Far from dy­ing down af­ter be­ing raised so no­to­ri­ous­ly by Nizam Mo­hammed in state­ments be­fore Par­lia­ment, the is­sue of race re­la­tions in Trinidad and To­ba­go con­tin­ues to be stoked in po­lit­i­cal quar­ters.Last week, Op­po­si­tion Leader Kei­th Row­ley re­port­ed to Par­lia­ment that he had been in­formed of con­cerns ex­pressed by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al about the eth­nic bal­ance of staff at this coun­try's mis­sion in New York, pre­dictably stok­ing fur­ther crosstalk and ac­cu­sa­tions in the House.

Un­der­ly­ing these is­sues is a grow­ing sense of un­ease about racial im­bal­ance in Trinidad and To­ba­go and an even greater dis­com­fort about dis­cussing these mat­ters open­ly and with a view to clar­i­fi­ca­tion.Noth­ing il­lus­trates this mor­ti­fi­ca­tion more clear­ly than the fate of the Pres­i­dent's Com­mit­tee for Na­tion­al Self Dis­cov­ery, for­mal­ly con­vened on Au­gust 12, 2003 with a man­date to, among oth­er things, "imag­ine new be­gin­nings and ways of see­ing the past dif­fer­ent­ly in or­der to con­struct a new fu­ture."Af­ter host­ing sev­er­al sym­posia around the coun­try, the com­mit­tee's mem­bers quick­ly re­alised that the mis­sion en­com­passed more than they were equipped to han­dle.

Eight years lat­er, the com­mit­tee has not been for­mal­ly dis­band­ed by or­der of Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards, but it has ef­fec­tive­ly col­lapsed, not hav­ing met for sev­er­al years and doesn't even have the mon­ey to pack­age and dis­trib­ute the record­ings of its meet­ings in Ari­ma, Ch­agua­nas, To­ba­go, Ce­dros and Port-of-Spain.To be fair, the Com­mit­tee for Na­tion­al Self Dis­cov­ery was not a com­mit­tee about race, but it was formed in the wake of an elec­tion that trans­ferred pow­er from the dom­i­nant­ly In­do-Trinida­di­an UNC to the Afro-cen­tric PNM and there were con­cerns about na­tion­al uni­ty in the head­lines of the day then as well.

The mis­sion of the Com­mit­tee, ap­pro­pri­ate­ly for one con­vened by the Pres­i­dent of this coun­try, was clear­ly one to raise the con­ver­sa­tion about na­tion­al is­sues be­yond sim­plis­tic eth­nic con­sid­er­a­tions to a larg­er con­tem­pla­tion of our achieve­ments as a na­tion and the val­ue of in­clu­sive think­ing in our cul­tur­al and ed­u­ca­tion­al ad­vance­ment.On Fri­day, Regi­nald Du­mas was all but call­ing for a re­sump­tion of the work of the Com­mit­tee for Na­tion­al Self Dis­cov­ery in new fo­ra, de­scrib­ing the need for a new dis­course on na­tion­al­i­ty that would fo­cus on the core is­sues dri­ving the cur­rent en­thu­si­asm for con­ver­sa­tion about racial in­equal­i­ty and im­bal­ance.

Du­mas sen­si­bly called for a new dis­course to be over­seen by the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go that would al­low for a so­lu­tion fo­cused dis­cus­sion of all forms of re­al and per­ceived dis­crim­i­na­tion along lines of race, gen­der and re­li­gion.To that might read­i­ly be added a se­ries of stud­ies that should be tasked with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to in­ter­ro­gate and re­port on the re­al­i­ty of sit­u­a­tions of per­ceived racial im­bal­ance and the cul­tur­al paths that might have led to sit­u­a­tions where they ex­ist and to such per­cep­tions, where they do not.

There is sure­ly a re­al need to move these in­flam­ma­to­ry ac­cu­sa­tions be­yond po­lit­i­cal rhetoric in­to more use­ful and cred­i­ble realms of in­ves­ti­ga­tion that will ad­vance an an­a­lyt­i­cal and con­tem­pla­tive un­der­stand­ing of the con­tem­po­rary re­al­i­ties of Trinidad and To­ba­go."We are not one in T&T, as is be­ing claimed by politi­cians and oth­ers in so­ci­ety," Regi­nald Du­mas said. Nor are we as racist and preda­to­ry as politi­cians with a con­stituen­cy to sat­is­fy might have us be­lieve.

There are too many ca­su­al ex­am­ples in the lives of any cit­i­zen of Trinidad and To­ba­go of ac­cep­tance and in­deed, en­thu­si­as­tic en­dorse­ment of cul­tur­al prac­tices that are eth­ni­cal­ly spe­cif­ic but wide­ly shared re­gard­less of race and class in this coun­try for any­one to ac­cept the al­most week­ly ef­forts to por­tray this coun­try as racial­ly di­vid­ed.In any coun­try as racial­ly rich, the­o­log­i­cal­ly en­thu­si­as­tic and cul­tur­al­ly abun­dant as ours, there is al­most sure­ly room for a deep­er un­der­stand­ing of the many skeins of dif­fer­ence that make up the unique ta­pes­try of this coun­try and that's cer­tain­ly a study and in­tel­lec­tu­al en­gage­ment worth pur­su­ing.