Afro Trinis are TT’s bobolees

THE EDITOR: If Good Friday had not passed and gone, I would have believed that it is now Good Friday and Afro Trinidadians were made out to be Good Friday “bobolees.” We were being kicked around and disrespected by a prominent businessman and a well known columnist of one of our local newspapers; all in the pursuit of sensationalism. It is a well known fact that Blacks usually make good fodder, for sensational news. And both parties sugar-coated their exploitive motives to appear to be interested and concerned about the plight of Afro-Trinidadians in entrepreneurship. Whenever I hear people talk of the problems Black people encounter in the Western world all because of our enslaved ancestors, I quickly remind them that our enslaved brothers and sisters who never left Africa share far worse fates than we do in the Western world and they are not descendants of slaves. This begs the question: Why are our socio/economic problems commonly categorised as the legacy of slavery?

Just to illustrate my point, people of Lebanese and Syrian descent are not electricians, doctors or lawyers on a grand scale. They are for the most part businessmen. Indians for all practical purposes are well established in business and the professions of law and medicine, while Afro Trinidadians are dispersed in the Civil Service, the Police Service, the Defence Force, the Arts and in the professions, law, medicine, engineering and small scale entrepreneurship. So which group is most widely dispersed in the society? Which group is making well deserving contributions to the society? And why are Afro Trinidadians as a group being lumped with the criminal elements of the society? No one in TT envies Syrians, Lebanese or French Creoles for their dominance in business; which for the most part are hand over family businesses from generation to generation. This characteristic is non-existent in the Afro-Trinidadian ethnic group. We also lack solidarity and comradeship which are manifested in our surreptitious dislike for each other; consequently, networking is not a common practice in our ethnic group. We lack the jingoism that is ever present in other ethnic groups, which would not be solved by just becoming involved in entrepreneurship; our pursuits must be nurtured, encouraged, sustained and above all supported by friends, family and relatives.

I hasten to draw from my own experiences, with a view of highlighting where our true problems lie; not in the Mark Guerras of Laventille, or the criminal element, that is pervasive in TT but in our own perception of ourselves, as an ethnic group and the preoccupation of others, with our past, as people of African descent. Our travail has fashioned and molded us. Our ascent to greater accomplishments in business may be slow and arduous but our all- round achievements are second to none in TT. I see no parallel or influence in our behaviour as a result of slavery; although it remains a component of our history. Too many behavioural scientists feed into the “vestiges of slavery bit,” when talking about people of African descent, while they shy away from doing an empirical study on the impact of slavery on our lives as an ethnic group. If anything, the best case scenario is that not all of us were subjected to peril by the atrocity anymore than the jews during the Holocaust. Like the Jews, we are also painted with a wide brush.

In conclusion, the socially conscious local newspaper columnist, with his clinical fixation on Dr Selwyn Cudjoe in particular and Afro-Trinidadians in general, should open workshops in TT with a view of saving our Afro-youths from hell and damnation and Afro males from becoming dons like the late Mark Guerra. Arthur Lok Jack should put his money where his mouth is; that is, with the implementation of franchises which would serve as the harbinger of his clarion for the involvement of Afro Trinidadians in entrepreneurships in TT for which every able-bodied Afro-Trini will be thankful. We cannot alleviate problems with only talk; there must be some form of action along the way. The ball is now in the courts of the columnist preaching fire and brimstone and Arthur Lok Jack the well meaning TT businessman. Let’s hear from you.

ULRIC  GUY
Point Fortin