By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
June 27, 2011
In March of last year the General Assembly of the United Nations declared 2011 “The International Year for People of African Descent.” It called for the “strengthening national actions and regional and international cooperation for the benefit of people of African descent in relation to their full enjoyment of economic, cultural, social, civic and political rights, their participation and integration in all political, economic, social and cultural aspects of society, and the promotion of a greater knowledge of and respect for their diverse heritage and culture.”
This mandate allows national governments to institute programs that can enhance the lives of people of African descent. One of the conditions that should engage the attention of our government, as a matter of nation urgency, is the state of young African males in the society. Many good and conscientious citizens are conducting programs in various parts of the country. However, it is time that this effort be elevated to the status of a national emergency. Left unattended, it’s a cancer that will continue to eat at the social tissues of our society.
This is neither an African nor Indian problem. It is a national problem that continues to tear away at the heart of our society. To be sure, there are many elements that contribute to this problem: the dwindling influence of church (or perhaps religious education) on our young people; a de- emphasis on the importance of moral and ethical values at the school; the inability of the family unit to act as a transmitter of social values and the concept of personal responsibilities; and the bad examples that are set by adults.
It goes without saying that any program that strengthens the family will strengthen the performance of our black young men. The moral and ethical principles embodied in religious teachings can only give these young men a deeper understanding of themselves and a firmer foundation within the society. Yet, without the promulgation of a broad-based educational program it is not likely that people of African descent are likely to enjoy any of the rights for which the United Nations Declaration calls.
The plight of these young men can be seen in the disproportionate number of crimes they commit; the higher rates of unemployment among this group; their disproportionate numbers in the prison population; their lower numbers in our schools, particularly at the high school and college levels; their inability to read and write; and the sheer aimlessness of their lives.
Such a situation is bad for the black family. It is also bad for the nation as well. Black people cannot compete seriously in the national or international market place if our young men lack in the academic, social and civic skills that make them better and more productive citizens. Since poverty begets poverty (it is estimated that 70 percent of children from poor families will remain poor) the downward slide of Africans in the society is assured.
One needn’t go further than the University of the West Indies at St. Augustine at which about forty percent of the students are males. Twenty seven percent of those males are Africans. In other words, less than ten per cent of our UWI students are black males. If only ten percent of our national university consists of black males then it is less than likely that the black community will ever enjoy the blessing of which and for which the UN Declaration calls.
University-trained persons are not the only models of success in any community. This means that all adult black males who have achieved some level of success in their professions or line of work can make a difference to the future of these young men. It all depends on their levels of social and ethnic/racial consciousness. I am not too sure that many of us are standing up to the test.
Many of us do not see it as our responsibility to act as mentors in the practical sense and to conduct ourselves in an exemplary manner. Recent literature in the United States suggests that supportive environments and relationships are important in fostering positive educational outcomes for high school students. Our parents knew this without reading sophisticated studies. It would be helpful if our generation see and accept this home-grown wisdom.
A recent study by College Board of the United States suggested that 51 per cent of African Americans were reading below the basic norms; 36 per cent of African American females were doing the same. I am sure that we are replicating these figures in the Caribbean. This suggests that the academic performance among blacks in the Caribbean and in the United States leaves much to be desired.
Four years ago the Boston public schools created “10 Boys” clubs, a program in which they offered additional tutoring, mentoring and emotional support to about 600 boys in Grades 4 (9 years old) through Grade 12 (17 years old) in approximately 50 schools. According to the Boston Globe, “that program proved to be so popular that the school district launched a similar program, Impact 300, to target boys in kindergarten through Grade 4.” They wanted to get to the students while they were young. Recently, these students visited Harvard University to “in an effort to start breeding a college-going mentality at a young age.”
Carroll Blake, the executive director of Boston school achievement gap office was enthusiastic about the College Board initiative and its impact on turning around the depressing condition of black youths. He said: “We are losing so many of our boys. In some cases, we are losing them to the street. In other cases, they are being killed.” He may have been speaking about the plight of young black men in Trinidad and Tobago.
