Shal­iza Has­s­nali

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Jour­nal­ist

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

His­to­ri­an, Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies lec­tur­er, and ad­vo­cate for so­cial jus­tice, Jerome Teelucks­ingh, fears that racism in Trinidad and To­ba­go has reached a dif­fer­ent lev­el now.

“We have reached a turn­ing point … it’s not a good turn­ing point. I am see­ing a re­gres­sion in pol­i­tics. Let me tell you some­thing … racism is one of the ele­phants in the room that we don’t like to talk about. But we keep feed­ing that ele­phant of racism be­cause we are afraid to tack­le it … be­cause if we tack­le it, cer­tain peo­ple will lose their jobs.”

His com­ments come af­ter weeks of in­tense rhetoric af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­cid­ed to skip African Eman­ci­pa­tion Day cel­e­bra­tions at the Lidj Ya­su Omowale Eman­ci­pa­tion Vil­lage at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah. The Prime Min­is­ter, in her ex­pla­na­tion, re­ferred to her­self as a c****e. That in­ci­dent came a week af­ter com­ments on so­cial me­dia had gone wild fol­low­ing the leaked tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion be­tween Star Sab­ga and Genevieve Hadeed on the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Gov­ern­ment.

The Op­po­si­tion ac­cused the Prime Min­is­ter of dis­re­spect­ing one of the coun­try’s most sig­nif­i­cant na­tion­al ob­ser­vances, while she, in turn, point­ed fin­gers at the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), ac­cus­ing them of ex­ploit­ing Eman­ci­pa­tion Day to deep­en racial di­vi­sion.

“The PNM and their sup­port­ers’ idea of cel­e­brat­ing Eman­ci­pa­tion Day is to den­i­grate, hu­mil­i­ate and tear down In­do and Afro-Trinida­di­ans who don’t sup­port their po­lit­i­cal par­ty,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar had claimed.

“This ver­sion of the PNM un­der Pen­ne­lope Beck­les is the most hate­ful, racist and di­vi­sive.”

She claimed what they did to Cul­ture Min­is­ter Michelle Ben­jamin and Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T (UTT) chair­man Sel­wyn Cud­joe over the Eman­ci­pa­tion week­end was dis­gust­ing.

“I don’t mind if the PNM MPs and sup­port­ers in­sult and call me a stink­ing c****e but Michelle Ben­jamin and Sel­wyn Cud­joe are won­der­ful peo­ple who are un­fair­ly at­tacked be­cause the PNM be­lieves that spread­ing c****e ha­tred and de­stroy­ing Afro-Trinida­di­ans sup­port­ive of the UNC is a po­lit­i­cal strat­e­gy.”

The crowd at­tend­ing the event in Port-of-Spain booed Ben­jamin.

A UTT Eman­ci­pa­tion Day pro­gramme sparked a fierce pub­lic back­lash af­ter East In­di­an mu­sic and dance per­for­mances were in­clud­ed in their event.

Crit­ics ac­cused the uni­ver­si­ty of dis­re­spect­ing the sig­nif­i­cance of the oc­ca­sion.

For­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley al­so jumped in­to the fray and blamed Per­sad-Bisses­sar for pos­ing “a great dan­ger to the so­cial and racial sta­bil­i­ty of this coun­try.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar ac­cused the Op­po­si­tion of try­ing to politi­cise the na­tion­al cel­e­bra­tions.

“That’s all the PNM and their sup­port­ers care about, rum drink­ing, fete­ing, win­ing in the road and get­ting free­ness from the State,” the PM had said.

Beck­les de­scribed the PM’s de­ci­sion not to at­tend the flag­ship event as dis­re­spect­ful and dis­crim­i­na­to­ry.

“This Gov­ern­ment is led by a Prime Min­is­ter who gaslights the pop­u­la­tion about uni­ty, while she is pub­licly and dai­ly en­gaged in deep­en­ing racial and po­lit­i­cal di­vi­sions,” Beck­les said in re­sponse to the PM last week.

It evolved in­to a race-re­lat­ed con­flict for a few days.

But in the face of ris­ing racial ten­sion, Teelucks­ingh, along with two oth­er in­flu­en­tial voic­es, stepped for­ward, urg­ing a col­lec­tive em­brace of uni­ty to help bridge these di­vides.

