Dr Sheila Ram­per­sad

With no plea­sure, I dis­agree fun­da­men­tal­ly with my col­league and part­ner colum­nist, Max­ie Cuffie (We Will Fall, De­cem­ber 23; Max­ie's Re­sponse, De­cem­ber 29), as I did with for­mer chair­man of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC), Nizam Mo­hammed (Nizam Cries Race, March 25, 2011), and in­deed all those who ra­tio­nalise that count­ing eth­nic heads is an ef­fec­tive and pro­duc­tive route to­wards equal­i­ty in T&T.

There are many parts of the world where this ap­proach is prac­ti­cal as a start­ing point to­wards eth­nic equal­i­ty, and even in those parts eth­nic head-count­ing is not the fi­nal des­ti­na­tion but an ini­tial strat­e­gy to af­ford ba­sic hu­man rights to mil­lions who have, and con­tin­ue to be, sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly op­pressed by an­oth­er eth­nic group. A char­ac­ter­is­tic of these lo­ca­tions is in­sti­tu­tion­al dis­crim­i­na­tion against peo­ples of par­tic­u­lar races.

Con­tem­po­rary racism in the Unit­ed States, for ex­am­ple, is built on a long his­to­ry of racist philoso­phies of white su­pe­ri­or­i­ty that were but­tressed by a broad range of poli­cies, laws and in­sti­tu­tions that nor­malised racism and per­pet­u­at­ed it.

In­sti­tu­tion­al racism in the US has been re­spon­si­ble for African en­slave­ment, In­di­an reser­va­tions, seg­re­ga­tion, res­i­den­tial schools for Na­tive Amer­i­cans, and in­tern­ment camps. As a re­sult of in­sti­tu­tion­al racism, wide dis­par­i­ties have oc­curred in em­ploy­ment, hous­ing, ed­u­ca­tion, health­care, gov­ern­ment and oth­er sec­tors.

While many laws were passed in the mid-20th cen­tu­ry to make dis­crim­i­na­tion il­le­gal, ma­jor in­equal­i­ties still ex­ist and con­tin­ue to af­fect that so­ci­ety; le­gal changes notwith­stand­ing, it is a much more daunt­ing to change world­views based on racist sen­ti­ments.

Vi­o­lent white-on-black racism in South Africa is an in­deli­ble part of the mem­o­ries of gen­er­a­tions in South Africa and the world. In­sti­tu­tion­al racism ex­clud­ed mil­lions of Black peo­ple from re­sources and pow­er; one pow­er­ful ex­am­ple was South Africa's 1913 Na­tives Land Act, which re­served 90 per cent of land for white use, and the Na­tive Ur­ban Ar­eas Act, which reg­u­lat­ed the move­ment of black males.

From 1948 on­wards, white South African gov­ern­ments en­forced le­gal seg­re­ga­tion through the: Pro­hi­bi­tion of Mixed Mar­riages Act (1949); Im­moral­i­ty Amend­ment Act (1957); Pop­u­la­tion Reg­is­tra­tion Act (1950); Group Ar­eas Act (1950); Sup­pres­sion of Com­mu­nism Act (1950); Ban­tu Build­ing Work­ers Act (1951); Sep­a­rate Rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Vot­ers Act (1951); Pre­ven­tion of Il­le­gal Squat­ting Act (1951); Ban­tu Au­thor­i­ties Act (1951); Na­tives Laws Amend­ment Act (1952); Na­tives (Abo­li­tion of Pass­es and Co-or­di­na­tion of Doc­u­ments) Act (1952); Na­tive Labour (Set­tle­ment of Dis­putes) Act (1953); Ban­tu Ed­u­ca­tion Act (1953); and Reser­va­tion of Sep­a­rate Ameni­ties Act (1953).

These are, of course, far from the on­ly lo­ca­tions where racism and eth­nic dis­crim­i­na­tion is so nor­ma­tive and con­sol­i­dat­ed that re­dress­ing it re­quires head-count­ing as a di­ag­nos­tic tool and af­fir­ma­tive ac­tion as part of a cor­rec­tive strat­e­gy. (And dis­crim­i­na­tion, of course, ex­tends be­yond race to many groups such as women, the dis­abled, peo­ple of a par­tic­u­lar re­li­gion etc.

