American-Style 'Progress' Leaving Its Mark on Trinidad

Insight ^ | 16 September 2003 | Nicholas Stix

[mrustow]

"Let no child be left behind"; ... "It takes a village to raise a child"; ... "Quality time"; ... "Crime Stoppers." Each of the foregoing, unfortunate phrases is supposed by many to be an expression of progress, is as American as Enron and now is at home in - the West Indian Republic of Trinidad and Tobago?

During our just-concluded annual visit to my wife's folks in Trinidad, my family was bombarded with warmed-over Americanisms on television. (While prosperous, tiny Tobago with its beautiful beaches is the preferred destination of tourists, 93 percent of the 1.3 million largely hardworking, hard-luck citizens in the two-island republic live in Trinidad.)

In 2001, then-prime minister Basdeo Panday of the (Indian) United National Congress Party demanded, "Let no child be left behind." Panday got American welfare guru Marian Wright Edelman's phrase from his American political consultant, Trinidadian-born, retired California congressman Mervyn Dymally. In a bold reform, Panday extended schooling for all Trinidadians and Tobagonians beyond grammar school. While acknowledging that many of the reform's beneficiaries had little to gain from extended schooling, Panday spoke of "remedial education."

In the United States, most folks are unaware of how such "progress" routinely works. In my Hungarian-born grandmother's benighted day, children in America graduated literate from grammar school, as she did in 1907. Today, however, functional illiterates now routinely are graduated from U.S. high schools and admitted to college.

While Trinidadian politicians speak of educational opportunity, once-rigid school discipline is collapsing. Three years ago, a then 16-year-old nephew of mine dropped out of school. Though he was strong enough to cut sugarcane in the blazing sun for 12 hours a day, he could not handle the routine violence of school.

"It takes a village to raise a child," now spouted by nonprofit organizations in Trinidad, is a made-in-America "African" saying. Taken literally, it would mean that each village could have only one child. Indeed, its meaning has nothing to do with villages; rather, it is an argument for replacing parents with agents of the state.

American-style progress in Trinidad has resulted in the nascent spread of out-of-wedlock childbirth, which until recently was extremely rare. Compared to the United States, the Trinidadian family is intact, but it won't be able to withstand much more "progress."

"Quality time" is a phrase coined by a yuppie journalist to put a happy face on middle-class child neglect. In late July, the new chairman of the Princes Town Regional Corporation, Kemchan Ramdath, said that he sought to make the town a tourist destination for families wishing to "spend quality time together." But sleepy "P-Town," which happens to be my wife's hometown, shuts down at 5 p.m.!

Children require immense quantities of time - just ask my son! In the vast majority of Trinidadian families, the husband works and the wife still stays at home to raise the children. Quantity time - what a revolutionary concept.

"Crime Stoppers" is a program in U.S. cities that asks citizens to call a telephone number to report information on crimes. Prior to the advent of Crime Stoppers, folks talked to the local beat cop or called his precinct.

In Trinidad the people are besieged by criminals. The first seven months of this year saw 112 kidnappings, the hottest new felony. Initially, businessmen were kidnapped for substantial ransoms; now, any member of the middle class is fair game.

Prime Minister Patrick Manning of the (black) People's National Movement Party (who beat Panday in a controversial 2001 election) has an American consultant on crime - counterterrorism guru Kelly McCann. In July, McCann advised people to deal with crime by calling Crime Stoppers, and not to arm themselves.

Consultants are people who amass fortunes by spreading bankrupt ideas around the world. Tropical Trinidad has the world's sweetest mangoes and is the birthplace of steel-pan music. But the government just performed a mercy killing on the sugarcane industry, which for centuries was Trinidad's chief form of employment. Trinidad needs consultants like it needs more mosquitoes.

American influences go back to at least World War II. In A House for Mr. Biswas, the Trinidadian-set masterpiece by Trinidad's greatest writer, Nobel-laureate V.S. Naipaul, the novel's narrator tells of the positive influence of the Americans, much to the misfortune of protagonist Mohun Biswas. A journalist covering the poverty beat, Biswas is hired away from his Port-of-Spain newspaper to be chief investigator for a new "Community Welfare Department." But as the war ends, the department is shut down. "[T]he war, the American bases, an awareness of America had given everyone the urge, and many the means, to self-improvement. The encouragement and guidance of the department were not needed."

Those were the days - when American-style progress truly was beneficial.

Nicholas Stix is associate editor of Toogood Reports. His work has appeared in Insight, the American Enterprise and Middle American News.

[Cicero]

Good article.

A propos of the last paragraph, "A House For Mister Biswas" is Naipaul's greatest novel, very much worth reading. I'd put "A Bend in the River" in second place. Naipaul is VERY much hated by the professional leftist academics, which may recommend him to Freepers.

[mrustow]

A lot of people thought he'd never win the Nobel, because he has a history of honesty re race. A white writer who said the things he's said wouldn't get published, at least not in book form, or not by a major publisher, and certainly would never be considered for a Nobel.

[mrustow]

FYI

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FYI

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FYI

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FYI

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FYI

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FYI

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FYI

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FYI

[mrustow]

FYI

[cyborg]

American-style progress in Trinidad has resulted in the nascent spread of out-of-wedlock childbirth, which until recently was extremely rare. Compared to the United States, the Trinidadian family is intact, but it won't be able to withstand much more "progress."

*** Of course because they're importing more of the degenerate aspects of American culture, they either have to use American solutions. Did Panday say those things while he was sober or while drinking the adult beverage? Why he should have addressed the rank abuses of government that caused Trinidad to go into an economic tailspin. Now Patrick Manning is in office :yawn: I do not think there will be anyone as good as Eric Williams ever again.

[cyborg]

they either have to use American solutions.

** I forgot to add or go back to the days of old. The more distant the generations get from the British colonial days of Trinidad and Tobago, the more I wonder about the effects of importing vicious American vice and bad culture will have. I'm not talking about American things in general, but the sort of things my grandmother complains about (sex,dirty films, filthy music and clothes).

[mrustow]

Don't know much about Williams.

[mrustow]

Is your mom a Trini?

[TopQuark]

"A House For Mister Biswas" is Naipaul's greatest novel, very much worth reading. I'd put "A Bend in the River" in second place

Thanks for the pointers. I've never read anything by him.

[cyborg]

http://users.rcn.com/alana.interport/eric.html

** Yes she is. Eric Williams is a hero to many older Trinidadians. Unlike so many other British colonies, Trinidad fared well after independence because of Eric Williams' leadership. At the same time, we went to England for the first time this year. My mother and I went to see the changing of the guard at the Palace. She started crying and all that. It was her dream to visit the 'mother country' and it was quite an experience.

[mrustow]

Good for her!

Thanks for the link to the wonderful web page. Did you set it up?

I am going to let down my bucket where I am, right here with you in the British West Indies.

What a lovely statement. Naipaul, unfortunately, had the opposite attitude.

[cyborg]

No I did not. I do not have that much talent for the Internet web pages :-). My attitude is probably more right of Eric Williams, as I tend to be more pro-commonwealth and retaining English influence. I think were it not for my dad, my mother would have went back to Trinidad. I explained to her she would have felt different if she didn't come here during the sexual revolution and all that. Oh well... either way, she became a citizen (after 25 years) and she's not a Bushbot like me, but still thinks America is 'milk and honey'.