Teaching the Youth: How ethnic marginalisation hinders social and political development in the Caribbean

Kala Ramnath received her MPhil in International Relations from Trinity College, Cambridge University and her PhD from the University of Hull. Active in the field of disability at both an academic and applied level, she is co-founder of the Step-By-Step School in Guyana.

One of the perennial ‘hot potato’ issues in the Caribbean Region is the idea of marginalisation. Ethnic marginalisation, to be precise. Mention the term ‘ethnic marginalisation’ in the Caribbean and the reaction you get depends pretty much on who you are talking to. The average Indo-Caribbean would be inclined to agree, regaling you with tales of discrimination as long as Independence itself. To the average Afro-Caribbean, one might get a shrug and a curt dismissal about ‘those people are well sorted in business what is their problem’ type of response. The roots of this of course lie in the post-emancipation colonial dynamics as one group was effectively shipped in and shunted off to rural plantations to replace the other group, many of whom were heading for the urban sprawl of the cities. The relative lack of interaction, added to the informal ethnic designation of villages, accentuated the mutual distrust

The people of the Region are largely Afro-Caribbean with a growing and bewilderingly diverse mixed race population. We also have a significant Indian presence in both Guyana Trinidad, and Suriname, if we include the wider Caribbean. There are also small populations of Indians in Jamaica, St Vincent, St Lucia and Grenada. Alongside Indians, Guyana, Dominica and Belize have significant numbers of Indigenous peoples. In Guyana there are 9 different indigenous groups which comprise about 13% of the population- a fact that is barely known in the rest of the Caribbean. Add to this the small but longstanding presence of Chinese, Syrian-Lebanese and other groups and we can truly call ourselves an ethnically-diverse region.

But how does this stack up with images of the Region to the outside world? More importantly, how does this stack up to our own diverse selves? And for our kids in school? Are we seeing ourselves in popular culture and sports? Are we sufficiently represented in our wonderful diversity in our societies? Are we represented in our textbooks? Raising these issues can be a pretty contentious issue which then leads to the perpetuation of clichés and stereotypes. How many of us know of the Akawaio, the Lokono and Wapishana presence in Guyana or of the Mayans in Belize whose ancestors have been living and traversing boundaries for thousands of years? Or, beyond the roti, curry and doubles clichés, how many non-Caribbeans know about the formidable Indian presence in the Caribbean for over 170 years? Why is this idea of a multi-ethnic, truly diverse Caribbean so contentious? When Frank Birbalsingh wrote a book about the marginalisation of Indo-Caribbean cricketers a few years ago, it was not well received in some quarters. But ask any Indian in T&T and Guyana and they can probably reel off a long list of grievances, including selection criteria, some dating back to the 1950s and 60s, others to do with the shabby treatment of Alvin Kallicharran when he decided to tour with the Windies rebel tour of South Africa, when compared with the treatment of his African colleagues. These rumblings continue in cricket to this day. The fissures are sadly all too real. And it starts with our divide and rule political history which persists. In Guyana and T&T our entire post- independence histories have been dominated by race. Our politics is effortlessly fissured by race. Indians vote for one party. Africans vote for another. Not much has changed since the 1960s. The deleterious effects of this on the development of the Region has been a matter of academic study for some time, and is beginning to enter into public discourse more fully, although some of these discussions can come with their own health warnings about political and/or racial bias. But deal with it we must.

In February this year an interesting piece of research passed under the radar until it was raised by one Indo Caribbean critic recently in an Indo-diaspora paper. Swami Askharananda mentioned that Dr NK Mahabir had presented a paper titled ‘The Marginalisation and Exclusion of Indians by the Caribbean Education