Po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Shane Mo­hammed called on po­lit­i­cal lead­ers to step away from script­ed speech­es that po­larise our so­ci­ety.

Pro­fes­sor Emeri­ta Rho­da Red­dock said it’s es­sen­tial to be­gin the work re­quired to keep so­ci­ety from reach­ing a break­ing point.

His­to­ry of in­ci­dents in­volv­ing race in T&T

T&T’s his­to­ry of racial ten­sion is root­ed in the colo­nial era, when slav­ery es­tab­lished a racial hi­er­ar­chy that placed Eu­ro­peans above Africans, fol­lowed by the ar­rival of In­di­an in­den­tured labour­ers af­ter eman­ci­pa­tion. These sys­tems cre­at­ed dis­tinct African and In­di­an com­mu­ni­ties whose ex­pe­ri­ences of ex­ploita­tion, dis­crim­i­na­tion and so­cial ex­clu­sion dif­fered but were shaped by the same colo­nial or­der. Racial and colour-based prej­u­dice per­sist­ed af­ter eman­ci­pa­tion, in­clud­ing stereo­types against Africans and the use of terms such as “c****e” against In­di­ans. Con­flicts such as the 1881 and 1884 Can­boulay ri­ots, and the labour un­rest of the 1930s, re­flect­ed the in­ter­sec­tion of race, class, cul­ture and colo­nial pow­er.

Af­ter in­de­pen­dence in 1962, racial ten­sions in­creas­ing­ly be­came in­ter­twined with pol­i­tics, eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ty and ques­tions of na­tion­al iden­ti­ty. The 1970 Black Pow­er Rev­o­lu­tion brought is­sues of racial and eco­nom­ic in­equal­i­ty to the fore­front, while po­lit­i­cal com­pe­ti­tion from the 1970s on­ward be­came in­creas­ing­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with Afro-Trinida­di­an and In­do-Trinida­di­an con­stituen­cies.

1956 - Dr Er­ic Williams, who was then cam­paign­ing and be­came Chief Min­is­ter af­ter the 1956 elec­tion, is re­port­ed to have de­scribed all Hin­du schools as “cow sheds.”

1993 - Hulsie Bhag­gan, then Ch­agua­nas MP, al­leged sev­er­al women in Cen­tral Trinidad had been raped and ac­cused men of African de­scent of ter­ror­is­ing and rap­ing In­do-Trinida­di­an women. She ques­tioned whether the PNM gov­ern­ment was go­ing to pre­side over “eth­nic cleans­ing” and “the es­tab­lish­ment of a Bosnia in Trinidad”.

The po­lice fig­ures at the time did not sup­port the racial char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion. Up to June 1993, po­lice had record­ed 13 rapes in Cen­tral Trinidad: five had been com­mit­ted by In­di­an men, while sev­en were at­trib­uted to masked/hood­ed men whose iden­ti­ties were not known; one of the sev­en vic­tims was of African de­scent.

1997 - Then prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day called busi­ness­man and me­dia mogul Ken Gor­don a pseu­do racist. Gor­don sued Pan­day for li­bel. In 2000, the court award­ed Gor­don $600,000 in dam­ages. Pan­day ap­pealed the mat­ter, and the Court of Ap­peal in 2003 re­duced the dam­ages to $300,000 in the defama­tion case.

2013 - PNM’s To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly can­di­date Hilton Sandy urged To­bag­o­ni­ans to vote for the par­ty, as a ship from Cal­cut­ta was wait­ing to sail to To­ba­go pend­ing the out­come of the THA elec­tion, which the Ma­ha Sab­ha felt was di­vi­sive, racist and in­cen­di­ary. Sandy even­tu­al­ly apol­o­gised for his re­marks.

2015 - Then Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds made a com­ment that trig­gered crit­i­cism when he re­ferred to cer­tain in­di­vid­u­als as al­li­ga­tors in the same murky la­goon. This metaphor was in­ter­pret­ed as hav­ing racial un­der­tones and di­rect­ed at mem­bers of the East In­di­an com­mu­ni­ty. The PNM in­sist­ed that the re­mark was not racial.