Solving this problem will not be easy. But it’s time we place the following tag on the national agenda: “Emergency: Black Young Men in danger.” Saving our young black men calls for a national effort. We can use the UN Declaration to spur on our efforts.
We must remember that these young Black males are citizens of T&T and if they fail we all fail.
Cudjoe should be commended for raising this issue because he has credibility, particularly with the Black population.
Whenever this issue is honestly and genuinely raised by non- Africans, accusations of racism, prejudice and bias are levelled against those expressing the same concerns as Cudjoe. Major interventions are required in the public schools and I hope the Minister of education is paying attention.
“One needn’t go further than the University of the West Indies at St. Augustine at which about forty percent of the students are males. Twenty seven percent of those males are Africans”.(CUDJOE)
On closer examination,the above statistic by Cudjoe does not really support his argument, if University education is used as the criterion for success. If 27% of the males are African, that leaves 13% non-African males at the University of the West Indies.
Does this mean that non-African males in T&T are at greater risk than African males?
that only means that u do not understand math TMan 27% of the males indicates 27% of the 40% not 27% of the total :-O
Once again Doctor Cudjoe produces an analysis of a problem in our community that requires our attention. But our glass is more half empty than half full. It is half empty because given the unique experience of centuries of enslavement and denial of access to education, we were still able to produce intellectuals who made contributions to this world that is unequalled by others who did not have our experience. Imagine then if we had an equal star from the beginning.
The strategy for African developement reside in our ancestral history, and it is from there that we must siphon tools to repair ourselves. The longer we refrain from doing this the more fodder we give to the inventors and perpetrators of supremacist cultural and religious self stroking beliefs and notions to sate their depraved appetites. We must understand the significance of the trails and ordeals that have inhibited our developement, and use those experiences to stride forth stronger and more united.
If the black population of the US had concentrated on breaking down and removing barriers that affected them as a group, rather than assuming the role of champion for others who sat in the wings waiting to exhale, their position today in the US would be much better. African Americans faced raging dogs, water cannons, lynchings and a whole heap of violent repercussions in their quest to remove absolute white entitlement and privilege from the social construct of the US, only to see those who were too cowardly to step forth come in and enjoy the proceeds.
Black people need to look inward, release themselves of the burden of being the ones fighting to integrate and other “all awee a wan” crusades and come home to themselves. Again, we built graet civilizations and societies on our own. It is when we opened the doors and allowed others to come into our homes, our indigenous homes, that our retrogression began.
I have read your various comments on the subject and I concur with your views 100%. The problems we have as a people can only be fixed by us; looking inwardly and accepting that it is our psychology that is keeping us back. We have been inducted to this way of thinking over the centuries of enslavement, discrimination and oppression that we faced as a people and in many places we still face today! The problem is that the majority of us see nothing wrong with this way of thinking because the rest of us who have and are trying to shift to a more positive way of thinking and being are seen as the problem.
I live in the UK where there a people from every area of the world living and succeeding; the thing I notice and appreciate most from learning from these other cultures is that the most successful immigrants are the ones that have a strong connection to their origins and a sense of community. They are proud to be who they are…Indian, Chinese whatever.
Many people of African origin no matter what we say about being proud of who we are do not truly feel it in our hearts or by our actions. The bleaching creams and hair weaves are not used just for their aesthetics qualities, they are used transform and eradicate “our blackness”. Many of us are happy to speak of our lineage to the slave master/rapist, that portuguese, Spanish, English we do not want to say or see Africa at all!
If our children were given the tools to truly love themselves, we wouldn’t have the crisis we face now as people. As you said when one thinks of our greatest achievement… surviving all the oppression and enslavement we should so much more advanced in our thinking as it proves our strength and resilience but unfortunately exposes our weakness.
I have two sons and three daughters and I am doing my best to raise young men and women who truly love themselves and measure their success by their effort and not by material possessions.
WHERE EVERY CREED AND RACE FIND AN EQUAL PLACE?
Cuba has achieved free access to healthcare for 100% of its
population. Cuba’s infant mortality rate of 4.90 deaths/1,000 live births is better than that of Canada (4.92), United States (6.06), Philippines (19.34), Trinidad & Tobago (27.69), India (47.57), and Bangladesh (50.73).
