We must not con­fuse equiv­a­lence with ac­cu­ra­cy. It is not bril­liant to place two his­tor­i­cal facts side by side and sim­ply de­clare them rel­e­vant. Some­times that is pre­cise­ly the art of de­cep­tion: place two things next to each oth­er, say lit­tle, and al­low the mind to man­u­fac­ture the con­clu­sion. Some will call that so­cial com­men­tary. Ca­lyp­so, so­ca and ex­tem­po have long mas­tered the dou­ble en­ten­dre. We Trin­bag­o­ni­ans know how to say one thing while every­body un­der­stands an­oth­er. But race talk re­quires con­text. And con­text re­quires con­sis­ten­cy.

Be­fore the in­tel­lec­tu­al ar­gu­ment, I am a fa­ther

I write this not be­cause of the let­ters be­fore my name, but be­cause of what comes af­ter it. Mwale means, among oth­er things, en­durance and un­shak­able courage. My last name, Hen­ry, like yours, rep­re­sents a fam­i­ly her­itage: those who came be­fore us and those who will come af­ter us. I there­fore have a sa­cred du­ty to both.

So, for a sec­ond, put aside the in­tel­lec­tu­al ar­gu­ment. Con­sid­er this a mes­sage from a fa­ther who has to sit at the kitchen ta­ble and ex­plain dif­fi­cult things to his 9- and 7-year-old chil­dren af­ter they read the news­pa­per. Then, al­most un­avoid­ably, I must wade in­to the his­to­ry, cul­ture and so­ci­ol­o­gy that guide that con­ver­sa­tion.

Warn­ing! When I move from com­men­tary in­to the lit­er­a­ture or pinch a nerve, doh run to the com­ments sec­tion or my in­box, or ex­tract one ran­dom sen­tence to prove the prej­u­dice you ar­rived with. Test what I have said on its mer­its. Paul preached. The Bere­ans went and checked. Truth does not need your loy­al­ty. It needs your ex­am­i­na­tion.

We al­ready know how race talk works

In Trinidad and To­ba­go, the C-word and N-word are sel­dom used freely in mixed com­pa­ny un­less some­body first un­der­stands the re­la­tion­ship, au­di­ence and bound­aries. Go in­to a bar, bar­ber­shop or mar­ket. Even the man mak­ing the risky racial joke usu­al­ly knows where the line is.

Among close friends, cer­tain words may be tried, test­ed or tol­er­at­ed be­cause there is tac­it agree­ment. But no­body as­sumes pri­vate per­mis­sion be­comes a pub­lic pass­port.

So­ci­ol­o­gists from J S Fur­ni­vall to M G Smith wres­tled with plur­al so­ci­eties in which cul­tur­al­ly dis­tinct groups oc­cu­pied the same po­lit­i­cal ter­ri­to­ry while main­tain­ing im­por­tant dif­fer­ences in iden­ti­ty and so­cial or­gan­i­sa­tion.

T&T com­pli­cates any rigid ver­sion of that mod­el. Our so­ci­ety still has strong eth­nic di­vi­sions, but peo­ple al­so share cul­tures, de­pend on each oth­er and take part in many of the same in­sti­tu­tions.

But we still un­der­stand how be­hav­iour changes across so­cial set­tings. When it is time to buy, sell, work, ne­go­ti­ate or achieve a com­mon out­come, what­ev­er prej­u­dices some­one may pri­vate­ly hold or ex­press through satire, pi­cong or even dis­crim­i­na­tion, we gen­er­al­ly un­der­stand that dif­fer­ent so­cial set­tings car­ry dif­fer­ent rules of con­duct.

In Trin­ba­go terms, we know what time it is.

The Speak­er came be­fore Star

That is why the Par­lia­ment of the Re­pub­lic of T&T mat­ters. The high­est seat of democ­ra­cy rep­re­sents the col­lec­tive wish­es of all of so­ci­ety.

On March 24, 2026, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, speak­ing dur­ing Spir­i­tu­al Shouter Bap­tist Lib­er­a­tion Day greet­ings in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, de­scribed her­self as “this lil c***** girl from down wher­ev­er.”

Bri­an Man­ning, MP, ob­ject­ed, sup­pos­ed­ly protest­ing the use of “of­fen­sive” or “un­par­lia­men­tary lan­guage,” and asked: “Mr Speak­er, are you go­ing to al­low that word on Hansard in this Par­lia­ment?”

Speak­er Jagdeo Singh, an at­tor­ney, re­spond­ed that it was “not a ques­tion of al­low­ing the word,” say­ing the Prime Min­is­ter was re­lat­ing an anec­dote rather than di­rect­ing the ex­pres­sion at an­oth­er mem­ber.

The Prime Min­is­ter con­tin­ued: “I call my­self that…I am not ashamed.” And there it sits in our Hansard. That in­ter­ests me be­cause Par­lia­ment is not a pri­vate lime. Hansard is not What­sApp. It is the of­fi­cial and per­ma­nent record of Par­lia­ment.

