Category: race

On what basis, ITEC?

February 7, 2010 by Edmund Gall

Are you racist? Maybe a little...(take the test)

November 3, 2009 by Ian Ramjohn

According to Harvard's Project Implicit I have a slight preference for Arab/Muslim names over "others", a slight preference for darker skin colour over light skin colour, and a moderate preference for white faces over African faces.  OK...so tell me something I don't know.  Most of the people I grew up around were Indo-Trinis, many of them Muslim.  And while we were not Muslim, the extended family was, and there was clear subtext that south Trinidadian Indian Muslims were good people (and mostly were "pumpkin vine" relatives of some sort).

Had I simply taken the black-white face test, I might have been a bit less impressed.  Despite the fact that both my mother and my wife are white, white people - at least American and European ones - are still less familiar to me than are darker-skinned people. {Read more}

From POPPG to COP - evolution of a third party

October 30, 2009 by Ian Ramjohn

I have voted only four times in my life¹ - one local government and three national elections.  And 100% of my voting pattern can be explained by a single factor - I voted for the Muslim candidate.²  Combine that bit of information with my surname and it's easy to conclude that my vote is driven simply by identity politics.³

It would be easy.  But while it would prodict my voting patterns fairly well, but it wouldn't do much to explain why I voted the way I did, nor would it be a useful predictor of future scenarios.  

As I mentioned on Monday, saying that "corruption, on its own, does not decide elections in Trinidad: Race does" (as Selwyn Ryan did) turns correlation into causation.  Voting patterns and election victories can be explained in terms of race, but saying that "race decides elections" is an oversimplification.  Electoral victory depends on a combination of building coalitions and motivating your base.  Add to that the fact that we don't have national elections, we have a series of local elections that are won constituency-by-constituency.  More to the point, if race decided elections, one would expect that we had experienced substantial demographic shifts over the last 40 years, an expectation that's not supported by the facts. {Read more}

The third race

October 26, 2009 by Ian Ramjohn

In the Sunday Express, Selwyn Ryan wrote

...Mr Panday is also correct when he notes that corruption, on its own, does not decide elections in Trinidad: Race does...

Taran questioned whether this assumption about Trinidadian politics remains valid, pointing out that

If COP support is an indicator, they don't follow their parents. Sure, they didn't win a seat - but they did cast a wide net on Election Day because something about COP was appealing. It wasn't Winston Dookeran's charismatic speeches. What was it?

If you're interested in predicting outcomes, phenomonological models are good enough.  Race, coupled with a few other factors, can explain the outcome of every election since 1956 with the possible exception of 1986.  If you consider mixed people as a "swing" constituency, caught between the two races, you've got your model.  Figure out how they'll vote/how they voted, and you've predicted or explained your election.  It works, it's simple...it's what they call an elegant solution.

The problem with phenomonological models is that they are only interested in emergent patterns, not in the mechanisms that generate those patterns.  Correlation, they tell you, does not imply causation.  If you want to study the underlying mechanics that create those patterns you need to dig deeper, and look for more complicated models. {Read more}

Is Trinidad and Tobago Beyond Race Based Politics?

October 26, 2009 by Taran Rampersad

Yesterday, Selwyn Ryan wrote, 'The UDeCOTT election: round 1' - and within it he wrote something that should be apparent to anyone who isn't in Parliament:

...Mr Imbert brags that the central issue in the Inquiry will not be UDeCOTT, but the cartelisation of the local construction industry, the nature of the Opposition, and much else. He boasted that "the election will be about who is fit to run the country, which is the best party to run the country, who has the moral authority to run the country, and who is best equipped to serve the people of the country". The problem, however, is that none of the parties, including the PNM, is seen as having any abundance of these qualities...

Exactly. But the next sentence is disturbing:

...Mr Panday is also correct when he notes that corruption, on its own, does not decide elections in Trinidad: Race does...

I don't know that Basdeo Panday actually said that race wins elections, and it's a little disturbing to consider that it could be true... and that it could be considered true enough for a politician to say. Was it true? Of course it was. Lets just say that when it comes to race in politics, Trinidad and Tobago has a colourful past. We all know it. There are people who will talk bad about a political party, but when it comes to election day people are likely to vote with their raw prejudice. {Read more}