Tony Deyal | Tony done try

Why do white people own so many pets? Because they can’t own people anymore. I thought of this as we got ready for a trip to Canada to attend the wedding of my wife’s niece. Immediately, my early days at university there, and my views about ‘white’ vs ‘black’, came back to me. “How many white people does it take to replace a light bulb?” One to hold the bulb and the rest to screw the whole world. Another was, “What word begins with ‘N’ and ends with ‘R’?” Neighbour!

I had got a scholarship to Carleton University in Canada after a year at The University of the West Indies (UWI) and another working in the Office of Prime Minister Dr Eric Williams. Fortunately for me, I had gone to schools that had students of different races, so that, when I went to Carleton, it was clear that in the university, and in Canada as a whole, if you were not white you were black. Of course, a few thought that racism was so stupid. You couldn’t treat someone differently just because he’s from an inferior race. While that has changed a bit over the years, you still hear things like, “What’s the difference between a black dad and a boomerang?” A boomerang comes back. Or this from one of the universities I went to in the US, “I painted my computer black thinking it would run faster, but it just stopped working.”

What I did in Canada was join the university’s student newspaper and wrote a column I named ‘Blackadaisical’. While I did well, I also learnt two things that have stayed with me for life. The first is that some people might consider you a friend or a different kind of black, white, mix, Chinese or Indian, but one thing that doesn’t change is how they feel about the race you were born into. The second, and most important of all, is that you should never allow anyone to change the essence of who you are. One of my ‘friends’ actually told me, “I have never been racist. It is wrong for anybody to be racist. It doesn’t matter whether they’re black, Trini or normal!”

‘UPPER’ CLASS

Interestingly, when ‘white’ immigrants went to the US, they were not always accepted as belonging to the ‘upper’ class. You would think that ‘foreign’ whites were immediately accepted by the other whites, regardless of where they came from. Not so! The ‘new’ immigrants had to behave as if they deserved to be considered white. According to an American sociologist, the appropriately named Henry Pratt Fairchild, “If he proves himself a man and … acquires wealth and cleans himself up – very well, we might receive him in a generation or two. But, at present, he is far beneath us, and the burden of proof rests with him.” New immigrants either had to fight to be included as whites or be part of the people of colour. But, as one Serbian said, “You soon know something about this country … Negroes never get a fair chance.” What the newcomers did was watch whites abuse blacks, mimicked whatever they saw the whites do, and so came closer to being accepted as whites.

What helped them were the police. In just one place in the US, the Ferguson Police Department, the Department of Justice, found an ongoing pattern of racial bias towards black people. They uncovered an email that said, “President Barack Obama won’t be president for long because, what black man holds a steady job for four years?” Another depicted Obama as a “chimpanzee”. An African-American woman in New Orleans was admitted into the hospital because of a pregnancy termination. Two weeks later, she received a check for $5,000. She phoned the hospital to ask who it was from. The hospital said, “Crimestoppers.” One that showed the true colours of the police in that town was an email supposedly from a man who wanted to obtain “welfare” for his dogs because they are “mixed in colour, unemployed, lazy, can’t speak English, and have no frigging clue who their Daddies are.” The police and court officials were never disciplined. What was scary was that the use of force by the police was 88 per cent on the blacks and only 12 per cent on the whites and others. In the 14 police-canine “bite” cases for which racial data was available, all the people bitten were black.

BIOLOGICAL RACES

However, what all the research shows is that biological races in the human species do not exist. They cannot be determined by either physical or genetic measures. What we think of as “races” are socially assigned sets of characteristics depending on context. The completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003 confirmed humans are 99.9% identical at the DNA level and there is no genetic basis for race. As Discover Magazine wrote, “Race Is Real, But It’s Not Genetic.” The magazine pointed out in an article in 2020, “The reality is that socially defined racial groups in the US, and most everywhere else, do differ in outcomes. But that’s not due to genes.” In other words, although race isn’t real, racism certainly is. Or, put another way, race is real but it’s not genetic. Communities of colour in the US have reduced access to medical care, well-balanced diets and healthy environments. It is not just the harsh treatment by the law and the legal system. There is endemic racism affecting health. Babies born to African-American women, and others not considered white (like my family), are more than twice as likely to die in the first year than babies born to ‘non-Hispanic Euro-American’ women.

I have always been told by family and friends that I should have never left Canada. Others tell me I had all those great opportunities in the US and I came back to “catch my tail” in Trinidad. In a way, they’re right. But, once upon a time, I was on a trip Dr Williams allowed me to go to in Germany and I met two other men there, one from Africa and the other from Finland. One evening they asked me, “What party are you involved in?” I laughed, “Any with plenty rum, pretty women and good music.’’ They were upset and I had to tell them flatly, “I am a journalist. Politics is not for me. It’s all poli-tricks.” The African one said, “You are only about .00001 per cent of your country and you went to the university. If you are not involved in politics, you deserve what you and your people and community get.” I found out the hard way that politics in Trinidad, despite our National Anthem that “Here every creed and race find an equal place”, is based on the race of the party in power. It is why I continue to fight for the rights of all the people here and everywhere - black, white, brown and mixed up beyond recognition. I will die trying and my epitaph will read, “Tony Done Try”.

The still very much alive Tony Deyal was last seen quoting from American author Fredrick Joseph, “No one would be comfortable being racist around someone who truly stands against racism, because they would know there’d be consequences.” Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com