Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: The best insight, instant feedback, accountability. The all new Talk Radio Freedom 106.5.
[00:00:08] Speaker B: Mr. David Muhammad is in the building. Good morning to you, sir.
[00:00:11] Speaker A: Good morning. And good morning again to all the listeners.
[00:00:14] Speaker B: I am so grateful to have you in studio with me this morning. One texter, one texter has already reached out to me this morning and extending. Brother Muhammad, It's a pleasure and indeed a pleasure to hear you this morning. All right, so as we kick things off, you know, let's start off with your learned position on the responsibility of the Emancipation Committee of Trinidad and Tobago, the role and function it plays in the recognition of African Emancipation Day celebrations.
[00:00:51] Speaker A: Right. Well, first of all, let me say I am not in a position to speak on their behalf. Of course, I would speak as an outsider making observations of them.
I want to, first of all, congratulate them for the way that they handled the events that took place over the weekend.
And they have in the past as well had to perform a delicate balancing act.
So, of course, we heard about the booing and the heckling and so on.
This is not the first time that that has happened.
As a matter of fact, I think I might be wrong, but over the last 10 years, there may have been on at least three or four occasions similar kinds of responses from audiences and members of the public.
So it's not necessary, I think, for any particular politician to personalize the matter and, you know, internalize it as a direct, specific, personal attack because it happens. And that's our type of society anyway. That is a way that people express themselves in public forums like this. I remember the funeral of McCandel Dagger when the last government was in office. And, you know, there was a similar kind, but much more amplified heckling of the government then, and that was the other government. So you have so many cases like this. But my work is quite different to that of the Emancipation Committee in many ways. But they're doing their part and they're doing a great part.
They are largely responsible for heightening levels of awareness, love and pride of African culture, heritage and consciousness. And I don't know if anyone else could have done that in the way that they do it. So from my vantage point, I'm pleased with what they're doing.
[00:03:12] Speaker B: Well said and I thank you for clarifying that. Now, black consciousness, black awareness, why is that so significant in our society today? What is the relevance of us becoming aware citizens, the young ones, the newer generations?
I know they have these codings for it, Gen Pop and whoever, I don't know it, 200 you know, why the importance of black awareness in black consciousness?
[00:03:39] Speaker A: Well, our society is a very unique one.
And it is because of the absence of black consciousness that we have had the kind of inequality that has led to poverty, the kind of poverty that has led to crime, the kind of crimes that have led to social exclusion.
And that social exclusion being linked to so many other negative fallouts. We are a society that is riddled with communities that suffer from broken families, faulty parenting, unemployment, poverty, negative peer group influences, gangs, educational underachievement, students dropping out of school, being led astray by father figures who replace their biological fathers in the home.
Now, all of these toxic causal factors of problems exist because of the vacuum of consciousness, because of the absence of consciousness, and with the reintroduction of consciousness that within itself could solve many of these problems. And it's for this reason as well that I hope that the philosophy of Kwame Ture can be honestly embraced in our society and that he not be treated as some kind of symbolic figure where we don't actually try to explore what he represented.
[00:05:17] Speaker B: The abolition of slavery 400 plus years ago, thereabouts. If I have my timing correct, you can correct me if I'm wrong.
[00:05:26] Speaker A: Well, slavery would have been abolished exactly.
209.
[00:05:36] Speaker B: Oh, sorry.
[00:05:37] Speaker A: 219 years, somewhere thereabouts. 1807.
[00:05:40] Speaker B: 1807, okay, yeah. 18, 19, 20. Yeah, 200 and something. Yeah. Checking it now, in the American education system, they have Black History Month.
[00:05:52] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:05:52] Speaker B: They have African American Studies.
[00:05:54] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:05:56] Speaker B: In universities in Trinidad and Tobago, that type of study is absent from our curriculum. We talk about black consciousness and black awareness. But what exactly does it mean for one to be cognizant of black awareness? Black blacks, blackness, as it were? We talk it.
But I want the man in the middle seat in the taxi to understand exactly what you were saying.