Cuba’s “number of (5.91) doctors per 1000 population” is higher than all other countries in the world. Malta (3.18), Ireland (2.79), United States (2.3), United Kingdom (2.2), Canada (2.1), Philippines (1.16), Trinidad & Tobago (0.79), India (0.6), and Bangladesh (0.26).
Cuban doctors are among the best in the world, and Cuba has the
highest doctor-to-population ratio in the world. Hence the reason why “Cuba has 42,000 workers in international collaborations in 103 different countries, of whom more than 30,000 are health personnel, including no fewer than 19,000 physicians.” There are no language complaints about Cubans in 103 countries around the world! There are no language complaints in Cuba from 2 million visitors /year.
The previous Minister of Health, Therese Baptiste-Cornelis could have gone to any of the American and European countries in search of 275 doctors, 2,467 nurses and 161 pharmacists, and she would not have found them, because those countries simply don’t have them to spare. To fill T&T’s shortage, she would not have found the 2,903 health personnel in Bangladesh either, because Bangladesh is the worst country in health standards and quantity of doctors.
There was a lot of publicity for her getting 25 Vincentian nurses and a few others, but these do not even make a 5% dent in T&T shortage of health personnel. There was no fanfare afterwards because nothing more was done to solve the problem.
The T&T Minister of Health knew she could have had the urgently needed 275 doctors, 2,517 nurses and 161 pharmacists on short notice with a 4th Cuban Medical Brigade from Cuba, but she did not try to get personnel from Cuba. Instead she supported the “MBTT and Associates” embargo against Cuba, and parroted the lie (that Cuban doctors do not speak English) started by private hospital individuals. Was the tail wagging the dog? Was the Minister of Health slave to a clique of private hospital individuals from, Friday 28th May, 2010, the first day when she was sworn in, until Saturday 25th June 2011, when she was
relieved of her Cabinet portfolio in the PP Cabinet reshuffle?
Trinidad and Tobago still has less than 1 doctor for 1,000 people. As long as the quality of health service in T&T can be deliberately kept low by blocking Cuban doctors and Cuban-trained Trinbagonian doctors from working in Public Hospitals, the private hospital patient population will be kept high, and consequently the financial status of the private hospital doctors will be kept high. Isn’t racketeering illegal?
Isn’t the clique of “MBTT and Associates” doctors acting like a gang of mobsters, maintaining “their” status quo by using “their” own yardsticks to determine who get into “their” UWI Medical School, and protecting “their” Private Hospitals cacada by blocking Cuban doctors and Cuban-trained Trinbagonians from practicing medicine in T&T Public Hospitals? Isn’t the end result the deliberate shortage of doctors in T&T Public Hospitals, for Public Hospitals to hire private doctors,
and to funnel patients into Private Hospitals, where they can be bled of their money? Isn’t gangsterism illegal?
There are Trinbagonian Cuba-Trained Doctors who have graduated from Cuban Universities recognized by the Accreditation Council of Trinidad and Tobago before UWI was recognized. These Trinbagonian doctors speak English, Spanish and “Trini”, served 1 year internships in both Cuba and in T&T, were graded “A” on the job, and were accepted for House Officer Doctor positions by Regional Health Authorities. Yet, these Trinbagonian Cuba-Trained Doctors are experiencing hardships, due to harsh, oppressive, and discriminatory denial of access to work, for as
much as 1 year, by the clique of “MBTT and Associates” doctors. By extension The People are also suffering denial of their free services in Public Hospitals.
Cuban and Cuban trained Trinbagonian doctors are hard working,
dedicated, and disciplined medical professionals who have a sense of commitment to improve the quality of life of the people of this Republic of T&T. Will the next Minister of Health and the MBTT grant them equal opportunity to work in this land of Trinidad and Tobago, where every creed and race finds an equal place?
