By Clint Chan Tack
August 01, 2021 – newsday.co.tt
MOVEMENT for Social Justice (MSJ) political leader David Abdulah said slavery continues today in different forms.
He made the statement in his Emancipation Day message to the nation.
He said the MSJ “deplores the fact that our education system is so deficient in the teaching of our real history – the history of the struggle “out of slavery, through indenture and up to freedom.”
Continue reading MSJ’s David Abdulah: Slavery continues today
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
August 01, 2021
PART 1
The masters were “dam tief”, the Governor an “old rogue”, and the King not such a fool as to buy them half free when he was rich enough to pay for them altogether.
—Port of Spain Gazette, August 5, 1834
Today is Emancipation Day. Ashton Ford, one of our respected elders, remembers the impetus that led former prime minister George Chambers to change the Discovery Day holiday (a day that recognised the misdeeds of our oppressors) to Emancipation Day that honours the achievements of our ancestors.
Chambers believed if you named your streets and monuments after local patriots, you encouraged a sense of nationhood and strengthened national identity among the population.
Continue reading Glorious day(s) of the happy and the free
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
July 26, 2021
By the rivers of Babylon/Where we sat down/And there we wept/When we remembered Zion.
But the wicked carried us away in captivity/Required from us a song/How can we sing King Alpha song/ In a strange land?
—Jimmy Cliff, “Rivers of Babylon”
Two Fridays ago Brian Lehrer interviewed me on his radio show on WNYC (New York) about Jamaica’s most recent petition to Britain for $10.5 billion (US) in reparation for the damage done to our people during slavery. I informed Lehrer that Jamaicans have been battling Spain and Britain for the control of their lives and the product of their labor ever since those two countries enslaved and later colonized their country.
Continue reading Honorable Lives / Forgotten Worlds
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
July 04, 2021
The condemnations came fast and furious. U.S. actor Michael B. Jordan, it seems, was farse and outaplace to name his new rum J’Ouvert and equally outatiming to set the label of his product on a box that included “a schematic of the islands of Trinidad and Tobago, plus a written reference to Trinidad and to J’Ouvert as a local celebration of emancipation and carnival” (Newsday, June 21).
One Trini woman mused: “We look for that. This is what happens when we are constantly ambivalent about our culture, largely ignore its historical, spiritual and ideological significance” (Newsday, June 21).
Continue reading Saying Yes, Sometimes
By Julien Neaves
March 17, 2021 – newsday.co.tt
POLITICAL and social activist Bernard Yawching said he expects backlash over his book The Hidden Agenda of Race Relations in Trinidad and Tobago.
The new book accuses the United National Congress (UNC), the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha (SDMS), and some members of the Hindu community and the East Indian community of promoting a racist agenda. It tracks events from a 1913 speech by former Arima Mayor FEM Hosein about Africans not being as productive as Indians to more modern-day controversies such as Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar describing the Prime Minister as an “oreo.”
Continue reading Bernard Yawching defends book accusing UNC, Hindus of racist agenda
By Raffique Shah
March 08, 2021
If a brush with death is said to prompt man to reflect more deeply on life, then the Covid-19 pandemic that swooped down on mankind last year, cutting a path of death and destruction such as we had never seen in our lifetime, has also triggered deep thinking on the social contracts that exist among governments and the governed, on how societies are structured to sustain inequality, and on altering such arrangements, replacing them with more equitable alternatives.
Continue reading Remove these shackles
DDX Channel
January 24, 2021
Continue reading Dr Selwyn Cudjoe – History, Writing and the Slave Master of Trinidad
By Dr Selwyn Cudjoe
January 05, 2021
“So Trinidad was and remains a materialist immigrant society, continually growing and changing, never settling into any pattern, always retaining the atmosphere of the camp… [This explains] its special character, its ebullience and irresponsibility… an indifference to virtue as well as to vice.”
—VS Naipaul, The Middle Passage
In 1960 Eric Williams, premier of Trinidad and Tobago (T&T), suggested to VS Naipaul, one of our premier writers, that he write a non-fiction book about the West Indies that the T&T government would support financially. Williams assured Naipaul he “could write about any aspect of the region and visit whatever territories [he] wished” to accomplish his objectives.
Continue reading A More Reflective Society
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
December 15, 2020
The savage murder of Ashanti Riley touched many of us. It led us to reflect upon the kind of society we have created and the citizens (social beings) we are cultivating. Ashanti’s murder led the prime minister to talk about “the monsters” we are cultivating within our midst. Phyllis Bruce, another mother whose Black son vanished on March 19, sympathized with Ashanti’s mother in her grief: “Even from one mother to another, I can’t find the words to comfort her. But I would say to her, be strong. Hold on. Keep courage” (Express, December 11).
Continue reading The Potency of the Word
By Raffique Shah
September 07, 2020
Early morning Independence Day. I switch on the television, remembering that there would be no military parade this year, thanks to Covid-19, the Great Destroyer. So what is there to watch? On CNC3, I catch the last few words of the Prime Minister—rerun of an interview he’d done with Natalee Ligoure a few days ago. Then the host excitedly introduces 2020 Panorama champions, Desperadoes—their winning performance on Carnival Saturday night.
Continue reading Opportunities lost