Dear Editor,
I saw the full-page advertisement of Caribbean Airlines’ new marketing campaign a few days ago and my heart sank because I think this giant regional corporate citizen is missing a chance to redirect a century-old culture of exclusion and marginalisation of several Caribbean race groups into one that shows inclusivity and respect for all.
I have travelled several times on Caribbean Airlines and almost always more than half the cabin is filled with Indian Caribbean people from Guyana and Trinidad. Yet we are always absent from the airline’s video magazine “Essence” and the pages of its on board publication “Caribbean Beat”.
The Caribbean identity advertisement uses a quote that states that it is “one race from the same place” pushing “one intention”. I know that Caribbean Airlines is not unaware that many of the Indian Guyanese filling its seats hold visas and one-way tickets to Miami, New York and Toronto and have “one intention” and that is to escape the heinous racial violence directed at them and which has been going on for over 50 years.
The cluster of words used in the advertisement supports the one-race theory that is pushed in Guyana and Trinidad by politicians and cultural and racial activists. There are words like carnival, jazz, jerk, reggae, soca, junkanoo. The “one intention” of exclusion is very clear. The airline’s clientele of Indian Caribbean people who have brought words like curry, chutney, roti, doubles, Holi, Diwali, Eid (words that are in common usage) to the Caribbean are all overlooked.
The follow-up advertisement ‘The energy of our festivals” uses three photographs. Could not just one have been an Indian, Chinese or Indigenous Indian? We, too, have festivals that are vibrant and colourful.
But this blindness is part of the Caribbean culture and identity and like all blindness it hampers true vision and all progress. It is a pity that Caribbean Airlines chooses to buy into the region’s lack of vision rather than show a leadership example and strike a bold new path.
I do not know who Black Stalin is but I don’t hold much truck by someone who uses the name of a murderous fascist dictator as a nom de plume.
I offer alternative lines that could accompany a restructured advertising campaign that would do the Caribbean identity and culture of diversity justice. I say “Different races in one place/Showing the world a brave, new face.”
They rhyme, offer up fairness, and Caribbean Airlines can use them for free.
Yours faithfully,
(Name and address supplied)
