THE EDITOR: This COLFIRE caper illuminates some deeper issues that have always crept up every now and then. This doesn’t mean I expect said issues to be addressed; by and large, as a society we don’t like to face uncomfortable truths, preferring instead to deflect, trivialise and live in denial.
Continue reading On the Colfire Dress Code
Category Archives: Racism Watch
‘Why target Chinese?’
By Sue-Ann Wayow
Aug 18, 2016 – trinidadexpress.com
THE perception is that all Chinese people in Trinidad and Tobago have money and are therefore easy targets for thieves. The difference in language and culture may also be behind the increasing number of attacks on Chinese-owned business across the country, say Chinese businessmen who spoke with the Express yesterday.
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On the Chief Servant Makandal Daaga….and latent ignorance
THE EDITOR: To any young person under 25 who may somehow be reading this, please look carefully at those of us over 40 and kinda pattern your life doing the exact opposite of whatever it is you see.
Because, listening to some callers to Power 102 and i95.5fm the morning after the passing of Makandal Daaga, one has to wonder why we bothered changing flags in 1962.
Continue reading On the Chief Servant Makandal Daaga….and latent ignorance
Workers welcomed Caroni’s closure
By Raffique Shah
Submitted: July 19, 2016
Published: July 25, 2016
The only thing necessary for myths and mischief to be recorded as historical facts is for informed persons to say nothing.
I liberally paraphrase Irish philosopher Edmundd Burke’s injunction to responsible persons to speak out or act when tyranny threatens, to respond to one lie Sat Maharaj peddled when he spewed cobra-like venom against deceased ex-prime minister Patrick Manning, branding him a racist.
Continue reading Workers welcomed Caroni’s closure
Let the Jackasses Bray
By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
July 24, 2016
My good friend called. She was irate: “Why don’t you speak to [not with] yo’ good friend Sat?” “Why yo’ say so,” I asked. “He called Manning a racist.” I don’t know if I was supposed to return the insult, but I am aware that if everyone is a racist then no one is really a racist. Counter accusations are generally useless.
Sat claimed Manning was a racist because, among other things, he closed down Caroni 1975 Limited and paid the workers $2m. That Manning may have calculated that the sugar industry was no longer economically viable did not enter into Sat’s thinking? But even if Manning paid the workers $4m it would not have endeared him to Sat.
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Sat torches ex-PM’s legacy
By Shaliza Hassanali
July 14, 2016 – guardian.co.tt
General secretary of the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha (SDMS), Sat Maharaj, yesterday launched an extraordinary verbal attack on former prime minister Patrick Manning, describing him as a “racist.”
In a harsh assessment totally out of step with laudatory ones heaped on Manning in the week between his death and his burial, Maharaj said he and several members of the public came to that conclusion on a talk show programme on Radio Jaagriti on Tuesday, based on a series of discriminatory practices Manning perpetuated against Indians in T&T while he served as PM.
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On ‘THE GREATEST’ as a model
THE EDITOR: As the United States and the rest of the world said farewell to “The Greatest,” Muhammad Ali, I kept wondering how many libraries and schools across the country bothered to put up displays to educate our very young people who was this giant of a personality.
Continue reading On ‘THE GREATEST’ as a model
Is Sat Really a Racist?
By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
June 13, 2016
Last Sunday, in this newspaper, Sat Maharaj mentioned casually (or perhaps not so casually) that he couldn’t possibly be a racist since I was his best friend and Desmond Hoyte was a close friend. Most of my friends were aghast that Sat should consider me to be among his best friends and, even if we are, they asked, why should he use our friendship to camouflage his racism?
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Peerless and fearless: simply The Greatest
By Raffique Shah
June 11, 2016
In death, as in life, he straddled the world like a colossus. All the major international news networks suspended regular programming to pay homage to Muhammad Ali, the greatest boxer ever, the supreme sporting figure of the 20th Century, the defiant one who sacrificed a successful career on the altar of principle.
Just four years older than me, Ali symbolised the rebelliousness of so many of my generation, it was almost as if we knew him, grew up with him, that when he spoke out, confronted what we had dubbed “the establishment” in those heady days, his was our voice.
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GOPIO: T&T Indians second class citizens
By Kim Boodram
Jun 1, 2016 – trinidadexpress.com
NEARLY two hundred years after they became part of the building of Trinidad and Tobago, people of East Indian descent are still considered second class citizens, the president of the local chapter of the Global Organisation of Indian People (GOPIO), Karran Nancoo, has said.
Continue reading GOPIO: T&T Indians second class citizens