I have always believed that part of our problems as black people is that while there are many black ‘individuals’ to look up to, there are fewer of these ‘individuals’ who look back and ask “what can I do to help my brothers and sisters in need?”. Most non-Africans have built-in support by means of religion or religious beliefs, ethnicity or community based ethics. There has been an almost total dis-integration of young black children by the acceptance of “ghetto” style way of life. There is nothing romantic about this but in raga-soca and reggae the lyrics tend to legitimize that way of life. I grew up in an era when there was automatic respect for ALL adults, regardless of kinship or relationship. When I walk the streets I hear the young black youths in particular using language that are generally obscene and vulgar without heeding who is around or who is aware of that kind of behaviour. We need to re-energise parenting, religious orientation, responsibility and expectations for these young people to follow. Last but not least we need more “Dr. Cudjoes” to remind us when we go out of line. We also need more “Dr. Cudjoes” to produce literatures that would make us proud and up-lifting.
Dr.
The attitudes and behavious of young black people is the consequence of the psychological trend that has become fashionable in the black community going back several decades. It is trend mirrored in attitudes and decisions that we alone in this Caribbean World, and indeed the outer world, should jettison group consciousness for the sake of national collectivity. We continue to ignore the reality that we are the only group that seem to be interested in making this sacrifice, and how it it has transformed us as a people over the past 6 decades.
Go back to earlier days, when the residual memory of our struggles and experiences was alive in the personalities of our elders, and they comported themselves with the kind of dignity and pride that inspired and elicited respect from the younger generation. This translated into intellectual and academic accomplishments and achievements in our communities, that saw a people who had survived three centuries of holocaustic enslavement producing some of the most learned, articulate and intelligent scholars in this Caribbean region.
I say again, as long as we continue to allow ourselves to be guilt tripped into accepting the revisionist history that racism and racial prejudice was an equal distribution of group character traits, and thus spend more time trying to get people to like us rather than just liking ourselves and passing this down to the generations that follow us, our children will continue to display negative anti-social behaviours and attitudes. We need to come home and bring them with us. We need to close our doors, in a manner of speaking, and distribute our time and efforts in recapturing the traditions and values our ancestors, even the most recent, held so dear. Our communities need to go back to being villages of caring, of mentoring, of pride and respect.
We are in geographical region where our numbers exceed 150 million, and we cannot seem to understand leverage value of that distribution. In stead we spend a whole heap of time pursuing fleeting romantic illusions that this world will accept us equals, will sever itself from cultural traites that have existed for centuries, and has become interwoven into the reality of the current day hosts. We need to become a population of Malcolm Xs, of Patrice Lumumbas, of Winnie Mandelas, of Marcus Garvies, and do so with no apology whatsoever to our detractors.
>>>We need to become a population of Malcolm Xs, of Patrice Lumumbas, of Winnie Mandelas, of Marcus Garvies, and do so with no apology whatsoever to our detractors.<<<
And I will add also a population of Dedan Kimathis and others. Indeed bro KW, indeed. I read all of your inputs and they need to be passed on for dissemination especially with the present hindu agenda of the Trinbago reality that is a serious threat to the black community in its entirety.
The reality is that the pnm government has failed young African men by not empowering their parents. The pnm has ruled Trinabgo since 1956 through 1986 unbrokenly. Look at Laventille, Morvant, Beetham estates and Carenage and the whole East/West corridor and you will see the pnm neglect of a people and their community.
Mr. Cudjoe should first analyse the pnm neglect of a people that supported the party since its inception and continues to this day. Most of the young men in prisons are from those communities which are majority pnm strongholds. why is there so many yougn African men imprisoned like the US when we have had a government whose majority is African? That is the question that must be addressed.
The PNM inherited 200 yeaqrs of British neglect of these communities, none of which were given more than a million acres of land by the beginning of the 20th century as was given to Indians in Trinidad and then British Guiana.
Wilsibo, in addition, your response is mere finger-pointing, and backward. My parents grew us in Laventille and Morvant and without the changes made to places like QRC we wouldn’t have received the education we did.
Among the other factos is the fact that the shortest distance between criminality and conviction is a very convoluted line. Today, accusations of criminality are as much related to lawlessness as to vulnerability.
