AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

an­ge­lo.je­didi­ah@guardian.co.tt

The sto­ry of Dr Richard An­toine White con­tin­ues to res­onate with the lives of many, as he vis­its T&T to share a mes­sage of sur­vival and hope.

Those fa­mil­iar with White’s sto­ry may be fa­mil­iar with him be­ing the first African Amer­i­can to earn a doc­tor­ate in mu­sic for tu­ba per­for­mance. But it is through his ac­com­plish­ment that he has in­spired many.

On Tues­day, Ross Ad­ver­tis­ing/Re­Think host­ed a spe­cial mo­ti­va­tion­al speak­ing event which fea­tured White to mo­ti­vate scores of at­ten­dees of var­i­ous ages and back­grounds. The event took place at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA), in Port-of-Spain.

“Don’t try to be what peo­ple want you to be. Be who you are and it is okay for peo­ple to not like you. If some­one does not like you, don’t in­vite them for cof­fee. If some­one likes you and you touch them, then you could con­nect with them. I think we have to stop be­ing so di­vi­sive in this world,” White said, an­swer­ing what en­cour­aged him to add ‘mo­ti­va­tion­al speak­er’ to his port­fo­lio.

One at­tendee asked for ad­vice on how to en­sure that all her chil­dren are al­lowed to be them­selves. She claimed that the present ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem does not cater for in­di­vid­u­al­i­ty, which is to the dis­ad­van­tage of young chil­dren.

Ac­cord­ing to White, he frankly sug­gest­ed for lo­cal politi­cians and sen­a­tors stop be­ing ‘blind’ and forc­ing chil­dren to ‘fit in­to one box.’

“Most im­por­tant­ly, I will tell your kid not to check their per­son­al­i­ty at the door. It’s the biggest prob­lem with the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem. ‘You’re dif­fer­ent, I want you to check your per­son­al­i­ty at the door and fit this mod­el.’ That is in­cor­rect…en­cour­age kids to be them­selves,” White said.