Rowley’s ‘N’ word use unfortunate- analysts

(Trinidad Guardian) In­ap­pro­pri­ate, un­for­tu­nate and an­gry.

That was how two po­lit­i­cal an­a­lysts viewed state­ments made on Tues­day by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley that an “Oreo is the mod­ern, po­lit­i­cal­ly cor­rect way of call­ing some­one a house nig­ger.”

Yes­ter­day, an­a­lyst Prof John La Guerre de­scribed Row­ley’s pub­lic re­marks as “un­for­tu­nate and in­ap­pro­pri­ate,” say­ing he should not have gone down that road but fo­cused on the clo­sure of Petrotrin, which has been build­ing mo­men­tum and at­tract­ing na­tion­al at­ten­tion.

La Guerre said such a jar­ring com­ment was an in­di­ca­tion that the 2020 gen­er­al elec­tions cam­paign had be­gun.

“It al­so showed that pol­i­tics has been al­lowed to tri­umph over good sense,” La Guerre told the T&T Guardian.

While La Guerre felt the word “Oreo” has racist over­tones, he said he won­dered why peo­ple were ap­peal­ing to race in a mul­ti-cul­tur­al so­ci­ety, not­ing was do­ing the coun­try no good.

At a po­lit­i­cal meet­ing in Tu­na­puna on Tues­day, Row­ley again re­spond­ed to be­ing called an “Oreo” by Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, an at­tack for which she was con­demned by sev­er­al quar­ters, in­clud­ing the Gov­ern­ment.

As snip­pets of Row­ley’s com­ments cir­cu­lat­ed on the air­waves and Face­book, he was heav­i­ly crit­i­cised in some quar­ter yes­ter­day but there were dif­fer­ing views as well.

La Guerre said un­for­tu­nate­ly, racist in­sin­u­a­tions have and will con­tin­ue to sur­face in T&T’s pol­i­tics.

“A num­ber of syn­ony­mous terms are be­ing used and it is re­al­ly un­for­tu­nate that these terms are be­ing ap­plied in the po­lit­i­cal con­tent of T&T.”

He said Row­ley’s re­marks harp back to the du­al­i­ty of his­to­ry in­volv­ing field slaves ver­sus house slaves who were giv­en more priv­i­leges which made them be­lieve they were far su­pe­ri­or.

“So that di­vide con­tin­ues ac­cord­ing to the Prime Min­is­ter. Is on­ly now they are us­ing the metaphor of the Oreo hop­ing to hide their mean­ing.”

How­ev­er, James said the metaphor of the “Oreo,” which he de­scribed as deroga­to­ry, has re­sus­ci­tat­ed in the Prime Min­is­ter that some blacks are su­pe­ri­or to oth­ers.

“I don’t think it is racist be­cause it is very dif­fi­cult to ar­gue that a black man is racist against his own race,” James said.

How­ev­er, he said Row­ley’s re­peat­ed use of the ‘N’ word “showed he is up­set about this….he is quite an­gry that the metaphor used by the Op­po­si­tion Leader, why else would he talk about it in what ap­pears to be a very pas­sion­ate and emo­tion­al tone.”

For such a re­mark to be made by Row­ley, James said some­thing trig­gered the PM. He said it al­so sug­gest­ed that Row­ley was per­mit­ted by our so­cial norms to use the word.

“And that is large­ly be­cause he is Black…he is African.”

James said while many would dis­ap­prove on so­cial me­dia of Row­ley’s state­ment, few can say why?

“If you are liv­ing in a di­verse so­ci­ety, you got to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the words that you ut­ter and how it can cause dis­com­fort to oth­ers. This is not build­ing oth­ers. This is not help­ing us to get a lit­tle clos­er in our di­ver­si­ties.

“We are hu­man be­ings who are shar­ing a space and we need to be tol­er­ant with the dif­fer­ences that ex­ist among us. It doesn’t have to get nasty if we take the right steps to ed­u­cate our emo­tions.”