Rhoda Reddock is Emerita Professor of Gender, Social Change and Development at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine. He also served as deputy and first head of the Institute for Gender and Development Studies. Acting in the national and Caribbean Women’s Movement and other social causes. Professor Reddock is currently an active member of the International Sociological Association (2018-2022) and an elected expert on the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (2019-2023).
This week’s column (Part Two will be published next week) was first featured in A Time for Healing: Understanding and Reconciling Race Relations in Trinidad and Tobago, a joint national symposium organized by the Faculty of Law, University of India West, St. Augustine Campus and the Catholic Commission for Social Justice (CCSJ), August 30, 2020. Responding to the racial tensions during and after the Trinidad and Tobago 2020 elections, the symposium was described as an attempt to facilitate a “national conversation, focusing on on understanding and healing … in an empathy, balanced and objective environment. “
Elections and post-election periods are difficult times for us in Trinidad and Tobago as in many parts of the world. They are especially difficult because they delve deep into our fears and uncertainties that come from living in a racially polarized post-colonial society. Writing in 2004, political scientist Ralph Premdas stated that “Every election that came tended to raise all unresolved issues of ethnic equity … An election campaign presumed the form of an identity contest expressed in a communal struggle on the joint where the claims of each community are so reigned over and expressed in uncompromising terms. ”
The historic elections of 1995, with the first victory of the United National Alliance (UNC) – National Alliance for Reconstruction (NAR) was a welcome development for many. It was seen as a fitting recognition of the 150th anniversary of the arrival of Indians to Trinidad and Tobago and of Tobagonians, their inclusion in the government of the Tobagonian political party. While Indo-Trinidadians rejoiced, there was a deep sense of loss to parts of the Afro-Trinitarian society. This was reflected in the capepsos of the 1996 season eg Cro Cro – ‘Black Man alyuh look for Dat’; Aloes Sugar, ‘The Facts’; and ‘Sat on Top’ by Mystic Prowler. It is argued that the attack of these ‘race’ calypsos in the tents during that time caused many calypso-loving Indians to stop attending calypso tents.
Politicians whose core political base is racist, are often unaware of the ways in which this racist and divisive politics affects citizens. Even when no overt racial statements are made, the viciousness of language and imagery creates deep wounds. Attacks on political leaders become attacks on the people of those ethnic groups and perpetuate the feelings of shame, anger, triumph and even hatred upon which ethnic tensions and conflicts are built. Party leaders often do not apologize for the hurt caused by their words or deny their members, followers and supporters who do so, and so the wounds are left to accumulate.
But the 2020 elections brought something new.
It was predicated on two key stereotypical narratives. The first was that Africans or Afro-Trinidadians were at the bottom of the economic pile. They have not made any progress (since independence or since slavery for some), their educational and economic performance has been poor because unlike Indians they are lazy. They were not given any privileges eg land, good schools, did not go into business and could not access private sector opportunities because of their color and race. The second narrative is that whites and Indians on the other hand received certain privileges, which allowed them to move forward, and when in power, the Indian government supported itself. What’s worse, the government of the National People’s Movement (PNM) is in power for most of the time since Afro-Trinbagonists failed independence.
This narrative was presented by some Afro Trinidadian radio guests, Black Nationalists and Afro-centric leaders. The result of this was the argument that Indians did better because their family system was stronger; they had worked harder, and unlike ‘lazy’ Afro-Trinbagonists who relied on public sector jobs, they opened businesses; given land, Hinduism includes a love of money and land; they discriminated and continued to discriminate against Africa and the like.
This use of myths and stereotypes was also evident in Indo-Trinidadian radio stations and their audiences, who received suggestions that Indo-Trinidadians were smarter and active, hence their improved educational and economic performances.
These discourses were so powerful, that UNC based its political campaign on elements of these narratives. Television ads presenting economically disadvantaged Afro-Trinidadians were ignored by the PNM, and had to seek and receive support from what was traditionally understood as an Indo-Trinidadian party. Although the ads focus on the economically disadvantaged
lower working and middle classes. I suspect that the educated middle classes, usually the ones made up of the swing voters, were the most troubled. He was right when Afro-Trinis criticized their own but it wasn’t right for those not in this group to take part in this discourse. Many forgot that it was Afro-Trinis themselves who were central to these discourses of victory.
These dangerous myths and stereotypes produce little real understanding of the legacy of historical socio-economic and cultural forces at work in Trinidad and Tobago. They also create boundaries for young people, curtailing their aspirations of what they could become.