In these cas­es too, in­struc­tion­al dis­crim­i­na­tion over pro­tract­ed pe­ri­ods of time forced the need to al­le­vi­ate dis­crim­i­na­tion through head-count­ing, such as the num­ber of women in par­lia­ments etc).

This is not the case in T&T's short his­to­ry of In­di­an/African re­la­tions, and to sug­gest that those groups here, which ex­ist in a lat­er­al rather than hi­er­ar­chi­cal re­la­tion­ship, have sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly op­pressed each oth­er to the ex­tent that it is nec­es­sary for the coun­try to count In­di­an­peo­ple and Black­peo­ple across sec­tors and then re­dress any nu­mer­i­cal im­bal­ances found is to: ac­cept un­truths about our­selves; re­duce our unique re­al­i­ty to one that fits in­to prim­i­tive glob­al trends; di­min­ish the re­al­i­ties of peo­ples who ac­tu­al­ly suf­fer vi­o­lent, sys­tem­at­ic re­pres­sion; make Stoke­ly Carmichael (who coined the term "in­sti­tu­tion­al racism") roll over in his grave laugh­ing at his home­land (note how the dis­cus­sion raised by Max­ie was re­duced to a jokey dis­agree­ment over whether the chair­man of the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ties Com­mis­sion, Prof John La­Guerre, is re­al­ly an In­di­an); and take us along a dan­ger­ous and un­pro­duc­tive path where In­di­ans are en­cour­aged to view Africans in po­si­tions of au­thor­i­ty with sus­pi­cion and vice ver­sa, while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly fu­elling a mis­guid­ed per­cep­tion that In­di­ans can­not be treat­ed fair­ly by Africans and Africans will be dis­ad­van­taged by In­di­ans when In­di­ans are in po­si­tions of pow­er.

Eth­nic head-count­ing al­so as­sumes that these ap­point­ed In­di­an and African heads are suf­fi­cient­ly group-con­scious to en­sure that their own is pro­tect­ed from un­fair treat­ment and, fur­ther, that these heads are more con­scious, bet­ter in­formed, and more knowl­edge­able about their own group than peo­ple out­side their group; in T&T we share knowl­edge of each oth­er's his­to­ries and cul­tures to the ex­tent that there are Africans who know more about In­di­an­peo­ple than In­di­an­peo­ple them­selves, and vice ver­sa. This, by the way, is a good thing and ought to be en­cour­aged at the same time that self-knowl­edge is en­cour­aged.

The head-count strat­e­gy is al­so blind to in­ter­nalised racism-some­thing that many find awk­ward to dis­close and dis­cuss-where some Black­peo­ple and In­di­an­peo­ple do not hold mem­bers of their group in high re­gard.

Blind it is, too, to in­ter­nal di­ver­si­ty with­in groups where class and re­li­gion, for ex­am­ple, al­so de­ter­mine one's view of mem­bers of one's eth­nic group as well as those out­side the group. An Or­isha or Hin­du ad­her­ent sit­ting be­fore a pro­mo­tions pan­el in the po­lice ser­vice is like­ly to both be dis­crim­i­nat­ed against by African and In­di­an born-again Chris­tians be­cause both Hin­du and Or­isha fol­low­ers are de­mon-wor­ship­pers in the born-again Chris­t­ian world­view.

If the pri­ma­ry ben­e­fit of eth­nic head-count­ing is su­per­fi­cial, that is, it gives the ap­pear­ance that one would be fair­ly treat­ed, then that is too mi­nor a ben­e­fit to be de­rived from such a fun­da­men­tal pol­i­cy. Not to men­tion that it is back­ward to en­cour­age a pop­u­la­tion to feel bet­ter, re­act more favourably, or feel more se­cure on­ly when they see peo­ple who share their par­tic­u­lar phe­no­type.

In our con­text, it is un­so­phis­ti­cat­ed, dan­ger­ous and I dare­say lazy to sug­gest head-count­ing to ad­dress in­stances of racial dis­crim­i­na­tion. The hard­er but more pro­gres­sive so­lu­tion is to en­sure that sys­tems ex­ist to en­sure equal­i­ty for all cit­i­zens-what­ev­er their race, re­li­gion, gen­der, sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion, colour, class etc-and that those sys­tems are scrupu­lous­ly man­aged and mon­i­tored by com­pe­tent and fair peo­ple in a trans­par­ent man­ner.