Tag Archives: Selwyn R. Cudjoe

Elections, General T&T, Opposition Party, PNM, Politics

PNM’s Last Chance

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By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
March 05, 2014

Part 1

A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones—and South Africa treated its imprisoned African citizens like animals.

—Nelson Mandela

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeI am pretty certain that Keith Rowley will emerge victorious during the PNM’s party election and go on to become the next prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago. Fortunately, that is the easy part of the political equation. The more difficult part is to govern in such a way that the society emerges in a better place than it is in 2014. That’s the challenge PNM faces when it takes the helm of government. However, if Rowley and the PNM fail to leave Trinidad (and especially our brothers and sisters in our depressed areas) in a better way than they found them in 2014, one can confidently predict that 2020 would mark the beginning of the end of the PNM as a political force in our country.
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Africa, General T&T, India, Labour, Race and Identity, Racism Watch

The Indian Experience in Trinidad, or The Triumph of Ideology Over Scholarship

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By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
November 24, 2013

No one, again with the exception of the extinct Carib people, and perhaps the Spanish people can claim to be ‘natives’ of the island. All peoples were newcomers to Trinidad, and all were immigrants. The immigrant nature of the society of Trinidad needs to be recognized for what it was and what it is. (537)

GeradTikasingh, Trinidad During the 19th Century

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeGerad Tikasingh has written an interesting book, Trinidad During the 19th Century: The Indian Experience, an extension of his doctoral thesis, “The Establishment of Indians in Trinidad, 1870,” that he completed at UWI, St Augustine, Trinidad in 1973. Although his book is filled with facts, it is marred by an ideological orientation (one may say Indo-centric perspective) and a negative rendering of the African experience in the country. This book continues an argument made by other Indo-Caribbean scholars that suggests that the dominance of an Afro-centric ethos (which Tikasingh calls a “black bias”) has “tended to downplay, if not obscure the parallel Indo-Caribbean experience of indentureship and its contributions to Guyanese and Trinidadian culture in particular” (see Frank Birbalsingh, Indo Caribbean Resistance, 1993).

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Culture, General T&T, People's Partnership, Politics

Preserving the Tacarigua Savannah – Part 2

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By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
September 20, 2013

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeI don’t know what area of Trinidad Anil Roberts comes from and on what basis he makes the claim that a Regional Sporting Complex “is forty years overdue” or why he feels that a sporting complex “equipped with facilities for all citizens to use for sports such as cricket, football, swimming, squash, tennis and table tennis” (Newsday, September 16) is the best use we can make of the remaining ten acres of the natural savannah of Tacarigua.
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General T&T, Passed on, Sports

Preserving the Tacarigua Savannah

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By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
August 09, 2013 – trinicenter.com

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeTacarigua, one of the oldest villages in Trinidad, has always been a peaceful village. In fact, it has been so peaceful that there has never been a police station in that village.(1) One suspects that the presence of its savannah, the second largest in the country after Queen’s Park Savannah in Port of Spain-that is, until the construction of homes on those magnificent grounds in the 1950s,-the gentle-flowing waters of its river to which all repaired on a Sunday, and the peaceful mixture of its peoples-Hindus in Paradise, Muslims in Dinsley, and Africans in St. Mary’s-all added to the attractiveness of the place and mutual respect each accorded to the other. In a way, it could be said that the Tacarigua Savannah held the village together. It certainly was the central spot where everyone gathered.
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General T&T, Politics, Race and Identity

The Blackness of Black or, How Black is Really Black?