In divided and unequal societies there is also an alternative phenomenon where one group’s definition of itself is constructed in opposition to the other. For example, if women become the majority of teachers then men are left to find a place that continues to be defined as masculine. Similarly, if the girls are doing well at school then it would be unimaginable for the boys to do well unless they can do as well as beat all the girls. Similarly, if educational success is to be defined as Indian, then Africans, especially boys must self-identify away from it. In other words, our societies and behaviors are complex and are not the result of any single fact but the intersections of ‘race’ / ethnicity, color, class, gender-gender identification, geography and our socio-economic and historical context .
After the 2020 elections and again the sense of loss is great in Trinidad and Tobago. This was not just a political loss, it was a collective group loss, a sense of disappointment, shame and anger. While in 1995, the loss was reflected in what Gordon Rohlehr referred to as the ‘race’ calypso, in 2020, it was clearly reflected in social media. People who giggled at the popular media to see themselves as successful, superior and wealthy exploded in anger and a deep sense of loss at the victory of the less well-off and also ethnically inferior who did not deserve to ‘win’. In other words, it was not a party that lost it but people.
The power of myths and stereotypes is that they often contain aspects of truth that make them difficult to challenge. But they need to be challenged if we are to start making our way back from where we have arrived. One such myth is that, unlike Africa, Indians were given land at the end of their period of indentureship. The historical evidence is that between 1869-1880 (11 years) Indian men, after completing their internment, were given five acres of crown land in exchange for forfeiting their right of return to India. A total of 2,643 adult males received a total of 19,055 acres of Crown Land under this scheme. As historian Bridget Brereton has pointed out, it was poor quality land, far from services, close to sugar estates, poor access roads, so much so that some Indians felt tempted to deceive them. their way back.
Africans were accessing land in various ways – by occupying it directly as peasant farmers (ie squatting) immediately after enfranchisement, through land grants eg the Merikins in Moruga and the troops of the West India Regiment demilitarized in different parts of ‘ the country. Between 1880 – 1920s, Crown lands opened up for sale in 10-acre plots for £ 1 an acre and Africans, and all other ethnicities purchased land, many of which involved cocoa production and cane farming.
On another occasion we could similarly deconstruct the myths surrounding education and the lazy N-word stereotype that emerged in the post-franchising era. The question now is – How did we get here? How do we understand and make sense of our situation and how do we begin to transform it?
Race is a feature of modern European history and was central to the American conquest. It was a central organizing principle of colonialism. Our story of Trinidad and Tobago begins with the near decline of indigenous peoples and forced transportation and slavery from Africa. Thus, Indentured Indians entered an already racist, color-coded, hierarchical social structure, and as later arrivals – Chinese, Portuguese, persecuted Jews and trading communities eg Indian Sindhis and Middle Easterners ( popularly known as Syria-Lebanon) and others – were inserted and located in this rating system. Today, racial meanings permeate all social, political, and economic relationships and ethnic consciousness shapes our dominant view of the world. That is, we see and understand almost everything through the prism of ‘race.’ Race ‘becomes an explanation for all failures, achievements, economic decisions, marriage decisions, education decisions, employment decisions and of course voting decisions.
While the black-white (African-European) binary dominated T&T racial structures in the colonial age, this was replaced by the African-Indian binary in the post-independence period but with both groups understanding themselves in relation to white / Europeans. In 1962, Trinidad and Tobago’s year of independence, in his essay in The Middle Passage, Trinidadian Nobel Laureate VS Naipaul, did well when he chose:
“Like monkeys pleading for evolution, each claiming to be whiter than the other, Indians and Negroes appeal to the unrecognized white audience to see how much they despise each other. They despise each other by referring to complaints; and the irony is that their antagonism should have reached its peak today, when white prejudices have ceased to matter. ”
Other antagonistic spurs emerged in other parts of the colonial world – eg Sikh / Hindu and Muslim / Hindu in India, Pathan / Muhaji in Pakistan, Tutsi / Hutu in Rwanda, Sinhala / Tamil in Sri Lanka, Hausa / Igbo in Nigeria.
Thus ethnic identities are constructed in opposition to each other and ‘cultural practices’ are constructed as much in response to the other as in relation to some hereditary tradition. At the same time, while all the public noise and divisive talk is happening at the public level, as Keith McNeal noted, there is evidence that populations in Trinidad and Tobago have “… become increasingly similar in important ways without being somehow affordable to each other. ”So while there is a strong movement to highlight difference and distinctiveness, we are really coming together.
Racial experiences in Trinidad and Tobago are shaped by a number of intersectional frames: Color and anti-Blackness; what I have called competitive victories; Ethnic Dualism and Hybridity and mix. Next week’s diaspora column will receive two of these frames, anti-Blackness and colorism; and competitive victories.