Those Drums...

I remember as a child looking on at  Sesame Street and if nothing else stuck I recall "Those drums...those drums...they're saying TAXI!...I tell you it's a jungle out there".  This crossed my mind as I observed the undercurrent of discord and rumbling throughout the country as mini race wars flare up and die down and then flare up again.  We have been called a rainbow republic by many and a melting pot has been used as an avid description.  But does that description fit?

Melting pot would leave one with the idea of a melding...with no definition of where one starts and the other ends.  Can that really be an apt description of this nation?  Are we so well meshed that our unity is thing that bonds us together?  I think not.

  When those in high office can look at a current disparity of ethnicity while blatantly disregarding the History which caused that disparity I think not.  When we as a people vote in tribes and not on issues, I think not.  When the ethnicity of the nation's new leader can bring cries of "Is we time now", I think not.  When those who are reprimanded by people who take umbrage at their statements can then turn around and bash an entire political party based solely on that fact alone, I think not.

For all our forward thinking pronouncements, we continue to labour with colonial time thinking.  We judge a man based on his skin, on who is father is, on what his station in life is and not on the make up of his mind...the making of his mentality and value of his thoughts.

We have been described as a Carnival people.  Thinking only of partying and having a good time but I dare to say that beneath this mentality is the real one...that of anger, rage and racial divisiveness.  We have had more uprisings than neccessary, two of the major ones being the 1970 riots and the 1990 Coup. But what have we learned?  Did we really learn anything from them?  Or did we go back to our partying when the rioting was done?  Or is it that we mask how we really feel with all the good time vibrations and talk of unity and when the dam can no longer be held we have a large display of violence...only to go right back into our party mode.

Can we even fix this? Do we even address this?  How can we when chairmen quote statistics and then make implications of discrimination.  How can we when those in government defend this statement and equally denounce this statement at the same time (A house divided against itself cannot stand).  When calls are made from the upper echelons of society to cast aspersions on promotion boards and those who sit on it, where do we start to address this disparity?  

Why have we descended into a "one ah we" mentality?  Where does it say that I cannot be served fairly if the man who serves me is not of my ethnicity?  A senator asked this and I find it pertinent: If the police service is mixed equally of both Africans and Indians, then does this mean that the crime situation will be better solved?

If I am stopped by a police officer who is not mixed, should I as a mixed person fear ill treatment?  I ask this since a chairman suggested that Indo Trinidadian population could not feel entirely safe since there were not enough Indo Trinidadians on the police force and Indians represented 50% of the population (I am not sure where he got that statistic from).  My question is where will this end...do the Africans have a right to feel safe only with African officers?  Then what of the rest of the nation, the people the chairman conveniently left out, the mixed people like myself.  Where do they fall?  Should they also clamour for their own to have proper representation?

Those of us who have decided that the chairman is correct simply because he is quoting statistics and statements from a study, I urge you to be proactive and take another listen to the chairman's statements, not just the statistics, but also the implications and insinuations proffered.  I urge you to logically think about what is being said and where statements like this can take an already tribal nation.  Put aside the fact that support is coming from the Opposition for this man's removal...look closely at what this man has said.  Look at the genesis of his statements.  A letter written by a man who feared the make up of the promotion board would affect his ability to be promoted...this same man who is president in a place where he claims gross imbalance...then who would have voted for him? Not the very same people he is claiming cannot be fair?

Yes I have been reminded of drums over the last few days...drums of discontentment, drums of tribal calls, drums to racial divide, drums of racial tension, drums of ethnic divide, drums of violence and impending doom.  My real concern is what happens when the drums go silent.