[00:06:22] Speaker A: Yes. And that is so important because, I mean, over the last three years, I have been lecturing in the United Kingdom in sociology, psychology, criminology, and me, as a Trinidadian with great pride in teaching sociology sessions, I'm using a textbook that when I open it up and it speaks on institutionalized racism, it talks about a great Trinidadian named Kwame Ture, formerly Stokely Carmichael, who students in Europe are learning about on terms of his philosophy. But I come back home to Trinidad and his ideology is not in the textbooks in the same way.
Now, having said that, we do have elements of this kind of ideology incorporated into different courses, but mainly on the tertiary level. The Caribbean studies programs that we have contain a fair degree of consciousness just about every tertiary level institution in this country has an equivalent Caribbean Studies course.
Not so much on the primary level and the secondary level in terms of mandatory knowledge, but it's there.
And the state needs to be a bit more courageous and bold in pushing these kinds of ideas. And there's this fear of us becoming conscious. And this is why many times around Emancipation Day, there's a very heavy focus on the. The history, the past, the classical period of all of the great achievements and accomplishments of African people. Africa being the birthplace of civilization, the place where there were the first towns, villages, cities and civilizations in Africa. We wrote the Alphabet, the number system, invented mathematics, science, algebra, geometry, arithmetic, et cetera. Then we talk about enslavement. But the third period of African history, which is the Reconstruction period, is the part that we're afraid of, because that's when we start to sound like we are taking a revolutionary approach to solving our problems. And this society is managed by trying to ensure that the black population remains asleep for the most part, so that we can become tolerant of. Of normalized injustice and that we feel in a comfort zone, being oppressed by outside forces.
[00:09:04] Speaker B: When we talk about black awareness and we look for that cognitive consciousness in our school curriculum, the more we push for this agenda, I am just. This is just a thought of one of my teqsas.
Are we running the risk of bordering on racism teachings?
Because one will say so. Why we don't have an East Indian syllabus in there, given the, and I want to use this word very candidly, the petty rhetoric that we're seeing happening today.
Because I believe in Trinidad and Tobago, jokey racism exists because if you deal with some rednecks in some parts of the world.
Listen, we. That chair that we sit on in the office, we don't know if we racist. And we have one ethnic background. We don't know if the other ethnic group build the chair, but we sit on it. They might have touched the fabric before. Who saw the clothing in the store, who transport the clothes to the store for me to buy, understand where I'm going? Because if we are truly, I don't want nothing that the person. That is how they view it. This is just David Murray speaking right now.
Could it be that we would border or open up a can of worms on racism? If we truly get the Ministry of Education to promote the teachings or the legacy of not just Uriah Buzz Butler that I learned about in school, but this individual, Kwame Tory, you call that name out there now. And there are a lot of persons and citizens don't know.
[00:10:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:10:38] Speaker B: Kwame Tory.
[00:10:40] Speaker A: And a question like that to me is a reflection of the kind of fear that segments of our population have of black consciousness.
For many years, particularly in the early days, I used to be asked, well, you have a program called the Black Agenda.
How would you feel if there was a program called the White Agenda?
You are pushing this black agenda. But what if someone else were to come up and try to call for the incorporation in the school system and the curriculum and the syllabus? A white agenda.
[00:11:22] Speaker B: But that already exists, sir.
[00:11:23] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:11:24] Speaker B: I'm happy that you mentioned that.
[00:11:25] Speaker A: So my response is, I've already learned the white Agenda.
[00:11:29] Speaker B: It exists. It already exists.
[00:11:31] Speaker A: First of all, Jesus, the messiah of religious theology, was an African in Northeast Africa. But every time I see an image representing him, it's white. That's the white agenda.
Every time I open the history books that we would have learned in particular during the colonial era of Europe, the conquest of the Vikings, the travels of the Normans, the Anglo Saxons, that's the white agenda.
