The column below by Michael Harris was reproduced from the Trinidad Express
I sat and watched the video in stunned amazement and horror. I simply could not believe what I was hearing spewing out of the mouth of the young lady in the video. It was a tirade of the vilest, most obscene, most racist, most incendiary language imaginable. By the time the video ended I was in a state of suspended cognitive animation.
What made it worse is that I had watched the video shortly after writing a short eulogy mourning the death of Pat Bishop. I had been genuinely distressed by Ms Bishop's death understanding instinctively what an irreparable loss of capacity for development it meant for the country.
Then I watched that video. When my brain began to function again, one question kept repeating itself over and over again in my mind. How did we come to this? How did we move from a society, a culture, a race, which could produce a Pat Bishop, an exemplar of civility and grace, as I had referred to her in my eulogy, to one which could produce "Granny Quila", the very antithesis of civility and grace?
Pat Bishop was 71 years old when she died. The young lady in the video is said to be 13 or 14. What happened in that intervening span of time, those 50-plus years, which so diverted and distorted our path and progress from the development of a true civilisation to this state of putrefaction exemplified by "Granny Quila"?
A sociologist would no doubt tell us that many things happened in those intervening years which might be cited as contributory factors to us losing our way. In those years the world has turned many times and every time it turns it radically alters the environment in which we and our children have to adapt and develop.
The sociologist would no doubt be correct. But we cannot leave the answer there. For the task of development, of building a civilisation for our people, is precisely the task of adapting to our changing environment without losing sight of our vision and our values. In other words the world did not cause us to lose our way; we lost our way because we failed to come to terms with the world and to maintain, in spite of the world, our vision of a civilisation for ourselves.
So the world is what it is and does what it does. The real answer to our question therefore has to do with what we as a people and, more importantly in the context of this question, what we as a race, did in those intervening years that caused us to lose our way. And, in that context, we cannot avoid the recognition and the realisation that, in those intervening years we tied ourselves, most of us, uncritically and unreservedly, to the People's National Movement (PNM) and that party led us down the garden path.
Those intervening years between Pat Bishop and "Granny Quila" were also, for the most part, the years of our political independence. And our years of political independence have also been, again for the most part, years of PNM dominance and hegemony.
When the PNM came on the scene it articulated for us the vision which we had held in our hearts for many generations before, the vision which our forefathers had worked towards through long days of labour and nights devoid of ease. The PNM was to be the movement which we would use to realise for ourselves the dream of the ages; a race, a society and a civilisation, free, independent and secure.
But that movement all too swiftly proved itself unequal to the task and became corrupted. And instead of the vision—of political education, morality in public affairs, "bandung" solidarity, strong local government and economic independence—which it had promised, that party began to feed its supporters a steady diet of racist toxicity mixed with cargo cult mentality.
We were told in so many ways and through so many symbols and signals that because we were black the world owed us a living, that because we were black we could get something for nothing, that because we were black we could reap what we had not sown, that because we were black we did not have to face the consequences of our actions or inactions. Little Eric was our shepherd and as long as we kept the PNM in power we would not want nor have to work for whatever we wanted.
"Granny Quila" is not an only child. She is sister to tens of thousands of siblings, the spawn of the abomination which the PNM has become. Over the decades and through successive generations this debilitating poison was passed from mother to child so that today those children of the PNM live lives of utterly distorted and corrupted perspectives.
They have no ambitions, just expectations of being taken care of; they have no standards or values, just the need to have their desires satisfied whenever they want. They have no concept of the world and they hardly even comprehend that there are, or can be, other modes of existence.
The irony is that they have long cut their umbilical cord from the PNM. Bred as election fodder they now have no particular allegiance to that party. Their only allegiance is to themselves and their only concern is to make sure the manna from heaven keeps coming or to take it themselves any which way they can.
"Granny Quila" may be a traumatised "child" but she and her siblings have traumatised this society for years now to the point where we are so desperate that we are willing give up our civil rights to win a temporary respite from their depredations. But it is not going to happen that way.
The fact is that these "children" may have been spawned by the PNM but they are our children, they live in our house, and we must accept that they are our responsibility for there is no "children's home" to which we can send them to get rid of the problem.
We have to face it and deal with it through a long process of re-education, through the restoration of discipline at all levels of the society and through the re-establishment of some basic societal values which we lost along the way. But to do any of that we have to fix our politics first.
* Mr Harris has been for many years a writer and commentator on politics and society in Trinidad and the wider Caribbean. He is a long-standing member of the Tapia House Group and works as a human resource executive.
