By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
July 13, 2020
I met Sophia Chote once but was enchanted her intellectual sophistication and emotional maturity of her columns. Her writing reminded me of the qualities that one found in the thinkers of the romantic movement of the nineteenth century: a belief in democracy and republicanism; an appreciation for the sublime and transcendence; and most of all, a belief in the power of imagination.
Continue reading The Last of the Romantics
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
July 06, 2020
While the world has been impacted by the Black Lives Matter movement, none of the political parties of T&T has issued a statement on its relevance to black people of this country. Nor, for that matter, have they told us how they will deal with the impoverishment, unemployment, alienation and miseducation of our black youths.
Necessarily, black youths from these under resourced communities have reminded us that black lives matter and that there must be an accounting for past wrongs and present grievances. Predictably, there will be more clashes between the police and the youths of these deprived communities if things continue as they are going.
Continue reading Do Black Lives Matter in Trinidad?
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
June 29, 2020
About one hundred yards north of Whitehall, there is a short street, Maxwell Philip Street, that is located between Prada and Scott streets, in St. Clair, Port of Spain. It is no more than 500 yards long. Although it is located in an affluent part of the city, it commemorates the life of a very important member of our community.
Philip, one of the most respected and accomplished Afro-Trinbagonians of the nineteenth century, might be little known to our contemporaries. However, given the impact that Black Lives Matter (BLM) is having on the present era and the interest it has generated all over the world, it might be wise to become acquainted with Philip, his importance in our history, and the enduring connection of the BLM to Afro-Trinbagonians.
Continue reading Black American Lives Have Always Mattered…
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
June 29, 2020
“No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man, without finding the other end of it about his own neck.”
—Frederick Douglass
For the past three weeks, the world’s attention has been transfixed by the racial tensions that engulfed the United States. We, in T&T may have been spared “the most vulgar displays of systemic racism” as the prime minister said but, as the old people say: “What miss yo’ ent pass yo.”
The massive resistance against the racism that engulfed the US has to do with how white people and their government treat black people on a day-to-day basis. In T&T I am not sure that our government and those in power are treating its black citizens as they should. An immediate example is how PNM’s Screening Committee treated (and is treating) Robert Le Hunte because he took “a principled stance” on an important issue.
Continue reading Be Careful How You Treat Black People
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
June 23, 2020
“White men, I curse you to your face,/ Curse you and all your hated race!/ Great war has placed me in your power;/ I am your captive; this is your hour/ To wreck your bitterest thought of ill;/ To bind or slay me as you will.”
—Horatio Nelson Huggins, Hiroona
I do not have strong feelings as to whether we should move Columbus’s monument from its present location or whether it should be placed in a special museum. However, I am encouraged by the discussion the issue has engendered and the eloquent articles it has generated.
I am more concerned with the havoc the Europeans have wreaked on our civilization after Columbus’s arrival, the genocide that was perpetrated against our indigenous populations, and the subsequent barbarity to which brown and black people have been subjected.
Continue reading Columbus and His Progeny
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
June 09, 2020
PART 3
“To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history.”
—Marcus Cicero
On Friday, May 23, 1958, Lionel Seukeran, MP for Naparima (DLP) and grandfather of Faris Al-Rawi, AG, offered the following motion to the Legislative Council: “Whereas the Chief Minister [Eric Williams] is reported to have made an unwarranted and derogatory attack on the Indian community at a public meeting at Woodford Square, following the Federal elections, whereas his utterances on that occasion have aroused the indignation and caused grave concern among all sections of law-abiding people, and have contributed greatly to the embarrassment of people of East Indian descent…
Continue reading The Lie…
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
June 01, 2020
My dear Josh:
I write to you at what is supposed to be a happy time although it is tinged with sadness.
The happiness first.
You have spent seventeen years preparing for your graduation day. It is a time to celebrate with your parents and your friends, your teachers and loved ones, after years of hard work and dedication. You have been to summer camps—you even had a stint at one of the leading technology companies in the country—as you strove to carve out a space to begin your new adventure in college and to think about what you want to do after you graduate from college.
Continue reading Letter to My Grandson
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
May 25, 2020
PART 2
“All that is needed on the part of the Negro to attain his rightful place [in this society] is to embark on a wild binge of destruction and plunder.”
—Trevor Sudama
About five years ago several Eric Williams scholars were invited to investigate Eric Williams’s work at Oxford University before continuing on to Senate House, London. Brinsley Samaroo, one of the invited scholars, gave an illuminating lecture on Williams after which I asked him whether Williams had called Indo-Trinidadians, rather than a segment of members of the Democratic Labor Party, “a recalcitrant hostile minority.” His answer was an emphatic “No. He did not.”
Continue reading The Lie…
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
May 18, 2020
If once you forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem.
—Abraham Lincoln
I thought the expeditious manner in which the Prime Minister and his party handled the coronavirus pandemic rescued their fortunes and gave their supporters reason to believe the PNM would focus on the needs of ordinary people, albeit by circumstances rather than by choice.
Then the unravelling came. Without even being pushed, the Minister of National Security uttered the most unbelievable statements of his career and, by extension, the Government in which he serves. Inexplicably, he continues to do so in the face of evidence to the contrary.
Continue reading Young’s tragic blunder
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
May 11, 2020
PART 1
I was stunned but not surprised by Roodal Moonilal’s letter to Joseph Mondello, US Ambassador to T&T, asking the US government to act against the best interest of our homeland. His lame excuse, a mea culpa perhaps, was: “If the United States imposes no sanctions against Trinidad and Tobago it will be because of the action of the United National Congress” (Express, May 5). As Mondello asserted, the US does not need Moonilal to tell it where its interests lies.
Continue reading The Lie…