Amery Browne
Much of the US campaign season has been dominated by Donald Trump and his pronouncements. There are frequent expressions of concern over the intolerance that characterises his rhetoric, and over the possibility, no matter how remote, that he could become the next so-called Leader of the Free World.
The easy part would be to engage in hand-wringing over the rise of Trump and what it says about the people of the United States; the more important challenge would be to look within ourselves in the Trinidad and Tobago society and identify traits and tendencies that we might actually share with that alleged standard-bearer of intolerance.
We are certainly not as immune to xenophobia as some of us might think. Just think back to the popular reactions to the circulation of photos that suggested that persons of Chinese origin were indulging in some canine cuisine. Numerous people including the then Minister of Health were open and comfortable with utterances that blatantly contributed to the further stigmatisation of “those persons sneaking in here from China.”
Let us not forget the enduring sentiment that associates some crime and most poverty with “small island” immigrants to Trinidad and Tobago. If we ignore the obvious irony of any of us pontificating on the nature of people from small islands we are still left to confront a disturbingly Trump-like propensity to blame our problems on “them”; on those we perceive as outsiders and outliers.
Consider as well the negative reaction of many of our fellow citizens to the protests against perceived nightclub discrimination. Surely we should have matured enough as a society to recognise that in a democracy there will always be people who would express concerns that are vastly different to your own concerns.
The fact that the same things that move them do not move you does not negate their right or even duty to address injustice as they see it. But yet we expend so much energy in railing against such expressions, and in shouting rhetoric that includes why don’t you instead protest against x or y.
It may not be your personal cause of choice, but at the end of the day isn’t every one of us entitled to feel respected and at home in this place, notwithstanding whether or not someone choses to wear what our police service might refer to as a pants-like substance.
If you still think the Trinbago nexus to “trump” is limited only to the local game of All Fours, give some consideration to the manner in which some of us use Facebook (maybe in our jurisdiction it could be labelled as Racebook). There is the phenomenon of several FB groups of various political affiliations, some of which are closed or secret, whose membership is comprised of people who share a philosophy that is sometimes expressed as raw racism.
This spills over into the general engagement and participation, but it is within such groups that the most provocative photos, memes, myths, anecdotes and affirmations of prejudice are shared and digested.
Large groups, feeding daily on the most empty rhetoric designed to rally the most basal and hostile emotions with talk of Rowley going south to engage in “necromancy” and Kamla spraying “blood and religious fluids” from helicopters. I don’t know about you, but that reminds me of some of the rhetoric spewed by a certain ambitious billionaire.
There’s much more to be explored on the topic, but consider as well Trump’s consistent and pernicious focus on people of the Islamic faith. While many of us here carry a facade of religious tolerance, this is often belied by our quiet conversations amongst ourselves when people of like mind are gathered.
That is when the vicious anti-small church, and anti-Hindu, and anti-Muslim and anti-Catholic and anti-Baptist inter alia rhetoric emerges. Such characteristics do not require a tan and a bad hair piece in order to take root.
Perhaps a real test of our society’s religious tolerance or intolerance would be to consider our reaction to the prospect of one day a Member of Parliament being sworn in live on television, but in a ceremony with a difference. He or she would begin by being covered with paint and feathers, then after self-inducing vomiting would swear an oath to “zemi”, dancing all the while on legs covered with shells.
Would we warmly embrace such traditional expression of the beliefs of the First Peoples of this land in which we live, or would we recoil in horror and shout (and I quote) “get them out of here”? Honestly.