From personal experience I specialise in redeeming youth from livs of crime into esteemed professions. However, in many of my experinces, too, in North America, a white youth without finishing high school and with a criminal record is more asily employable than a Black youth without a criminal record and university training … and these youth face such discriminations not only from whites but also from other “minorities” like Japanese, Chinese and Indians.
why is there so many yougn African men imprisoned like the US when we have had a government whose majority is African? That is the question that must be addressed
If the T&T Government went after major crimes in which millions are stolen through devious and deceitful machinations the prisons of T&T would be more representative of the population. The fact that the majority of people in T&T’s prison were black during the tenure of black leadership should convince even the most reluctant of African Trinis that the guilt trip crap sent their way about the PNM giving preferrence to Africans is a ploy used to justify their marginalization under the PP. We as Africans need to begin to see the evil design behind some who share this twin island with us, and understand that until we are shuffling obsequiously before them in order to conform that we accept the dalit role in their ambitious re-stratification of the society, they will continue with that deceitful ploy.
It is not a coincidence that in every part of this world where there are similar demographics like T&T, and Indians control the Government, Africans are catching hell. We need to wise up and smell the coffeee, and understand that virulent racial prejudice was never an exclusive traite of Europeans, and that it is shared across the spectrum of peoples with that common origin in equal proportions, or at times in even greater proportion.
No one is more important in growing up a child than a mother. This is shown to be true in every other ethnic group. Where the mother’s influence is weak in Indian families, the children go astray and end up just as the described by Cudjoe. People tend to blame government and teachers for failure of students. This is very convenient. The blame must be with the family. I have seen children growing up very well without parents – but with care of other members of the family. Leaders in the afro groups have to take charge and do not allow their own to choose the wrong path. Most governments are sympathetic to blacks. They know that blacks have innate skills and abilities, if they are willing to walk straight and do not focus on the trials and tribulations of their ancestors.
The issue of opportunity must arise. To provide opportunity there must be skills building. I do not think that the disproportional numbers of black men in university should be used as a measure of failing people, whether black or other. What proportion of black men are in skill training schools?? What job creation are being put in place?? Are we measuring these jobs that are being created?? Why are so many unskilled workers been giving job opportunities in T&T?? What programs are being put in place, when skilled workers are brought in to the country, to ensure that the importation of skilled workers are not eternal??
Then we also have to look at the homes. T&T has not moved ahead in the family stabilization area concerning black men. I know that I am generalizing here, but why is it that black men could always seem to brag about who their “child mother” is rather than being involved in the child rearing activities and encouraging the children’s environment to include two parents living together and seeing how conversation and the meeting of minds work.
Finally, I think that we in T&T should really look at our laws that create a criminal element in society that only has more criminality as the consequence. While laws are necessary when these laws work against the society they are set up to protect the laws should be reviewed because they are not protecting society but destroying society.
Keith you need to get around more. I lime all over Trinidad in high and low places. There are more Africans in jail because Africans commit more crime.Its not only in Laventille. There are many Laventilles all over. Siparia for example, Which is a mixed community, more than half of the African males have been to jail.
But fear not, Most of the Indian youths in the countryside are involved in crime. They would soon bypass the Africans. Cunupia is soon becoming the Indian Laventille.
People like Cudjoe are misleading Africans.
Im not chinese. I dont know where the Guardian got that name from.
Very thought-provoking article by Dr. Cudjoe. Given my expeiences living abroad and in T&T, the one common denominator that has been alluded to in the comments and here and from own personal observations is this: the absence of a strong family unit where the male and female operate in unity within the black community. The contemporary black male in the 18-40 age group seems to remain mired in a perpetual state of adolescence and seem unwilling to assume the mantle of manhood that they should, by a proper upbringing grow into. The young black male now cuts a tragic figure and the rest of the world continues to despair over, or from another point of view, sneer at his continuous spiral into cultural oblivion. The real solution to this crisis is decisive leadership by prominent black males within Trinidad and Tobago’s society. Dr. Cudjoe has started the work and it is up to other influential black leaders to continue the work that he has started.
