Labelling and discriminating against the weak
July 20, 2003, Posted July 27, 2003
by Dr Winford James
Hitler and his German sycophants labelled the Jews exploitative and extortionate in their business dealings, as well as racially impure, and they proceeded to kill more than six million of them. More than sixty years later, the NALIS authorities in this country have labelled students in non-denominational schools badly behaved and poorly disciplined, and have proceeded to ban them from the main library in town. In Nazi Europe, the Jews were a group identified for extermination by a lethal German perception of their racial pedigree and business practices. In Trinidad and Tobago, the children of non-denominational schools are identified for exclusion from public centres of civilisation by a lethal perception among the NALIS leadership that they are social retards, misfits, and degenerates.
If it is one thing that Hitler's butchery of the Jews should have taught us is that we should be careful not to label races, ethnic groups, and social classes for negative action from a position of superiority - because of the pernicious mayhem that could result. But the NALIS leadership doesn't seem to have learned this lesson - an astounding irony against a Caribbean historical background where African, Indian, and other non-white peoples were labelled - by their skin colour, general physical appearance, and military weakness - stupid, inferior, and fit only for labour.
The NALIS leadership has displayed ignorance not only of history (whether international or local) but of social management. They obviously considered themselves to have been protecting the other more behaviourally palatable users of the library - 'the good people' from the good schools and social classes - from these social vermin (not necessarily in these terms, but certainly in the effect). They thought that the situation cried out for a social engineering based on the doctrine of separating the bad schools from the good, the bad social environments from the good, the wheat from the tares - so that the good would prosper as they alone deserved to. And yet the overwhelming evidence, not only from formal research, but pure observation and a little unbiased reflection, is that 'the bad people' are the way they are, not because of biology or some inherent personal worthlessness, but rather because of a combination of negative conditions they were born into and political hegemony, discrimination, and lack of vision by those groups that are in charge of the society and that dwell in its high places.
The child from Westmoorings and St. Mary's college is not superior biologically to the child from Morvant or Cedros, but is certainly superior in terms of his socio-economic conditions. The Morvant or Cedros child can over time, with the right social provisions and amenities, grow up to compete with the Westmoorings child in education, social manners, personal development, and entrepreneurship. And if those provisions and amenities remain slow in coming, s/he could compete through migration to better, i.e., more facilitative, social conditions.
I am now a university lecturer, but in my distant past there is the most vicious slavery and exploitation, and in my not too distant past in East Tobago, there are struggling, poor parents with a tonload of children in conditions of personal deprivation and village depression. There was nothing wrong in the biology, but there was much that was wrong in the sociology and the politics.
Trinidad is better developed than Tobago, and this is a direct consequence of the politics of unitary statehood. More particularly, Trinidadian results in education are generally better than Tobagonian ones, and this is a direct consequence of the politics. But give the average Tobagonian the best Trinidadian conditions, and s/he will excel just the same. Give the Morvant child the Westmoorings conditions, and s/he will do as well as the Westmoorings child.
The NALIS authorities should have asked themselves how they were helping, not 'the good people', but 'the bad people' by their action? How could banning children from Belmont Junior Secondary, Belmont Boy Secondary, Mucurapo Secondary Comprehensive, Malick Composite, and Barataria Secondary Comprehensive help these children? And how could banning them on the day SEA results came out help the children who have now been placed in these schools? Wasn't this a case of insensitive and sinister timing?
Have they checked themselves to see whether they are contributing to the behaviours that caused them to invoke the ban? Could it be that their arrangement of having computers in little clusters (rather than in reading rooms) makes it almost impossible to supervise patrons and encourages indiscipline? When patrons can change the wallpaper on a computer as easily as kissing hands, mustn't we ask whether the NALIS authorities know how to rationally manage patron use of their facilities?
The NALIS leaders charge that students from the schools listed above are bullies, use drugs, and are violent. But do they know that, according to the Deosaran Report, the most indisciplined schools in these respects are denominational ones?
In selecting students from socially stigmatised schools for their ban, they have clearly discriminated against groups that are socially weak and vulnerable to abuse from on high. Their action is clearly unconstitutional, unenlightened, and violent. It can only breed a violent response, especially as it targets groups, not individuals.
It is also illogical. Children do not join a library on the basis of their membership in a social group; they join as individuals. So when you punish them on the basis of the school they go to, you are sending the message that it is because of the school they attend that they are behaving as they are. Which is pernicious group labelling and must also be paranoia masquerading as logic, particularly in the light of the Deosaran Report.
The Ministry of Education is using a number of school intervention strategies to, among other things, prevent reactions like the NALIS group label ban. It is trying to provide caring and nurturing administration. NALIS should join in this approach instead of helping to kill the 'monsters' our unconscionable politics has created.
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