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WAYNE KUBLALSINGH

DR ERIC WILLIAMS was wrong. He was wrong on a number of fronts. He should have never terminated the train. He should have never imported, lock, stock and barrel, the factory-type, double-shift comprehensive school for our children. He should have never so easily obliged the establishment of ghetto sprawls, by vulnerable West Indian migrants, in the suburbs of Port of Spain; sans proper education, water, housing, lights, service infrastructure. He should have talked to Black Power leaders, not tried to expunge them, shook police commissioner Randolph Burroughs after them, had an American gunboat lie in wait off the Gulf.
He was also wrong to proclaim: “There can be no Mother India, for those whose ancestors came from India...there can be no Mother Africa, for those of African origin. There can be no Mother England and no dual loyalties...There can be no Mother China, even if one could agree as to which China is the mother; and there can be no Mother Syria and no Mother Lebanon. A nation, like an individual, can have only one mother. The only mother we recognise is Mother TT, and mother cannot discriminate between her children."
Africans should fight tooth and nail to keep their ancestral bonds with Africa. Africa’s history, philosophies, music, songs, dances, languages, ceremonies, foods, its panoply of heroes and heterogeneous cultures. And likewise, Indians and India. Chinese and China, Syrians and Lebanese, Syria and Lebanon. And Caucasians/whites Europe. Our ancestral grandmother cultures have offered, do offer and will offer more wisdom, power, edification and knowledge than poor Mother TT by herself. Ancestral grandmother and grandfather civilisations are the foundations of nation-building; not one national culture and history alone.
It is a fallacy to say that our “going back” to our ancestral cultures makes us less patriotic. Or to say that it will encourage inter-ethnic rivalry. Our duty is to respect each other’s ancestral cultures while foraging, feasting, with glee at the well-springs, the banquet of our ancestral cultures.
Most citizens do not identify with the pre-20th century identity of TT. Psychological dissonance. Too tough to handle. Conquest and decimation. The slave trade. Slavery. Indentureship. Colonialism. Massa. And when there is heroism, song, music, philosophy, ceremonies in this relatively short history, we do not properly respect it. The histories of our ancient overseas ancestral cultures are vast. Knowing them is going forward, not back!
Many citizens get confused. Some say, I am not an Indian, I am a Trinidadian. This kind of statement is also fallacious. Each citizen possesses many identities. A woman might be a mother, a teacher, an importer of salt prunes and seaweed from China. Likewise, we each possess different identities. The great calypsonian Maestro was a Trinidadian. This was his national identity. He was a Caribbean man. This was his regional identity. He was also an African. This was his ethnic or race identity. Having one identity, holding it boldly and firmly, does not preclude your having other identities. No confusion at all.
Maestro’s position is correct. His song Black Identity (1973) was a message to Africans. TT Africans:
Presently almost everybody talking about black identity/But if you check out the majority, they only using these words falsely/Because the first thing that is a shame – African people with European name/That is the first step we have to take to correct a prehistoric mistake.
His message to Africans was simple, direct, clear. He used other ethnic groups as examples, without being disrespectful:
If you hear Seecharan, Ramkelhawan, Lalchan, Balchan/Well, bet your life that's an East Indian man/Jose, Juan, Gonzalez, Manuel, Sancho, Pablo/You sure them fellahs from Mexico.
Yes, “East Indian.” To differentiate between East and West Indian, or East and Amerindian. No confusion.
He explains further what he means:
If you retrace your steps from the start, you find names play an important part/For if you did some great thing in history they might want to record your activity/But if your name Hutchinson or Graham, no one could tell that you were a black man/So this is why it's an important factor to use the names of your African ancestors.
And he piques, takes a chook at prominent Trinidadian Africans. “Change your name from George Weekes to Wakamba/So we could know that you serious 'bout Black Power.” And to the Mighty Chalkdust: “Change your name from Chalkdust to Pygmybus/So we could know that you really Afro conscious.”
And who respects the identity of our genuine heroes? Who knows that the Trinidad African woman who fought like a lion against the ruinous smelter economy was Yvonne Ashby, a nurse, the great-granddaughter of a Chatham slave? Or that Ballyram Siew, citizen-intelligentsia, did the same against the destructive Debe to Mon Desir highway? Or likewise Kishore Boodram, with his myriad "dramas" against the infernal NEC port on the Claxton Bay fishing grounds? Or Daisy Mohammed, who built on her proverbial shoulders the Pranz Gardens village and protected it, fighting, like the others, against all comers: the local police, army and government-backed, neo-liberal, globalist Gaffney and Cline Master Gas Plan (2001), the latest round of neo-colonialism?
A revolution in the 21st century has happened right under our eyes while we wait on CNN, the BBC, a hundred Mistah Kurtzs in Washington and London, to name our heroes.
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