DR GABRIELLE JAMELA HOSEIN

MOCKERY OF names is an old form of schoolyard insult, and historically it has been racist as much as sexist and classist. There is also a long history of feeling ashamed of one’s name, whether Indian or African, and of European colonial names either being forcibly imposed on colonised people, as part of their dehumanisation, or chosen by them in order gain acceptance they would otherwise be denied.

Naming, and specifically Afro-Caribbean efforts to identify with African names similar to those once taken, has been an effort to overcome deep losses suffered because of colonial masters. Others have lived with the names their ancestors were assigned, making identities and lives that are full of love, connection, memories and humanity, creating new meanings from survival of once-wretched conditions. Names are sacred and should not ever be used as fodder for insult.

Kamla Persad-Bissessar’s clapback was hurtful and alienating, casting those with Indian ancestral names as superior to those Africans who were denied theirs, knowing this difference is a result of colonial violence. Insensitivity to history is what makes it racist, beyond acceptable banter of political picong.

It was intended to provoke shame, just as Indian names have been and still are deliberately mispronounced, misspelled (see the PM’s Facebook post) or made fun of to shame a people for who they are. Knowing these wounds, as they are experienced and remembered by many in our population, should make us refuse to let ravages of history ever be a basis for belittling each other.

The insults being thrown from all sides of the political platform have become more personal, more violent, more unnecessary, more divisive, and more harmful to our everyday lives. There is hardly a politician today who isn’t guilty of this or of applauding when party colleagues launch into a language of derision and abuse.

Camille Robinson-Regis’s repeated use of Persad-Bissessar’s entire Hindu name dog-whistled that Indians cannot be trusted, or that’s what was heard. It felt weird and excessive as much as extremely methodical and deliberately personal to state and restate Persad-Bissessar’s name that way.

I noted, but dismissed it. Robinson-Regis likes gutter talk about narcissists and predilections. Is so cross-talk goes sometimes. It was also the Opposition Leader’s “government name,” and its use is so easy to put out of context (many use the PM’s whole name regularly), that such tactics make you wonder if you are imagining things, though you know what you hear and how it makes people feel.

I was intrigued that the Emancipation Support Committee didn’t recognise this in its press statement, which highlights how we don’t hear words in the same way in our society, even if we are genuinely committed to anti-racism. Indeed, acknowledging how ethnic groups differently receive and feel about words is part of addressing inherited disagreements in our shared journey.

Any political analyst will tell you that Persad-Bissessar disappointingly t