2018 - A skit per­formed at a PNM fam­i­ly day sparked out­rage from sev­er­al quar­ters. The skit, per­formed by the Tabaquite con­stituen­cy, fea­tured a woman draped in a yel­low sari be­ing dis­robed by men dressed in red go­ril­la cos­tumes, which many felt was dis­re­spect­ful to the Hin­du re­li­gion. Then prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley had to apol­o­gise to the Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty.

2018 - Then op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­scribed Row­ley as an “Oreo in the ser­vice of the one per cent.” The state­ment sparked con­tro­ver­sy and led to calls from the PNM for Per­sad-Bisses­sar to apol­o­gise for the re­mark, but she main­tained it was not racist.

2019 — For­mer Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha sec­re­tary gen­er­al Sat Ma­haraj, while on Ra­dio Jaagri­ti, made dis­parag­ing com­ments about To­bag­o­ni­ans, say­ing they were lazy and al­leg­ing that many peo­ple em­ployed by the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly did not want to work. He al­so made com­ments about To­bag­o­ni­ans want­i­ng to “race crab and goat”. To­ba­go politi­cians con­demned the re­marks as di­vi­sive and racist.

2020 - Af­ter the PNM won the 2020 elec­tion, Naila Ram­saran wrote on Face­book that hard­work­ing UNC sup­port­ers would con­tin­ue to pay tax­es and mind the loafers who sup­port the PNM. Ram­saran said she hoped Row­ley would start putting con­tra­cep­tives in their wa­ter sup­ply be­cause “these cock­roach­es keep pop­u­lat­ing” and that the on­ly thing they know is to vote. Sev­er­al re­tail­ers re­moved Ram­saran Dairy Prod­ucts items from their shelves, and the com­pa­ny apol­o­gised. Ram­saran was dis­missed.

2020 - Per­sad-Bisses­sar ac­cused Row­ley of wag­ing an­oth­er racial­ly-mo­ti­vat­ed cam­paign af­ter she ap­peared to at­tack his race yet again dur­ing a vir­tu­al meet­ing. “Some peo­ple out of con­cern, and in fact, the black/blank man on the oth­er side talked about kinder­garten. What a great dis­ser­vice and dis­re­spect to the peo­ple of T&T.” This quote land­ed Per­sad-Bisses­sar in trou­ble, as many de­bat­ed whether she had brought race in­to pol­i­tics. While Per­sad-Bisses­sar in­sist­ed she said blank man, Row­ley said with­out a doubt it was “black man.”

2023 - Per­sad-Bisses­sar blamed Row­ley for hav­ing his mind in a “racial gut­ter” af­ter he con­demned the UNC pro­posed ‘Stand your Ground” law. Row­ley rub­bished the pro­pos­al, say­ing it seemed as if Per­sad-Bisses­sar want­ed to arm a cer­tain race of peo­ple to shoot peo­ple of an­oth­er race.

2025 - Per­sad-Bisses­sar claimed Row­ley and the PNM gov­ern­ment were “racial­ly charged pro­pa­gan­da” ahead of the April 2025 gen­er­al elec­tion.

2026 - Laven­tille West MP Ka­reem Mar­celle told PNM sup­port­ers at a meet­ing that “this UNC Gov­ern­ment by their words and ac­tions to­wards our com­mu­ni­ties sim­ply do not like us. And guess what? We don’t like the UNC ei­ther.”

‘Racism will al­ways raise its ug­ly head’

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Shane Mo­hammed said race con­ver­sa­tions have al­ways been part of our po­lit­i­cal dis­cus­sions.

“Racism will al­ways raise its ug­ly head.”

But giv­en the in­ten­si­ty of what has been re­port­ed in the me­dia and cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia in the last few days, Mo­hammed urged the speech­writ­ers of Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Beck­les to put down their pens.

“They need to stop. This racial talk … this racial ten­sion. I don’t like where we are. I think we are bet­ter than this as a na­tion. We must not let our un­der­tones cause a rag­ing fire. What is our end game?”

These un­der­tones will be picked up in oth­er ju­ris­dic­tions, which can de­ter in­vestors, Mo­hammed point­ed out.

“It is un­sus­tain­able for eco­nom­ic rea­sons.”

