Pereira: Make race the new reality

WITH the general election reopening the Pandora's box of race and racism, RC priest Msgr Christian Pereira believes the time is right for the people of TT to embrace the reality of the taboo subject of race.

“We must learn to make race the new reality that brings us to a greater respect for ourselves, a deeper appreciation of each other, a commitment to rekindling the communion we all need and the new experience of enabling all of us to evolve to a better version of our true selves.”

Pereira, the parish priest at St Benedict’s RC Church, La Romaine, said, “We can no longer be afraid of race.

“We are all required to embrace our own racial reality, even the dougla and cocoa panyol, and appreciate each other so that we help each other to become the community we are called to be as children of Mother Trinidad and Tobago, living the joy of evolving to be the people we are created to be.”

He said for many years people were guided by an unwritten convention that race should not be discussed but better left alone. He said that allowed race to evolve as a reality “that would haunt us."

But, he said, “Like covid19, we cannot see it as a problem. The truth is, we have come to realise that it is a real problem that makes life difficult for all our citizens. As a people we seem to not know how to have a conversation about race. We do not know what people really think or feel and maybe we ourselves are not sure how we really feel about it.”

He called on people to take example from the experience of the late African American Muslim minister and human rights activist Malcolm X who once rejected an offer by a young co-ed white woman who, inspired by him, wanted to work with him.

Pereira said it was not years later that on a trip to make Hajj in Mecca a mature Malcolm X discovered people of different races, colours and nationalities believed in the same thing he believed in.

“That was his conversion moment. He returned to the US and continued his commitment to improve race relations by including all persons who were equally committed regardless of their colour or their race.

“He no longer vilified white people as he once did. He told ‘sincere individuals’ of all races to work in conjunction with them to find all other people who can feel as they do to work trying to convert people who are thinking and acting so racist.

“So, sincere people of all races, there is much you can do. You can start with ensuring those who have skewed views of fairness and harbour racist views come to an understanding of the term race.”

Race to him was an acronym which stood for "respect, appreciation, communion, evolving.

“Respect for ourselves not because of our colour or ethnicity but deeper than that, a self-respect that recognises our own personal humanity and our connection with all of God’s creation as described in Genesis. Appreciation of who others are. The humans who are all created in the image and likeness of the God who created me in the same image and likeness.

“For the communion we are called to create and develop among all God’s people. Communion frees us and sustains us. A lack of communion imprisons us thereby robbing us of our freedom to be open and trusting and deprives us of sustenance.

He evoked an “the evolving reality that brings us closer with each other, appreciative of each other and respectful of ourselves.”