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By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
August 06, 2013

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeIn responding to my article of her representation as to who was the first black legislator in Trinidad (see the Trinidad Express, July 26), Professor Bridget Brereton, one of our most distinguished historians, raised more questions than she answered even as she sought refuge in the philosophical theory called solipsism. Professor Brereton is unwilling to concede that St. Luce Philip possessed any blackness (or did he possess just a little bit?) because, as she says, he was of mixed race; light-complexioned; married a white wife and would not have considered himself black, nor would he have been so considered by Trinidad society in the 1830s.
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Features, General T&T, Politics

Dr. St. Luce Philip: The First Black Legislator of Trinidad and Tobago

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By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
July 25, 2013

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeOn July 17, Professor Bridget Brereton wrote in the Trinidad Express that Cyrus Prudhomme David was the first black legislator to sit in the Trinidad and Tobago Legislative Council. This is not true. It is the repetition of a position that Brinsley Samaroo articulated in his pamphlet, “Cyrus Prudhomme David: A Case Study on the Emergence of the Black Man” (1970). It needs to be laid to rest for the fiction it is.
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General T&T, International, Racism Watch, USA

Zimmerman Verdict — Where Do We Go From Here?

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By Frances Cudjoe Waters
July 18, 2013 – huffingtonpost.com

“A black man has no rights which the white man is bound to respect.” — Sup. Ct. C.J. Roger Taney, Dred Scott Decision, 1857

Trayvon MartinOn March 6, 1857, Chief Justice Roger Taney and the United States Supreme Court put into words what America had been putting into practice for centuries. He stated that Americans of African descent should not ever presume to have the audacity to expect that the legal system in this country would ever treat them as equal citizens worthy of the same protection and respect enjoyed by others.
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Africa, Crime in T&T, General T&T, Hindu, India, PNM, Politics, Race and Identity, Racism Watch, Religion

Don’t Blame the Hindus or the Christians

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By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
July 04, 2013

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeTwo of my dear friends are reputed to have suggested that the Hindus and the Christians may be responsible for the plight of young Africans who find themselves in trouble with the law. They also seem to suggest that a Hindu-based government is to be blamed for out plight. I should hope that this is not what they intended to convey to the public. Such statements tend to inflame national feelings and deepen the national divide. I am a member of the PNM and count myself to be as conscious of my blackness as anyone else. However, I think we ought to be careful about what we say.
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Africa, General T&T, Race and Identity, Racism Watch

Selwyn Cudjoe Speaks on the Life of Tony Martin

By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
[Celebration & Remembrance of Tony Martin, Wellesley College,
Wednesday, May 1, 2013.]

Professor Tony MartinI met Tony Martin when I arrived at Harvard University in 1976. Although we were both born in Trinidad, we had not met each other prior to that time. Tony was born in Port of Spain, the capital of the country; I was born in Tacarigua, a village about twelve miles east of Port of Spain. Tony had studied at St. Mary’s College, one of the elite colleges of the country; I had remained at St. Mary’s Anglican Church School, as a pupil teacher or practicing teacher under supervision of other teachers. In the course of things, Tony went off to England “to further his studies” as we say at home. I went to the States. By then he had written Race First: The Ideological and Organizational Struggles of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Improvement Association, a book that came to define his scholarly career and which the late, great John Henrik Clarke described as being “close to a definitive study of Marcus Garvey as we have seen.” Other than our mutual national origins, my interest in Tony Martin grew because I was using Race First in my class and wanted to know more about Tony and what had gone into the writing of his book. In December of 1987, a year and a half after I arrived at Wellesley, Tony presented me with a copy of his book that was inscribed, “To a brother and a colleague, with Best wishes.” I still possess a copy of that book, but this is getting ahead of my story.
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Africa, England, Features, General T&T, International, Race and Identity, Racism Watch

Ignorant Negroes/Tyrannical Masters: William Burnley and the Caribbean Slave Experience

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By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
Published: April 05, 2013 – trinicenter.com

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeIn the 1950s when I was growing up in Tacarigua, Trinidad, West Indies, there existed a large, faded mansion in the Orange Grove Savannah that had seen the last of its glories. It stood there as a colossus on this magnificent expanse of land which, at that time, was one of the largest savannah in the country second only to the Queen’s Park Savannah in Port of Spain, the capital of Trinidad. It reminded one of the glorious days of a time long past. I was a young boy then and could not have known that in this residence there once lived one of the most important men in the West Indies during the first half of the nineteenth century.
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