01 December 1998, 930 words
Bigots love labels. At the crudest level, they use epithets like "nigger" and "coolie" and "faggots." But there is also fancier labeling by the ethnic activists, who favour terms like "African", "Indian", "Afro-Christian", "Hindu", "urban" "creole" "Western" "Asian" and so on - as if anyone, let alone Trinidadians, could be so neatly defined.
Both types of labeling have the same roots: psychological insecurity and/or intellectual puerility. Both the bigots and the ethnocentrists (the difference is one of vocabulary and public behaviour, rather than attitude) are quite incapable of dealing with the messiness of reality, and are totally terrified of the complexity of the Trinidadian society.
I am making a distinction here between "naming" and "labeling." Naming is a fundamental aspect of human thinking. Children spend their first three years of life doing little else but finding out what things are called (except sleeping, eating and pooping, I mean.) In adulthood, this process - naming, that is - continues as part of our way of organizing abstract realities. But the boxes we construct are just conveniences, and the effective human being always keeps a lid conveniently raised on his various categories. This allows us to deal with the real world in a logical and flexible way. "Labeling", on the other hand, always involves oversimplification. Its intent is not to match word to fact, but to alter perceptions of reality.
That intent is always pragmatic, in the sense that it is an attempt to wield political power. (Selwyn Cudjoe and Kumar Mahabir are the prime examples of this.) But, intellectually, it is all a load of doo-doo, if you'll pardon my French. The idea that racial traits make people behave differently from one another (as distinct from to one another) is simply not borne out by reality. Devant Maharaj and Rajnie Ramlakhan, for example, would probably deny vehemently that they are culturally the same as Dr. Mansoor Ibrahim or Nafeesa Mohammed. Yet Hindus and Muslims share 97 percent of the same cultural values, according to a survey published last year in the Anthropological Survey of India. Such values, out of 776 traits identified, include monogamy, patrilocal residence, marriage by negotiation, marriage within the community, succession by elder son, and participation in fairs and festivals. They also belong to the same ethnic group. One can only conclude, therefore, that the opposition between the two religions is political (or that God has a most peculiar sense of humour.)
Ironically, both racists and ethnic activists tend to define themselves and other people exclusively through culture (in the narrow meaning of the term). This one beats book, that one beats pan. Political scientist Samuel Huntington, author of The Clash of Civilizations, has lent ammunition to these people by arguing that the great divisions of the coming century will be cultural rather than political or economic.
But such a hypothesis is very dicey, because culture itself is never fixed. Also, most human beings tend to identify with national or ethnic groups, rather than "civilizations" , as Huntington argues. A1995 poll found that 70 percent of persons in European Union countries, for example, thought of themselves in purely national terms. In other societies, national loyalties also seem predominant. Nor is this self-perception a consequence of the modern nation-state. The members of the main ethnic group inhabiting the Caribbean 500 years ago didn't call themselves Tainos, but Ciguayoans or Lucayans, according to whether they lived in Haiti or the Bahamas. (Taino means "good" or "noble", and the group Columbus first encountered used the term to distinguish themselves from the Caribs, who they said weren't.)
Because the local idea of ethnicity is usually bound up with religion, ethnocentrists tend to believe that specific cultural traits are inherent i.e. given by God. They argue that it is these traits which define civilizations (Western, Hindu, African, Islamic) and, by extension, the individuals whose ancestors came from these civilizations. This is both nonsensical and racist. Natural scientist Jared Diamond, rejecting such perspectives, has suggested that biogeographical factors are what have really determined which civilizations, especially that of Western Europe, became dominant. He points out that the shift from nomadism to settlement in human culture meant that agriculture became the defining factor in civilization-building. The Mediterranean's fertile crescent had significant advantages: the most continuous climate in the world favouring early forms of cultivation; 32 of the world's 56 types of large seeded grasses (cereals); and 13 of the 14 big domesticated mammals descended from wild species found only in Eurasia and North Africa. Domestication in turn was a major factor in ensuring Europeans carried diseases fatal to everyone but themselves when they went exploring in the 15th century.
Even the most abstract artifacts of culture, such as ideas and religion, do not become influential without very concrete factors supporting them. Greek philosophy, for instance, did not make its great leap until after the Athenians started fully exploiting the silver mines of the Laurium hills; Christianity didn't have any real influence until Constantine threw the organization of the Roman Empire behind it; and Islam was spread through conquest.
In the coming millennium, the success of a society or a civilization will probably depend on four tightly connected institutions: knowledge, economics, government and, yes, culture. But to ascribe "civilization" to culture alone, and to make it the basis of divisions within our newly-minted Trini culture, is simplistic and futile: which is exactly why the ethnocentrists do exactly that. But if our society buys into this dotishness about religion, race and ethnicity, we will end up being barbaric and futile ourselves. And we'll deserve whatever happens next.
Copyright ©1998, Kevin Baldeosingh