For Cheryl and so many

By Bukka Rennie
July 02, 2003

When I was in Lower Sixth at St Mary's, I took Cheryl Byron to the Sixth Form graduation ball. That's almost equivalent to the American "prom". I was heckled by classmates. They said and I quote: "...Bukka bring Dingaka in the fete..." "Dingaka", the title of a then popular movie set in Africa, indicated that she was black, very black, and therefore "ugly" and unworthy of being there partying with the "Saints" at the Hilton.

At 16-plus then, I took the heckling stoically as any hip youngster akin to the ways of the culture and the times would.

But I can distinctly recall that Cheryl Byron did stand out among the females who all seemed to measure up to a particular colour bar. What Cheryl and I had innocently done was to challenge with brazen audacity a certain status quo.

Trinidad, not Tobago, has always been in this regard a most violent society, a society that deals brutally, and continues to deal brutally, with anyone who dares to breach the space, set aside by unwritten law, for the soft-hair and brown-skin complexioned folk; "whiteness" and the various shades of the Mulatto spectrum being deemed here the closest thing to righteousness and godliness and given undue pride of place.

The only perpetrator against this ordained order that is spared is the one that has on his or her side the blessing of wealth.

Cheryl herself did not have it easy at Bishop Anstey. I recall her relating time and time again the trauma of constant disparagement from her class colleagues.

On one occasion it was so intense that Cheryl afterwards admitted to me that she burst into tears and the only words that sprung from deep within, in defiance and in defence of her persona, were: "...But my mother shook Queen Elizabeth's hands, though..."

Beulah Byron, Cheryl's mother and the foremost administrator at the School for the Deaf, had, in that capacity, been formally introduced to the queen during one of the so-called royal visits to T&T.

What is even more violent is that in order to escape further pain and buffets, Cheryl found herself clinging for salvation in this instant to the very same social yardstick used to measure her a non-person. And in similar fashion, I found myself in Upper Sixth the following year taking Aying Wu to the graduation ball.

Dr Lester Forde has a story he once related to us one summer in Toronto as we hung out at Ainsley Mark's home. Lester said that while he was attending the Tunapuna Government Primary School, a particular teacher shared out to the class a form in which personal information of each pupil had to be filled in.

The teacher sought to explain and clarify to the class what was expected of each pupil. In the slot that indicated "racial origin", the teacher suggested, to loud guffaws from both himself and the rest of the class, that Lester should put there, "African".

Lester that afternoon goes home and in tears complains to his mother and she in serious earnestly intones: "...But what happen to that teacher, he can't see that you mix..?"

That day in Toronto, Lester wondered who was more violent to him and his persona, his teacher or his mother.

After decades and decades of such violence to human beings here we are yet to make that crucial link between the lack of self-esteem and violent behaviour, the fact that any form of dehumanisation and marginalisation, any process that fosters self-degradation, is actual social violence that tends most times to breed violence in return.

And as is the case with so many of us abused in this way, the mark, the psychological disfigurement, remains indelible even after we have matured, and even after we have supposedly joined the ranks of the enlightened.

So many of us prove unable even then to "wear our skins comfortably". We can only hazard a guess as to how much more terrible it is for those who in the course of growing up fall through the cracks of the education system and end up unprepared and unskilled, drifting in lives that are aimless, yet forced to face a society that deems them to be non-persons, but which nevertheless surrounds them with materialistic spectacles and a legacy of great expectations.

Society tells them that this is the good life, defines it, parades it, then rules certain people out of the game outright or limits their participation to being mere survivors. Society always creates its own monsters, people who will brook no compromise with social convention that is not accommodative of their personage.

Recently Mahabir-Wyatt wondered why, despite Jamaica's political violence and gang warfare, despite their more rigid class and colour lines, Trinidadians experienced greater inter-personal violence, particularly domestic violence that saw women being the targets for murder.

The answer is clear in my view: if you are not secured within your self, the people closest to you, your loved one or ones, are the ones to feel your wrath.

Jamaicans are more comfortable with whom they are. They are at greater ease with a sense of their black-selves. The Maroon culture and Rastafarianism of course have contributed in no small way to the Jamaican security in their sense of self.

You look at Jamaican TV, for example, and you see the presence of black people in the ads, while in T&T you never see black-skinned Afro or Indo-Trinidadians in our local ads. You will see copper complexions and the lighter shades of pale.

Naipaul talked about this way back in the early '60s and it still is happening. I am saying to you too that unlike Jamaica we may never see here a "jet-black" Afro or Indo-Trinidadian Prime Minister. Of course the Hindu concept of "varna" also has a lot to do with this consideration

Recently, I was asked by the Guardian's administrative staff to compose a few lines indicating something about myself and why I write. In response I sent in part the following:

"...My name is Bukka Rennie. I write because I seek to get people to stop thinking in 'solid categories', to think divergently and to question even the questions... I am a husband and a father of three and the members of the family will tell you that the words that have been banned by consensus in that household are the adjective 'ugly', the verb 'cannot' and the noun 'fear'..."

Formulations like that can only come from encapsulating the interpretations of one's own experiences within specific social environment.

In this regard I often quote my column "Rage of the marginal" in which I talked about one Garnet "Brigo" Lake who stood before Basdeo Panday, then Prime Minister of T&T, at the funeral of his friend Shawn St Clair who Panday had befriended and supposedly adopted but for whom Panday did nothing. I said in that piece:

"...Garnet Lake said to the Prime Minister that Shawn spoke about him every single day, hoping that somehow the connection between them would one day make the difference in his life. It never did because there was never any serious bonding ('yuh never come')... then Garnet Lake summed up his life's learning, the sum total of what he had come to know: 'Is better all yuh hate me for what I am, than love me for what I am not.' It was a declaration on behalf of himself and his dead friend that such like them can never embrace hypocrisy, no matter how well-intentioned...

"Young Afro-Trinidadian males, in particular, have not been buying into what has become acceptable social convention. They are not buying into any formalised schooling that does not accommodate their own sense of self, or is self-degrading to them. They will not be made over to satisfy and accommodate the patronising sense of superiority of others. The days of the Afro-Saxons are going fast..."

Cheryl Byron embraced the rapso art form with which to do battle until she died in New York two weeks ago. I am here still writing though with greater resolve as a result of her passing. And I wonder sometimes about Garnet Lake of the Beetham. Where is he? What is he becoming? What is the prognosis?