Race, responsibility, cowardice of power

THE EDITOR: When the PNM warns that the UNC is “targeting” constituencies largely populated by black citizens, it is not exposing the UNC, it is exposing itself. After more than 60 years of political dominance in many of these same communities, the PNM is admitting, in real time, that those areas remain underdeveloped, crime-ridden, socially fragile, and politically exploitable. That is not a campaign talking point; it is a confession of failure.

If black communities are still lagging after decades of uninterrupted PNM representation, then the blame does not lie with an opposing party sniffing for votes. It lies squarely with the party that held power and failed to act decisively when it mattered.

The PNM’s favourite refuge has always been the claim that opportunities were “equally available.” That argument is not only tired; it is dishonest. Outcomes matter, not slogans. The PNM itself acknowledged inequality when, under Patrick Manning, it proposed targeted programmes for so-called “at-risk” youth, code for young black men abandoned by the state. Scholarships, skills training, and social interventions were not racial indulgences; they were belated responses to structural neglect backed by data.

The UNC, however, cannot pretend innocence. As a national party it was called upon to support initiatives rooted in genuine national interest, serious interventions aimed at stabilising communities, building skills, and interrupting cycles of marginalisation. It chose instead to retreat into the safe cocoon of opposition politics. Rather than engage the substance of the proposals, it defaulted to obstruction, cloaking political expediency in the language of racial grievance. In doing so, the UNC failed black youth and cannot escape the reality of its complicity.

The same pattern emerged with national service for young people. What should have been debated as a nation-building exercise was deliberately distorted and weaponised as an attempt to “douglarise” the country. Facts were ignored. Fear was cultivated. The national interest was sacrificed at the altar of partisan survival.

Yet the ultimate betrayal came from the PNM itself. Faced with resistance and fearful of electoral consequences, it folded. It lacked the courage to defend evidence-based policy and abandoned the very youth it claimed to champion. That is not governance under pressure; it is cowardice in office.

This reflex to deny, deflect, and suppress inconvenient truths runs deep. When Prof Courtenay Bartholomew presented data showing that black students were being systematically excluded from medical programmes, he was not engaged; he was attacked by the same people identified as the UNC support base. They closed ranks to protect their carefully constructed domain. The evidence was never disproved; it was buried.

Colonialism laid the groundwork for this dysfunction. Afro-Trinidadians were systematically disconnected from Africa and anything African stripped of a coherent spiritual and cultural anchor. Into that vacuum stepped political loyalty. The PNM became more than a party; it became a substitute identity promising hope, and it did. The benefits of free education and healthcare and development of the energy infrastructure cannot be denied, but it ultimately delivering stagnation.

European Christianity, imposed through violence, fulfilled its purpose: mental subjugation. African spiritual systems demonised. Even in ensuring Christianity as the dominant religious beliefs upon enslaved Africans, the colonial administrators ensured that Ethiopian Christianity, rich with black imagery and self-recognition, was marginalised. A theology of dignity was replaced with a theology of obedience.

Afro-Trinidadians anchored their political identity to the PNM. Indo-Trinidadians, by contrast, preserved strong cultural and religious institutions from which political organisation naturally flowed. This is not accusation; its an observation. One group retained cultural autonomy, the other outsourced it to a political party. The consequences are visible and enduring.

Yet, we are still encouraged to argue about surnames, ships, and racial dog whistles, as if these distractions explain poverty, exclusion, and underdevelopment. They do not. They merely shield failure from accountability.

Development does not emerge from rhetoric. Leadership is not inherited through party loyalty. And nation-building cannot occur when political survival is valued above truth.

The PNM failed black communities through fear and inaction. The UNC failed black youth through obstruction and complicity. Until both realities are confronted honestly and without euphemism, nothing will change.

DERYCK RICHARDSON

via e-mail