I sat and watched the video in stunned amazement and horror. I simply could not believe what I was hearing spewing out of the mouth of the young lady in the video. It was a tirade of the vilest, most obscene, most racist, most incendiary language imaginable. By the time the video ended I was in a state of suspended cognitive animation.
What made it worse is that I had watched the video shortly after writing a short eulogy mourning the death of Pat Bishop. I had been genuinely distressed by Ms Bishop's death understanding instinctively what an irreparable loss of capacity for development it meant for the country.
Then I watched that video. When my brain began to function again, one question kept repeating itself over and over again in my mind. How did we come to this? How did we move from a society, a culture, a race, which could produce a Pat Bishop, an exemplar of civility and grace, as I had referred to her in my eulogy, to one which could produce "Granny Quila", the very antithesis of civility and grace?
Pat Bishop was 71 years old when she died. The young lady in the video is said to be 13 or 14. What happened in that intervening span of time, those 50-plus years, which so diverted and distorted our path and progress from the development of a true civilisation to this state of putrefaction exemplified by "Granny Quila"?
A sociologist would no doubt tell us that many things happened in those intervening years which might be cited as contributory factors to us losing our way. In those years the world has turned many times and every time it turns it radically alters the environment in which we and our children have to adapt and develop.
The sociologist would no doubt be correct. But we cannot leave the answer there. For the task of development, of building a civilisation for our people, is precisely the task of adapting to our changing environment without losing sight of our vision and our values. In other words the world did not cause us to lose our way; we lost our way because we failed to come to terms with the world and to maintain, in spite of the world, our vision of a civilisation for ourselves.
So the world is what it is and does what it does. The real answer to our question therefore has to do with what we as a people and, more importantly in the context of this question, what we as a race, did in those intervening years that caused us to lose our way. And, in that context, we cannot avoid the recognition and the realisation that, in those intervening years we tied ourselves, most of us, uncritically and unreservedly, to the People's National Movement (PNM) and that party led us down the garden path.
Those intervening years between Pat Bishop and "Granny Quila" were also, for the most part, the years of our political independence. And our years of political independence have also been, again for the most part, years of PNM dominance and hegemony.
When the PNM came on the scene it articulated for us the vision which we had held in our hearts for many generations before, the vision which our forefathers had worked towards through long days of labour and nights devoid of ease. The PNM was to be the movement which we would use to realise for ourselves the dream of the ages; a race, a society and a civilisation, free, independent and secure.
But that movement all too swiftly proved itself unequal to the task and became corrupted. And instead of the vision—of political education, morality in public affairs, "bandung" solidarity, strong local government and economic independence—which it had promised, that party began to feed its supporters a steady diet of racist toxicity mixed with cargo cult mentality.
We were told in so many ways and through so many symbols and signals that because we were black the world owed us a living, that because we were black we could get something for nothing, that because we were black we could reap what we had not sown, that because we were black we did not have to face the consequences of our actions or inactions. Little Eric was our shepherd and as long as we kept the PNM in power we would not want nor have to work for whatever we wanted.
"Granny Quila" is not an only child. She is sister to tens of thousands of siblings, the spawn of the abomination which the PNM has become. Over the decades and through successive generations this debilitating poison was passed from mother to child so that today those children of the PNM live lives of utterly distorted and corrupted perspectives.
They have no ambitions, just expectations of being taken care of; they have no standards or values, just the need to have their desires satisfied whenever they want. They have no concept of the world and they hardly even comprehend that there are, or can be, other modes of existence.
The irony is that they have long cut their umbilical cord from the PNM. Bred as election fodder they now have no particular allegiance to that party. Their only allegiance is to themselves and their only concern is to make sure the manna from heaven keeps coming or to take it themselves any which way they can.
"Granny Quila" may be a traumatised "child" but she and her siblings have traumatised this society for years now to the point where we are so desperate that we are willing give up our civil rights to win a temporary respite from their depredations. But it is not going to happen that way.
The fact is that these "children" may have been spawned by the PNM but they are our children, they live in our house, and we must accept that they are our responsibility for there is no "children's home" to which we can send them to get rid of the problem.
We have to face it and deal with it through a long process of re-education, through the restoration of discipline at all levels of the society and through the re-establishment of some basic societal values which we lost along the way. But to do any of that we have to fix our politics first.
* Mr Harris has been for many years a writer and commentator on politics and society in Trinidad and the wider Caribbean. He is a long-standing member of the Tapia House Group and works as a human resource executive.
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