Mo­hammed al­so won­dered what Ben­jamin did to de­serve the boos dur­ing her ad­dress at African Eman­ci­pa­tion Day in Port-of-Spain.

“What has hap­pened to the min­is­ter is so dis­gust­ing­ly cheap. It is so taste­less that it stinks. She did not de­serve this type of be­hav­iour.”

He said many peo­ple have been feel­ing un­easy with the re­cent race talks that have been at­tract­ing at­ten­tion.

“If we are at a break­ing point, then the lead­ers need to stop. We can’t sus­tain this. It’s not fun­ny. It has all of us … and I say this from where I sit, very un­easy. There should be ease be­cause they are both women and have that nur­tur­ing and com­pas­sion­ate em­bod­i­ment.”

By na­ture, he said Trin­bag­o­ni­ans love their coun­try, cul­ture, her­itage and di­ver­si­ty, and the sit­u­a­tion was un­healthy for the coun­try and so­ci­ety.

“It’s low-grade pol­i­tics that is be­gin­ning to have a stench that is leav­ing a very bad rem­nant in their palates. This coun­try is now at a point where there is a need for some lev­el of bi­par­ti­san­ship in how we go for­ward.”

In­stead of caus­ing racial ten­sion, Mo­hammed said there are more se­ri­ous is­sues to ad­dress.

“A gov­ern­ment does not get a con­sti­tu­tion­al ma­jor­i­ty for a sec­ond time to squan­der it. There’s a lot else go­ing on for a dis­trac­tion of racism that has us all tied in­to a con­ver­sa­tion when we are not look­ing at the big­ger pic­ture.”

Mo­hammed said he thought both the PNM and UNC would have found a way to change the di­a­logue and de­nounce the race talk, re­gard­less of “if they are friends or foes,” and move on in the in­ter­est of the coun­try.

“Let me tell you what I know. The Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar that I know is not a racist. She con­sid­ers all things be­ing equal and that every­body finds an equal place.”

Asked if Per­sad-Bisses­sar stepped out of line by say­ing that all PNM sup­port­ers cared about was drink­ing, fete­ing and win­ing, Mo­hammed replied: “Isn’t that what we all en­joy as an en­tire so­ci­ety?”

Shar­ing his views, Teelucks­ingh, a Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies lec­tur­er and ad­vo­cate for so­cial jus­tice, said racism has gone to a dif­fer­ent lev­el now.

Teelucks­ingh said what we have been notic­ing is that me­dia hous­es are broad­cast­ing and pub­lish­ing in­stances of racism.

He said the me­dia has a role to play by calm­ing the pop­u­la­tion.

“So these in­ci­dents com­ing to­geth­er, I have not seen it in the past com­ing to­geth­er so close­ly. Usu­al­ly there’s a gap.”

He ex­pressed that ha­tred for hu­man­i­ty is grow­ing.

“We have reached a turn­ing point … it’s not a good turn­ing point. I am see­ing a re­gres­sion in pol­i­tics. Let me tell you some­thing … racism is one of the ele­phants in the room that we don’t like to talk about. But we keep feed­ing that ele­phant of racism be­cause we are afraid to tack­le it … be­cause if we tack­le it, cer­tain peo­ple will lose their jobs.”

Teelucks­ingh said peo­ple get pro­mot­ed not on mer­it, trans­paren­cy or per­for­mance but on friend­ship and who knows who.

“One of the prob­lems why we have so much in­ef­fi­cien­cy, waste­ful­ness and cor­rup­tion is be­cause we are putting peo­ple (in jobs) be­cause of eth­nic­i­ty. We are putting peo­ple be­cause of po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion.”

Teelucks­ingh said while some peo­ple want the dream of uni­ty re­alised, oth­ers “want to see a night­mare evolve.”

He said while UNC sup­port­ers may view the Prime Min­is­ter’s de­ci­sion not to at­tend African Eman­ci­pa­tion Day cel­e­bra­tions as no big deal, PNM sup­port­ers took it as an in­sult.

“So again, cul­ture be­comes politi­cised. We judge pres­ence and ab­sence … not on some­body’s health or fam­i­ly’s com­mit­ment but on pol­i­tics.”

