By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
March 13, 2017
When President Donald Trump promised to make America great again, no one believed he wanted the United States to relive its dark history. To be sure there was a desire to return to a time when things appeared to be less complicated—a kind of white-skinned Utopia—but no one believed the president would hark back to a period when racial bigotry, religious scapegoating and ignorance prevailed.
Continue reading Making America Racist Again
By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
March 06, 2017
Last Wednesday, Max Prime’s “We Jammin’ Still” was declared the Road March of the year. Over the two days of Carnival, it was played over 556 times as opposed Machel Montano’s “Your Time Now” that was played 77 times. On January 11, Joanne Briggs declared: “Ultimate Rejects” has already been declared the people’s anthem for Carnival 2017″ (Trinidad Guardian). She wasn’t wrong. Over the last two months, “We Jammin’ Still” replaced our National Anthem as an expression of our people’s sentiment: a directionless nation in crisis.
Continue reading An Anarchist Anthem
By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
February 26, 2017
In 2011, shortly after the People’s Partnership was installed as a government, the GOPIO asked me to give a lecture on multiculturalism. I emphasized that Trinidad and Tobago will never reach its full potential unless all of us—black, white, Indian and African, protestant and Hindu—accepted our past as our national patrimony. Therefore, I was pleased when, Kamla Persad Bissessar, in her response to Faris Al-Rawi’s attempt to do away with the three-fifths requirement for the passage of certain legislation, recognized that our Independence constitution “was evolutionary and was the result of hard fought negotiations at Marlborough House by our forefathers.”
Continue reading Guarding Our Laws
By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
February 12, 2017
Last Monday, Dr. Keith Rowley embarked upon a tour to converse with his constituents. Symbolically, he began his conversation in the constituency of his most tone-deaf, most unavailable minister.
Any astute observer of the political scene could have told him that crime, public safety and citizens’ distrust of their government are prime concerns. They would have told him that men’s cruelty to women has little to do with the choices they make in picking their spouses or the clothes they wear.
Continue reading Beware of our Talents
By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
January 29, 2017
On Wednesday 18th January the Senate passed the Miscellaneous Provisions (Marriage) or the Child Marriage Bill (2016) that prohibits twelve-year-old girls from getting married. It did so with the notable abstention of the UNC-led Opposition. Put simply, as Jennifer Baptiste Primus suggests, this bill prevents “hard-back men” from clambering over young girls to satisfy their lust.
Enter Kamla Persad-Bissessar, Q.C. She is one of the country’s more distinguished lawyers. I don’t know how she conducts herself in court but one presumes it is befitting of her status. Language and the manipulation of language are at the heart of her profession which allows her to say things without regard of their consequences or truth content. It is almost as though she (or any lawyer) can use words to serve any purpose they deem necessary.
Continue reading Kamla’s Equivocation
By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
January 22, 2017
Last Friday Donald Trump was inaugurated as the 45th president of the United States of America. As in so many other offensive things he has tweeted since November, Trump began this year by trying to besmirch (unfortunately one dictionary defines the meaning of this word as “to blacken”) the reputation of John Lewis and his courageous actions in turning the USA away from its segregationist past and setting it on a path to achieve its founders’ dreams.
Here is a man, with no sense of history, dismissing an icon of America’s attempt to redeem its past, with a silly phrase “All talk, talk, talk-no action or results.” Such disparagement led David Remnick of the New Yorker to ask: “Who would have the impoverished language to dismiss the whole of John Lewis as “sad”? To which he answers: “As it happens, the President-elect of the US.”
Continue reading President Trump and the Black Blowback
By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
Jamuary 16, 2017
Poor Rolph, or should I say, brilliant Rolph. I do not wish to denigrate Dr. Rolph Balgobin’s name or rush to judgment about any of the charges that have been made against him. I expect justice to run its course since Balgobin has hired the best legal minds to defend his innocence and sustain his reputation.
This is my dilemma: I cannot understand why any society would want to pile so much responsibility on one man or woman even though it does seem as if our women are so favored. Balgobin’s public profile is a thing to behold. Andy Johnson described him as “one of the country’s more connected and powerful men” which is why so many persons feared to interfere where he trod.
Continue reading Poor Rolph, Brilliant Rolph
By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
January 08, 2017
It would be hilarious if the issue were not so deadly serious. President Barack Obama accuses the Russians of undermining the US presidential election and the Senate Armed Services Committee holds intelligence hearings to discover why President Vladimir Putin tried to sabotage the will of the American people. Such treachery, President Obama suggests, throws us back into a past from which American citizens have turned their gazes.
Continue reading Do so eh like so
By Dr. Selwyn Cudjoe
January 01, 2016
WHEN I was a boy I wanted to go to Queen’s Royal College (QRC), not because of its academic standing but because I loved the khaki jackets its cadets wore.
I thought it was cool as I imagined myself in that uniform.
Years later I learned about its academic excellence when Eric Williams returned to Trinidad as one of its most famous graduates.
Continue reading A Brek-UP, Brek-DOWN Society
By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
December 25, 2016
It’s Christmas Day. All are gathered at home with their loved ones. You may have started your day by going to church, calling friends to wish them “Merry Christmas,” or even getting over a hangover, the product of too much partying.
As we come together on this holy day we remember the virgin birth; shepherds walking in the fields at night, following a star to the manger in which the Christ child, symbol of peace and love, lay.
Continue reading Sleep in Heavenly Peace