Tag Archives: African

Africa, Education, General T&T, Racism Watch

Public Enquiry needed into the Education System

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By Dr Tye Salandy
October 09, 2019

Dr Tye SalandyTwenty 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.
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Africa, Gender, General T&T, Politics, Sex

Turning the Clock Backward

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
October 09, 2019

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeTrinidad and Tobago is a difficult, contradictory society. Every time we take one step forward, we also take two steps backward. Imagine a progressive leader saying that she won’t invite a man or woman to a government function unless he/she is accompanied by his/her married partner. One would have thought our foremothers had solved that problem two hundred years ago but one of her great granddaughters is doing her best to turn the clock back to even darker days.
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General T&T, PNM, Politics, Racism Watch

Misplaced Philanthropy

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
September 20, 2019

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeOne 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….
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Africa, General T&T, Passed on, Racism Watch, Zimbabwe

Robert Mugabe: An African Hero

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September 07, 2019

Robert Mugabe

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.
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Court, General T&T, PNM, Politics

Independence, sedition and legislative violence

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Of Independence, sedition and legislative violence: how elitist laws have damaged the nation

By Dr Tye Salandy
September 02, 2019
UPDATED: September 03, 2019

Sedition, careful, careful how you talking … hey hey!

Sedition, careful, careful whey you walking

Incompetent idiots have genuine patriots

Always under escort in the sedition court.

—The Mighty Sparrow (Sedition)

Dr Tye SalandyThe Sedition Act, used recently to charge Watson Duke (and earlier Michael Seales and Abu Bakr), is a dangerous law that has no place in our law books. This Sedition Act, along with marijuana laws, anti-loitering laws, vagrancy laws, and obeah laws, is part of a long list of colonial laws that are still on the books.
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Crime in T&T, General T&T, Law, Media, PNM, Politics, Race and Identity

The Road Make to Walk…

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
August 06, 2019

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeLast Sunday, four of the five Sunday columnists of this newspaper wrote about the crime problem that confronts the nation. The Sunday Guardian also published a long investigative piece on the subject. On Monday, Archbishop Charles Jason Gordon talked about the pervasiveness of crime and concluded that ours is “a culture of disrespect.” At a fundamental level, it is more an economic-philosophical than a moral question. Left unattended and incorrectly analyzed, it will lead to greater degeneracy.
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Africa, General T&T, Race and Identity, Racism Watch

Abolition of Slavery — Economic/Political Aspects

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By Dr Kwame Nantambu
Published: August 06, 2019

Dr. Kwame NantambuThis article was written before August 01, 2019

As Emancipation Day approaches, it is indeed apropos to delineate the economic and political aspects of the abolition of slavery, albeit the European enslavement of African people or MAAFA— the “great disaster.”
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Africa, General T&T, International, PNM, Politics, Race and Identity

CLR James: man without honour in his own country

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By Raffique Shah
August 02, 2019

Raffique ShahA tragedy of our times is the absolute ignorance of the vast majority of our population of the nation’s history. And for once I cannot blame this void on information technology, on the electronic devices that most young people and many mature ones are glued to, in most instances day and night.
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Africa, Books, General T&T, Racism Watch

The Making of a Scholar…

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
July 16, 2019

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeOn Monday I presented a paper, “Writing the Slave Master of Trinidad,” at an important conference “Slavery and Its Afterlives: Blackness, Representation, Social Justice, Vision,” at the National Maritime Museum in London. The conference aimed “to extend our understanding of diaspora, to connect diaspora and, in the process, to forge new critical directions.”
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Africa, General T&T, Race and Identity, Racism Watch

Thinking Dialectically About Slavery

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
January 30, 2019

“It is impossible completely to understand Marx’s Capital…without having thoroughly studied and understood the whole of Hegel’s Logic.”

—V. I. Lenin quoted in C. L. R. James, Notes on Dialectics

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeOn Monday the Sugar and Slavery Gallery of London Museum Docklands invited me to be a panelist in a seminar, “London’s Debt to and Involvement with Slavery.” The other panelist, Dr. Kate Donington, Co-Curator of the Slavery, Culture and Collecting display at the Museum, spoke about George Hibbert, a slave owner in Jamaica and a hugely influential presence in eighteenth-century Jamaica and London.
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