On Tuesday 31st July, 2007, NAEAP held its dinner and awards ceremony at the Centre of Excellence, Macoya and Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe delivered his Emancipation address.
By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
President: National Association for the Empowerment of African People
On August 1, 2007, we celebrate two hundred years since the European slave trade was abolished. This is a cause for great celebration. May we never forget the trials and tribulations that our ancestors suffered when they were transported across the African continent as cattle and brought to these islands to serve the needs of colonialist-capitalist exploiters. However, 2007 is not 1807. Much has changed since then in these very small islands of the Caribbean. Today, we must give serious thought about how we transcend the limitations of slavery and colonialism and function in a globalized society as purposeful agents who have shed the baggage of restrictive or coercive practices. In 2007 we should seek to deepen our freedom in the land that has been bequeathed to us.
Freedom is much more than a concept. It is a constant state of becoming; a delicate balancing act between what is and what ought to be. It is a process in which one tries always to realize oneself in historical time. It is not a license to do what one wants to do; when one wants to do it; regardless of the consequences. Freedom, as Frederick Engels observed “consists in the control over ourselves and over external nature which is founded on knowledge of natural necessity. It is therefore necessarily a product of historical development.”
Recently, there has been some confusion about the content of social categories such as citizenship, race, and ethnicity. The term Trinbagonian or Trinidadian and Tobagonian refers to one’s citizenship. With the exception of the guests who are in our midst, all of us are Trinbagonians or Trinidadians and Tobagonians. In our Caribbean civilization, the terms “African” and “Indian” refer to one’s cultural or ethnic identity, each of which is constructed in time. There is and can be no irreducible African or Indian essence upon which we can draw to make ourselves whole. Our Africanness or Indianness, to the degree that we speak of such identities, results from centuries of living in a particular place, intermingling in a specific way, and the vivacity with which we preserve historical memory, of which the slave trade and slavery are constitutive parts.
Such a framework suggests there is no contradiction between a person’s assertion of his identity and his claim of a specific citizenship. “Each group,” Walter Rodney reminds us, “must be built up, made conscious of their own potential, their own dignity and their own power” before their identities become mere markers in the larger fabric of the national space.
In this bicentennial year, African people do not receive the respect they deserve. We can ensure such respect by first respecting ourselves; pulling ourselves together, demonstrating the necessary self-sufficiency, and asserting a new a sense of group pride. In 1868 L. A. De Verteuil commented about the African presence in this land: “They are besides guided, in a mixed degree, by the sense of association; and the principle of combination for the common weal has been fully sustained wherever they have settled in any number. In fact, the whole Yarraba [Yoruba] race of the colony may be said to form a sort of social league for mutual support and protection.”
In our nine years of existence, few Africans of means have assisted the National Association for the Empowerment of African People (NAEAP) in our mutual support effort; few persons have contributed to our school; few persons have assisted us in our efforts to speak out against the injustices that are being committed against black people in the country. While the Maha Sabha cries discrimination for not receiving a radio license, NAEAP is yet to receive a radio license for which it applied over six years ago.
Sometimes I wonder when an African statesperson will get up and say we need not be discriminated against because we are Africans. We hear of discriminatory practices against black students at the Medical School; at the University of the West Indies; and at firms that pave our roads. Yet, discrimination against Africans does not elicit the same opprobrium as discrimination against other groups. We wonder why this is so. This evening I want to challenge the African elite to become more supportive of African brothers and sisters in the society. Your silence bespeaks a certain complicity in our loss of respect among other groups. The African elite ought to take a page out of the book of Louis Lee Sing who, from the inception of our organization, has gone out of his way to support NAEAP and everything that it has done. Radio i95 is the only place where NAEAP can count on a voice over the national airwaves.
It is important that our African elite realize their obligation towards the group and participate in its liberation journey. Rodney reminds us that “the responsibility for the slave trade, as far as Africans themselves bear responsibility, lies squarely upon the shoulders of the tribal rulers and elites. They were in alliance with the European slave merchants, and it was upon the mass of people that they jointly preyed.” The elite cannot continue to participate in the betrayal of the group.
