If we are to agree that Dis­ci­pline, Tol­er­ance and Pro­duc­tion are in­tend­ed to be our core val­ues/watch words, as Trin­bag­o­ni­ans we must ap­pre­ci­ate that sim­ply be­ing born and raised in Trinidad and To­ba­go does not make one a cit­i­zen of Trinidad and To­ba­go in the purest and most holis­tic sense of the word. There must be the buy in of the so­ci­ety to these core val­ues. That buy in is man­i­fest­ed in how we find com­mon­al­i­ty in the be­hav­iours as­so­ci­at­ed with our watch­words.

Of height­ened rel­e­vance in this post-elec­tion pe­ri­od (and par­tic­u­lar­ly in light of the re­cent ex­plo­sion of ex­pres­sions of prej­u­dice, vit­ri­ol and ha­tred on so­cial me­dia) is the core val­ue of Tol­er­ance. What is tol­er­ance? Be­cause of its na­ture, the very de­f­i­n­i­tion of the word is high­ly sub­jec­tive. As a re­sult, in the ab­sence of a set and ar­tic­u­lat­ed na­tion­al stan­dard, it may mean dif­fer­ent things to dif­fer­ent peo­ple. In this re­gard I wish to quote an ex­cerpt from Riv­ka Witen­berg’s pa­per en­ti­tled ‘Do Un­to Oth­ers: To­ward Un­der­stand­ing Racial Tol­er­ance and Ac­cep­tance’, in which it is ex­plained in­ter alia as fol­lows:

“The ul­ti­mate, prac­ti­cal ob­jec­tive of un­der­stand­ing both prej­u­dice and tol­er­ance is to re­duce dis­crim­i­na­tion. Nowhere is this more im­por­tant than in di­verse so­ci­eties where dif­fer­ences ex­ist in cul­ture, colour and creed. Tol­er­ance is on­ly nec­es­sary when dif­fer­ence or di­ver­si­ty is present and en­tails en­durance at the most ba­sic lev­el and ac­cep­tance at its best……….

Tol­er­ance in­volves a con­scious re­jec­tion of prej­u­diced at­ti­tudes, be­liefs and re­spons­es. That is, one’s own neg­a­tive stereo­types are recog­nised, judged against ex­pe­ri­en­tial knowl­edge or val­ue sys­tems, and re­ject­ed” (Robin­son et al., 2000, p. 4). Recog­nis­ing and re­ject­ing prej­u­di­cial views moves a per­son from sim­ply be­ing “a nar­row-mind­ed big­ot who shows re­straint” (Bur­wood and Wyeth, 1998, p. 469) to a per­son who is tol­er­ant both in judge­ments and con­duct. Per­haps the strongest and most ide­al way to think of tol­er­ance hinges on full ac­cep­tance of oth­ers whilst dif­fer­ences be­tween the “oth­ers” and one­self are recog­nised. This in­volves a con­scious re­jec­tion of bi­ased be­liefs and be­hav­iour and the valu­ing of oth­ers ir­re­spec­tive of their colour or creed. Ac­cep­tance of dif­fer­ences and di­ver­si­ty al­so en­tails “en­thu­si­as­tic en­dorse­ment of dif­fer­ence”

Cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go must first un­der­stand what tol­er­ance means to this coun­try be­fore they are able to ac­cept and em­brace their in­di­vid­ual and col­lec­tive re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to be tol­er­ant. They must then make a con­scious ef­fort to un­der­stand and ac­cept the cul­tur­al dif­fer­ences which sep­a­rate us in this mul­ti-cul­tured so­ci­ety of ours. What is our de­f­i­n­i­tion of tol­er­ant? I am par­tial to the em­bold­ened de­f­i­n­i­tion above but is this what Trinidad and To­ba­go wants?

I re­call watch­ing for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar in 2012, greet­ing the Pres­i­dent of In­dia by touch­ing his feet.

At first in­stance I thought a greet­ing of that na­ture to be in­ap­pro­pri­ate for our head of Gov­ern­ment. It was on­ly when I be­gan to un­der­stand some of the tra­di­tions of Hin­du cul­ture that I was able to ap­pre­ci­ate that our then Prime Min­is­ter had done noth­ing in­ap­pro­pri­ate. It was on­ly then that I was able to reeval­u­ate my views and to be tol­er­ant.

As we un­der­go the process of heal­ing fol­low­ing the Gen­er­al Elec­tion I urge all in­di­vid­u­als who call them­selves Trin­bag­o­ni­ans to strive to be cit­i­zens with­in the purest de­f­i­n­i­tion of the word.

We must all make an ef­fort to un­der­stand the cul­tur­al dif­fer­ences which ex­ist in our so­ci­ety. We must reeval­u­ate our views, as deep seat­ed as they may be, and we must ad­here to the core val­ue of Tol­er­ance.

We as a coun­try have to col­lec­tive­ly de­cide what it means to be tol­er­ant and to en­grain that core val­ue in­to the fab­ric of our so­ci­ety via the be­hav­iours that we agree as a so­ci­ety are ac­cept­able.

This process must be un­der­gone for all of our watch words. This is the hard but nec­es­sary task of na­tion build­ing.

We have missed a step in our de­vel­op­ment in that re­gard and we must now take mea­sures to recre­ate that step, fail­ing which our dream of build­ing a coun­try will re­main just that.

The work of mov­ing from spec­ta­tors to cit­i­zens needs to start now

It is nev­er too late to start the process.

Hap­py In­de­pen­dence Trinidad and To­ba­go!