With the Black Lives Mat­ter move­ment con­tin­u­ing to draw in­ter­na­tion­al at­ten­tion, a group of our cit­i­zens staged their own protest op­po­site the Unit­ed States Em­bassy last Mon­day, draw­ing a small but en­thu­si­as­tic gath­er­ing. Along with this event, there has been a surge in con­ver­sa­tions re­gard­ing race and race re­la­tions in our coun­try. How­ev­er, as we’ve seen on so­cial me­dia, not all opin­ions have been well-re­ceived, re­sult­ing in some awk­ward apolo­gies and de­nials of es­pous­ing racism. Of course, in Trinidad and To­ba­go, we of­ten ac­cuse peo­ple of be­ing racist, es­pe­cial­ly if they be­long to the up­per crust of so­ci­ety. That be­ing said, it is en­cour­ag­ing to see cit­i­zens be­ing so­cial­ly con­scious and tak­ing a stand. But what is that stand re­al­ly about?

The is­sue of race is a nu­anced and com­plex top­ic for our coun­try. Most of us are here be­cause our an­ces­tors came from some­where else, ei­ther by force or will­ing­ly. More im­por­tant­ly, the vast ma­jor­i­ty of the pop­u­la­tion are peo­ple of colour. As such we have to be mind­ful about adopt­ing the BLM cause; what it means in the US doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly or en­tire­ly ap­ply to T&T. As I wrote in my pre­vi­ous col­umn, BLM seeks to draw at­ten­tion to the in­sti­tu­tion­alised racism that af­fects African-Amer­i­cans, specif­i­cal­ly with re­spects to law en­force­ment and the ju­di­cial sys­tem. Grant­ed, there are sim­i­lar­i­ties in that Afro-Trin­bag­o­ni­ans are mur­dered and in­car­cer­at­ed at high­er rates than oth­er eth­nic groups. But while peo­ple of African de­scent are a mi­nor­i­ty in the US, here they count for about half the pop­u­la­tion. Fur­ther­more, since our in­de­pen­dence, the Afro-cen­tric Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment has had the longest stint in gov­ern­ment, and our se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus is pre­dom­i­nant­ly staffed by Afro-Trin­bag­o­ni­ans. There­fore, our so­ci­ety can hard­ly be de­scribed as pur­pose­ly op­press­ing Afro-Trinida­di­ans. That’s un­less you’re will­ing to ar­gue that Afro-Trin­bag­o­ni­ans op­press their own peo­ple.

Of course, that’s not to say that prej­u­dice doesn’t ex­ist; but, again, there’s a com­plex­i­ty to it. Yes, there are ad­van­tages and dis­ad­van­tages as­so­ci­at­ed with race and skin colour, but your so­cio-eco­nom­ic sta­tus, last name, and even so­cial cir­cle al­so con­tribute to whether you get ahead or are left be­hind. Al­low me to share a per­son­al ex­pe­ri­ence as an ex­am­ple. My fa­ther is Arab-Trinida­di­an and my moth­er is In­di­an-Trinida­di­an; so while I do “blend in” ow­ing to my dark com­plex­ion, my sur­name does open doors of op­por­tu­ni­ty. Here’s what hap­pened. About 20 years ago I went to a pop­u­lar night­club in Ch­aguara­mas; my first (and on­ly!) time go­ing there. I was charged $100 while every­one else in my “fair” group paid $45. It was on­ly af­ter my peers spoke up for me, and I pre­sent­ed my dri­ver’s per­mit, show­ing that I was a “Hadeed”, that my en­trance fee was re­duced. Now, as a pri­vate busi­ness, they could charge pa­trons what­ev­er they want­ed. Fine. But the racial cri­te­ria the own­ers/op­er­a­tors “Base’d” that on was de­testable. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, this prac­tice was com­mon­place in the night­club scene back then. What made it even worse was that we (as young peo­ple) ac­cept­ed that sys­tem. White, black, In­di­an, Chi­nese, Syr­i­an —we all will­ing­ly lined up to spend our mon­ey know­ing full well what was go­ing on. And there­in lies the prob­lem.

As the be­fore-men­tioned ex­am­ple shows, we know the in­equities that ex­ist. But the con­tra­dic­tion is that we ei­ther tac­it­ly sup­port them, ig­nore them, or are mis­guid­ed when it comes to ad­dress­ing them. So when lo­cal pro­test­ers sup­port “black lives mat­ter”, I want to know what “black lives” they are talk­ing about. Since black youth from com­mu­ni­ties along the East-West cor­ri­dor are re­spon­si­ble for our high crime and mur­der rates, the cit­i­zen­ry is un­sym­pa­thet­ic to­wards them. We even open­ly ex­press the hope that they kill them­selves off in­stead of in­no­cent cit­i­zens. If black lives re­al­ly did mat­ter to our so­ci­ety, then we wouldn’t need what’s go­ing on in the US to mo­ti­vate us to take a stand. And, in­stead of protest­ing in front of their em­bassy, we would be protest­ing in front of our Par­lia­ment, de­mand­ing that the gov­ern­ment take ac­tion to cor­rect the so­cial, eco­nom­ic, and ed­u­ca­tion­al de­fi­cien­cies that ex­ist in these “hot spot” com­mu­ni­ties.

In­stead, we use the ac­cu­sa­tion of racism as a weapon or tool; fre­quent­ly and ca­su­al­ly wield­ing it to den­i­grate each oth­er and as an ex­cuse for our so­ci­etal short­com­ings. Again, I’m not sug­gest­ing that racism and prej­u­dice don’t ex­ist here. But the re­al ques­tion is whether we’ve ex­ac­er­bat­ed it in­to more of a prob­lem than it re­al­ly is. While lo­cals are tout­ing “black lives mat­ter”, Afro-Trinida­di­ans con­tin­ue to kill each oth­er in trou­bled com­mu­ni­ties. And call­ing for boy­cotts of cer­tain “one-per­center” busi­ness­es isn’t go­ing to ar­rest that from hap­pen­ing. Like­wise, re­mov­ing stat­ues of Colum­bus or re­nam­ing our colo­nial-era land­marks isn’t go­ing to erase our racial an­i­mos­i­ty. This isn’t about ar­gu­ing be­tween “Black Lives Mat­ter” and “All Lives Mat­ter”, it’s about iden­ti­fy­ing and do­ing “WHAT MAT­TERS” to help those cit­i­zens who are at-risk or have fall­en be­hind. I imag­ine that such an opin­ion might up­set some read­ers, and con­sid­er­ing my sur­name, I might even be ac­cused of be­ing a racist. Be­lieve me, it wouldn’t be the first time. And un­til we have an open and hon­est con­ver­sa­tion about race in Trinidad and To­ba­go, it won’t be the last time ei­ther.