By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
Posted: November 26, 2019
Remarks made at the Sending Home Ceremony of Sat Maharaj, Secretary General of the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha (SDMS), at the SDMS Headquarters, St. Augustine, Trinidad, West Indies, November 18, 2019.
Sat Maharaj is dead!
Continue reading Sat Maharaj Is Dead
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
November 20, 2019
As Boris Johnson, UK prime minister is finding out, and Keith Rowley, T&T’s prime minister has found out, it’s easier to be on the opposition benches and spout invectives than it is to be in the driver’s seat making consequential national decisions. Boris lost pivotal votes last week in the British parliament as his Tory diehards voted against him. Even his brother—Jo Johnson—resigned from his ministerial post and his seat in Parliament. Boris is likely to have the shortest tenure as a UK prime minister.
Continue reading Two Trinidad and Tobagos
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
November 16, 2019
Part of the excitement of being an educator is my having spoken in many places (such as Canada, the United States, Central America, South America, the West Indies, Japan, Africa and the Fiji Islands) about slavery, education and social justice. I am always excited to share my thoughts about these issues and learn what others have to say about their conditions.
Continue reading Slavery, Education, Social Justice
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
October 29, 2019
In 2003 I fought a doggedly battle to convince educators at (The University of the West Indies) that grades and standardized tests should not be the only criteria for selecting students to enter our university. Many people castigated me and a few called me a racist. Morgan Job bleated: “If Selwyn Cudjoe’s racist quota is implemented, UWI will have semi-illiterate African lecturers teaching illiterate students. They will go into the classrooms, the Public Service and police to compound the problems which plague the nation, and are a necessary consequence of the blight of mediocrity we have nurtured and promoted” (Trinidad Guardian, August 21, 2003).
Continue reading Diversity Matters
By Dr Tye Salandy
October 09, 2019
Twenty years ago, in 1999, young Clivia Jones went to school with a modest cornrow hairstyle only to be told by the Corpus Christi principal to fix her hair or stay home. This incident came to mind when I read of two recent incidents that have been highlighted recently within T&T’s education system. The first incident was the teacher in a POS school spewing racist and classist statements. The second incident is the issue of the student at the south Anglican school who complained about being harassed for wearing her natural hair in Bantu knots, twists and cornrows. From my own experience in the education system as a student, educator and researcher, issues of discrimination, abuse and damaging approaches to differences are deeply entrenched across the education system. This is so despite the actions of some dedicated and fairminded teachers and administrators to do better.
Continue reading Public Enquiry needed into the Education System
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
September 20, 2019
One cannot help but be amazed by the indigestible piffle that emanates from the mouths of our politicians when they speak about issues concerning the society. We hear their speeches and read their statements, yet we wonder if they understand what they are saying and the implications of their actions.
Take, for example, the prime minister’s response to the concern that most of the students who were selected for the national mentorship program in energy are Indo-Trinidadians. After fierce criticism about this imbalance, he replied with self-evident pride: “I initiated this program by sending out personnel to find our national scholars…trained in areas of expertise useful to the Ministry of Energy. We decided that those who had done extremely well, with first class honors, should be gathered to rebuild the pool of expertise in the ministry and enable the country to cope with the requirements of the energy sector….
Continue reading Misplaced Philanthropy
By Raffique Shah
September 16, 2019
I had no prior information that the Express had commissioned a poll on Dr Keith Rowley’s performance as Prime Minister after holding office for four years, far less that publication of the results would coincide with my return as a columnist in last week’s Sunday Express.
So you can imagine my shock, having written on the propensity of politicians to use race as a weapon in the war for power, on reading responses to key questions in the Nigel Henry poll, based largely on race. In fact, the race-lines were so sharp, they startled many people who thought we had long overcome that primal instinct, that we were well on the road to electing politicians based on their policies and performance, or potential to perform, rather than their colour of skin or texture of hair.
Continue reading Crabs in a barrel
By Raffique Shah
September 09, 2019
What possessed United National Congress leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar to unleash a loose cannon in the form of ex-soldier Carlton Dennie on an unsuspecting audience of party faithful a few Monday nights ago, we may never know.
Surely she could not have known beforehand that the corporal, who had somehow been elevated to head the intelligence arm of the Strategic Services Agency, was about to cast a giant-but-crooked shadow over her beleaguered UNC that seems to be locked in battle with the incumbent People’s National Movement to lose the next general election.
Continue reading Racism—last refuge of a scoundrel
September 07, 2019
Robert Mugabe died on September 06, 2019 at the age of 95.
On the passing of former Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe… I salute Robert Mugabe for his enormous contributions towards freedom and decolonization. Demonized in life and death for retrieving stolen Zimbabwe land, he will go down as one of the bravest leaders on the African continent. Thank you, sir.
—Dr Tye Salandy
We at RaceAndHistory.com, AfricaSpeaks.com and Trinicenter.com hail the contributions of former Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe towards African liberation in Zimbabwe, the African continent and the African diaspora.
Continue reading Robert Mugabe: An African Hero
By Raffique Shah
August 14, 2019
It’s so easy for us to be so overwhelmed by our own mess—and there’s more than enough sewage there to drown us all—that we are unmindful of what’s happening in the wider world, developments that could impact our small island state negatively.
When the fallout from certain actions by powerful leaders hit us in the face with a bang, we will come awake startled, crying out: Oh Jeezanages! I was watching Marlene McDonald and her gang…ah didn’t see that bolt from Donald Trump (or Xi Jinping or Boris Johnson or Vladimir Putin) coming this way!
Continue reading Turmoil in the global village