Throwing my request in with Maximillian. I would really like to see an extended blog entry from you. I too was reading Munasinghe and in my gut, felt uncomfortable with parts of her analysis, but struggled — is it because I think ‘outsiders’ will never get it? do they or do they not have any contribution to make or are they just furthering their own careers? Anyway, thank you for helping me understand why her book made me uncomfortable.

little busy right now. but in the near future i could try to put something together.

all the best

Identity

By Rikki Jai

De bogey of race stares me in my face anywhere I go
Like ah time bomb ticking, waiting to explode
But as ah East Indian Trinbagonian, ah want you know
Here’s where I stand in that scenario
When ah sing Hindi and ah sing chutney, dat’s mih heritage
East Indian drums echo from a land outside ah mih sight
But when I sing kaiso and ah sing soca, dat’s mih privilege
Mih blood, mih sweat, mih joy and mih copyright

‘Cause I’m ah Trinbagonian, I’m ah born Trini
I’m ah chutney champion, all ah dat is me
And I’m ah Trinbagonian, I’m ah born Trini
I create my music in English and Hindi.
But I’m a freedom fighter with both mih guns aglow
You see ah blazing a trail in chutney and calypso
Ah want de world to know
Ah blazin a trail in chutney and calypso.

Let de record show dat dis Trinbago, which I love so dear
It has well prepared me to go anywhere
But as I walk de earth, I does feel so hurt ’cause I’m well aware
The racist bogey still prevalent out dey
In Trinidad we got such a melting pot to appreciate
‘Cause we are a microcosm of the whole world
Things like tolerance, I must advance, not bias or hate
I will never see light through a crack or a pigeon hole.

‘Cause I’m ah Trinbagonian, I’m ah born Trini
I’m ah chutney champion, all ah dat is me
I’m ah Trinbagonian, I’m a born Trini
I create my music in English and Hindi.
But I ‘m a freedom fighter with both mih guns aglow
So ah blazing a trail in chutney and calypso
Sparrow tell me so,
He say to blaze a trail in chutney and calypso.

There a pride that I feel that words can’t reveal
But if yuh sensitive, you will feel it flowing,
I wont have to tell
Ah walk off mih job just to join this club, my all to give
To be an international chantuelle
I’m no hit and miss, fly by night artist, but a committed soul
Ent Ato Boldon does run de one and de two?
Likewise with mih chutney and mih soca guns
I’m attacking dem twofold
And every laurel I win, yuh know ah win it fuh you.

‘Cause I’m ah Trinbagonian, I’m ah born Trini
I’m ah young King champion champion, all ah dat is me
And I’m ah Trinbagonian, I’m ah born Trini
I create my music in English and Hindi.
But I’m ah freedom fighter with both mih guns aglow
So ah blazing ah trail in chutney and calypso
Sparrow tell me so,
He say to blaze ah trail in chutney and calypso.

Examine this world, there’s some special souls
Who transcend their race
Despite eyes or hair or country of their birth
Their philosophy and humanity defy time and space
The whole planet feels their influence and their worth
Let me imitate, I must emulate all these great examples
Of men who teach the world we one before God
Through mih chutney songs and mih calypsos, let me touch my people
So my worth could be measured in gold for the road I trod.

‘Cause I’m ah Trinbagonian, I’m ah born Trini
I’m a chutney champion, all ah dat is me
I’m ah Trinbagonian, I’m ah born Trini
I create my music in English and Hindi.
But I’m a freedom fighter with both mih guns aglow
So ah blazing ah trail in chutney and calypso
Kitchy tell me so,
He say to blaze ah trail in chutney and calypso.

‘Cause I’m ah Trinbagonian, I’m a born Trini
I’m a chutney champion champion, all ah dat is me
I’m ah Trinbagonian, I’m ah born Trini
I create my music in English and Hindi.
But I’m a freedom fighter with both mih guns aglow
So ah blazing ah trail in chutney and calypso
Sparrow tell me so,
He say to blaze ah trail in chutney and calypso.
Kitchy tell me so,
He say to blaze ah trail in chutney and calypso.
Stalin tell me so,
He say to blaze ah trail in chutney and calypso.
Sundar tell me so,
He say to blaze ah trail in chutney and calypso.
Ah want yuh know,
Ah blazing ah trail in chutney and calypso.
Tell de world I say,
Ah blazing ah trail in chutney and calypso.
Ah want de world to know,
Ah go blaze ah trail in chutney and calypso.
All for Trinbago,
Ah go blaze ah trail in chutney and calypso.
Ah want de world to know,
Ah go blaze ah trail in chutney and calypso…..