The first thing that should be targeted by many of these black leaders is the soul-destroying hip hop and dance hall culture that has hindered the progress of many communities in the African Diaspora. As one who has grown up in this culture, I can testify to the evils and poisons that these subcultures presents to black communities in T&T and across the Caribbean. These musical genres offers nothing to black people by way of upliftment and only drives black youths to a life of irresponsibility and delinquency.
Youths should be encouraged to listen to conscious reggae and great artists such as Salif Keita from Mali. These types of music always continues a powerful message and tends to be palliative rather than incendiary.
A return to the ancestral reverence of elders must also be encouraged. Young black men must learn to value the wisdom of older black men with more experience. Admittedly, this is a challenge when the older black men themselves are not very wise and have little to offer the younger black men in terms of experience. However, there is still value in building up that notion of respect.
I can’t think of anything else right now, but these are good places to start.
Africans commit more street crimes. I said if the crimes of embezzlement, fraud, and electronic larceneous crimes and the like received as much attention as street crimes the prison population would be more proportionate. Street crimes have always, in all societies, in every era, been most prevalent among the lowest in the income strata in such societies. This is not a defence of crime or a rationalizati
Come on Professor bring on the boys club that you talked about lets move forward.
I say we perform an experiment: take other “racial” groups, and expose them to the same historic conditions in which African descendants have had to manoeuvre for well over 400 years of existence, and if ANY of their outcomes are ANY different, then we can all accept our (assumed) “inferiority”, and predispositions to criminal activity, based on our “Africaness” (Blackness), and not on social and environmental hazards we have had to cope with. Interestingly, a Wikipedia input posits that, “Crime is as old as Trinidad and Tobago itself, going back to when it was a haven for pirates in the 17th and 18th centuries.” I have to concur, and, in my opinion, the REAL CRIME is the social injustice that is intentionally handed to “Blacks”, simply based on “white supremacy” and “colonialism”. The current conditions are in accordance with faeces on “hitting the ceiling fan”!
TGWT they would not survive. None of them would survive. If they have a unbroken connection to their past and still produce people who kill their families for their inheritance as well as every other crime they lump at the feet of black people, imagine what they would be after three centuries plus of holocaustic enslavement.
That is why I always argue for black people to give up the struggle for integration and concentrate on integrate within ourselves. We spend to much damn time trying to covert people whose psychology comes from thousands of years of myopic beliefs that they are superior. I say let them have their beliefs, keep our cash, our trade, our commerce, and let them live on their beliefs.
The problem just like in the U.S. isthat parents have children before they are ready to be parents and haven’t finished doing all of the things in life that are countractive to parenting, tradition, and values. Get rid of BET and go back to the old days of dicilining these children when they are youn rather than burying them or visiting them at an institution when they are older. These kids have to be regimented and seperated from media outlets that offer them nothing but false social constructs of reality to subscribe to that in the end are empty, negative and basically fruitless.
Tman: On closer examination,the above statistic by Cudjoe does not really support his argument, if University education is used as the criterion for success. If 27% of the males are African, that leaves 13% non-African males at the University of the West Indies.
Factoring proportionality into your arguments have always been a steep hill for you to overcome. What is the population breakdown, in terms of ethnicities, in the geography in which the UWI is situated. How can 13% of non Africans represent marginalization or risk when it might represent the population demographic of the region.
The Georgraphy is more then two thirds African descendant. Only Guyana and T$T have significant non African Populations. Africans might well represent over 75% of the population of the territory the UWI serves. Extrapolating from Cudjoe figures to say that the percentage of others might represent risk or marginalization is obtuse, under-thought, but completely in line with the spontaneous and incredible eruptions that issues forth from your mind.
I am sure that Doctor Cudjoe had an image of the population breakdown of the territories served by the UWI in his mind as he did his analysis. His critics, who mostly come from those absent a periphery that accounts for anyone else but those within their logies, lack the attention span to figure numbers beyond that ethnic boundary, and thus put their keyboards in spontaneous gear spitting out stupid critiques. My God!!