The freedom of our people lies squarely on the shoulders of every responsible African in this land. We are our own liberators. Frantz Fanon affirmed: “I am my own foundation. I will initiate the cycle of my freedom.” Archimedes, the Greek mathematician, averred: “Give me a place to stand and I shall move the earth.” In Trinidad and Tobago, Africans have a place on which to stand. The question remains: How do we initiate that cycle of action and activity that will ensure our freedom?
The advancement of group sufficiency and ethnic consolidation resides within each of us and our capacity to give generously to the collective. Our fate is not to pull apart but to strengthen the fabric of the group; reaffirm group pride; and move towards a place where ethnic attributes become nothing but markers of our existentialist condition rather than the determinant of our destiny. Loyalty to our group, it must be emphasized, does not threaten any other group nor does it impact adversely upon our national cohesion. In 1962 Dr. Eric Williams observed there can be only one mother of the nation. No mother, he said, can love one child more than the other. Our destiny, he hinted, is to create a state in which the ethnic and the national blended into a harmonious whole.
As we strive towards that ideal, let us give to our group as much as we receive as individuals. Africans can only take their rightful place within the larger family, called the nation, if its members contribute generously to the group. Only in giving do we find our better selves; only in sharing do we enhance our presence and ensure our just due. It is only when the Master gave himself so that others may be free that He found his true ontological vocation.
We should follow in his footsteps. It is the necessary prerequisite of our transcendence.
http://www.trinicenter.com/Cudjoe/2007/3107.htm
DR. CUDJOE writes: “As we strive towards that ideal, let us give to our group as much as we receive as individuals. Africans can only take their rightful place within the larger family, called the nation, if its members contribute generously to the group. Only in giving do we find our better selves; only in sharing do we enhance our presence and ensure our just due. It is only when the Master gave himself so that others may be free that He found his true ontological vocation.” Dr. Cudjoe, after you wrote this I am sure you loaughed so hard that you ripped your under pants. By now you should realize that no one is buying your political, self-righteous, pompous, claptrap hence the dearth of funds to your organization even from your prosperous Afro brothers. Even your cultured Afro brothers see your organization NAEAP as a political arm of the PNM masquerading as the savior of the lost and disadvantaged African People in Trinidad and Tobago. After 53 years of PNM rule, we still have African People looking for their just due? If so, then that is the legacy of the PNMites and not the fault of young bright ambitious Hindu girls on the UWI campuses. If you really want to uplift your African brothers and sisters and more so our Nation, then you and your self anoited Gurus should preach tolerance, camaraderie, values, respect for the properties of others, and love and brotherhood.
I WAS OUT OF ACCESS FOR 6 WEEKS, THANKS TO TSTT. NOW I AM CATCHING UP.
I just completed reading Rosemary Okosso’s piece on British teachery in Nigeria at Independence. Now if one reads that first, then Selwyn Cudjoe’s Emancipation address, then the comment that the writer makes to his address, a few things become abundantly clear.
One such thing is the way people fail to understand the machinations of power. Trinidad and Tobago bcame ours in 1956, but was not really ours. Economic power was not ours, it was firmly in the hands of white Europeans, who handed over the semblance of political control, while holding firmly to wealth and power. When they did give some economic empowerment to Trinis, they gave it to others, not Africans. How long did it take for an Africabn looking person to head a bank in TnT, is it because those who were of African ancestry did not understand how to count pennies? A member of the UWI class of 1967 set up the Unit Trust Corporation- (Mr. Poor Blackmans Holdings Inc).
Watching Europeans do business in the non-white world is interesting; they look to anyone but the African, even the least educated.Unless we are willing to admit that the politics of divide and rule, their modus operandi,is still rampant in the ex-colonial world,we would never grasp some of the more subtle aspcts of racial economics still rampant in our country.( One aspect- The UTC launches the Energy Fund. We are told soon after that the oil and gas is running out in twelve years.Three years ago, an official of acompany that goes beyond petrleum products, is heard to describe the government of TnT as being too greedy, coming constantly with their hands out for more. The next day there was an article in the Express stating that they were cutting back unproductive wells.Were
thesetwo items connected? You bet.
We only have to look at the India-Pakistan divide, the Middle East mess, and th constant wars fostered in Africa to sell munitions to both sides, to understand that we thought we had power, but did not really.
Now that Manning has re-instituted full free tertiary education for all Trinbagonians, we are haring that “they don’t understand the meaning of the word ‘vulgar’. (Was that Job or Warner, they sound and loo alike, we have it implied that the education being offered is inferior, and we are hearing that the oil and gas may run out in twelve years. Could al of this be coming from the same relentless forces of destruction?
