Sascha Wil­son

In the midst of an ex­plo­sion of racial com­men­tary on so­cial me­dia in the wake of the 2020 Gen­er­al Elec­tion re­sult, an on­line pe­ti­tion for leg­is­la­tion against racism has been start­ed and is cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia.

Hurt and dis­gust­ed by a slew of racial re­marks and sub­lim­i­nal mes­sages be­fore and af­ter the Gen­er­al Elec­tion, at­tor­ney Cordell Sa­landy de­cid­ed to set up the pe­ti­tion on Tues­day night.

By last evening, his pe­ti­tion on change.org that sought a tar­get of 10,000 sig­na­tures had al­ready gar­nered al­most 9,000.

Seek­ing sup­port for the pe­ti­tion, Sa­landy post­ed, “Fol­low­ing and pri­or to the 2020 Gen­er­al Elec­tions, there has been a pro­lif­er­a­tion of racial­ly charged hate speech­es and or com­ments made pub­lic via sev­er­al dig­i­tal plat­forms and about in par­tic­u­lar one racial group.

“Fur­ther­more, par­tic­u­lar po­lit­i­cal par­ties have used sim­i­lar racial com­ments and even ad­ver­tised what may be con­sid­ered to be bla­tant racial­ly de­vised sub­lim­i­nal mes­sages about a par­tic­u­lar race tend­ing to low­er their char­ac­ter and or class in so­ci­ety. These oc­cur­rences have caused se­vere emo­tion­al pain to me and to the so­ci­ety at large, ev­i­dent in the shock and dis­be­lief ex­pressed against them, and there must be leg­is­la­tion to put an im­me­di­ate stop to such forms of abuse and dis­crim­i­na­tion in any man­ner so as to pre­serve the in­clu­sive na­ture of our beau­ti­ful coun­try.”

In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Sa­landy said racism in all forms must not be tol­er­at­ed. He said when a trade union leader could use the ‘N’ word pub­licly and then refuse to apol­o­gise, some­thing was very wrong with that. He said the surge of racial­ly charged re­marks re­mind­ed him of when he was a child and there was dis­trust and dis­like amongst neigh­bours be­cause of race.

“This brings back that feel­ing of hurt,” Sa­landy said.

Sa­landy said he wants a law sim­i­lar to the Race Re­la­tions Act in the Unit­ed King­dom. The Race Re­la­tions Act was first im­ple­ment­ed in the Unit­ed King­dom in 1965 and made racial dis­crim­i­na­tion a civ­il of­fence.

Sa­landy said if T&T adopts a sim­i­lar ap­proach by way of leg­is­la­tion, peo­ple will be care­ful of their words as if they breach the act they will face se­ri­ous penal­ties.