I just had a conversation with someone who works at the PTSC and was told that out of a total of 27 new people accepted to be bus drivers only two are Africans. Of course we know who the new Minister of Transport is – the right honourable Devant Maharaj, who was more than just an acolyte to the great Sat Maharaj. Anyone familiar with his social beliefs and affirmations would put him in the same category as David Duke but in sweet Trinidaa and Tobago and under our present transformative captain Kamla, we have a character as Devant in charge of a workforce that consists of people who, in his past writings and utterances shoulod be castigated in T&T. Where are our great African minds who are aware of this fellow and what he stands for?
What really pisses me off is that African Trinidadians would give their support to an organization that has Sat Maharaj locked to its breast. That is the equivalent of voting for David Duke.
What we are seeing in T&T is what occurred and is occurring in Guyana. These ruling Indian Regimes use blackmen to hide their machiavellien racist policies and operations. What I am optimistic about, is the difference in the thinking of Trinis, who, unlike their brothers and sisters in Guyana, will not suffer this racial exploitation for three decades. The more it is exposed, pointed out and analysed for their informational consumption, the faster they will disabuse themselves of the notion that this Tiger, because it now calls itself a leopord, has changed its feasting habits.
The following is taken from a recent CNN report.This is the sort of positive, cooperative and pro active action required for success.
“Indians now represent the country’s second-largest Asian group, after the Chinese.
They’re also among the nation’s most successful ethnic groups, with 71% of Asian Indians earning bachelor’s degrees or higher, compared with 28% of all Americans, according to data from the U.S. Census’s 2009 American Community Survey.
The survey reported that Asian Indians have median household incomes of more than $90,000, compared with $50,000 for all Americans.”
Those who wobble in hatred and focus on “putting down” others will forever be doomed to failure. It is possible to advocate for and support your “own’ without discriminating against other groups.The hate merchants on this website should take note.
Something that I noticed that CNN dare not report on is how Indians in the U.S. that come from India as immigrants to the U.S. do not consider Indo-Trinis as part of the same group. I personally hear a Indian fellow tell a Indo-Trinidadian that “he was not his people”.
Look, we can look to blame other groups of people for the despair that we find ourselves in, but all that one has to do is look in the mirror. Africans in Guyana gave the country away the same as Africans in Trinidad did by partying and not taking things serious. Nobody cares about how you dress, dance, sing, or play music. No one cares about the fancy suits, total amount of cars, size of the crib, private jets and any other measuring stick symbolic of success that Caribbean leader try to match with their European and American counterparts. That is all temporary. The kids need to be taught real skills and the parents are not preparing their children for the future in the same way that people from eastern traditions prepare their children. That alone is symbolic of the legacy of slavery and its impact on Africans of the Diaspora. It is rotting the Afro-Trinidadian global view so much that mass looks like a daytime public strip club/ border line porn production.
Perhaps I’m being too hard. After all, the Yankee cousins are faring much worse. However, Trini’s should have no problem turning off BET because that in no way reflects who they are or what they should be.
You can’t blame other groups of people for trying to gain power. That’s what groups of people are supposed to do. You have to blame the people who gave away power because you aren’t supposed to do that especially if it goes against your interest. Stop making excuses for people who don’t do what they are supposed to do and create more opportunities for your own youth or you will find yourself in another extension of India. No matter how well CNN reports Indians doing in the U.S., an Indian President is a lifetime away.
If you want to limit the danger of young black men, remember that there is safety in numbers. Therefore there has to be a multitude of professional Black symbols of strength and character. There has to be an instituted standard that young Black men must adhere to which is based on love for one another without contempt for each others possessions. Stop trying to live like people from different geographical locations.
Bollocks, it was African Americans who opened the system that all minoritis enjoy today. Check to see how many Indians had degrees and jobs in the US in the 50s and 60s. Check and see how many of them could have moved into the neighbourhoods they now live. They made personal gains without sacrifices to open the national gates where those gains could be achieved.
Preening your ethnic self ain’t gonna impress those of us who are aware of what it took to open up America. Boasting about Johnny come lately success, regardless of the volume of that success, proves once again how dastardly shallow, historically empty, and churlishly oafish you are.
