Kamla: Race relations between Europe and people of colour has progressed

Former school teacher Victor Edward, 100-year-old Jassoo Sookram and Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar were honoured at GOPIO’s Indian Arrival Day dinner at the Chagauanas Borough Corporation Auditorium, on Saturday.
Former school teacher Victor Edward, 100-year-old Jassoo Sookram and Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar were honoured at GOPIO’s Indian Arrival Day dinner at the Chagauanas Borough Corporation Auditorium, on Saturday.

PRINCE Harry’s marriage to bi-racial American actress Meghan Markle on Saturday was hailed as an “exciting day in history” by Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar.

Speaking at the local chapter of the Global Organisation of People of Indian Origin (GOPIO) Indian Arrival Day dinner at the Chaguanas Borough Corporation, Persad-Bissessar said the marriage of a member of the British Royal family and the daughter of an American middle-class family demonstrated there was only one race: the human race. She said she interacted with the Royal family when she was the Chair-in-Office of the Commonwealth nations in 2011, and to witness the marriage of Prince Harry to Markle, “a woman of colour,” showed that the world was at a “good place in history” in terms of race relations. She said the funeral of the late Dr Morgan Job had also reminded her about the equality of the races. Persad-Bissessar said race relations between white Europeans and people of colour had progress. She also shared some of her experiences as a teenager in the UK.

“At a very early age I learned “if you not white, then you are black” and that is what it is in the world,” she said.

She said this “hostile environment” wasb created by the British who also created animosity between the freed African slaves and the indentured Indian labourers who came to Trinidad to work on the sugar cane estates.

“It was all a part of a British plan to get the former slaves off the land and replace them with cheap labour from India. So from the very beginning this sinister British plan created animosity between the two main ethnic groups that make up our country. The freed blacks wanted a fair wage of two shillings a day to work on the plantations as free men and women; the planters refused because they knew that there was a plentiful supply of cheaper labour on the other side of the planet so traders and bureaucrats colluded to export Indians as scab labour to work for a shilling a day on fixed contracts that prevented any attempt to negotiate a better deal.” Persad-Bissessar said the indentured labourers were able to survive as they were allowed to keep their culture, their dress, their languages, their religions.

“And that freedom they cherished, and held on to, in order to survive and move beyond survival.

Three people were honoured at the function which included Persad-Bissessar, 100-year old Jassoo Sookram, and former teacher Victor Edwards.

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