Drowning in hate

One’s race ought not to be an excuse for the use of pejorative comments about other sectors of our society.

I looked on painfully as our Parliament reached a new low with the leader of one political party refusing to respect the Speaker by remaining on her feet while the Speaker was standing and the other in cross talk supporting a position that could be deemed racially tainted.

I read on social media the numerous accusations of elitism towards the Syrian-Lebanese community and I wondered where do we go from here.

I imagined that an African slave after a day’s work with his back bruised from the whip must have prayed for a day when he could be free to work for himself. How he must have prayed for the opportunity to read, to raise his children in his home rather than have them sold off as property. I suspect that he could never have imagined a free African killing his brother without provocation, refusing to elevate his or her educational status or moreover refusing to support his family.

Who would imagine that after struggling for the freedom to chart one’s own course such a person would return with hand outstretched demanding a handout? I think of Basdeo Panday and the other politicians of East Indian ancestry and their struggle to secure a footing in the Parliament.

Who would believe that after years of struggle the successors of Panday would use the Parliament to promote selfish agendas that build barriers to unity rather than take them down? The struggles for economic and political survival that was based on hard work and education are daily being eroded by the few who promote reliance on government contracts, illusions of racial victimisation and nepotism in their struggle for political survival.

Our Syrian community with a history of hard work, education and support for both political parties are being ridiculed for their success.

It was so easy for many to read into a statement of a businessman in a television show almost everything except that this was an example of what is possible if one maximises the opportunities available in TT .

Contrary to what some may think, such success is not uncommon nor is it necessarily linked to illegal activities.

There are many people of African, Indian, European, Chinese and Hispanic ancestry throughout TT who are successful and live very comfortable lives. The common thread is education, innovation, entrepreneurship and hard work.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, an American poet, once said, “The height that great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight, but they, while their companions slept, were toiling upward in the night.” It’s time to wake up TT and sow seeds of love or drown in the hatred.

STEVE ALVAREZ via emai