View Point

Happiness, for this West Indian cricket lover, is an 80″television set. Or larger. With Lara, Brian Charles Lara—no longer “live” but in living colour—in full flow. Nirvana? In the terms of Edward Fitzgerald’s “Omar Khayyam:” A stack of Tapia/Review, complete somehow; More, Sparrow, More; Beyond a Boundary and thou before …

The rule of law is an abstract concept but that does not mean it is difficult to understand. Here goes: Let us suppose the government passed a law to empower the police to come into your house and take all your money away and freeze all your bank accounts? How …

Last week, on 20 March to be precise, the chairman of the Tobago Festivals Commission, which is responsible for organising the Tobago Jazz Experience 2018 (TJE) made the announcement of the headline acts. That gives patrons less than six weeks’ notice that international artistes Ne-Yo, Tarrus Riley and Anthony Hamilton …

As the Guardian last week marched into April, something seemed to have been taking place behind the scenes. My suspicion is that, with Shelly Dass now officially fired, someone from the CCN group who knows English has crossed the floor and taken up new responsibilities in the print section of …

“On the heels of the disappointing hands-off approach taken in the matter of the sexual harassment allegations levelled against Government-appointed Angostura Chairman Dr Rolph Balgobin, Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi and Minister Stuart Young have sought to robustly though ill-advisedly justify the alleged use of public funds to settle a matter …

“Which woman,” my decent, upstanding, well-behaved friend CJ enquired with a chuckle, “doesn’t want to start her day every day with a prick?” Kees was on the radio, the melodic strains of his “Sweet type of Love” filling the room. Coincidence? Perhaps… “Wanna piece?” she had asked, giggling and proffering …

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 …

In Part One, we touched briefly on my personal experience with American-born Evangelical Christian religions, their racist past and anti-tolerance messaging. We touched on how religion is historically used to erase and homogenise a culture for compliant assimilation into an empire and the impact it has on our multi-cultural nation …

In a powerful and moving maiden address to the nation she now heads, newly installed President Paula-Mae Weekes urged us all to “…confront the darkness and declare that it will not take over.” I wonder about her tense. From early boyhood, I have repeatedly heard that what is to is must …

Monday 19 March, 3:54pm. Charlotte Street. The shrill wail of a siren assails shoppers, motorists and pedestrians as a lone Trinidad and Tobago Defence Force vehicle bores a hole through the thick traffic, forcing drivers to hastily squeeze to the far edges of the road, making room where there is …

In England, the word black (originally spelt “blæk”), from its Germanic/Dutch root “blah”/“blaken,” first appears in Old English around 1210, meaning “absolutely dark, absorbing all light, the colour of soot or coal” [www.etymonline.com]. Interestingly, “blac” from the same root, meant: “bright, shining, glittering, pale.” Linked to fire, the two meanings …

“The English language has its roots in a savage historical racism and pride,” (Chris Searle, White Words, Black People, 1972). The words “black” and “white” in Searle’s book-title echo the dialectic in Frantz Fanon’s Peau Noire, Masques Blancs (1952). Indeed, Searle acknowledges his reliance on the English edition, Black Skin, …