While the aforementioned stereotypes and racist labels do, when required, provide negative connotations of place and origin they also indicate the possibility of movement not only for wearers of the labels but also if the wider society do not agree the label fits the visual characteristics of the person being labelled. As any one of mixed parentage can attest

In urban Trinidad both speakers and subjects, in articulation with varied notions of culture, age, gender, class and religion, evoke ethnic nicknames, demeanors, language to situate social identities depending on social situations. Or put another way, claiming and identifying with certain ethnic groups/designations for particular historical, social, economic or cultural opportunities and everyday situations through the use of ethnic stereotypes and labels is part of ‘banal nationalism,’ and hence part of being a productive Trinbagonian citizen. Everyone knows the meaning and history of the derogatory labels hence everyone can manipulate them, get the joke, be offended or not – this is 2008 not the 1940s.

Socio-ethnic mixing and the malleability of ethnic position as a metaphor for nation-building, rather than solidity of stereotype is for me a more accurate reading of the existence of many different and sometimes unclear faces.

It is something Munasinghe’s 2001 book with its Indo-centric standpoint premised on the ‘original ancestral categories’ held onto by her informants in an isolated rural village who see creolisation as a blackening process rather than a creative one influenced by many different ethnic others fails to recognise. (although i do sympathise about the base meaning of the word – but find me another label to describe the mixing that has taken place over the last 130yrs and we’re good to go)

I personally get the impression her personal understandings of race and ethnicities that are tied into wider Euro-American ideologies of race fail her and cannot properly articulate nor imagine the everyday ability many Trinidadians possess to move up and down a colour continuum, something that happens in ‘town’ all the time, and especially amongst those aged 15 -30. (and yes its different for different grades of skin tone, but that doesnt change the fact that people move up and down the continuum many times a day).

As such Munasinghe sees ‘difference-making’ as a process of exclusion where she would be better to read it as a contradictory process of mixing and division that are basic elements in a localised T&T form of banal nationalism.

The Afro/Indo racial classification in T&T, which Munasinghe relies upon, what some would argue is an extension of the original white/non-white dichotomy, is an inadequate and misleading way to enter discussion of ethnic naming and labelling in T&T. Locals don’t – why should foreign anthropologists.

As other authors like Stoddard and Cornwell, Khan point out, Trinidad understands itself as a mixed society. This is not a claim to M.G. Smith’s concept of cultural pluralism where different groups foreground their cultural distinctiveness, their unique histories, practices, experiences and protect their diverse heritages, but rather it is a claim to and i had to go and look this one up – for “an alternative vision…of an intercultural democracy whose constituent peoples and cultures mix and influence each other to create identities and cultural forms that are uniquely and originally Trinidadian” (Stoddard & Cornwell 2001:30).

Munasinghe may situate ethnicity as her hermeneutic and even stress in places a heterogeneous place in-between Indo-Trinidadian and Afro-Trinidad. Nonetheless her reliance on racial binaries to situate what it means to be mixed in exploring the cultural politics of identity in Trinidad misses a more accurate picture of T&T reality.

On the streets, in schools and in day to day life there are many more people of mixed ancestry than the census reveals, and analysis of identity in T&T through a paradigm that stresses the 40/40 population split between persons of either Indian and African is redundant, misleading and at base ultimately essentialising in its ignorance of the multiple hierarchies operating at the same time, creating complex nodes around which individuals negotiate their cultural identifications.

Furthermore, to think of T&T as Munasinghe does masks the potential and daily ritual of realising a national unity that not only sustains the ethnic differences of Trinbagonian society but also creates a common national culture and ‘inter-national’ differences too. Yes at the same time!

Her work is old hat and problematic. In sum she ignores a reality that stresses the proliferation, vibrancy and plenitude of ethnic markers and knowledge specifically existent in T&T for rehashing a simplistic argument about racial politics.

What i think is really going on on the ground is the acceptance of ethnic difference in T&T as a national necessity and producer of national identity.

Nation-building and ‘difference-making’ in T&T Im suggesting is a constant contradiction and negotiation between the possibility of being mixed or of more than one ethnic designation while at the same time still possessing a sense of singular ethnic origin and hence a position in within a complicated ethnic milieu.

Sorry if thats a bit long. There ideas im thinking about at the moment and i was just reading a few days ago munasinghie and getting mad