Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Arch­bish­op Ja­son Gor­don and the Catholic Com­mis­sion for So­cial Jus­tice (CC­SJ) are urg­ing cit­i­zens to de­nounce racism in all its forms.

The calls came yes­ter­day as so­cial me­dia con­tin­ued to be abuzz with hate­ful race-laden com­men­tary all sparked by the re­sult of Mon­day’s Gen­er­al Elec­tion in which the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment de­feat­ed the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress.

Even as a re­count in five con­stituen­cies seemed to con­tin­ue to fu­el the flames of race hate on­line, Arch­bish­op Gor­don, in his week­ly on­line ad­dress, warned that a lot of heat laced with racial tone was build­ing up, say­ing the re­sult­ing dis­cord could be very de­struc­tive to the so­ci­ety.

“It’s clear in this coun­try, right now, that we are blind­ed by race,” Gor­don said, look­ing in­tent­ly to­wards the cam­era.

“We can­not have a place in racism in this na­tion. We do not have a place for it,” Arch­bish­op Gor­don as­sert­ed.

One of the in­ci­dents which would have sparked the Arch­bish­op’s com­ment would have been the back­lash to a com­ment deemed as racist by Naila Ram­saran, the daugh­ter of the own­er of Ram­saran’s Dairy Prod­ucts. Sev­er­al su­per­mar­ket chains have pulled the com­pa­ny’s prod­ucts from their shelves af­ter mem­bers of the pub­lic re­act­ed an­gri­ly to Ram­saran’s com­ments, al­though she sub­se­quent­ly apol­o­gised and was fired as the com­pa­ny sought to dis­tance it­self from her com­men­tary.

In his mes­sage, his Grace called on cit­i­zens to see com­mon­al­i­ties in one an­oth­er rather than dif­fer­ences. He begged cit­i­zens to for­get hy­phen­at­ed de­scrip­tions, say­ing first and fore­most, we are all cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Gor­don claimed he’s see­ing things he has nev­er seen in the coun­try be­fore, adding some of the words he’s seen were used in Rwan­da pri­or to the African coun­try’s 1994 geno­cide.

“This is a se­ri­ous mo­ment. A mo­ment where we have to stop. We have to pray and where we have to call out peo­ple who are be­ing racist. Call them out and ask them to cease and de­sist,” he said stern­ly.

How­ev­er, Gor­don al­so called on cit­i­zens to re­sist fight­ing fire with fire.

“Please, I beg you, Trinidad and To­ba­go, we on­ly have one home and that’s here. Let’s not start fires now. Quell the fires,” he plead­ed.

Warn­ing that trou­ble lies ahead if things do not change, he asked cit­i­zens to put their trust in the elec­tion process.

“Let the process take its place. Let it come to its con­clu­sion and let us live with what­ev­er the re­sult is,” Arch­bish­op Gor­don said.

The Catholic Com­mis­sion for So­cial Jus­tice (CC­SJ) mean­while urged all cit­i­zens to de­nounce racism, which it says “is a vile worm that eats at the very soul of our be­ings and our na­tion.”

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, CC­SJ chair Leela Ramdeen de­scribed racism as “a sin,” which she said should be “elim­i­nat­ed in all its forms.

Ramdeen said so­ci­ety should not for­get the im­pact of racism on the lives of our an­ces­tors.

Cit­ing the Book of Proverbs in the Bible, Ramdeen not­ed that: “With­out a vi­sion the peo­ple per­ish.” She added, “We have a vi­sion—laws e.g. our Con­sti­tu­tion, the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Act; poli­cies; the tenets of our var­i­ous faith com­mu­ni­ties. Trans­for­ma­tion will on­ly come when we move from pa­per to ac­tion. Faith with­out good works is dead.”

The CC­SJ not­ed that the Cat­e­chism of the Catholic Church tells us that: “Cre­at­ed in the im­age of the one God and equal­ly en­dowed with ra­tio­nal souls, all men and women have the same na­ture and the same ori­gin. Re­deemed by the sac­ri­fice of Christ, all are called to par­tic­i­pate in the same di­vine beat­i­tude: all there­fore en­joy an equal dig­ni­ty. The equal­i­ty of men rests es­sen­tial­ly on their dig­ni­ty as per­sons and the rights that flow from it.

“Every form of so­cial or cul­tur­al dis­crim­i­na­tion in fun­da­men­tal per­son­al rights on the grounds of sex, race, colour, so­cial con­di­tions, lan­guage, or re­li­gion must be curbed and erad­i­cat­ed as in­com­pat­i­ble with God’s de­sign.”

Ramdeen not­ed that while “we ab­hor all the re­cent racist state­ments made on so­cial me­dia be­fore and af­ter our Gen­er­al Elec­tion, we agree with the UK jour­nal­ist, Ke­hinde An­drews, who right­ly says that “…fo­cus­ing on in­di­vid­ual prej­u­dice has avoid­ed tack­ling en­dem­ic, sys­tem­at­ic racism, leav­ing sig­nif­i­cant in­equal­i­ties.”

She said “as long as racism ex­ists, jus­tice and peace will nev­er be­come a re­al­i­ty.”

“The time is long over­due for us as a peo­ple to re­ject racism and em­brace and pro­mote uni­ty in our di­ver­si­ty. We ig­nore, at our per­il, the call of all right-think­ing peo­ple to do so. Let us pray for God’s grace to open our eyes and those of our lead­ers so that we will choose val­ues and virtues that will help us to flour­ish and progress as a peo­ple,” Ramdeen said.