Could it be coming from the same forces that, in aMexican five star hotel, tried to throw out the most distinguished indigenous woman of the Americas, Rigoberta Menchu. These same attitudes are alive in Trinidad and Tobago, and when they speak of years of PNM rule, they conveniently forget that when the PNM wasin oposition the countrywas strangled by the IMF- reducing many Afrian people to near homelessness, tha the actions of other governments led to bloody revolution, and that the immediate past government became an international benchmark for corruption- banking their ill gotten gains in the same Britain that had had its foot on our necks for years. Areweathinking people, ordoes Selwyn Cudjoe’sname send us into apploxies of nonsense?I
Chandra Singh
If you really want to uplift your African brothers and sisters and more so our Nation, then you and your self anoited Gurus should preach tolerance, camaraderie, values, respect for the properties of others, and love and brotherhood.
Have you ever heard of Africans threatening to kill their daughters if they dated Indian men? Have you ever heard of any African belief system that accord status according to pigment. That deceitful crap pedalled out by you Hindu bigots lend posthumous credit to Sigmund Freud, for detecting the human tendency to accuse others of the nastiness that is inside of them, and define them by heritage. You bring a perspective shaped by a swastika and sense of Aryan superiority to a tiny Caribbean island nation, and accuse those who find it unpallatable and repugnant of being intolerant. You damn skippy we are intolerant.
We come from a recorded culture and heritage that has always been in the vanguard of intolerance against the kind of nasty bigotry you “Hindu Gals and Guys” are seeking to bring to the Caribbean. Whether in the US, in Africa or elsewhere, we do not sit on the fence and wait for the manna of civil rights sacrifices to come our way courtesy of the activism of others. We get in there and fight. Can you name one historical event where Indians or Hindus out of India joined any struggle for the rights and freedoms of others. Indians and Hindus enjoys freedoms in the US today courtesy of the blackman. You do not have a track record of championing tolerance, so you should just shut your pie hole and continue cuss out the blackman under your bottom houses and in your online chat rooms. That is what you live for after all.
You guys do not define intolerance on the basis of Africans who do not like Indians. You define it on the basis of truth tellers that Indians do not like. And you know that maaaaan!
Ruel Daniels is a man of discriminating intelligence. He appears to be educated in one way and incompetent in others. To answer two of your first questions posed – Yes, I have heard of African men threatening to disown or even kill their daughters when they want to marry or date indian men. You may not hear of it as often but that may be due not to the fact that afro-trinis are more tolerant than indo-trinis but as the favourite defence for non-biased in kidnappings in T&T goes…it’s simply a matter of proportions.
While there may be no belief system that I am aware of in Africa where people are discriminated against due to pigment in their skin – which should be unlikely since no one culture in Africa or the world has as wide a spectrum of skin tones as in India, don’t act like people don’t hack and shoot one another to death due to tribal differences.
This is the second time I have seen Ruel make reference to the Swastika in an incorrect way. You obviously don’t know the origins of it.
“Can you name one historical event where Indians or Hindus out of India joined any struggle for the rights and freedoms of others.”
– what do you mean by “others?” Does Ruel mean non-Indians? If that is what he means, again I go not know if he is making an attempt to sound uneducated. Gandhi while in South Africa formed the only ethnic-indian regiment to help in the South African War and they were primarily ambulance brigade due to Gandhi’s non-violence approach and they were one of the few regiments allowed to tend to injured black soldiers.
I know I will now be accused of being racist so after Ruel accuses me,he needs to apply some of that Freudian psychology to himself.
Go back to the Legislative Council of 1951. The Butler party got the most seats of any one party in the council. Had a certain other group joined with him the non-white population of Trinidad and Tobago would have controlled the house. They did not join him, but kept to themselves, and so it was up to the PNM IN 1956 TO WREST FULL INTERNAL SELF GOVERNMENT FROM BRITAIN. This was documented on the Parliament Channel in Mid-July of 2007. You could go check that too. This was an opportunity to join together for the common good. They flubbed it.
Again Riaz, one has to credit the great Mahatma with having grown and matured. In his later years, the years that brought him unstintinted admiration, he was a philosopher of note, aliving saint to many.
