Is racism an is­sue in T&T sports? It is an is­sue in glob­al sports but is T&T an ex­cep­tion?

Racism, clas­si­cism, elit­ism and vari­ants of those "isms" in most spheres of life here in T&T are nev­er it would seem far from the sur­face.

There is as a re­sult of a per­ceived stan­dard op­er­at­ing man­u­al that guides the in­ter­ac­tion amongst the di­verse mem­bers of so­ci­ety.

Dare to raise it and run the risk of char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion as be­ing racist and or play­ing the race card. There is a de­lib­er­ate at­tempt, that is, age-old to in­tim­i­date dis­cus­sions in re­spect of sur­mount­ing the is­sue of racism, clas­si­cism or elit­ism, in par­tic­u­lar, when it comes to the per­ceived un­der­de­vel­op­ment of afro-T&T com­mu­ni­ties.

If you ask the ques­tion why is racism, clas­si­cism and elit­ism such a taboo? The su­per­fi­cial an­swer is we are a rain­bow and cos­mopoli­tan na­tion where every creed and race find an equal place.

But is that true? Or is it that T&T is, in re­al­i­ty, more about know your place and space and stay in your space and place It is sub­tle and covert but at times overt and not so sub­tle.

There is a lot of talk about in­clu­sion but the truth be told, it's de­pen­dent on know­ing your place and space.

Re­cent­ly some­one as­sert­ed to me of not "mess­ing up things". I couldn't help but chuck­le to my­self as I won­dered what could I have done since first elect­ed T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) pres­i­dent in May 2013 to make some­one feel it nec­es­sary to ex­press the thought that I run the risk of mess­ing things up.

The his­to­ry of sports in T&T is un­ques­tion­ably linked to the na­tion's colo­nial past and its so­cio-cul­tur­al di­men­sions. Sport in the main was con­sid­ered one of the cul­tur­al foun­da­tions of British Colo­nial pol­i­cy and was in­tro­duced to T&T and the Caribbean by British mil­i­tary of­fi­cers and plan­ta­tion own­ers. The his­to­ry of sports on the twin-is­land is con­nect­ed to oth­er as­pects of colo­nial so­ci­ety.

Sports in T&T, based on his­tor­i­cal an­tecedents, re­flect­ed ide­o­log­i­cal so­cio-eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ments and the so­cial struc­ture at a point in time in his­to­ry.

The so­cial struc­ture at one time re­flect­ed white planters, mer­chants and the colo­nial ad­min­is­tra­tors at the top of the pyra­mid, a pre­dom­i­nant­ly brown mu­lat­to mid­dle class in the mid­dle, and a large group of black peo­ple and in­den­tured In­di­ans from In­dia at the bot­tom- (Br­ere­ton 1981).

In the pre and post-In­de­pen­dence pe­ri­od there were fer­vent calls for a na­tion­al­is­tic ori­en­ta­tion away from the val­ues, norms and prej­u­dices of the Colo­nial rul­ing class.

Be­cause we shy away from con­struc­tive and pro­gres­sive dis­cus­sions about racism, elit­ism and clas­si­cism in many spheres the his­tor­i­cal an­tecedents re­main im­pen­e­tra­ble and dri­ve un­con­scious bias and prej­u­dices that in­form how we view and in­ter­act with in­di­vid­u­als who may not be per­ceived as his­tor­i­cal­ly fit for pur­pose to run things or lead.

The cau­tion­ary at­ti­tude of don't go there in re­spect of the three pil­lars of racism, clas­si­cism and elit­ism is a con­straint as T&T at­tempts to ful­fil its po­ten­tial as a na­tion.

Ed­i­tor's Note

Bri­an Lewis is the Pres­i­dent of the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) and the views ex­pressed are not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of the or­gan­i­sa­tion.