Racism, racial dis­crim­i­na­tion or the more eu­phemistic term, a po­lite man­ner for race think­ing, is in­dige­nous to T&T. The seeds have been sown through his­tor­i­cal an­tecedents of ‘di­vide and rule’. They have been fer­tilised by our post-in­de­pen­dence, so­cial and po­lit­i­cal de­vel­op­ment.

De­spite its long ex­is­tence, nev­er be­fore in the his­to­ry of this twin-is­land Re­pub­lic has racism been so un­con­cealed and de­lib­er­ate as it is to­day. T&T is now seen as the land of the fad­ing rain­bow.

In­ter­net plat­forms are un­reg­u­lat­ed breed­ing grounds for racism and re­li­gious hate. Racial hate speech is of­ten in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries and de­hu­man­is­ing rhetoric.

Racism can be de­fined as a form of dis­crim­i­na­tion that aris­es from the be­lief that one group is bi­o­log­i­cal­ly su­pe­ri­or or in­fe­ri­or to the oth­er and should be treat­ed pref­er­en­tial­ly or dif­fer­ent­ly.

Racism is man­i­fest in many ways. It may take the form of di­rect at­tacks. For ex­am­ple, one group is be­ing at­tacked by an­oth­er. News­pa­per re­ports rank T&T as sec­ond in the world in kid­nap­ping rates. Most of the vic­tims have been In­do-Trinida­di­an, while those ap­pre­hend­ed for us­ing guns in rob­beries have been most­ly Afro-Trinida­di­ans.

Sec­ond­ly, per­ceived dis­crim­i­na­tion by in­di­vid­u­als based on mi­nor in­ci­dents or re­jec­tion im­pacts peo­ple’s health. A typ­i­cal ex­am­ple is the de­spair, mis­ery and sad­ness felt by can­di­dates who ap­pear for an in­ter­view to en­ter nurs­ing at hos­pi­tals. The pan­el was pre­dom­i­nant­ly Afro-Trinida­di­ans. Many In­do-Trinida­di­ans were al­leged­ly re­ject­ed be­cause they were “too qual­i­fied and would not stay in nurs­ing.” They would be seek­ing high­er pay­ing, bet­ter op­por­tu­ni­ties in for­eign lands.

A third form of racism is in­equity in the re­ceipt of ser­vices. Spe­cial­ly tar­get­ed pro­grammes for male Trinida­di­ans, aged 17-24, es­pe­cial­ly Afro-Trinida­di­an males.

One has to ask why so many trade schools were closed down, John Don­ald­son Tech­ni­cal In­sti­tute, San Fer­nan­do Tech­ni­cal In­sti­tute; it can be ar­gued that they were re­placed by UTT and COSTATT. Sad­ly, nei­ther has any great suc­cess.

There is no doubt about the in­tent of the pol­i­cy­mak­ers. The al­leged mis­take is a clas­si­cal Freudi­an slip (An er­ror in speech, mem­o­ry or phys­i­cal ac­tion that is thought to be caused by the in­ter­fer­ence of an un­con­scious wish or train of thought).

There is re­search link­ing racial dis­crim­i­na­tion to men­tal ill­ness both in the Unit­ed King­dom and Unit­ed States. High preva­lence rates of de­pres­sion have been re­port­ed in both South Asian and African Caribbean pop­u­la­tions.

High­er rates of psy­chosis, ten times more than the white pop­u­la­tions, have been found in African Caribbean groups. This is a man­i­fes­ta­tion of sev­er­al so­cial and eco­nom­ic-re­lat­ed risk fac­tors. A ma­jor so­cial fac­tor fre­quent­ly iden­ti­fied by so­cial work­ers and aca­d­e­mics is racism.

Racism is a ma­jor stress fac­tor both to the vic­tim and the per­pe­tra­tor. Dai­ly ex­pe­ri­ence of mi­nor acts of dis­crim­i­na­tion in a race-think­ing so­ci­ety is a cause of chron­ic stress. This re­sults in phys­i­cal and men­tal dis­eases.

A Na­tion­al Sur­vey of Eth­nic Mi­nori­ties pro­vid­ed UK ev­i­dence of a cross-sec­tion­al as­so­ci­a­tion be­tween in­ter­per­son­al racism and men­tal ill­ness. A rep­re­sen­ta­tive sam­ple of over 5,000 per­sons of Caribbean-African and Asian ori­gin was asked about their ex­pe­ri­ences of racial dis­crim­i­na­tion af­ter the turn of the cen­tu­ry.

It was found that those who ex­pe­ri­enced ver­bal abuse were three times more like­ly to be suf­fer­ing from de­pres­sion or psy­chosis. Those who had ex­pe­ri­enced a racist at­tack were near­ly three times more like­ly to suf­fer from de­pres­sion and five times more like­ly to suf­fer from psy­chosis. Those who said their em­ploy­ers were racist were 1.6 times more like­ly to suf­fer from psy­chosis.

Find­ings re­lat­ing to racism and men­tal ill­ness in T&T and oth­er Caribbean coun­tries have been un­re­li­able. In clin­i­cal prac­tice, racial dis­crim­i­na­tion is an every­day com­plaint of mem­bers of all eth­nic groups who seek sick leave, med­ical rea­sons for trans­fer and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of be­ing med­ical­ly un­fit.

Re­searchers’ find­ings in T&T have re­port­ed dif­fer­ent rates of men­tal ill­ness with­in eth­nic groups. Ear­ly works have re­port­ed high rates of stress-re­lat­ed dis­or­ders, such as al­co­holism, de­pres­sion and sui­ci­dal be­hav­iour, among In­do-Trinida­di­ans. Alien­ation, mar­gin­al­i­sa­tion or racial dis­crim­i­na­tion have been at­trib­uted as causative fac­tors.

While in­ter­per­son­al dis­crim­i­na­tion is di­rect, in­sti­tu­tion­al racism is of­ten in­di­rect. Dis­crim­i­na­tion can be achieved by chang­ing the rules or poli­cies of gov­ern­ment de­part­ments and in­sti­tu­tions. Af­fir­ma­tive ac­tion or tar­get­ing one eth­nic group through so­cial pro­grammes is in it­self born out of dis­crim­i­na­to­ry think­ing.

The fact that Trinida­di­ans can now ar­tic­u­late their feel­ings about race is a step in the right di­rec­tion. It is a sign that our peo­ple are now be­com­ing more ma­ture and are un­will­ing to sweep is­sues that af­fect their dai­ly lives un­der the car­pet.

Res­o­lu­tion of race is­sues can on­ly be at­tained through dis­cus­sion. Since racism is a cause of men­tal ill­ness, on­ly through di­a­logue can prop­er so­cial and pub­lic health poli­cies be im­ple­ment­ed.