Is Dr. Rowley Too Black To Become Trinidad’s PM?

By Lincoln Depradine
Pride Contributing Writer

I’ll wager that Fitzgerald Hinds, the former People’s National Movement (PNM) senator of Trinidad & Tobago, must still be reeling from left and right jabs and the uppercuts he received from the pens and keyboards of political commentators.

What sparked the torrent of fury and raised the ire of the scribes were comments on skin colour, relative to Dr. Keith Rowley, T&T’s opposition leader and head of the PNM.

This is what started the brouhaha: a front page headline in the Express titled, “Rowley too black for PM”. The story accompanying the headline quotes Hinds relating a discussion he said he had with an unnamed former PNM cabinet minister.

According to Hinds: “He (the former cabinet minister) said to me that he had just come from a meeting with a couple of other former ministers and some businessmen… (who) told me, shockingly, that the only issue that came up in objection (to Keith Rowley) was that we had never had such a dark-skinned prime minister.’’

Well, blows started to rain down on the Rastafarian brother, Hinds.

Sir Ronald Sanders, the former Antiguan diplomat, reacted by saying, “there is nothing in the Caribbean’s political history that discredits its leaders of dark complexion’’.

Sir Ronald went on: “To the international listener, Trinidad and Tobago must have seemed like a very odd place – one which is concerned with gradations of blackness as a qualification for its leaders in a world where the majority of leaders are of the very dark complexion about which Mr. Hinds (and apparently others) hold out reservations.

“That in 2014, almost two centuries after slavery was abolished with all the shades of colour that made slaves more valuable only according to the whims of slave owners, complexion still preoccupies the minds of persons who hold (or held) offices of state, is a tragic commentary on those persons.’’

Author and commentator, Jai Parasram, chimed in that Hinds, “a man who has held ministerial posts and has been a senator, should know better than to try to create division in the society based on race. That is what Hinds is desperately trying to do’’.

Trinidad & Tobago, said Parasram, “is an ethnically diverse (country) and any one of us could be prime minister’’.

The argument is made that Hinds – a Rowley supporter – made up this whole thing to help Rowley, who will soon be facing a PNM leadership challenge from Ms. Penelope Beckles-Robinson.

I won’t rule out the possibility that the Rastaman may have concocted the story.

However, what I find incredulous and startling is the notion that skin colour prejudice is rare or an oddity in Caribbean society; or, it would be farfetched for anyone – politician, businessman or labourer – to vocalize that someone in his or her Caribbean country in 2014 is “too black” to be prime minister.

Colour prejudice is one of the legacies of the slave and colonial systems that ranked people in a pecking order, where white pigmentation was the most valued skin colour and was a passport to unmerited rewards; with “red’’ people second; followed by the “brown’’ man and woman; with blacks at the bottom of the ladder.

I remember some months ago in the Caribbean, in a conversation with a University of the West Indies professor, I referred to former Grenada Prime Minister Tillman Thomas as a “brown man’’.

The professor’s response was, “Isn’t he black?’’

I told the goodly prof that in the context of the Caribbean’s colour scheme, Thomas is “brown’’.

Parasram, Sanders and most other Caribbean people would deny that “colourism’’ – prejudice based on skin colour – is an existential reality and is a feature in the day-to-day lives of people in the region. Some may even be ignorant of the fact.

But “colourism’’ is played out almost unconsciously in daily life. Just listen attentively to everyday language-use, even among families where descriptors like “the child with nice colour and pretty hair’’ are proffered nonchalantly in reference to a kid with light complexion and soft hair.

He or she is to be contrasted with the other “darker’’ or black child in the family, with not-too-infrequent complaints about the texture of his or her hard, nappy hair.

There is reason why, in some countries, a thriving industry has sprung up over the purchase and use of bleaching products to make dark skin a lighter shade of black or brown.

The fact that the majority of Caribbean leaders since independence has been black – in the Caribbean and North American definition of the word – in no wise means that discussions of the “blackness’’ or colour or the ethnicity of the contending leaders never occur.

In fact, I have the personal experience of hearing politicians on a campaign platform, and party supporters at a political rally, attacking an opponent on his “blackness’’.

And black leaders do get elected because, ultimately, other factors trump the skin colour issue in the majority’s choice of a national leader and in voting for a political party in a general election. As Sanders rightly puts it, “it is leadership, vision, proficiency and commitment that all political parties everywhere need,’’ and – I may add – these are indeed considered by the electorate and influence their final leadership decision, even where many of the more backward-thinking remain uncomfortable with the blackness of the leader.

Brother Valentino, in one of his vintage calypsoes, sang: “When carnival come and gone, the people does go back to their race and class; so the only thing to bring us together is mas’’.

Perhaps, the different colours are together in the same mas’ band; not necessarily in the same sections of the same band. Take a good look at the next carnival you attend in the Caribbean or North America.

“Colourism’’ in the Caribbean, like racism in North America and Europe, is an uncomfortable topic. However, it doesn’t mean that they should be denied.

Both should be discussed with the objective of their elimination.