We, during the colonial era, even coming into independence, had a British post colonial educational curriculum that literally taught white supremacy and black inferiority. That's the white agenda. And every single time we turn on the tv, we have seen images representing the achievements and accomplishments of European people while Africa and African people have been portrayed and represented as being backward, barbaric, savage, ignorant, illiterate and inhuman.
I have grown up on the white agenda, so I have the right to represent a black agenda that pushes a consciousness. But the real fear is with black economics, right?
And remember, think about something here.
The East Indian community in Trinidad and Tobago is large enough to support itself economically and that they still be prosperous.
But the white community, the Chinese community and the Syrian community are not large enough within themselves for their businesses to be mega economic successes unless we Africans are unconscious.
Because if we were to start thinking, but wait a minute, we need to support our own businesses, we need to circulate the black dollar in the black community, then that would make others poor.
So part of the response to that reality has been this restriction of us entering that kind of consciousness. And when you look at the way that we think.
I made this observation recently that African people in Trinidad and Tobago, and particularly in Trinidad, could hardly even talk about matters of race and ethnicity without apologizing in advance or asking for forgiveness, laughter for being conscious. For example, we punctuate our language when we talk about issues of race and ethnicity by saying, I am not racist, but.
And then we make a point and then someone else. We want to talk about anything. Emancipation, black business, African history in the schools. We punctuate it by saying, first,
[00:14:37] Speaker B: I
[00:14:37] Speaker A: am not racist, but.
And then we proceed to make our point. We want to make another point. Well, I am not racist there, but that we're the only people who talk like that because we think we need some kind of permission to be conscious. Because we're so preoccupied with the possibility of offending someone else or us being, being interpreted or perceived as being conscious people who will put our own people first. We're the only ethnic group that thinks that way.
And subsequently we are also the only ethnic group that finds ourselves trapped within these ideological prisons and confined in minute spaces where look at our relationship with politics.
No other race of people in this country votes or supports a political party to get jobs.
None.
All other ethnic groups in this country would support a political party for mega contracts, multi million dollar and multi billion dollar opportunities, rental of buildings to be service providers to state institutions for security contracts.
Do you think white, Chinese, Syrians, or even East Indians will vote for a government or support a government to get jobs?
But that's us.
We say we.
So we have lowered our standards and our expectations to accept whatever is thrown at us by politicians. And one observation that I've made this year in particular is first of all, we have never had any government ever that has made the empowerment of African people its first priority. Never, never happened. You've had little moments in between.
But think about this, Brother Davey.
If you were to write down the 10 worst cases of tyranny against the African population, you will see that they are probably evenly split between the major governments. So I have two main political parties. Look at all of the worst cases of how African people were treated in this country. It's not all on one side or all on the other side. And it's split between the two major parties, PNM and unc. But here, where the problem is, we feel more comfortable accepting oppression from a government that looks like us.
And we are more sensitive and offended when the oppression comes from a government that does not look like us.
I am saying that we have to be able to, as an African community, identify that injustice, tyranny, oppression or exploitation, no matter where it comes from. I don't want to be oppressed by any politician, neither one that looks like me nor one that does not look like me. And again, you take the 10 most terrible episodes of mistreatment of the black community in this country and it's spread across the board, but each side only sees the side that their opponents have perpetrated.
[00:18:12] Speaker B: What you have just described is nothing short of the truth and facts we do punctuate.
I am guilty and I am not afraid to admit it. I'm not racist. But here's I have done it or I say something, but hey, that wasn't meant to be of any racist connotation.
[00:18:33] Speaker A: I don't do it, but the whole country does it.
[00:18:36] Speaker B: So you have spoken truth. But when I research slavery, when I looked at, when I look at even slavery movies and some of these things we look at now, you mentioned breaking down the morale, we lower our standards.
But could that be a derivative of slavery? Given the fact that when we take the slaves when they were enslaved from Africa and come to different countries to colonize, we say here, what's going on? You see the man too strong.