When asked which racial re­mark over the years had the most im­pact on him, Teelucks­ingh said it was the de­scrip­tion of the Prime Min­is­ter as a c****e.

“I want to be­lieve that this is prob­a­bly one of the harsh­est I have seen in my life­time.

“Us­ing the word is even more hurt­ful when re­peat­ed. It rips in­to the fab­ric of so­ci­ety. When we use racial tones, it sends a mes­sage that ha­tred and an­i­mos­i­ty are un­der­ly­ing all this hap­pi­ness that we like to show­case to the world. So any­time we use these slurs, any­time we use it on a po­lit­i­cal plat­form, it’s part of par­ty pol­i­tics. It sends a sub­lim­i­nal mes­sage, a bla­tant mes­sage that we are not re­al­ly one. We have some prob­lems with one eth­nic group.”

Time for di­a­logue and aware­ness

For decades, he said, Trin­bag­o­ni­ans have demon­strat­ed a spir­it of one love and to­geth­er­ness for Car­ni­val, re­li­gious cel­e­bra­tions, and sport­ing events.

In light of what has been tak­ing place, Teelucks­ingh said re­li­gious lead­ers, busi­ness groups, aca­d­e­mics and trade union lead­ers need to speak up.

“They need to be fear­less. We see wrong, and we say noth­ing. I’ll tell you why peo­ple are stay­ing qui­et. We live in a so­ci­ety where we don’t want to be vic­timised.”

Teelucks­ingh said there is a blan­ket of si­lence over T&T.

For Red­dock, there are rea­sons why racism ex­ists. She said the coun­try needs mech­a­nisms to trans­form it.

She said teach­ing di­ver­si­ty and non-sex­ist ed­u­ca­tion in schools at an ear­ly age is a start.

Ed­u­cat­ing par­ents and com­mu­ni­ties would al­so help.

It’s a ma­jor shift that is re­quired, Red­dock said.

“In oth­er words, we can­not ex­pect and hope that peo­ple would emerge in a non-racist sit­u­a­tion where there’s racism and eth­nic chau­vin­ism and all these things tak­ing place around us.”

Red­dock, a for­mer deputy prin­ci­pal of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine cam­pus, said some peo­ple pre­fer no change at all.

Hav­ing made calls in the past for politi­cians to de­nounce racism, Red­dock said in times of eco­nom­ic cri­sis “we have to be ex­treme­ly care­ful about po­lit­i­cal di­vi­sion in this way be­cause it al­so be­comes an eco­nom­ic com­pe­ti­tion, which can be very dan­ger­ous … which can lead to con­flict.”

In many parts of the world, Red­dock said, we have seen geno­cides.

She cit­ed Bosnia and Rwan­da as two of those coun­tries that ex­pe­ri­enced geno­cides.

“Un­less we struc­tural­ly make a com­mit­ment to ad­dress it, it makes no sense to say politi­cians must change it. Those who are con­cerned need to in­sist that in a di­verse coun­try, we pre­pare our pop­u­la­tion for liv­ing to­geth­er in a non-racist, non-sex­ist, non-clas­sist so­ci­ety. But it’s just not go­ing to hap­pen just like that.”

Red­dock, who served as head of the Cen­tre for Gen­der and De­vel­op­ment Stud­ies, said she was con­cerned about the struc­tur­al fac­tors that could de­stroy our so­ci­ety.

“And that is what this kind of eth­nic com­pe­ti­tion can lead to.”

What makes the sit­u­a­tion worse, Red­dock said, me­dia hous­es are racial­ly or eth­ni­cal­ly and po­lit­i­cal­ly di­vid­ed.

“So every­body is lis­ten­ing to dif­fer­ent mes­sages. So that you have peo­ple who are very clear in what they be­lieve, but they don’t re­alise that there are oth­er peo­ple lis­ten­ing to oth­er in­for­ma­tion who are al­so clear in what they be­lieve, and that is a recipe for dis­as­ter.”

Point­ing out that the sit­u­a­tion was com­plex and se­ri­ous, Red­dock said what was need­ed was a broad so­cial move­ment “to pre­vent us from get­ting to the brink every few years be­cause that’s what hap­pens. On one oc­ca­sion we are go­ing to fall over the brink, and we’ll nev­er be able to re­cov­er.”