{"id":1325,"date":"2009-07-19T22:32:44","date_gmt":"2009-07-20T02:32:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/?p=1325"},"modified":"2009-08-27T08:33:57","modified_gmt":"2009-08-27T12:33:57","slug":"ethnic-cleansing-of-whom-in-tt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/?p=1325","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Ethnic cleansing&#8217; of Whom in T&#038;T?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><i>By Dr. Kwame Nantambu<br \/>\nJuly 19, 2009<\/i><br \/>\n<em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/\">www.trinidadandtobagonews.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/?p=1325\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blogimg\/doctors.jpg\" width=\"150\" height=\"113\" border=\"0\" align=\"left\" alt=\"Doctors\"><\/a>The recent accusation by UNC&#8217;s Dr. Tim Gopeesingh of &#8220;ethnic cleansing&#8221; of Indian-Trinbagonian, not Indo-Trinbagonian, doctors at the Port-of-Spain General Hospital at the supposed hands of the PNM-Manning administration, smacks of an innocuous similarity of &#8220;reverse discrimination&#8221; by Euro-White Americans whenever African-Americans seem to make some modicum of socioeconomic progress.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nThe fact of the matter is that the alleged charge by Dr. Gopeesingh can only be described in acceptable layman&#8217;s terms as &#8220;chupid&#8221;, scandalous, irrelevant and puerile.<\/p>\n<p>Indeed, the facts\/data are clear and precise. It may be true that as Dr. Gopeesingh has alleged that two-three Indian-Trinbagonian doctors were either denied promotion to positions at the hospital and\/or other doctors of similar ethnicity were forced to repatriate because of &#8220;frustration&#8221; at this institution.<\/p>\n<p>However, such data only paints a miniscule picture of the real professional landscape\/profession in T&#038;T.<\/p>\n<p>In other words, either by accident or design, what Dr. Gopeesingh has purposefully done is to wield a massive, all-inclusive discrimination paintbrush on the professional class in T&#038;T a la Euro-White Americans&#8217; totally unfounded assertion that &#8220;all Black people are lazy.&#8221; Everyone now knows that sweeping assertion is totally false simply because one of these supposedly &#8220;lazy&#8221; Black people is now the elected president of the United States&#8211; elected by all the people.<\/p>\n<p>The afore-mentioned Euro-White American characterization is null and void&#8211; so too is the characterization of Dr. Gopeesingh.<\/p>\n<p>T&#038;T&#8217;s professional stats are very, very, very clear and totally irrefutable: Let&#8217;s deal with them.<\/p>\n<p>The vast majority of doctors who comprise the medical profession in T &#038;T are Indian.<\/p>\n<p>The overwhelming majority of lawyers who are members of the legal professional in T&#038;T are Indian.<\/p>\n<p>The vast majority of respected professional economists who publicly criticize Central Bank Governor, Ewart Williams, 24-7-365, are Indian-Trinbagonians.<\/p>\n<p>The overwhelming majority of civil servants at the Permanent Secretary and Deputy Permanent Secretary levels and a little lower in the country&#8217;s public service are Indian.<\/p>\n<p>Indeed, 99.9 percent of the drivers who drive the &#8220;big truck&#8221; on Carnival Monday and Tuesday are Indian-Trinbagonians. That&#8217;s real.<\/p>\n<p>Similarly, the majority of undergraduate students at UWI are Indian-Trinbagonians.<\/p>\n<p>The same is also true in the financial\/business professional sectors; and the list goes on and on&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>The fact of the matter is that forty years ago, it was an aberration, albeit anomaly, to see an Indian-Trinbagonian as a post man\/woman&#8211; that&#8217;s not the ethnic reality today, Dr. Gopeesingh.<\/p>\n<p>The same aberration\/anomaly also holds true in the profession of teachers, police men\/women, etc&#8211; that&#8217;s not the ethnic reality today, Dr. Gopeesingh.<\/p>\n<p>Moreover, forty years ago, it was &#8220;an out-of-body experience&#8221; to see a young Indian-Trinbagonian, male or female, &#8220;beating pan&#8221; in public&#8211; that&#8217;s the ethnic reality today, Dr. Gopeesingh. <\/p>\n<p>Most specifically, forty years ago, when one walked into a government&#8217;s office as in a ministry, one had to look real, real, real hard to see an Indian-Trinbagonian civil servant sitting at his\/her desk&#8211; that&#8217;s not the ethnic reality today, Dr. Gopeesingh.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, the reverse is true&#8211; today, one has to look real, real, real hard to see an African-Trinbagonian, not Afro-Trinbaqgonian, sitting at his\/her desk&#8211; that&#8217;s the ethnic reality today, Dr. Gopeesingh.<br \/>\nTruth Be Told: Indian-Trinbagonians have now taken over the professional workforce, workplace and working class in T&#038;T. <\/p>\n<p>The fact of the matter is that the only professional categories in which African-Trinbagonians predominate are in the membership of the prisons&#8217; population, vagrants and URP\/CEPEP.<\/p>\n<p>In the final analysis, who is really fooling whom, Dr. Tim Gopeesingh? &#8220;Where&#8217;s the beef?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><i>Dr. Kwame Nantambu is a part-time lecturer at Cipriani College of Labour and Co-operative Studies and University of the West Indies.<\/i><\/p>\n<p><em>Trinidad and Tobago News Blog &#8211; URL for this article:<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/?p=1325\">www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/?p=1325<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Dr. Kwame Nantambu July 19, 2009 www.trinidadandtobagonews.com The recent accusation by UNC&#8217;s Dr. Tim Gopeesingh of &#8220;ethnic cleansing&#8221; of Indian-Trinbagonian, not Indo-Trinbagonian, doctors at the Port-of-Spain General Hospital at the supposed hands of the PNM-Manning administration, smacks of an innocuous similarity of &#8220;reverse discrimination&#8221; by Euro-White Americans whenever African-Americans seem to make some modicum &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/?p=1325\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">&#8216;Ethnic cleansing&#8217; of Whom in T&#038;T?<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,33,30,142],"tags":[85,87,138,49,148],"class_list":["post-1325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-tt","category-health","category-pnm","category-unc","tag-abuse","tag-kwame-nantambu","tag-racism","tag-tt-govt","tag-tim-gopeesingh"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1325"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1501,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1325\/revisions\/1501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}