General T&T, International, Racism Watch, USA

White America Should Not Be Afraid of Critical Race Theory

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
Speech delivered on October 19, 2021
Posted: January 12, 2022

“Critical race theorists are committed to a program of scholarly resistance, and most hope scholarly resistance will lay the groundwork for wide-scale resistance.”

—Derrick Bell, “Who’s Afraid of Critical Race Theory?”

INTRODUCTION

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeI am pleased that Ines Maturana Sendoya, Associate Dean of Students and Engagement, has asked me to be the keynote speaker in her series, “21 Days Against the Racism Challenge.” I am also pleased that she has asked me to address you on the subject of Critical Race Theory. At least, my take on the subject. For over fifty years, as a professor of Africana Studies (we used to call it “Black Studies”) and a columnist for many newspapers, I have been writing or teaching about how race and racism have functioned within America’s theoretical discourses and historical practices.
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COVID-19, General T&T, Health, NJAC

Death, Be Not Proud

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
January 10, 2022

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeDeath has stalked our land this past year with particular fury. More than 3,000 have died from Covid-19; 448 people died from homicides in 2021 and, blissfully, there were only 76 road fatalities—the lowest number since 1957. Yet, we only talk about death in mournful terms rather than what it might mean to those who are still alive.
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COVID-19, General T&T, Health, Politics

Bring back the ‘Bull’

6 Comments

By Raffique Shah
January 10, 2022

Raffique ShahNot even George Orwell, who wrote the right-wing classic Animal Farm which summarised workers in power, post-revolution, in the worst possible light, could have scripted the post-Covid tragi-comedy that premiered a few weeks ago, when the Delta variant of the virus first showed what it could do, and now Omicron is breaking box office records, leaving mankind stupefied.
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Elections, General T&T, PDP, PNM, Politics, THA, Tobago

Move Satan move

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
January 04, 2022

“You may know the man by the conversation he keeps.”

—Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeOur Prime Minister, Dr Keith Rowley, is reputed to have said to US President Joe Biden that the salient factor in our democracy is his capacity to listen to the opinions of his people. I hope he meant that he listened not only to what they say loudly and directly, but also to what isn’t said aloud but is equally as pertinent.

This is important: the Prime Minister’s success in office over the next four years depends upon his listening not only to what is said directly, but also to what is communicated silently.
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Business, COVID-19, Finance, General T&T, Health, Oil and Gas, Recession

Covid and gas pains: who’s crying now?

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By Raffique Shah
January 03, 2022

Raffique ShahThe Covid-induced confinement imposed on citizens by the Government provoked a range of reactions—from anger and drunkenness to solitude and self-pity. Some persons came perilously close to crossing the thin line between sanity and insanity.

I was lucky to have lived the multi-faceted life I did before the pandemic—soldier, adventurer, prisoner, politician, teacher and a range of other life-skills that prepared me for just about anything I might face during the pandemic. Of course, as a human being and more so a humanist, I was shocked by the mass of people globally who were impacted by the virus, by how many were dying “live” before the lenses of reporters’ cameras, ­agony etched on their faces, questions writ large on them: why me?
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Africa, Education, General T&T, Schools

Suffer the little children

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
December 27, 2021

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeMy mother, Carmen Cudjoe (nee Batson), was born in Belmont in 1909. After spending her childhood years there, she moved to San Juan where she met my dad, married him, and moved to Tacarigua. Although my mother attended only primary school, she read constantly and wrote with eloquence and grace. In Tacarigua she was the secretary of most of the voluntary organisations there, such as the Garden Club and the Village Council.
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COVID-19, General T&T, Health, International

Be done with the lies: They’re killing us

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By Raffique Shah
December 27, 2021

Raffique ShahTwenty twenty-one will be recorded as the year in which the Earth was battered by calamitous events that seemed set to fulfil the biblical end-times that Man has feared from the dawn of civilisation, or the advent of religions.

There were heat waves that sparked forest fires that ravaged Western America and huge swathes of the vital Amazon jungle, and shockingly, the Tundra region in the sensitive Arctic Circle.
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General T&T, International, Religion, USA

Exposing the danger of cult leaders

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By Dr Kwame Nantambu
December 24, 2021

Dr. Kwame NantambuAs the US House of Representatives Select Committee continues to issue subpoenas to former president Donald John Trump’s advisers and allies in regard to the endemic dynamics of the historic, violent insurrection on the nation’s capital on January 6; plus the stark legal reality that on November 12, a federal grand jury “indicted” one of the former president’s advisers, Steve Bannon, “on two counts of contempt of Congress”; and as a sidebar, as of this writing, 32 “non-related sentences (have been) handed down so far” in cases filed by Justice Department prosecutors; ergo, it is a sine qua non to expose the gut danger of cult personality leaders: Jim Jones’ “Jonestown massacre” in Guyana on November 18, 1978, v Donald John Trump’s putatively inspired, violent insurrection on the nation’s capital in Washington DC, USA, on January 6.
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COVID-19, General T&T, Health, Politics

Let Medical Professionals Speak on COVID Vaccines

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By Stephen Kangal
December 23, 2021

Stephen KangalThe emotionally charged response of Prime Minister Rowley to the Sunday Express feature article is exclusively more political than the requisite scientific in relation to his weak defense of the alleged low efficacy of the Sinopharm vaccine.

He procured it with a secretive agreement from the Chinese with a huge cost — loan in a large quantity without obtaining any expected guarantee about its expected efficacy level even though scientists from developed countries refused to accept it as a genuine vaccine because trial results were not published globally and were not accessible.
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China, COVID-19, General T&T, Health

PM, PAHO, Chinese Embassy condemn news report on Sinopharm

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By Rishard Khan
December 20, 2021 – guardian.co.tt

Sinopharm vaccineThe Chinese Embassy, Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and the St Augustine Medical Laboratory (STAML), have all condemned an Express newspaper article [Putting vaccines to the test] that challenged the efficacy of the Sinopharm vaccine.

The article, published in the newspaper’s Sunday edition, implied the Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine is ineffective at generating immunity against the disease.
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