In his earlier years in South Africa, he was a young lawyer trying to make some money from any clients who needed his service. Africans needed lawyers to help them fight to retain some dignity in the land that has been theirs for three million years. Gandhi did not associate with them. When he as thrown out of the first class carriage, he had his defining moment. He was not white, but a brown man held in the smae contempt that Europeans had for Africans. This opened his eyes to injustice, leading to the liberation of India. Had he been treated well in South Africa, perhaps he would have never gone home.
Prior to 1950, I do not think the racial segregation laws were so drastic as to require him to form an Indian Regiment. The draconian laws came in the sixties. I was at UWI when the University of the Witwatersrand was closed for about two weeks, to re-open as a whites only institution that had previously been integrated.
Did Gandhi act like a rajah of old and form his own standing army because he could not be white and did not want to be black? These were his early years. He learnt much, and suffered much in later life.
He may not have been as broadminded early on, as you would hav eus think. Like Malcolm X, the older he got, the wiser he got.( Just an observation from a senile old lady)
Yes they “flubbed” it, I agree. But why do some writers only place blame on one side? Now I may have the dates wrong because I wasn’t born yet but I did read that once comment made around that time period was “We don’t want no Roti Government.”
Sounds to me like someone else also “flubbed” it.
Ghandi’s South African Struggle was on behalf of Indians. And Indians do come to the US in large numbers and benefit from the blood and sweat of the struggles of African Americans, only to turn around and villify the same people who opened the doors for them. You can go to any number of Indian Websites on the net and see examples of what I am talking about. And I will be quite happy to begin posting some of them or the links here if there are any doubters. When it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck I call it a damn duck, and do not give a rats patudi whom it offends
My maternal grandad was Indian. His mother wore gold bangles around her ankles. I tell it like it is. There is a great conspiracy by the Indian intellegencia to obfuscate the widespread prejudice that defines their interaction with Africans. So much so, that they now resort to labelling any illumination of that prejudice as racism against them. Yeah right. It is racist not to allow you guys to feed your ethnic egos. Give me a break man.
Ruel’s logic seems to work in only one direction. Gandhi struggled for the indians in SA but the blacks benefited from that struggle. How is that different from Indians going to the US and benefiting from the struggles of African-Americans? African-Americans didn’t fight for Indian’s rights, they fought for their own. You logic is so unidirectional you do not see that your argument against Gandhi is flawed when one greatest figures in their struggle for Equality in America modeled his movement based on the teachings of Gandhi?
I have no doubt that there are websites set up by indians where they publish racist rhetoric towards blacks – I have seen at least two of them myself where I found some of the content to be questionable and in cases outright false or distasteful. But there are also sites which are set up by people of African Diaspora that are also racist. What’s the difference? It doesn’t mean that the websites set up by a minority represents what all think. If you want to take what a few people think and apply it to an entire race, that my good man is the definition of being racist.
What does your grandfather being indian and his mother wearing gold bangles have to do with the issue? Was your grandfather Hindu? Was he part of this international conspiracy to propagate prejudice against Africans you speak about so knowingly? Did he try to infiltrate the enemy by inter-marrying? I fail to see the relevance to your argument.
Linda – go do some more research on the history of RSA. The British never mixed their soldiers with the locals unless they were officers. Furthermore, among the locals and imports, they never mixed different tribes, races etc in their regiments – this was a standard tactic of divide and conquer. So it was easier to quell uprisings, especially if for example a Sikh regiment decided to rebel, then they could call in a Hindu or Muslim Regiment.
Some people will always try to sugar coat their side of the story and throw epsom salts on the other side of the story.
Pray tell, what benefits accrued to blacks in South Africa based on Gandhis Struggles. Nothing changed for them. And they were not sitting on their hands while Gandhi was engaged in his Indian Struggles. They had been fighting against white oppression and discrimination from browns and half whites for eons. In contrast, the black struggle in the US opened up employment opportunites, neighbourhoods where no Indian or other minority could think of living before, and educational opportunities along with financial aid that Indians and other minorites today take for granted.
