Ray­mond Ram­char­i­tar

Dear Dr Row­ley,

Sor­ry to dis­turb your va­ca­tion, but I felt your re­sponse to Mr Sat Ma­haraj's state­ment about Mr Patrick Man­ning be­ing a "racist"–that the com­ment bor­dered on sedi­tion–re­quired a lit­tle re­join­der.

It's iron­ic that this ex­change hap­pens at a time when there's a lot of hand-wring­ing about Gate, and the de­nial of ac­cess to ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion to many peo­ple. It's iron­ic, first, be­cause I don't think you've re­al­ly con­sid­ered the weight of the terms "racist" or "sedi­tion," de­spite your con­sid­er­able ed­u­ca­tion. It's al­so iron­ic that last decade has seen an ex­plo­sion of peo­ple wield­ing de­grees in jour­nal­ism, com­mu­ni­ca­tions and var­i­ous oth­er things, so you should have been sup­plied with at least the ap­pro­pri­ate terms and de­f­i­n­i­tions be­fore jump­ing in.

This is not a de­fence of Mr Ma­haraj. His "best friend" is there for that. Nei­ther is it about whether for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Man­ning was a "racist." Nei­ther is this in­tend­ed pe­jo­ra­tive­ly. It is, to re­peat, about the word "racist."

Your in­ter­pre­ta­tion/re­sponse sug­gests you've been mis­led on con­cepts of race, en­ti­tle­ment and na­tion­al­ism. And you've un­for­tu­nate­ly fall­en in­to the com­mon habit of ver­bal/eth­nic/po­lit­i­cal "slip­page" (as my homey, Ho­mi Bhab­ha might put it). That's when words are de­ployed with­out care for pre­ci­sion in mean­ing, but emo­tion­al im­pact, which caus­es con­sid­er­able con­fu­sion and worse, as mean­ings be­come am­bigu­ous and mis­lead­ing.

"Racist" has be­come a re­flex­ive ep­i­thet to throw at any­one who says any­thing that up­sets the re­spon­dent. There's an OED de­f­i­n­i­tion of the term, but every so­ci­ety's de­f­i­n­i­tion of racism varies. It is ar­rived at through pub­lic de­bate, aca­d­e­m­ic in­put, art and cul­ture and so­cial mech­a­nisms, but too of­ten sup­plant­ed by pop­ulism and dem­a­goguery.

In our fair isles, aca­d­e­m­ic in­ter­ven­tions have been made (the Cen­tre for Eth­nic Stud­ies 1994 re­ports, Ralph Pre­m­das's edit­ed col­lec­tion Iden­ti­ty, Eth­nic­i­ty and Cul­ture in the Caribbean, Kevin Yelv­ing­ton's edit­ed col­lec­tion Trinidad Eth­nic­i­ty, Sel­wyn Ryan's The Jand­hi and the Cross etc), but ig­nored when they did not line up with pop­ulist/po­lit­i­cal­ly palat­able no­tions. (Which no­tions run par­al­lel with US/African-Amer­i­can pop­ulism.)

The thing is, Prime Min­is­ter, this "close to sedi­tion" ex­pos­tu­la­tion (con­sid­ered with pre­vi­ous state­ments you've made) seem to sig­nal that you mis­un­der­stand what "racism" in T&T means. This isn't com­fort­ing as you lead a plur­al, and di­vid­ed, na­tion. You've ac­cept­ed the broad out­lines of an ar­gu­ment that's been re­peat­ed end­less­ly in the pub­lic sphere in T&T for the last gen­er­a­tion: AfroTrinida­di­ans are an op­pressed group; those op­pres­sors came on Cal­cut­ta ships; some form of repa­ra­tion is re­quired; and any­one who dis­agrees with this is a "racist."

A ma­jor source of this is African-Amer­i­can dem­a­goguery pro­duced by the man you met with when you were Op­po­si­tion Leader: Louis Far­rakhan. I've in­clud­ed a pic­ture of you glad-hand­ing with him on his 2012 vis­it here. I don't know if the pic­ture will be pub­lished, but if it is, would make the point more elo­quent­ly that I could in 950 words. (In­ci­den­tal­ly, Barack Oba­ma de­nounced Far­rakhan in 2008. And I don't know if you know that the Na­tion of Is­lam al­so be­lieves the "white race" was pro­duced as a failed ex­per­i­ment by a mad sci­en­tist called "Ya­coob" mil­len­nia ago.)

Louis Far­rakhan and oth­ers like him take the ba­sic facts of the Black At­lantic (Paul Gilroy's term), and twist them in­to a warped ver­sion of past and present. This pop­ulist poi­son in­fus­es the air we breathe, be­cause of the at­mos­phere of African Amer­i­can cul­ture, pol­i­tics, and so­cial is­sues that sur­rounds us via all me­dia plat­forms. This isn't to say African Amer­i­can cul­ture is ob­jec­tion­able–far from it: it's to say the Far­rakhan in­ter­pre­ta­tion is. (Apro­pos, you should take a look at Spike Lee's Chi-Raq for an ex­am­ple of high-end African Amer­i­can pop cul­ture.)

But Chi-Raq isn't what many Tri­nis con­sume. They gob­ble Tyler Per­ry's Madea, news re­ports of trag­ic po­lice killings of African Amer­i­cans, and the emo­tive re­spons­es of the vic­tims, and trans­pose those feel­ings on­to Trinida­di­an re­al­i­ty. It's like tak­ing the sound­track and script from one movie and dub­bing it over an­oth­er. It scram­bles the con­nec­tions be­tween words, im­ages and ideas, na­tion and eth­nic­i­ty and what have you.

Clos­er to home, the is­sue of race isn't for­eign to your po­lit­i­cal life. I re­call your faith­ful hench­man The Hon Fitzger­ald Hinds, say­ing some years ago that it was felt by some you could nev­er lead the PNM be­cause of your dark skin. I al­so re­call (cir­ca 2003) your com­ments on the ed­u­ca­tion­al sit­u­a­tion of young black men in T&T, which was dire, and that they re­quired spe­cial at­ten­tion.

You were ac­cused of "racism" for say­ing this, but you were right about the is­sues faced by young black men, as con­firmed by Ramesh De­osaran's book, In­equal­i­ty, Crime and Ed­u­ca­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go. (A de­tailed re­view of Prof De­osaran's book should ap­pear in these pages soon.) But the rea­son for this isn't "racism." Sim­i­lar­ly, opin­ing a past Prime Min­is­ter was a racist is not even re­mote­ly close to sedi­tion–whether or not you like the facts pre­sent­ed in sup­port of the con­clu­sion.

What I want to leave you with, Prime Min­is­ter, if you've read this far, is that the race is­sue in T&T must be dealt with by sober, un­emo­tion­al con­fronta­tion of facts. It's far too easy to la­bel any­one who dis­agrees with the pop­ulist con­sen­sus "racist" or "sedi­tious." Un­for­tu­nate­ly Mr Ma­haraj and his best friend have emerged as de­fault spokes­men on the is­sue be­cause of the tac­it en­dorse­ment of po­lit­i­cal and so­cial fig­ures, like your­self and the Op­po­si­tion Leader. Per­haps it's time to change that.