I’ve been a big Kes fan for ages. I love “Wotless” and I’m not sure if I can get enough of the song “Hello”. Its recently released video, however, is a whole different bag of worms. Don’t get me wrong, I’m always happy when our ‘kaiso’—no matter the genre—is given …
Read More »Gilkes: Message to the Barbergreen; the continuing struggle for emancipation
Despite my shameless semi-appropriation of Malcolm X’s “Message to the Grassroots,” this in no way suggests that I place myself close to the same league of this giant ancestor. This is just my paltry message to those in my country, particularly those who live where there isn’t much grass, far …
Read More »Dear Editor: Racist, dehumanising language and militarised approach to crime will make things worse
“There’s no serious analysis of the observation—that even the Acting Commissioner of Police once made—that ‘crime’ is as much a social issue as it is a law-enforcement/security issue. “No, it’s easier to use words like ‘pest’ and ‘cockroaches’, strip the criminalised elements of their humanity—which they themselves often do as …
Read More »Master’s Voice: Black labour pains: By the sweat of MY brow; thou shalt eat bread
“I have […] great doubts whether the Cooly and the African are morally and mentally capable of being acted upon by the same motives in this island on their first arrival as labourers are in more civilised countries… “The only independence which they would desire is idleness, according to their …
Read More »Master’s Voice: The tumour of racism; addressing Trinbago’s ‘Nigger’ question (Pt Two)
By 1787 the English had just about constructed myths of their own about themselves where to be British was to be free and white. This despite their own history of being slaves of the Romans, at least one of whom, Cicero, wasn’t too impressed with them. They exported their notion …
Read More »Master’s Voice: Fear of the dark; addressing Trinbago’s ‘Nigger’ question (Pt One)
“Where a black man, by working about half an hour a day (such is the calculation), can supply himself, by aid of sun and soil, with as much pumpkin as will suffice, he is likely to be a little stiff to raise into hard work! Supply and demand, which science …
Read More »Dear Editor: What desperately needs changing in St James’ We Beat festival
“[…] That appreciation [of traditional carnival characters at We Beat] does not, however, extend to the management of it. What I witnessed on Saturday night is an excellent example of what not to do if you are trying to get youths involved to pass it onto them.” Wired868 columnist Corey Gilkes …
Read More »Master’s Voice: The rightness of whiteness; the complex nature of black and brown inferiority beliefs
In Trinbago, there is no racism, only prejudice. Well, daiz wha some people try to explain to mih after mih piece last week. Come to the US and Canada, they told me, to experience “real” racism—I have been to the US some years ago US and have experienced it first-hand. …
Read More »Master’s Voice: Racism comes in more than one colour and is not just skin-deep
“The vast and overcrowded peninsula of India […] is in its native condition most miserable and no better in a moral point of view, as exhibited in the picture which Sir Emerson Tennet draws of the Tamils of Ceylon: ‘[…] Sensuality and gain are the two passions of their existence, …
Read More »Master’s Voice: For Blacks, women and the colonised, sin is a sexually transmitted disease
We’re all probably familiar with the stereotype trope of the hypersexual (and if male, predatory) African. Most of us have heard about—and many struggle to disavow—that racist image of African people that seems to figure most prominently in the ways they see us. Even on many porn sites (yes, I …
Read More »Same-sex “soul” brothers (and sisters); gay/lesbian interactions in Africa and the Diaspora
The issue of homosexuality and same-sex relationships as it pertains to people of African and Indian descent is an extremely divisive one. As I pointed out in my preceding article, regarding African people, it is as deeply contentious in Africa as it is here in the Americas. Some of that …
Read More »Master’s Voice: Blessed are the unignorant of Scripture for they shall give LGBTQI no attitude
If my laptop had not died, I would have written this piece much earlier, not long after Akilah Holder’s 14 February article. Small ting; Jessica Joseph’s masterful response, using the same points I wanted to raise, was both an excellent rebuttal and an education resource. Those whose minds are not …
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