Move that man wife. And cherishing our next plantation, you stay. So break up the family, demoralize them. Get them in a state where their spirit is so low, they're working because they're yearning to see their wife again. Hopefully you'd see the daughter and their children. So they work and they toil indentureship. We come here, we keep the family together, build the morale because we want the work done. Could it be that following that 200 and something odd years that we would have been enslaved and that abolition of slavery, given that whole system that we went through, could it be that because of that we would have trickled down that mindset from generation to generation? Because I have observed when you look at our brothers and sisters, people that look like us, our children have grown up, we are anxious for them to fly, leave, go make your own family somewhere. We look at other communities and they're looking to put up a room to the back, build a house here.
We keep them together. So we want everybody, you're married, bring your wife here to live or bring your husband here. We want to keep them around while our people you have to go make your own. We we creating generational wealth and building an establishment in this yard that, that the community also can't come in here because is my uncle here, my brother, there must my daughter here, my husband and everybody. Could it be a derivative from slavery?
[00:20:35] Speaker A: But there absolutely is. And I just want to with two things. One, we, we no longer refer to our ancestors as slaves, but they were enslaved.
And this is something that was done to us.
But we were people of great magnificent heritage who were taken out of Africa.
But also when it comes to the issue of the after effects of enslavement on us.
That is how this system has thrived, by ensuring that that status quo remains almost the exact same as it was back then.
The sad thing about it is the political system that we're governed under now was an attempt to reproduce the status quo of the slave plantation from back then and now.
The attempt has been to keep the majority of African people as a laboring class, to ensure that we don't become landowners, business entrepreneurs in control of aspects of the economy.
And if you can get a people to think that way and be satisfied with less, and you restrict and confine them in into a space where they don't even believe that they are worthy or deserve to get that piece of the economic pie, then the problem is solved for the oppressor. And he doesn't even have to engage in any kind of coercion or repressive state apparatus because he uses ideological state apparatus. Our thinking is controlled by religion, by the media, by the education system. When where we are framed within a dimension which is literally like living in a mental prison. You live in a mental prison, you become a mental slave, you're a mental slave, it brings about a condition of mental death. You live under mental death, it brings about a state of mental genocide. But it's all now an entire people who are trapped by the limitations of their own thinking.
So when we talk about consciousness, we're not just talking about black history. Black history is just one in multiple departments of black studies.
Because it's not good enough to just talk about black history. We're not going to talk about black liberation. We also have to talk about black economics. We have to talk about black psychology, black sociology, black religion, black heritage.
[00:23:12] Speaker B: I have an overseas call coming through. Yes, Good morning to you and welcome.
[00:23:17] Speaker A: Good morning. And how are you, Devi?
[00:23:19] Speaker B: I am fine. What country are you calling me from?
[00:23:22] Speaker A: I'm calling from Canada. Markham, Ontario.
[00:23:25] Speaker B: Okay, Montario, good morning to you.
[00:23:28] Speaker A: I just want to ask your guests one question.
And the question is, which party has enslaved the African people in Canada most of all?
And the second part is which party is helping the African people most of all?
I'll listen to you answer.
Wait, but wait.
[00:23:53] Speaker B: Hold on.
[00:23:54] Speaker A: Call on.
[00:23:54] Speaker B: Go ahead.
[00:23:55] Speaker A: Oh, he was okay. I'm not sure if he's referring to Trinidad parties or.
[00:24:01] Speaker B: But he mentioned Canada. In Canada.
[00:24:03] Speaker A: Right. I know Canada has historically been one of the most racist countries in the world, along with Australia, India. I think Canada is in the top five.
I'm not sure specifically who he's referring to, but when it comes to political parties. If he's talking about Trinidad, no political party has enslaved African people on as far as the technicality of the term is concerned. But every single political regime that we have had from independence to now has overseen the oppression of African people. And the point that I was making earlier is that we as African people tend to notice it more and feel it more when it is an Indian based government. Okay, so we spoke about some of those top 10 worst cases of suppression of the African community.
If we list some of the worst things that ever happened to us in Trinidad and Tobago, let's call the roll. We go back to, first of all, the banning of Kwame Ture from Trinidad and Tobago.
We had the house arrest of C.L.R. james, Pan Africanist leader globally. All kinds of buildings and monuments named after our Pan African leader, but he was placed under house arrest here. We had the suppression of the Black Power 1970 movement in NJAC.
We had the execution of NUF National Union freedom fighters in 1973.
We had in 2011 close to 7,000 young African men arbitrarily arrested under a state of emergency.
We have had the blocking of an African bank, the Afrixim bank, denying African businesses mega opportunities. We had the deregistration of over 10,000 small businesses. This was done in November 2024. We have the closing down of programs like Mylat.
We have the loss of jobs, CPAP and URP, which largely affected the African population.
These are some of the worst moments, right? I probably listened about six or seven.
Now if you try to pinpoint which government was responsible, because out of those maybe six or seven episodes that I mentioned, about four of them were under one government, three of them were under another government.
All governments have contributed towards the oppression, exploitation and tyranny over African people.
But the African community only pays attention when the other government is oppressing us.
But when our government is overseeing similar conditions, we forgive it and make excuses for it. And that is why I say one government comes into power in this country, East Indian people are empowered. The other government comes into office in this country, whites, Syrians, Chinese and French Creoles are empowered. But for both governments, it is the African based population that provides the swing vote that makes the difference and has the final say for both of them being in power.
But we are the only ones who are literally given the crumbs that fall off the table, regardless of who is in office. And that has to change.
And I hope that the philosophy of Kwame Ture can wake us up on that. And I just want to mention that this Sunday at the Kwame Ture center, because I would have made a call 28 years ago that the government should do something in honor of Kwame Ture either.
Well, I was talking about an educational institution, but a road, a highway, monument, statue, whatever. 28 years ago, I made that call. But eight years ago, myself and my colleagues, we opened the Kwame Turi center in Success Laventille. And we did it with no handouts from anyone.
The Honorable Marcus Messiah Garvey asked the question, are we a race of beggars?
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said, black people must unite, pull their resources, settle their differences, open skills, banks and think tanks and come together on the basis of what we have in common. We, in spite of either government or political party, we got land from the state.
But we had to go into the community, even talk to the gang members who were in conflict on both sides. We had to. We got our own plumber, our own mason, our own carpenters, our own painters, our own electricians, pooled our resources. We as African people can create real estate.
We can create wealth out of unity, which is what we did. So when you see the Kwame Ture center, the amount of cash that we raised was very, very small amount. Marginally, we raised $700,000 in cash.
But we constructed a building that is worth about $8 million.
And it is only our unity, solidarity are coming together that created that wealth. Now, if we could do that for something like a building, we could do that for supermarkets, restaurants, bakeries, dry cleaners, clothing stores, shops, car parts, mechanics, all kinds of goods and services. But we don't think that way. We just think about jobs, unemployment.
And so this Sunday at the Kwame Ture center, we're going to be doing an entire presentation on Kwame Ture's black power philosophy. That's 11 o' clock this Sunday coming. Because I feel that an injustice was done to Kwame Ture in how he has been described. The media has described Kwame Ture as a civil rights leader or a civil rights activist, which is a very small dimension of what Kwame Ture represented in his early days. He was part of the civil rights struggle. But to try to redefine him as that is really diminishing of him.
[00:31:06] Speaker B: One texter said, the relic of colonialism continues, especially on the political fronts during election time.
Another one says, thank you very much for that. They had no idea that Kwame Turi was banned from Trinidad and Timor.
[00:31:25] Speaker A: Come on. Yeah. So now, again, let me say this right, because I did a narrative about how our airport, Piako Airport should be renamed the Dr. Eric Williams Airport.
And members of the, well, you know, members of one political side condemned me for saying that, because one I opened, I built and opened with colleagues the Kwame Ture center. And it was Dr. Eric Williams who banned Kwame Ture from Trinidad. But I didn't hold that against him, reason being that. And I'm not, I'm not making an excuse for Dr. Williams, but personally I have not held it against him because during that era in the Caribbean we were under such heavy United States imperialism that you had similar kinds of reactions across the Caribbean. So Prime Minister Errol Barrow in Barbados around the same time had passed something called the Race Hate Speech act, which was a law that they introduced to try to silence the voices of black liberation in Jamaica. Prime Minister Hugh Shearer had banned our newspaper, the Nation of Islam newspaper, which was the Muhammad Speaks. And you have a number of other kinds of, of steps being taken. The way they tried to suppress Forbes Burnham in Guyana around the same time too. But if you look across the Caribbean, most of our airports in the English speaking Caribbean are named after the first prime ministers of the country or one of the major. You have VC Byrd International Airport in Antigua, you have ET Joshua International Airport in St Vincent, you have Donald Sangster in Montego Bay and, and Norman Manley Airport in Jamaica, Jamaica and even in Grenada they renamed the airport and this was literally just the other day, the Maurice Bishop International Airport. Just like in Guyana, you have the Chady Jagan International Airport in Barbados, Grant Lee Adams International Airport, Tobago A and R. Robertson. There you go. So why not the Dr. Eric Williams International Airport? One of the reasons for that again is because of how polarized our society is politically. And it would be seen like, well, it's favoring one party as opposed to another.
But Dr. Eric Williams contribution to Trinidad and Tobago and by extension the Caribbean and by extension the African diaspora has been way beyond that of mere politics.
[00:34:11] Speaker B: I want to thank you.
Do I say Dr. David Muhammad?
[00:34:16] Speaker A: Yes, I have six.
[00:34:20] Speaker B: The humility. The humility is what I'm admiring. Dr. David Muhammad. Thank you. Unfortunately, I would love a part two to this conversation.
One person is asking me for and very quickly, a zoom link to the Kwame Torres events happening on Sunday.
[00:34:39] Speaker A: So what you can do, do you could just use the handle Black Agenda Project.
[00:34:46] Speaker B: Black Agenda Project. Let me send.
[00:34:49] Speaker A: Once you do that search whether it's on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, even the website black agendaproject.com even the email address black agendaprojectmail.com once you do a search for Black Agenda project across social media, you will find us.
[00:35:12] Speaker B: All right, so thank you very much, Dr. Muhammad. Unfortunately, we would have to end here.
[00:35:17] Speaker A: Yes, but thank you, Davey. And you know, listening to you a bit earlier, I really moved and inspired by your connection with what's happening on the ground level in our country. And I think you're a great asset to the local radio airwaves. Please keep that up.
[00:35:37] Speaker B: I, I thank you, thank you very kindly for that sentiment expressed.
I appreciate it. I do my best.
My job never ends. I leave radio at 9am and I am constantly on the phone receiving messages, researching information.
And guys, in all fairness and honesty, we must extend a heartfelt thank you to Dr. Mohammed this morning. Because this was an impromptu visit, we kind of take him off of CNC3. It was an impromptu visit, but we are grateful.
[00:36:12] Speaker A: But Davey, what if I were to tell you that I did multiple programs in this same studio 28 years ago?
[00:36:22] Speaker B: I am fully aware. 28 years ago, you just didn't do. This is your first with me. Mark it on the Kalinda. There will be others.
Melissa, I know you're listening. There would be others.
[00:36:31] Speaker A: A part two to this absolutely black
[00:36:33] Speaker B: consciousness conversation will continue. I look in as early as next week.
[00:36:37] Speaker A: Today is what Tuesday I'm gonna be in Jamaica.
I'm the feature speaker for the Marcus Garvey celebrations in Jamaica for the St Anne's Regional Corporation, which is where Marcus Garvey was born. So it's a great honor. I've attended that event before four, but I'm the featured speaker.
[00:36:57] Speaker B: If you're looking for somebody to bring you on stage, you know, corner graciously jump on a plane and take that. If it's. If you're traveling in a day with a six hour flight, I'll take it. 42 hour flight, guys. We take a quick commercial break.
[00:37:09] Speaker A: The best insight, instant feedback, accountability. The all new Talk Radio Freedom 106.5.
