Try­ing to avoid "race talk" in the pol­i­tics of T&T is like at­tempt­ing to walk in the rain with­out get­ting wet. The ten­sion be­tween the two ma­jor races, African and In­di­an, is as old as the is­lands' his­to­ry, with in­com­ing East In­di­an in­den­tures per­ceived as re­duc­ing the bar­gain­ing pow­er of freed slaves then, with that gap widen­ing by dif­fer­ences in cul­ture and by de­mo­graph­ics, with East In­di­ans ba­si­cal­ly rur­al and agri­cul­tur­al, and Africans ur­ban and 'Civ­il Ser­vice.'

But it's the pol­i­tics which ex­ac­er­bates this ten­sion be­tween the two groups. with the West­min­ster sys­tem of first past the post be­ing the per­fect fod­der for racial di­vi­sion to feed on. Its man­i­fes­ta­tion is crys­tal clear in the peren­ni­al an­tag­o­nism be­tween the African-based PNM and the East In­di­an-based UNC dur­ing elec­tions of any kind.

It is a cred­it to us a peo­ple, how­ev­er, that de­spite this on­go­ing "root" di­vi­sion we still co-ex­ist peace­ful­ly, even cross sig­nif­i­cant­ly in mu­sic, food, so­cial re­la­tion­ships.

We fete to­geth­er at Car­ni­val, in­ter­min­gle in the vil­lages and in the work­place and sport, we share in our var­ied fes­ti­vals. It's the pol­i­tics, though, that brings out the racial beast with­in us. When it comes to vot­ing our pri­mor­dial in­stincts take over and we vote not on is­sues, but ac­cord­ing to the tex­ture of our hair and the colour of our skin.

Some in­tel­lec­tu­als love to gloss over this harsh re­al­i­ty and give the elec­torate and en­light­en­ment which it does not pos­sess, foist­ing ideas about the in­formed judg­ment of the elec­torate which are on­ly in their aca­d­e­m­ic heads.

The PNM/UNC di­choto­my is the supreme man­i­fes­ta­tion of this race-based vot­ing and I would ask rhetor­i­cal­ly, "Would the grass­roots from Debe and Pe­nal ever vote for the African Row­ley de­spite all his man­go-chop­ping and dou­bles-eat­ing in Debe? And in the same vein, would Laven­tille ever re­al­ly vote for Kam­la de­spite all her over­tures to them?"

Race is the soul of our pol­i­tics and we can­not hide it un­der a bushel! We must talk about it as I did, teach­ing Selvon's A Brighter Sun to a mixed group of East-West cor­ri­dor stu­dents get­ting them to con­front the ini­tial ten­sion be­tween the East In­di­ans Tiger and Ur­mil­la and The Africans Joe and Ri­ta, and to talk mean­ing­ful­ly and with­out fear, about their ex­pe­ri­ences re­lat­ed to racial dif­fer­ence.

You do not solve a prob­lem by hid­ing from it and it's time we move away from this neg­a­tive mind­set.

Dr Er­rol Ben­jamin,

via e-mail