Is it pos­si­ble, in what the so­ci­ol­o­gists re­fer to as a plur­al so­ci­ety, one in which there are race, class, re­li­gious, and cul­tur­al dif­fer­ences that have stood in the path of the so­ci­ety achiev­ing its full po­ten­tial, to have a so­lu­tion-based dis­cus­sion with­out neg­a­tive ran­cour? On the agen­da for dis­cus­sion and res­o­lu­tion will be to iden­ti­fy the ma­jor bar­ri­ers that have re­tard­ed the emer­gence of a co­he­sive, even if dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed, na­tion.

If we are able to set and achieve such ob­jec­tives in­cre­men­tal­ly over time, it will most as­sured­ly move post-colo­nial Trinidad and To­ba­go to­wards true na­tion­hood, the one en­vis­aged by Patrick Castagne’s lyrics: “In which every creed and race finds an equal (eq­ui­table) place.”

The above out­line of a dis­course will be goal-ori­ent­ed and spread over a pe­ri­od to reach set goals with­in a frame­work in which the ma­jor ob­struc­tions to true na­tion-build­ing will be sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly and col­lec­tive­ly dis­cussed and so­lu­tions found to at least at­ten­u­ate them.

To en­gage the above and more, there must be an agree­ment and a work­ing to­wards the re­duc­tion in the short-to-medi­um term, ul­ti­mate­ly the re­moval of an­tag­o­nism, name-call­ing, race-bait­ing, ge­o­graph­ic iso­la­tion­ism, out­right race and class con­flicts, and is­lands’ con­flict (To­ba­go and Trinidad) from our day-to-day liv­ing en­vi­ron­ment. To go be­yond the above re­quires a dra­mat­ic shift from that which we have cul­ti­vat­ed in the pre- and post-In­de­pen­dence pe­ri­ods of T&T.

I am not here re­fer­ring to ide­al­ism and the cre­ation of nir­vana–a place of per­fect peace and hap­pi­ness–but to the so­ci­ety, as men­tioned above, to ac­knowl­edge the plu­ral­i­ty of the peo­ple in their dif­fer­ing cul­tures, their con­tri­bu­tions to the so­ci­ety, their as­pi­ra­tions, and their de­sires for a fair shar­ing of the re­sources of the coun­try. Per­haps most im­por­tant­ly, how do we ar­rive at the in­tan­gi­ble, tan­gi­ble re­spect and the ac­knowl­edge­ment that is need­ed to be giv­en to all cit­i­zens in their re­spec­tive group­ings?

Is all of that pos­si­ble, or is it pie-in-the-sky, un­re­al­is­tic as­pi­ra­tions? If in re­al­i­ty they are im­pos­si­ble to achieve, even to re­duce neg­a­tive con­flict which drags the ef­forts of all down to the low­est pos­si­ble lev­el, then what of the prospects of con­tin­u­ing to ex­ist in a caul­dron of a so­ci­ety with the al­ways present pos­si­bil­i­ty for ex­plo­sion in a man­ner which can de­stroy all of the gains made over the last few cen­turies? And there have been achieve­ments; oth­er­wise we would still be liv­ing in a jun­gle.

The fact that we may want to de­ny that there has been in­es­timable progress (per­haps not well ap­pre­ci­at­ed) which has been made since emerg­ing from the shack­les and bru­tal­i­ty of slav­ery and in­den­ture­ship, the fact is that many such achieve­ments are so self-ev­i­dent that they have been tak­en as a giv­en. They have, how­ev­er, been im­por­tant cross­ings over from our state of ar­rival-hood, an ex­pan­sion of Ka­mau Braith­waite, to in­clude all of the peo­ple who came from some­where else and un­der dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances and con­di­tions.

Any­one over 30 to 40 years read­ing this to­day sim­ply needs to re­flect on any choice of ar­eas ex­pe­ri­enced in your life­time to recog­nise the many pos­i­tive changes that have evolved, quite a few of them dra­mat­ic, even though achieved in a so­ci­ety bi­fur­cat­ed along the lines of race, colour, creed, so­cial class, and po­lit­i­cal par­ty af­fil­i­a­tion.

I ask all of the read­ers of this col­umn to re­flect for five min­utes on the pos­i­tive trans­for­ma­tion which has been record­ed in vil­lage, town, and city; along the lines of hu­man ad­vance­ment in knowl­edge, in sta­tus, in ma­te­r­i­al ben­e­fit, and even in hu­man in­ter-re­la­tions, along the lines iden­ti­fied above.

Yes, amongst many of the changes and achieve­ments, there have been im­per­fec­tions, but a close and ex­pan­sive study of so­ci­eties with many of the same con­flict­ing his­to­ries as ours will re­veal that T&T has not been dra­mat­i­cal­ly left be­hind in co­her­ence and achieve­ment.

Nonethe­less, tak­ing in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the pos­si­bil­i­ties we as a so­ci­ety have, much more could have been achieved by a peo­ple co­her­ing to ad­vance from where we start­ed and the jour­ney along the way to the present. A search around the world for sim­i­lar­ly placed plur­al so­ci­eties will dis­cov­er that T&T’s mul­ti-racial and cul­tur­al so­ci­ety has not de­gen­er­at­ed in­to open vi­o­lent con­flict as oth­ers have. This ob­ser­va­tion is made with­out cast­ing as­per­sions on oth­er coun­tries and so­ci­eties that have not been able to to­tal­ly avoid open and deep phys­i­cal con­flict.

Nonethe­less, the con­flict that has been bub­bling up in this so­ci­ety has been ev­i­dent amongst the eth­nic groups and the so­cial and eco­nom­ic in­ter­ests; the dif­fer­ences be­tween To­ba­go and Trinidad have been ev­i­dent, with is­land po­lit­i­cal con­tentions stick­ing out in the quest for eq­ui­ty.

Our Amerindi­an First Peo­ple have, for a long time, been ig­nored and so con­tin­ue to be. For a cou­ple of cen­turies, the con­flict be­tween the old planter class (French Cre­ole) has served as an eco­nom­ic and so­cial gap of dis­ad­van­tage. Yes, that gap has nar­rowed some­what and soft­ened. How­ev­er, oth­er dis­ad­van­tages have tak­en root. Please join the dis­cus­sion as we con­tin­ue.

Tony Rakhal-Fras­er is a free­lance jour­nal­ist, for­mer re­porter/cur­rent af­fairs pro­gramme host and news di­rec­tor at TTT, pro­gramme pro­duc­er/cur­rent af­fairs di­rec­tor at Ra­dio Trinidad, cor­re­spon­dent for the BBC Caribbean Ser­vice and the As­so­ci­at­ed Press, and grad­u­ate of UWI, CARI­MAC, Mona and the St Au­gus­tine–In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions.