President Christine Kangaloo has called on Trinidad and Tobago to free itself from “all forms of racism, exclusion and hatred,” saying true emancipation extends beyond physical freedom to include intellectual liberation.
In her African Emancipation Day message, the President said that “mental emancipation requires us to free ourselves from all forms of racism” and reject the notion that race determines a person’s worth, loyalty or place in society.
President Kangaloo warned that racial slurs and prejudice inflict real harm, but stressed that responding to prejudice with counter-prejudice only deepens divisions.
She said racial slurs, for example, bind us anew to old and dangerous notions that ancestry determines worth, loyalty or place, but noted that they do not vindicate any, one community; they diminish us all.
Describing the work of emancipation as “unfinished,” the President said the nation must continue the work through its laws, institutions and daily decisions, ensuring that freedom is not only remembered, but actively lived by all citizens.