“[…] The refugee crisis in Venezuela was not spawned by any government in T&T, either past or present. We are the victims of geo-politics… The shame is not on our country, but on those politicians and so-called validating elites/professionals […] who are willing to be pawns of a bully to …
Read More »Dear editor: The issue of African hairstyles in T&T schools is neither resolved nor frivolous
“At issue is the widespread, pernicious and fundamentally racist belief that the hair and hairstyles of African people are not suitable for formal settings and are intrinsically messy, unkempt, unhygienic and even disruptive. The insidious nature of this deeply ingrained idea encapsulated in the popular phrase ‘bad hair’ guarantees that …
Read More »Gilkes: Is 11/11 about remembrance; or chain up? Black West Indians must tell our story of WWI
So on Wednesday night, I was a guest on the radio programme Indaba. You know the programme that discusses issues relevant to raising African-centred consciousness? No? The one that was once two hours but is now reduced to one because, let’s be honest, it’s not like there’s any issue about …
Read More »Black identity (Pt 8): The redemption of blackness through the rubric of Black Power
The Black Power movement of the 1960’s and ‘70’s was not spawned by a spontaneous determination to destroy white supremacism and undo the psychological damage of European enslavement, colonialism and Jim Crowism. Rather, it was a much longer and more complex historical process, a process which this column is dedicated to …
Read More »Claude’s Comments: Black Identity (Pt 4): The African confrontation with European-copyrighted blackness
Black Power was primarily a revolution of the mind: the continuation of the revolution of Marcus Garvey. It first aimed to free “black” people who embraced it from seeing themselves and their past through the lens and language of those who trampled on their humanity, denied them the dignity of …
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