TIME TO HALT RACE TALK

There are sick minds in Trinidad and Tobago today, on both sides of the ethnic divide, and in between, bent on creating racial discord and polarisation of the major groups. Some engage in it for short term political gain, while others employ it to seek not insubstantial economic and social benefits. The clear hope is that, ultimately, those whom the sickos seek to manipulate will believe and subscribe to the sad, cruelly conceived and just as cynically promoted propaganda.

The preachers of the ethnic bile are not restricted to the political hustings, but instead sometimes use the media as well as the advertising industry, and even some schools, as their platforms. And worse, indeed far worse, in many homes in the country there are adults, who, exposed to the racist comments of their parents while growing up, consciously warp and sully the minds of their children. I stress as I did in the first paragraph, that racist talk, and I may add racial prejudice should not be seen as the preserve of any one ethnic group. All are guilty, whether they are of Nigerian, Ghanaian, Indian, English, Chinese, Syrian, Sierra Leonese, French, Spanish or Portuguese descent. My father, the late C G Alleyne, had been born in Barbados and could never understand to his dying day why there were large pockets of discord and suspicion among the major ethnic groups. He forbade, absolutely, the use of any racial epithets in our home, for example, nigger, coolie, chink, limey. It is a practice I have adopted in my own home and which I maintain to this day.

If someone in my company wishes to patronise a vendor of a race that is not my own I will not attempt to redirect him/her to a vendor of my ethnic group, on the absurdly spurious argument that because our antecedents are the same that I should use this accident of history to influence another person’s choice. Workers of East Indian and West African descent, in those memorable days of the 1930s, fought beside each other and marched as one behind Tubal Uriah Butler and Adrian Cola Rienzi, the former of West African descent and the other of East Indian and European descent, in a battle against British Imperialism and the planter class mentality that had seeped into and governed the oil industry. West African and East Indian descent workers — dockworkers and sugar workers — had been brothers in the great human crusade of the 1919-1920 period when they organised and staged strikes, whether at the Port-of- Spain docks or the sugar estates, in defence of the right of one and the other to better and far less humbling days.

But unity is not only expressed in terms of industrial struggle against the common foe. There are examples on the cultural plane. The ethnic groups dance and parade together at Carnival time, sing Calypsoes and have fun at pre-Carnival parties. Who among us has not thrilled to the classic “meeting of the Ganges and the Nile” featuring David Rudder, the Master of Calypso and Mungal Patasar, the Prince of the Sitar. This coming together is again demonstrated at Phagwa, a Hindu Festival, attended by all ethnic groups and when abeer is thrown or squirted on nearby friends, acquaintances and others. I saw my first Hosay, the celebrated Muslim Festival, in Tunapuna in 1935, and thrilled as I still do to the beating of the tassa by musicians of the two ethnic principals.

We have produced world famous composers and singers, not Indian nor West African descent composers and singers, but persons proud to be Trinidadians and Tobagonians. Heading the list of internationally acclaimed Trinidad and Tobago composers has been Sundar Popo, whose hauntingly beautiful music and songs are sung and heard in India, throughout the Caribbean and the United States of America, among others. The two best known singers, internationally, from the twin-island State have been the late Kitchener and the evergreen Mighty Sparrow, and there are others not far removed as Anand Yankaran, Edric Connor, Jan Mazurus, Anne Fridal and Yameen Khan. Dancers have included Geoffrey Holder, Boscoe Holder, Beryl McBurnie, Baby Susan, Julia Edwards and the Maurice sisters — Cicely, Barney and Pat. Our people have contributed both the Calypso and Chutney to world culture. Add to that cuisine: a beef or chicken roti, accra and float, doubles, pelau, barra and oildown are as typically Trinidadian as, say, curried crab is typically Tobagonian, and in turn with one or more on the list of dishes ordered whenever tourists visit here.

Whether we are descended from slave or indentured labour we have made our contribution to music, sculpture, songs, painting, the world of letters, architecture, construction. There was a time, and not long ago, when the world hailed us, in addition to the above, for living and dwelling in multi-racial unity, although we were products of the embittered and cruelly manipulated past.