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DR ERROL N BENJAMIN

THE RECENT race-based comments on criminal behaviour have caused quite a stir in government and elsewhere. I am trying to understand why the pundit from Aranguez made the comments that he did and my conjecture is that it is likely an emotional response to the many attacks on people from his community, basically East Indian, with no end in sight.
It seems unlikely that he would have researched the issue, taking as many samples of incidents as possible and gathering the empirical data before he made his statement. Which should have been precisely the approach from government officials and others so intellectually endowed, putting the pundit in the right if the research data said that he was wrong and that if he was right, to take stock and try to rectify.
Instead they seemed equally irrational in their response, painting a picture of doom and gloom, castigating the pundit who had the audacity to comment on a subject which is more “taboo" than any other. You simply don’t indulge in “race talk” in this country.
But the irony is poignant here. Beautifully unique as we are in the natural assimilation between the two major groups, the result being the infectious rhythm of chutney soca, doubles becoming a national dish as much as callaloo is, the unique physicality of the effects of creolisation and douglarisation, the latter still contentious but understandably so.
There is also the day-to-day consonance between our different peoples, riding the same maxis, shopping in the same malls, as much advocates of Carnival and emancipation as Divali, Eid and Christmas, so much so that for Desmond Tutu we are a rainbow country, the analogy so appropriate for even as we are beautiful in our individual colours as the rainbow, our collective self is even more so.
We are so different from other places where the individual tribal enclaves are in a perpetual state of animosity, like the Shia against the Sunnis in the Muslim world, the Hutus against the Tutsis in Africa, black versus white in the US, Muslim against Hindu in Pakistan/India, et al, making our unity in diversity exemplary to the rest of the world.
Yet what lies beneath in this country (and the pun is intended) is a deep division between the two races spawned by our politics which “laughs to scorn” (Macbeth: laughing to scorn that any of woman-born can harm him (Act 5, Sc7, 3-5) that unity of which we could be so proud.
In my last letter, I wrote of the historical origin of this animosity between freed Africans and incoming East Indian indentures over the issue of bargaining power with the white planter, and how this was exacerbated in the post-independence era by the formation of two race-based parties – PNM for Africans and UNC for East Indians. And further, how this was the perfect formula, enduring into the present, for self-seeking leaders to explore the unquestioning loyalty of the tribe and the latter to having their “mess of pottage” as reward.
It is instructive, almost amusing for the perceptive, how the reality of this racial division in the politics is camouflaged by the pretensions in the leadership of racial unity on both sides of the divide.
There is no more unashamed self-righteousness on this issue than with one such leader expressing the horror of how comments about racial division can lead us down a road of no return when his own political longevity is so race-based, party-wise, and the other on a public platform, together with her servile vassals, denying with their last breath that their party is not racially configured, when one with even an iota of intelligence would know otherwise.
The peaceful coexistence we have as a country at the top – manifested so graphically recently in the media, in the successful rescue attempt by John Jagurnauth, of East Indian descent, of Kern Keith of Pleasantville, of likely non-Indian/African descent, as he faced death in the swirling waters off the Bird Sanctuary, once again as the “safety officers” stood by and watched, with John having no second thoughts about Kern’s race or colour, his only concern being to assist another human being in need of help – is beautiful and something to cherish.
But what lies beneath is a festering sore, woven into the fabric of our being by self-serving politicians. The pundit’s comments, emotional as they may be, remind us of that deep-rooted malaise which lies beneath – and instead of hiding it under a bushel every time it raises its ugly head, we should confront it and deal with it head-on through intelligent dialogue.
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