Mine is not an attempt to dismiss the existence of prejudice among blacks. But most of it is reactive, and pales in comparison to what they experience from Indians and others. And the Indian Business people who today are over flowing black communities in the Bronx and elsewhere would have to be stupid or seriously lacking in business acumen if they are going there with the apprehension that inherent black prejudice will affect their customer base. Please! That is the problem with you some of youse guys. The prism through which you view the world is so obscured by the myths and ill-conceived notions about others instilled in you from small,that severe disjointment becomes the pattern with which you respond to anyoneone pointing them out.
Show me a link to one diasporian African website that targets Indians with racism. Put up or shut up. You issue forth these comments because they are comprised of air, effort and no small degree of mendacity.
Like a said, your definition of racism is skewed to indict those who illuminate your prejudices. And I mentioned the origin of my maternal grandfather to indicate that the attitudes and behaviours that I reference were visible to me in communites from time immemorial.
It is you who are attempting to sugar coat history. Yours and others attempt to re-create a Brahmin/Dalit scenario in the caribbean is being deceptively comaflaged by screaming racism every time a revelation of this effort occurs. When people point out the incongruity between your advantages in the commercial sector and your claims of widespread discrimination, even after years of so called black rule in Trinidada and Tobago, your prism contorts that into an appeal by black peoploe for help from you to solve our problems.
Africans dominate the civil and public sector areas in most countries where they are in large numbers, because those are more likely to be meritocracies. Many Indian parents, because of the messing and living arrangements for Police and Coast Guard Recruits, prevent their kids from going into those areas of employment. Because to do so mean that they will have to communally live and eat with black people. Then in machiavellian style, you guys turn around and scream about being discriminated against in those areas. Those are the lowest paid and most heavily taxed areas of occupation. But like I said, disjointment is the defensive pattern of response
I SALUTE YOU RUEL DANIELS , you have said it all except for the conveniently forgotten issue I raised before, of doing a head count of employees in the public sector, and their ranks, by ‘RACE” AND THEN DOING THE SAME IN INDIAN-OWNED BUSINESSES IN THE PRIVATE SECTOR.
I do not visit Indian generated websites, but if everyone who saw some of this expressed racism, withdrew their custom from Indian-owned businesses in Canada, USA, England and throughout the African diaspora,in Nigeria, Guyana, and throughout Europe, then, those billions of dollars African people spend in Indian stores, would be felt.
This must include from market vendor and maxi-taxi driver, on up. Tell the service company in North America, who lets an Indian call you that you will not do business with them, and explain why. People should put their money where their self-esteem is valued. Martin and Malcolm did not die for this.
So let me summarize to make sure I understand
Gandhi did nothing for SA blacks and the white doctors would have tended to the injured black soldiers during the SA war.
According to you – have a problem with Indian Businessmen overflowing the black communities in the Bronx. Sounds just like those indians who have a problem with the gov’t of Trinidad relocating blacks in predominantly indian communities.
You – Indians are racist towards blacks but black racism is mostly reactionary. I am really happy for your great-grandmother who could wear gold jewelry and not be a victim of the reactionary racism we experience today i.e. you is indian, you have plenty money. You could afford it if we rob you.
Blacks fought and opened the way for Indian immigrants to get jobs in America and educational opportunities, despite most Indian immigrants to America already attended universities in their home country and large multinationals and technology based orgs like NASA actively go to India to find employees. I don’t think any of them receive financial aid or are on welfare.
You – Indians have an advantage in the commercial sector (I might add an advantage that they worked for) so that means that no sort of discrimination exists against them or if it does, they should shut up and take it because some of them have plenty money. They don’t need any NHA housing.
One of your grandfathers had a racist attitude towards your grandmother and his children and grandchildren.
Many parents prevent their kids from joining the police force because they will have to eat and live with blacks. I thought it was because those were the lowest paid and most heavily taxed jobs (according to you anyway).
You – stop supporting all indian business because of some racist websites. How about stopping support for all white business because I’m sure there are some racist white websites. Stop supporting Arab business because of time racist Arab websites. That’s an excellent idea but when indian businessmen decide to close their business in protest of crime, some said they were holding the country to ransom. What’s your view on that?
My last comment on this article is that I will not defend or deny that racism against blacks exist in the indian community. What I have a problem with is, as is as clear as daylight (without use of that prism Ruel talks about) that two of these writers are outright lumping entire people as one and their denial or flower-dressing the fact that the problem occurs on both sides. It would have been interesting to see what their comments would have been, had someone with an Indian sounding name written the piece by Dr. Nantumbu.