Then came the al­leged Star Sab­ga record­ing. Re­mem­ber the se­quence of its pub­lic re­lease: March came be­fore Ju­ly. The Speak­er be­fore Star. C be­fore S.

Last time I checked my al­pha­bet, that is still cor­rect. The pur­port­ed Sab­ga record­ing sur­faced pub­licly months af­ter the par­lia­men­tary ex­change, al­leged­ly con­tain­ing deeply of­fen­sive racial lan­guage at­trib­uted to her.

I make no de­fence of racial con­tempt ex­pressed in pri­vate, in­clud­ing in any record­ing, if au­then­tic. But in­tel­lec­tu­al­ly, we can­not be­gin the his­to­ry with Star. The Prime Min­is­ter had al­ready pub­licly res­ur­rect­ed the word months ear­li­er.

Can you re­claim the poi­son with­out re­open­ing the bot­tle?

There is re­search sup­port­ing recla­ma­tion. So­cial psy­chol­o­gist Adam Galin­sky and col­leagues found that mem­bers of stig­ma­tised groups who self-la­bel us­ing deroga­to­ry terms can ex­pe­ri­ence in­creased feel­ings of pow­er.

Ob­servers may al­so per­ceive them as more pow­er­ful. How­ev­er, that is not the end of the sto­ry.

A 2024 study by Sa-kiera Hud­son, Jolynn D Hud­son and col­leagues, “Im­plic­it At­ti­tudes Evoked by a Sin­gu­lar Amer­i­can Slur,” ex­am­ined at­ti­tudes to­wards the N-word among more than 3,000 Black and White Amer­i­cans. They found that even where con­scious reap­pro­pri­a­tion oc­curred, deeply neg­a­tive au­to­mat­ic as­so­ci­a­tions with the racial slur re­mained. So recla­ma­tion can pro­duce two move­ments at once.

The speak­er hears em­pow­er­ment. The wider so­ci­ety may hear nor­mal­i­sa­tion. You may take the word back for your­self while ac­ci­den­tal­ly putting it back in­to cir­cu­la­tion for every­body else. The per­son may re­claim the word with­out the word sur­ren­der­ing its his­to­ry. That is the so­ci­o­log­i­cal dan­ger.

So who owns the C-word?

There is plain­ly a dif­fer­ence be­tween an In­do-Trinida­di­an Prime Min­is­ter de­scrib­ing her­self with the C-word and some­body us­ing that word to de­mean her. I refuse false equiv­a­lence.

Con­text mat­ters. Speak­er iden­ti­ty mat­ters. In­ten­tion mat­ters. His­to­ry mat­ters. But dif­fer­ence does not elim­i­nate con­se­quence. If a his­tor­i­cal­ly de­grad­ing term be­comes ac­cept­able be­cause the per­son speak­ing be­longs to the af­fect­ed group, what pre­cise­ly is the rule for pub­lic dis­course?

May I smile calm­ly and an­nounce, “Here comes our c***** Prime Min­is­ter”? May an Afro-Trin­bag­on­ian par­lia­men­tar­i­an stand and an­nounce, “I am your N-word Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment”?

Would our tele­vi­sion and ra­dio sta­tions broad­cast racial­ly re­claimed state­ments un­cen­sored? Prob­a­bly not. Nor would I. I re­spect the Prime Min­is­ter and its of­fice too much, my fel­low coun­try­men and women so much, and

I re­spect my­self enough not to make such a choice. There­fore, here­in lies the con­tra­dic­tion. Why should the of­fi­cial record of Par­lia­ment en­joy a racial vo­cab­u­lary that re­spon­si­ble broad­cast­ers or cit­i­zens would hes­i­tate to trans­mit?

Why, Kam­la?

This is where I gen­uine­ly ask the Prime Min­is­ter: why choose that word? Your po­lit­i­cal his­to­ry pro­vides vol­umes of ma­te­r­i­al for self-dep­re­ca­tion and tri­umph with­out re­sort­ing to race.

Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, SC, MP, has sur­vived po­lit­i­cal blows from Bas­deo Pan­day, Jack Warn­er and oth­ers who once stood much clos­er to her than her op­po­nents across the aisle. There is no deep­er po­lit­i­cal wound than one in­flict­ed by some­one close to you.

Yet af­ter a decade in op­po­si­tion, she brought the UNC out of the po­lit­i­cal wilder­ness and se­cured a com­mand­ing vic­to­ry in April 2025, a ten-year wilder­ness the present PNM has not had to en­dure. That is a re­mark­able po­lit­i­cal come­back.

Your op­po­nents tried to read your po­lit­i­cal obit­u­ary. You at­tend­ed your own fu­ner­al and asked who or­dered the flow­ers. So why make race the metaphor for a jour­ney re­plete with so many oth­er ex­am­ples of over­com­ing ad­ver­si­ty and tri­umph?

Dr Mwale Hen­ry

So­ci­ol­o­gist and ex­ec­u­tive lead­er­ship ad­vis­er

mwale.hen­ry@gmail.com