Dr Sheila Ram­per­sad

That In­di­an/African racism and racial­ism pre­date Hilton Sandy, that racial bait­ing has been ubiq­ui­tous in T&T pol­i­tics, and that it is prac­tised by PNM and UNC are by now un­de­ni­able truths. So to swel­ter in­side that co­coa house with repet­i­tive back-and-forth ac­cu­sa­tions of who said what, when, and who re­spond­ed then but not now and vice ver­sa is un­pro­duc­tive, un­healthy and, quite frankly, un­bright.

Politi­cians are easy tar­gets; it's easy to say they are the ones mo­bil­is­ing racial re­spons­es and in­flam­ing In­di­an/African ten­sions. Of course, they are blame­wor­thy, do­ing and say­ing too much for too long that ag­gra­vates ten­sions and con­sol­i­dates stereo­types (ob­serve how, while stereo­typ­ing the oth­er group, they al­so of­ten re­in­force stereo­types of the group on whose be­half they claim to be act­ing/speak­ing).

Politi­cians use race be­cause race has po­lit­i­cal pur­chase; race works in get­ting votes. Al­though there are those among the lead­er­ship and mem­ber­ship of PNM and UNC who hold racist world­views, I sub­mit that those views would be much more ef­fec­tive­ly con­tained if par­ties se­ri­ous­ly risk los­ing elec­tions be­cause of them. In fact, the re­verse is true; par­ties win votes among their own groups by gal­vanis­ing us against them.

So it seems the un­avoid­able and chal­leng­ing con­ver­sa­tion is why do vot­ers re­main avail­able for ma­nip­u­la­tion by trans­par­ent­ly racialised and at times racist ma­noeu­vres?

All of T&T's peo­ple can­not be brain-dead and un­think­ing; not all cit­i­zens are eas­i­ly duped for a CEPEP wuk; and I feel cer­tain that the ma­jor­i­ty of us re­al­ly like each oth­er and get along just fine to the ex­tent that if one were to re­move every­thing In­di­an from Trinidad, Africans would suf­fer and if one were to re­move every­thing African from Trinidad, In­di­ans would be a much less­er peo­ple.

Here­in lies one ob­ser­va­tion: in the con­text of In­di­an/African re­la­tions in T&T, there is of­ten a dis­con­nect be­tween how peo­ple re­late as in­di­vid­u­als and how they re­late as groups.

So when Sandy says he has In­di­an friends, when Sug­ar Aloes some years ago said he's not racist be­cause his man­ag­er is In­di­an and when Sat Ma­haraj said he likes black peo­ple, they are be­ing sin­cere; they and oth­ers do have friends, man­agers, lovers, co-work­ers of the oth­er eth­nic­i­ty, and they do get along just fine (re­mem­ber Sat and Sel­wyn Cud­joe pub­licly de­clared their friend­ship).

But lis­ten to those same peo­ple speak about their group iden­ti­ty in re­la­tion to the oth­er group and you hear such ra­bid state­ments–some cod­ed, some bla­tant–as to make you cringe. Among the ra­dio callers, let­ter-writ­ers and blog­gers (some get paid, some vol­un­teer) who spew vile com­men­taries, most prob­a­bly en­joy sol­id re­la­tion­ships and have pos­i­tive ex­pe­ri­ences with mem­bers of the oth­er eth­nic group.

This is part of the re­al­i­ty of eth­nic re­la­tions in T&T and these are the ar­eas of com­plex­i­ty that we have to ex­plore.

Rather than con­tin­u­ous­ly tar­get­ing politi­cians who play the race card or awak­en the race bo­gey (and yes, we even have clich�s to de­scribe their ap­peals, so fa­mil­iar are they to us) we have to al­so see our­selves with equal clar­i­ty. Why do we re­act? Why do we re­spond? Why do we avail our­selves for trib­al ma­nip­u­la­tion? Do we want to take the cur­ry out of the crab and Kendell out of the kathak?

The pop­u­la­tion has sig­nalled its de­sire to de­tach from the UNC-PNM, In­di­an-African pol­i­tics. We vot­ed 33-3 in favour of the NAR in 1986 and we vot­ed 29-12, not for the UNC but for a part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment that was mak­ing the right sounds dur­ing the 2010 elec­tion cam­paign.

In 2001, the 18-18 dead­lock was a sig­nal that racial vot­ing had reached its nat­ur­al cul-de-sac. (I re­main flab­ber­gast­ed that Patrick Man­ning thought, first, that this was a prob­lem and, sec­ond, that the so­lu­tion was to change the num­ber of elec­toral con­stituen­cies to an odd num­ber). And the break­down of the pop­u­la­tion by eth­nic­i­ty demon­strates that no par­ty can win a gen­er­al elec­tion by ap­peal­ing to its tribe alone.

The fail­ure of the NAR was dev­as­tat­ing; 26 years lat­er the PP has al­so failed; the COP, once a vi­able enough op­tion that at­tract­ed 148,000 vot­ers in 2007, is now a par­ty in name on­ly, hav­ing ab­sorbed the taint of its stub­born as­so­ci­a­tion with the UNC-dom­i­nat­ed PP. It is for this rea­son that the PNM should have sac­ri­ficed Sandy and the Belle Gar­den East/Rox­bor­ough/De­laford seat in the THA elec­tions.

At a time when peo­ple are search­ing for al­ter­na­tives and see­ing none, Kei­th Row­ley missed a bril­liant op­por­tu­ni­ty to point his par­ty in a di­rec­tion that would make it at­trac­tive to more than its core sup­port­ers, who by them­selves can­not win a gen­er­al elec­tion.

Had he sac­ri­ficed Sandy and one THA seat, he would have at once demon­strat­ed to his par­ty's se­nior mem­bers that the PNM's modus operan­di had changed or was in the process of chang­ing, in­di­cat­ed to PNM's core sup­port­ers that a new man with a new vi­sion was in the big chair, chal­lenged the PP to act de­ci­sive­ly each time racialised mes­sages drop from their ori­fices, giv­en In­di­ans a rea­son to con­sid­er vot­ing for him, in­vest­ed truth in the PNM's "gen­er­a­tion next" To­ba­go cam­paign slo­gan, point­ed a di­rec­tion for­ward for the coun­try, and writ­ten him­self in­to our his­to­ry. In the end, the task was too great for him and the PNM.

I guess in the To­ba­go bush, as in the Trinidad bush, a bird in the hand is worth two.