Ray­mond Ram­char­i­tar

And there they were on Sat­ur­day night's CNC3 News: The Black Cau­cus Move­ment, de­mand­ing land in Ca­roni for "Africans," and say­ing it's a love thing. In these days of Don­ald Trump's re­al­i­ty TV cam­paign for the US pres­i­den­cy, you can bare­ly tell what's a gag and what's re­al. But nope, it was as re­al as Har­vey Bor­ris's suit.

It wasn't the BCM's first rodeo. There's a bill­board just off the high­way as you dri­ve past the Barataria fly­over (go­ing east) an­nounc­ing the move­ment's ex­is­tence and cre­do: "unit­ed we own, di­vid­ed we beg." It gives a web ad­dress (www.bcm­move­ment.com), where you can find its mis­sion: "To con­scious­ly steer Afro Caribbean con­sumerism to sup­port black owned busi­ness­es and so­cial pro­grams to en­hance their per­son­al and com­mu­ni­ty growth."

Yes, "busi­ness­es" is mis­spelled (as of 9 am Mon­day 15), and the word "con­sumerism" is mis­used. (Con­sumerism is the phe­nom­e­non in preda­tor cap­i­tal­ism where­by the me­dia, en­ter­tain­ment and ad­ver­tis­ing in­dus­tries ma­nip­u­late buy­ers in­to mind­less, un­sus­tain­able con­sump­tion. I think they meant "con­sumers" but who knows?)

Al­so on the web­site is an "African De­vel­op­ment Agen­da" which lists "Land Dis­tri­b­u­tion" as one of its pri­or­i­ties. The group al­so has ra­dio and tele­vi­sion shows (I've seen episodes on Syn­er­gy TV) and is fea­tured on a YouTube chan­nel, "doc­trinie."

So they're out there: mis­spelling, mis­read­ing, mis­in­ter­pret­ing, mis­guid­ing and mis­guid­ed. But, till Sat­ur­day night, they were harm­less and more than a lit­tle amus­ing. That's changed with the "land in Ca­roni" ejac­u­la­tion, which is a pret­ty clear de­c­la­ra­tion of war–all protes­ta­tions of peace and love notwith­stand­ing. For­get dog-whis­tle pol­i­tics, this is mega­phone/news con­fer­ence pol­i­tics.

As I, re­gret­ful­ly, own no land in Ca­roni or any­where else, I'll en­cour­age Ca­roni land-own­ers to re­spond to this. How­ev­er, since many peo­ple can't tell In­di­ans apart, and Prem­chan fre­quent­ly pays for Pre­m­das, and I might be mis­tak­en for a Ca­roni land own­er, I'll take a quick look at two salient facts. First that the BCM felt con­fi­dent enough to say this pub­licly, and sec­ond, that they're sil­ly enough to think it is, or they can sell it as, a "love" thing, or any­thing oth­er than what it is–a Nazi Leben­sraum thing.

As to first is­sue–they have every rea­son to be con­fi­dent, since they're just re­peat­ing what's been said many times. Politi­cians and sur­ro­gates have said it (Cal­cut­ta Ship etc), artists and cul­tur­al fig­ures have said it, and Karene As­che (Be Care­ful What you Wish For), Cro Cro (Face Re­al­i­ty), Singing San­dra (Geno­cide) and many oth­ers have all con­fi­dent­ly got up on na­tion­al stages and sung much worse to great ac­claim. Ms As­che got $2 mil­lion for her ef­forts in the 2011 Di­manche Gras, and no one point­ed out (ex­cept me) how tru­ly pu­trid the sen­ti­ments were. (It's on YouTube. Give it a look/lis­ten.)

Ca­lyp­so is the most promi­nent, but not the on­ly place you'll find the sen­ti­ment. In 2002, I went to an event at the now-dead CCA7 fea­tur­ing Earl Lovelace, Ken Ram­c­hand and Rachel Man­ley. Lovelace said (and I re­port­ed in an­oth­er pa­per) that Africans were en­ti­tled to var­i­ous things be­cause they were here be­fore In­di­ans. He al­so wrote (in Cul­ture in Ac­tion (2004)) that bad­johns and thugs were "free­dom fight­ers." Fig­ures as di­verse as Chief Leroy Clarke and so­cial ac­tivist Karen Bart-Alexan­der wrote (be­fore last year's elec­tion), on the Ja­ha­ji mail­ing list, that Africans were be­ing vic­timised by the PP. (Well, mur­der rates have gone up in black com­mu­ni­ties un­der the PNM. So that means....)

The pre­cur­sor to these sen­ti­ments was the Cen­tral Bank Di­rec­tor/pro­fes­sor who was go­ing round be­tween 1997-2007 say­ing there were too many In­di­ans at UWI, In­di­ans were tak­ing over the TTIT (UTT), and that In­di­an teach­ers were not teach­ing black chil­dren in pri­ma­ry schools. So scream­ing racial vic­tim­i­sa­tion and de­mand­ing repa­ra­tion isn't iso­lat­ed to the BCM or new. But hav­ing this kind of poi­son flow­ing unchecked through your so­ci­ety for years has con­se­quences.

It's not co­in­ci­den­tal that while the case for repa­ra­tions de­scribed above was be­ing made via news­pa­pers, ca­lyp­so and elec­tron­ic me­dia around the turn of the cen­tu­ry, eth­ni­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed crime was in­creas­ing. Kid­nap­pings (up to the end of the last decade) in­or­di­nate­ly tar­get­ed In­do-Trinida­di­ans, Many vic­tims re­port­ed rape and Abu Ghraib-type hu­mil­i­a­tion as part of their or­deals. (This was re­vealed in a se­ries of ar­ti­cles re­count­ing the ex­pe­ri­ences of kid­nap vic­tims in this news­pa­per in Jan­u­ary-Feb­ru­ary 2007 writ­ten by Anand Ram­lo­gan, then a colum­nist.)

Those who think, like PNM philoso­pher, Cro Cro, that eth­ni­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed crime is equiv­a­lent to di­vine ret­ri­bu­tion should strain them­selves to think again. Crime is ec­u­meni­cal, as is ev­i­dent from the mur­der and vi­o­lent crime rates and their dis­tri­b­u­tion to­day. Every­body's get­ting it, but no one seems to know where it's com­ing from.

Here's where: when you have this kind of psy­chic vile­ness pol­lut­ing the men­tal and so­cial en­vi­ron­ment, all sorts of de­for­mi­ties re­sult.

The BCM is not so much to blame; they're act­ing in a way they be­lieve, with good rea­son, is ac­cept­able. They've been led to this by peo­ple who should know bet­ter, re­spect­ed artists like Earl Lovelace, aca­d­e­mics,

PNM cul­ture vul­tures and av­er­age peo­ple who swal­low Amer­i­can pop cul­ture whole and be­lieve them­selves to be African Amer­i­cans and there­fore en­ti­tled to all the perquisites. The prob­lem is that such a world­view re­quires an an­tag­o­nist, and guess who that is in T&T.

Per­haps the Hon Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion, the Most Hon Max­ie Cuffie, might re­call his "press free­dom-fight­er," days when this sort of thing came to be said and pub­lished rou­tine­ly in oth­er­wise re­spectable news­pa­pers and ra­dio. And he, and his Cab­i­net col­leagues, might be in­ter­est­ed to know that that's where the en­vi­ron­ment we live in to­day be­gan. Un­less they're com­fort­able with Afro-Trinida­di­ans be­liev­ing In­di­ans have op­pressed them.