Suzanne Shep­pard

A racist Face­book com­ment about the out­come of Mon­day’s Gen­er­al Elec­tion has led to a se­ries of reper­cus­sions and a boy­cott for lo­cal food man­u­fac­tur­er Ram­saran’s Dairy Prod­ucts.

The post by Naila Ram­saran, daugh­ter of the com­pa­ny’s own­er, Jof­fre Ram­saran, sparked out­rage on­line and brought a flood of an­gry re­spons­es from mem­bers of the pub­lic. This back­lash, in turn, prompt­ed sev­er­al su­per­mar­ket chains to pull their prod­ucts from shelves and a call for a boy­cott from the Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

In her post on the out­come of the elec­tion on Mon­day, Ram­saran wrote: “I hope Row­ley starts putting con­tra­cep­tives in their wa­ter sup­ply yes be­cause these cock­roach­es keep pop­u­lat­ing and the on­ly thing they know how to do is vote.”

Ram­saran lat­er apol­o­gised, claim­ing the posts were in “re­sponse to years of racial dis­crim­i­na­tion and crim­i­nal acts against my­self and my fam­i­ly in the last few years.” How­ev­er, the dam­age had al­ready been done.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, Massy Stores was one of the first su­per­mar­ket chains to re­spond with ac­tion. It said as a re­spon­si­ble re­tail­er, it makes every ef­fort to align with part­ners who hold sim­i­lar val­ues.

“We have lis­tened to our cus­tomers and have tak­en a de­ci­sion to re­move Ram­saran prod­ucts from our shelves at this time and tem­porar­i­ly sus­pend or­der­ing of this prod­uct,” the com­pa­ny said.

Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (SATT) pres­i­dent Ra­jiv Diptee then called on his mem­bers to boy­cott Ram­saran’s.

“We are ad­vis­ing all our mem­bers that a boy­cott of all Ram­saran’s Dairy Prod­ucts is to be un­der­tak­en im­me­di­ate­ly. This will stay in place un­til such time that the com­pa­ny seeks the ap­pro­pri­ate re­me­di­al ac­tion in a con­sis­tent and sat­is­fac­to­ry man­ner,” Diptee said in a state­ment.

Xtra Foods, West Bees, Per­sad’s D’ Food King and the JT Al­lum Group of Com­pa­nies were among oth­er re­tail­ers who re­moved Ram­saran’s prod­ucts from their shelves yes­ter­day. Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands oth­er com­pa­nies were al­so dis­cussing sim­i­lar ac­tion.

In re­sponse to the back­lash, Ram­saran’s is­sued a state­ment late yes­ter­day de­nounc­ing their fam­i­ly mem­ber’s com­ments and in­sist­ing that they were “not in any way what­so­ev­er re­flec­tive of the views and be­liefs of our small busi­ness.”

The state­ment added: “Giv­en these un­for­tu­nate de­vel­op­ments, we have tak­en ur­gent and ac­tive steps to part ways with the em­ploy­ee and au­thor of the sub­ject com­ments and state­ments, the con­tent of which can­not and will not be tol­er­at­ed by us.

“Ram­saran’s Dairy Prod­ucts has been in op­er­a­tion serv­ing the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go for over 70 years with­out in­ci­dent. We start­ed our op­er­a­tions as a hum­ble busi­ness and over time, on­ly with the cher­ished sup­port of our loy­al cus­tomer base, have our prod­ucts been able to be­come a sta­ple in many homes across the na­tion.

“Through­out this time, we have built, de­vel­oped and main­tained a bond with count­less em­ploy­ees, sup­pli­ers, cus­tomers and the pub­lic at large. While the said em­ploy­ee can­not speak on our be­half, even by as­so­ci­a­tion, we must un­re­served­ly ex­tend our apolo­gies na­tion­wide and to all those who have been im­pact­ed by the state­ments which were ut­ter­ly un­ac­cept­able and rep­re­hen­si­ble.”

The Ram­saran’s race con­tro­ver­sy was one of sev­er­al that have flared up since Mon­day night’s 22-19 vic­to­ry for the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s (PNM) over the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC).

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, in his first in­ter­view since the elec­tion, yes­ter­day told CNC3 The Morn­ing Brew host Na­talee Legore that seeds of dis­cord were be­ing sown in the coun­try. He ac­cused the UNC of fu­el­ing racism by telling the East In­di­an pop­u­la­tion they had been cheat­ed of the elec­tion. Dr Row­ley said there was “a huge un­der­cur­rent of racism” in the af­ter­math of the elec­tion. (See Page 7)

An in­ves­ti­ga­tion is tak­ing place in­to so­cial me­dia com­ments made by a Sixth Form teacher at Bish­op Anstey High School and Trin­i­ty Col­lege East (BATCE).

In one post, Kamel Ali wrote: “They ac­tu­al­ly cel­e­brat­ing that the PNM won? Oh right! Half of them on­ly eat bread and KFC so the price of gro­ceries wouldn’t mat­ter to them.”

An­oth­er com­ment not­ed: “This is what hap­pens when you give the un­e­d­u­cat­ed mass­es the right to vote... they make a mess of things.”

How­ev­er, in a wave of crit­i­cism that fol­lowed, one of the teacher’s for­mer stu­dents wrote: “To think that you were one of the few teach­ers I looked up to at Bish­ops! See­ing your views about ‘the blank PNM sup­port­ers who on­ly eat bread and KFC’ doesn’t sur­prise me or make me up­set! ... Be­cause of you and your teach­ing, a lot of us ‘Blank folk’ are in po­si­tions now, where we can walk in­to schools and take your place. There­fore, I be­lieve see­ing that it has all these qual­i­fied peo­ple who are ca­pa­ble of teach­ing the fu­ture gen­er­a­tion with­out hate, dis­gust and mal­ice in their hearts, I be­lieve peo­ple like you should not be teach­ing and if you still are a teacher, I would make it my busi­ness to make sure that you are not al­lowed to walk on­to any school com­pound in any part of Trinidad or To­ba­go ever again.”

Ali too sub­se­quent­ly apol­o­gised, say­ing his com­ments were not di­rect­ed at any­one in par­tic­u­lar and that he was not racist.

Par­ents and even the teacher’s col­leagues took him to task over the com­ment, with many mak­ing their feel­ing known to the schools’ man­age­ment. Bish­op of the An­gli­can Dio­cese of Trinidad and To­ba­go Claude Berkley has al­so spo­ken out against the state­ment, not­ing the pain and hurt it had caused. The schools are run by the An­gli­can Church.

BATCE di­rec­tor Jen­nifer Doyle said of­fi­cials of the school had tak­en note of the al­le­ga­tions and not­ed the mat­ter was un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

The T&T De­fence Force is al­so in­ves­ti­gat­ing some oth­er so­cial me­dia posts, al­leged­ly made by one of its mem­bers.

It is­sued the fol­low­ing state­ment: “The TTDF, in all en­deav­ours seeks to un­der­score the val­ue of equal­i­ty in our cul­tur­al­ly di­verse so­ci­ety as ex­pressed in our Na­tion­al An­them which states that “Every Creed and Race Find and Equal Place.” There­fore, the TTDF does not en­dorse the state­ments made and strong­ly con­demns any such ut­ter­ances that seek to di­vide our coun­try­men.”