When the accounting of American history is recounted, it will not be based on how much money anyone made. It will be based on what they contributed to the development and opening up of democracy. Money like all material trappings dissipate. Those things that are intrinsicly treasured by the sophisticated mind do not. Indians make big moolah but Africans gave the US its economic foundation, a bunch of products and inventions that are universally used throughout the world, and the most important thing that some humans enjoy but do not deserve, the freedoms to go to any school, to get jobs anywhere, and live in any neighbourhood. So spare me your peurile self stroking over the gains of materiality.
“Bollocks, it was African Americans who opened the system that all minoritis enjoy today. Check to see how many Indians had degrees and jobs in the US in the 50s and 60s. Check and see how many of them could have moved into the neighbourhoods they now live. They made personal gains without sacrifices to open the national gates where those gains could be achieved.” (KEITH WILLIAMS)
A completely correct analysis.
The question is why are so many African Americans today unable to walk through the doors which were opened to them by their ancestors?
On paper the doors where open, but the private sector in he U.S. is king and when any group of people starts ascending to power rapidly, there are those who stand to lose power in power who systematically try to shut the doors.
The doors were reopened in the last half of the last century. After the Emancipation Proclamation and during Reconstruction, African Americans were rising to power in the South both in government and the Private sector. That’s when a few things happened to derail them. One was the Jim Crow and segregation laws that were imposed to limit the political and social power of African Americans. Then there was “Back to Africa” movement which later evolved and became the Pan African Movement where freed Blacks would move to Liberia (created by President James Monroe) and or Ethiopia.
The reason why so many African Americans are unable to walk through those doors is complicated. Allow me to ask a few questions in order to provide perspective.
1) What would the conditions of Indians in TNT be like if they were forced to be in TNT without any right or means to practice freely their indigenous culture or speak their native tongue?
2) What would the condition of Indians be in TNT today if Indians were less than 15% of the total population and were forced to be segregated for at least 100 years from the dominant culture in schools, place of worship (but worshipping the same religion as the majority population), and systematically told that they were less?
3) What if TNT society reinforced negative connotations and stereotypes of Indian people and then prohibited them from developing and keeping pace with innovation and change for a century?
4) What would be the State of Indians in TNT if TNT be had a official like J. Edgar Hoover, seeking and destroying every major political movement of Indians for at least 60 years?
5)Last and most importantly, What would be the State of Indians in TNT be if a couple of generations were systematically targeted by their government for drug abuse, alcoholism, and incarceration instead of college for about 20 years?
The result is what you have now in the United States. However, there are still many African Americans who have still earned college degrees and decent lifestyles. That is why it is important to not watch BET. Through all of their sufferings, the combined earning potential of African Americas in the 80’s and 90’s was enough to make Haiti the 3rd or 4th wealthiest nation in the Western Hemisphere. Culture is king, but sometimes even that’s not enough. Look what happened to Hong Kong when the British forced Opium onto their streets in order to control southern China.
If children learn from the parents and their parents where addicts and alcoholics, what do you think that the kids will be like?
That is because they and their parents do not have visceral “awee time now” mentality of many who walk freely through the doors that they have opened. The most prideful and respected Africans are those who are mot afraid or reluctant to make it plain. To argue that they waste their resources by bankrolling the businesses of those who come into their communities with traditional anti black hatred, while profitting from the commercial spending of African Americans, and in fact blacks every where in this world. To argue that they must disassociate themselves from all others, except where occupational and like courtesy require such interaction.
When black people hear others point to material wealth they have acquired through the scacrifices of their ancestor’s struggles, while making comparison between what they gat and what black people ain’t gat, they should realize that they are being used. They should realize that it is waste of time and effort to even entertain any thought of respecttful communal relationships with such people. It is when they come to this point of recognition, this epiphany of consciousness, that they will begin to walk through the doors their ancestors opened in the US and elsewhere.
The only thing holding them back, is the divorcement from this awareness, because the lack thereof takes their minds away from where it should be. But slowly and surely it will come. Every journey begins with one single footstep, and the more smaller this word becomes because of the immediacy of communication networks, the more rapidly the tide of change will sweep away the cobwebs that confuse our thinking. Time a come, belie dat, time ah come.