As in­di­cat­ed in yes­ter­day’s Sun­day Guardian by a his­to­ri­an, a so­ci­ol­o­gist and a crim­i­nol­o­gist, racial con­flict is get­ting in the way of Trinidad and To­ba­go's so­cial de­vel­op­ment. They al­so made the point that this con­flict is be­com­ing more in­tense.

For decades, much of the con­flict has cen­tred on the shar­ing of the na­tion’s re­sources and the strug­gle for po­lit­i­cal pow­er be­tween the two ma­jor po­lit­i­cal par­ties, the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment and the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress, which have tra­di­tion­al­ly drawn much of their sup­port along racial lines.

The two par­ties have al­ter­nat­ed be­tween gov­ern­ment and op­po­si­tion through­out much of the decades of po­lit­i­cal In­de­pen­dence. Too of­ten, how­ev­er, their po­lit­i­cal bat­tles have been shaped by racial di­vi­sions.

It is there­fore hard­ly sur­pris­ing that when po­lit­i­cal pow­er is at stake, both gov­ern­ment and op­po­si­tion have been will­ing to play the race card when it suits their po­lit­i­cal in­ter­ests.

In the midst of grow­ing eco­nom­ic and so­cial pres­sures, po­lit­i­cal par­ties and their lead­ers ap­pear in­creas­ing­ly de­pen­dent on keep­ing their sup­port­ers di­vid­ed. It is an old po­lit­i­cal tac­tic: “di­vide and rule.” In fact, it was once used by colo­nial gov­ern­ments to dis­tract the pop­u­la­tion from the re­al is­sues af­fect­ing their lives.

Af­ter decades of self-gov­ern­ment, we should have moved be­yond this.

In­stead, too of­ten, the po­lit­i­cal strug­gle is pre­sent­ed as a con­test in which one eth­nic group must re­tain pow­er and the oth­er must take it back.

The re­sult is a cy­cle in which po­lit­i­cal vic­to­ry be­comes less about what is best for the coun­try and more about which group con­trols the State.

That is a dan­ger­ous place for any so­ci­ety.

His­to­ri­an Dr Jerome Teelucks­ingh, re­flect­ing on the state of race re­la­tions in T&T, puts it blunt­ly.

“We have reached a turn­ing point, and it’s not a good turn­ing point,” says the UWI his­to­ri­an.

There is am­ple ev­i­dence of the ten­sions he de­scribes.

Con­tentions over the dis­tri­b­u­tion of re­sources along al­leged eth­no-ge­o­graph­ic lines, as raised by re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions, have be­come part of the po­lit­i­cal de­bate.

So too have dis­putes over ap­point­ments to boards of State cor­po­ra­tions, the re­cent con­tro­ver­sy over In­do-Trinida­di­an cul­tur­al per­for­mances in African Eman­ci­pa­tion Day cel­e­bra­tions, and the use of a well-known deroga­to­ry term.

Each of these is­sues may have le­git­i­mate ques­tions be­hind them. But they can al­so be ex­ploit­ed to keep racial ten­sions alive.

This is where the wider so­ci­ety must in­ter­vene.

There needs to be an in­ter­ven­tion by what must be a sig­nif­i­cant seg­ment of the pop­u­la­tion who see T&T in all its won­der­ful di­ver­si­ty, and have the un­der­stand­ing that it is in­deed a great source of cul­tur­al and na­tion­al strength if the na­tion can har­ness it in the best in­ter­est of all.

That is the group­ing of the pop­u­la­tion which needs to make its state­ments and po­si­tions known to counter the con­flict­ual po­si­tions be­ing adopt­ed by the groups fight­ing against the best in­ter­ests of the peo­ple and coun­try.

Oth­er Cari­com coun­tries, in­clud­ing Guyana and Suri­name, have their own com­pli­cat­ed his­to­ries of eth­nic di­vi­sion. Yet they, like T&T, al­so demon­strate the pos­si­bil­i­ties that ex­ist when peo­ple from dif­fer­ent back­grounds work to­wards com­mon na­tion­al goals.

We should choose that path.

The fu­ture of T&T can­not be built on one race de­feat­ing an­oth­er. It must be built on all of us recog­nis­ing that the coun­try be­longs to every­one.