As a sec­ond-gen­er­a­tion Syr­i­an-Trinida­di­an (my fa­ther and both grand­fa­thers are from Syr­ia), I am ap­palled at the state­ments of cer­tain third-gen­er­a­tion Syr­i­ans who have been em­bold­ened to speak with a voice of big­otry and priv­i­leged em­pow­er­ment.

Any­one who reads this in­di­vid­ual’s com­ments will not find the hid­den un­der­tone of racism enig­mat­ic; how­ev­er, most Syr­i­an-Trinida­di­ans will un­equiv­o­cal­ly dis­as­so­ci­ate from this and any form of prej­u­dice and racism. Even though most of the na­tive Syr­i­an-Trinida­di­an pop­u­la­tion share a com­mon cul­tur­al her­itage, there couldn’t be a more rigid di­choto­my be­tween the val­ues of the ma­jor­i­ty of us, and those in the mi­nor­i­ty from the Syr­i­an com­mu­ni­ty who have clear­ly been bred and cul­ti­vat­ed up­on a seg­re­ga­tion­ist ide­ol­o­gy.

The Syr­i­an com­mu­ni­ty had its hum­ble be­gin­nings in Trinidad and To­ba­go in the post-World War II era, when many of our grand­fa­thers came to Trinidad sell­ing cloth and clothes as re­spect­ful work­ing-class door to door sales­men. And al­though most of us share this com­mon­al­i­ty, the di­vide grew in the next gen­er­a­tion when the chil­dren of this hard-work­ing gen­er­a­tion de­vel­oped the en­ti­tle­ment per­son­al­i­ty. The pro­gres­sion in­to the one per cent aris­toc­ra­cy was ex­clu­sive to a tiny seg­ment of the small com­mu­ni­ty. While most of the Syr­i­an com­mu­ni­ty came from a Catholic back­ground, a hand­ful of us came from vary­ing Is­lam­ic an­ces­try and up­held much dif­fer­ent val­ues. We were ed­u­cat­ed in Is­lam with the dis­tinct no­tion that there are no spe­cial priv­i­leges af­ford­ed to any­one based on race or birthright.

The Syr­i­an com­mu­ni­ty has had many lessons be­queathed to them from the cen­turies of strug­gles they un­der­went in the tur­moil that af­flicts the Mid­dle East, yet it is iron­ic that a hand­ful of spoilt in­di­vid­u­als with an acute ego-cen­tri­cal su­pe­ri­or­i­ty com­plex will have the au­da­cious­ness to say that when a black man “steals a sneak­ers,” then it makes it worse for the en­tire Afro-Trinida­di­an race! With what in­tel­lect can you ac­cuse an en­tire race due to the ac­tion of any one in­di­vid­ual? Can we de­fine all Eu­ro­pean white de­scen­dant peo­ple by the ac­tions of the KKK or the Nazis? It’s un­for­tu­nate, or for­tu­nate, that the hor­rif­ic event in Min­neapo­lis has brought out the ug­li­ness of many big­ots and racists around the world.

In this racial­ly elec­tri­fied at­mos­phere, em­bold­ened by an out­right dis­crim­i­na­to­ry pres­i­dent of the so-called “free world,” we find so many ex­pos­ing their dark and wicked hearts for all to see. Trinida­di­ans should thus be aware of these poor wretched souls who are so poor that their on­ly en­rich­ment is mon­ey and wealth, and as prin­ci­pal busi­ness­men in charge of the many fore­most busi­ness­es in our coun­try, they need to act more re­spon­si­bly with their state­ments that could have ad­verse reper­cus­sions to both them and the wider Syr­i­an-Trinida­di­an com­mu­ni­ty.

The pub­lic should fur­ther­more be aware of the fact that they do not rep­re­sent all of the Syr­i­an com­mu­ni­ty and they are alien­at­ed with­in the Di­as­po­ra just as much as they are in the wider Trinida­di­an pop­u­lous. No one should have any mis­giv­ings over the id­io­cy and im­moral­i­ty of this per­son’s mis­rep­re­sent­ed views, that a per­son should be en­ti­tled to dis­like an en­tire race due to their per­son­al ex­pe­ri­ences with one or a few of its peo­ple. This un­truth is re­fut­ed from many per­spec­tives, but the sim­plest of them is to beg the ques­tion: Should the en­tire Syr­i­an-Trinida­di­an com­mu­ni­ty be pe­nalised for in­tol­er­ant be­liefs? Al­so, what is the rea­son for The Almighty send­ing all the di­vine­ly re­vealed re­li­gions and Prophets with the uni­ver­sal mes­sage of hu­man­i­ty and equal­i­ty for all? Worse yet, does he as­cribe to a supremist men­tal­i­ty that makes him, and those like him, an en­e­my to all the up­right and wholis­tic val­ues that over­whelm­ing­ly shine in the hu­man race? If so, then let it be known, and let those of us who have waged war against racism and big­otry all our lives dif­fer­en­ti­ate from that ide­ol­o­gy.