Tag Archives: race

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 …

“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 …

Liverpool star Mohamed Salah marked his World Cup debut with a goal this afternoon but it was not enough to stave off Egypt’s elimination from the 2018 World Cup, as they fell 3-1 to Russia in St Petersburg. Russia have one foot in the knockout round already now and both …

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 …

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 …

On Monday March 12, Quartz Media, a respectable, business-oriented, online publication carried an article by film critic, Echo Huang. It was headlined: “A torture for the eyes: Chinese moviegoers think Black Panther is just too black.” The punch line in Huang’s story was provided by a “reviewer on Douban,” which …

Ancient Egyptians believed that a person’s name, the “rn” (ren), was “the foundation of a being as an individual.” A person’s name had a power of its own and lived as long as it was spoken; thus, the proverb, “To speak one’s name is to make him live again.” This …

Superhero comics were created to boost the image of whites as the world’s progenitors and purveyors of justice, peace and security. Likewise, Hollywood has earned its reputation as the quintessential flagbearer of American cultural imperialism for well over a century. The two cultural agencies have had a long, intimate relationship. …

“The desire for a new and just society, therefore, could only be achieved by replacing the old institutions with new ones. The generation of the 1970s thus saw its mission as the removal of these alien impositions and the mobilisation of our population for the building of a new foundation …

“Most of us Indians didn’t like Eric Williams and his PNM and would be glad to see them go. But we had no interest in seeing the Eric Williams black gang replaced by another black gang led by Granger/Daaga and company. “[…] Once Williams had got the news that a …

Someday in the future, when Trinbago nationalism becomes a common experience across our multifaceted demographic, February 1970 will surely be memorialised collectively as the month that precipitated the most significant events in the history of the two-island state since Emancipation. I am motivated to write this piece not only because …

“[Joan] Rampersad’s ‘December’ section highlighted the relocation of Desperadoes Steel Orchestra, a film featuring the Mighty Sparrow, the trial of soca artistes Machel Montano and Kernal Roberts, and the QED, Lydians and Marionettes Christmas concerts. Not a single Indian cultural event was mentioned.” The following Letter to the Editor, which charges …