By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
December 15, 2014
It was one of those riveting moments when a picture is worth more than a thousand words. Here they were, four young black boys, sitting forlorn, with their luggage around them looking as if their lives had come to an end. All their yearnings seemed to have been dashed, caught up as they were, in an unutterable moment of disappointment: their being unable to compete in a football tournament in Barbados.
Continue reading Take de Money and Run
Remarks to Academic Council,
Wellesley College
Faculty Assembly Room
December 10, 2014
As one of the few black men on this faculty, I could not let this opportunity pass without offering a few remarks.
On Wednesday, April 19, 1989, a white middle class woman, a promising young investment banker at Salomon Brothers with a degree from Wellesley College and Yale University was raped as she was jogging through Central Park, New York. The suspects were five black and Latino young men, some with dubious school records from Harlem. The police coined a new term for what they were doing: they called it wilding, to describe the beating up of random victims. On May 29, about five weeks later, the New York Times wrote: “A 28-year investment banker, jogging through Central Park, was attacked by a group of teenagers. They kicked and beat her in the head with a pipe and raped her. The teenagers, who were from East Harlem, were quickly arrested.”
Continue reading Dr. Selwyn Cudjoe’s Remarks to the Wellesley Council
By Dr. Selwyn Cudjoe
October 22, 2014
RECENTLY, I had a lively debate with Ralph Maraj on Cuba and its successes on i95 FM Showdown programme. Mr Maraj insisted that nothing good could come out of Cuba because Cuba has failed as a socialist society and there is “no freedom in that country”. I tried to convince him that Cuba has emerged as a leader on the world stage in areas of health care and education and there is little crime to speak of in that country. He insisted that Cuba was worthy only of condemnation.
Continue reading Ralph Maraj’s Myopia
By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
October 16, 2014
Last Saturday I attended the launch of Sat Maharaj: Hindu Civil Rights Leader of Trinidad and Tobago, a biography written by Kumar Mahabir. Although I did not read the book (it was not available at the time) I could see the enthusiasm and joy that emanated from an audience that had come to embrace Sat as their personal hero. I attended the function to congratulate Sat for having placed, via Mahabir, a partial account of his life.
Continue reading The Responsibility of Intellectuals
By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
August 20, 2014
Professor Antony Maingot has accused me of myopia but he has not responded to the arguments I made in my recent article on the constitutional reform proposed by the present government. Even if we grant that everything he says is true they do not refute my contention that in most of our political discussions we go no further than 1955; we do not look for constitutional precedence in our social and political history; and we do not seek, at any time, to determine the events had shaped our present thereby making us a unique society.
Continue reading Professor Maignot’s Non-Response
By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
August 15, 2014
To hear Kamla Persad-Bissessar and Anand Ramlogan tell it, one would think that August 12, 2014, was a red-letter day for Trinidad and Tobago’s democracy. They seem to indicate that somehow our society realized one of its brightest moments when the PP voted legislation to recall parliamentary representatives after three years of service if the needs arises, to creating time limits for the prime minister and, most important, to require that each parliamentary representative receive more than 50 percent of the votes cast at a general election though not necessarily more than 50 percent of the total voters of that constituency. Although I have no problems with the first two resolutions, I don’t know what democratic magic occurs when 50.1 percent rather than 49.50 percent of a constituency votes for a candidate of their choice.
Continue reading Staining the Soul of Our Nation
Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe delivered this lecture on June 27, 2014 in New York for National Caribbean-American Heritage Month.
By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
June 28, 2014
When Brother Aggery Dechinea, associate director of grievances and legal services, asked me to address you on the impact of Caribbean Culture on North America, I really had to scratch my head for the simple reason that North America includes Canada and the United States and as much as we would like to cross boundaries I thought it best that we narrow our focus to “The Impact of Caribbean Culture on the United States.” This is certainly much more doable.
Continue reading The Impact of Caribbean Culture on North America
By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
June 01, 2014
“A child is as much wronged by being left uneducated as it is by being left unfed.” Antoine Fortune, Public Opinion, October 30, 1888.
I endorse Sat Maharaj’s offer of grants of “about $100,000 to local historians who wish to document ‘authentic’ East Indian history in the communities” (Express, May 25). Although I don’t know what Sat means by “authentic” history or what constitutes misrepresented histories “by the children of converts,” I still think his thrust is correct. We need to pay greater attention to our past so that we can better understand our present.
Continue reading Happy Indian Arrival Day: Documenting Indian/Trinibagonian History
By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
April 13, 2014
Let me confess to my eternal shame that I am a soft man. After my prostatectomy (an operation for prostate cancer) about six years ago, I am sure that I can never win any titles for possessing the hardest hard which some of our calypsonians, promoters of this kind of wisdom, proclaim is the true sign of a real man.
Continue reading Confessions of a Soft Man
By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
March 11, 2014
Part 1
Maxie Cuffie is a dear friend. It is unfortunate that he misrepresented and distorted what I said in my article. In his anxiety to defend our party, he simply repeats and repositions what he believes rather than to confront the points I made in”PNM’s Last Chance.” (Express, March 3 & 4, 2014)
Continue reading Cuffie’s Fantasies