Riaz Ali
Blacks fought and opened the way for Indian immigrants to get jobs in America and educational opportunities, despite most Indian immigrants to America already attended universities in their home country and large multinationals and technology based orgs like NASA actively go to India to find employees. I don’t think any of them receive financial aid or are on welfare.
Of course there are Indians who are on welfare. And of course there are Indians who receive financial aid to attend city universities all over the US, and particularly in the Tri State Area. I knew that if I probed long enough the psychosis that characterizes the thinking I am exposing would become apparent.
Riaz Ali
According to you – have a problem with Indian Businessmen overflowing the black communities in the Bronx. Sounds just like those indians who have a problem with the gov’t of Trinidad relocating blacks in predominantly indian communities.
Like I said. Your prism nurtures you to apply Freudian defense mechanisms to evidence that contradicts your claims. Go back and read my comments with regard to Indian Businesses in black communities. It’s context clearly challenged the idea that Indians really expect prejudice in their interaction with blacks. Because if they did, then why would there be a preponderance of Indian businesses locating in black communities. In fact, other than their own, Indian businesses locate in black communities more than any other. You will not take your business where you apprehend your potential customers will base their patronage of an establishment on the race or ethnicity of the owner.
Your debased and deliberate misrepresentation of this corroborates the point I was making all along. That the Indian intelligencia are using claims of racism in order to obscure the generational prejudice many of them harbour against Africans. And that they will parse and convolute randomly in pursuit of that purpose.
Shut up and take what racism! Racism is prejudice plus power. What are the measurements being used to justify the claims you are making. Do blacks in Trinidad and Tobago have better schools than Indians? How many “black hoilidays”, religious or otherwise are there in Trinidad and Tobago? Is there a day black arrival in Trinidada and Tobago? The end result in all of the areas in which you claim discrimination exists against Indians does not substantiate your claims. And that is because the motive behind them is mean spirited and inherent prejudice, and being made by people who will never be comfortable in any mixed societies of which African and Indians are in large numbers, unless Indians dominate every sphere, every niche, every power connection in that society.
Of course Indians worked for the commercial gains that they have, so you can put that little racist crap and dig where the sun do not shine. Basic Commonsense lends to the understanding that racism expresses itself by denying people the fruits of their labour. If Indians are able to realize the fruits of their labour and acumen, so much so that it propells them above those they claim are being favoured before them, then it is obvious that what those making the claim are after is more than equal opportunity. What they are after is domination.
Africans have to stop playing this one sided game of diplomacy brought about by the deceptive “guilt trip” strategies that have become fashionable among the social movers and shakers in the “GOIP”. We know that we are accepting of every group regardless of whether they are blue pink or maroon, and that inherent tendency is reflected by the disparity in numbers of those who freely come into our communities, and vice versa. I do not make excuses or waste time defending myself against the freudian barrage that comes forth when I uncover sacred cows or reveal inconvenient truths. I am a disciple of the Malcolm Xs, the Marcus Garveys, The Denmark Vesseys. I will challenge the prejudice that facilitated three hundred plus years of enslavement of my ancestors regardless of its source or origin. The idea that because people are not white they are incapable of the kinds of vicious prejudice Africans, by virtue of hundreds of years of experience, have become experts at recognizing, is pure unadulterated excrement. There is burgeoning development in thought among other so called minority groups, that Africans in general perceive as allies, that if they cannot qualify for inclusion on the white side of the racial continuum by physical appearance, they will endeavour to do so by a manifestation of shared antipathy. Africans have to wake up and smell the coffee. The sacrifices of our ancestry demands it.
Ruel
“Of course there are Indians who are on welfare. And of course there are Indians who receive financial aid to attend city universities all over the US, and particularly in the Tri State Area.”
That is just the first instance where you misunderstood or misconstrued what I said – I was referring to the immigrants and people on work-visas who come in the US with jobs already waiting for them. (please re-read the very paragraph you quoted) And speaking as a non-American who received financial aid to go to school, the reason was not because I belonged to a visible minority. It was because my grades at University were high enough to obtain scholarships and bursaries.
This last comment from you is so long an erroneous in your interpretations of what I wrote, I won’t waste any more time correcting you about what I said as you will continue to see things the way you want to.