“Lord save our people in TT! To what depths are we descending? The N-word is so pejorative!” This was the cry of a Trini woman living in London when she read about the N-word being used by the Leader of a Political Party during the local government election campaign. We in TT must learn about/remember our history and about how racism has oppressed our people over hundreds of years. If we truly know our history, not one of us will use the N-word.
And for those who think it can be used as a term of endearment, I say: Never! It is deeply offensive, abusive and insulting. Although this derogatory term is not used by black people in the UK or TT, it is often used in the USA. Some use it to deepen racial divisions, while some members of the black community use it in their music and in their comedy routines. US Rapper, author and producer, Chuck D’s words are instructive. He said: “I don’t like the way our community throws the N-word around like it’s water, because it’s a derogatory term… You can never turn that word around and make it cool (it) is just derogatory, it’s wrong… It’s not a word of love…you can’t turn (it) around as hard as you try.”
I learned to hate that word and the C-word since childhood. Being of mixed heritage, some of our neighbours called my siblings and me the C-word, while others called us the N-word. One day our housekeeper reported to my mother that while she was shopping in the market, a vendor laughingly said to her: “You working for Ramdeen? He has 7 N-children (she used the full word) and gave them all Indian names, but they are still N…..”
Experiences such as this instilled in me a passion for justice. Throughout my life, I have had to challenge such racism. I remember in 1995 I was appointed ad-hoc Chair of the Indo-Caribbean Cultural Association in London, with the task of planning activities to mark the 150th Anniversary of the arrival of Indians in TT. Those on the Executive Committee worked with me tirelessly to achieve our goals. At a concert we had organised, I was the MC. My father always recalled how hurt he was to hear someone in the audience shout: “Yuh mean of all the Indians we have, is a N… dey put as MC?”
It is time for us in TT to wake up and learn to truly love ourselves/each other and to reject abusive words that are anathema to the principle of integral human development. Today, Saturday 16 November, the world observes the UN International Day of Tolerance. “The United Nations is committed to strengthening tolerance by fostering mutual understanding among cultures and peoples. This imperative lies at the core of the United Nations Charter, as well as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and is more important than ever in this era of rising and violent extremism and widening conflicts that are characterised by a fundamental disregard for human life” (UN).
Our people must understand that, as the Democracy Center says: “Democracy is about so much more than the act of voting every few years. It is about building real people power that advances social, economic, and environmental justice… real democracy is about the inherent rights of all people to understand the issues and forces that impact our lives and have the opportunity to shape the world around us.”
One of the books my father had in his library was Rabindranath Tagore’s Gitanjali. He often read to us from this collection of 103 poems. The following quotation from the Gitanjali is pertinent to us at this time when we should all be striving to lift our nation to “a higher, more noble place” (Martin Luther King Jr.):
“Where the mind is without fear
and the head is held high,
where knowledge is free.
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls.
Where words come out from the depth of truth,
where tireless striving stretches its arms toward perfection.
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost it’s way
into the dreary desert sand of dead habit.
Where the mind is led forward by thee
into ever widening thought and action.
In to that heaven of freedom, my father,
LET MY COUNTRY AWAKE!” (Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali).
TT awake and let’s build our democracy!
