By Earl Bousquet

   African-based spirituality was frowned-upon by West Indian Christians who saw any reference to ‘a Black Christ’ as blasphemous, but saw nothing wrong with statues of The Devil being depicted as Black.

   Likewise, early efforts at pastoral indigenization through introduction of African drums and other local musical instruments were also resisted vehemently by those who loudly opposed changing the language of the ‘Holy Mass’ on Sundays, from Latin to English. 

   In the 1970s, the Black Power Movement influenced better appreciation of the Caribbean’s Africa connection among progressive politicians, youth and students, who’d long yearned to learn more about their hidden roots and cultural origins.

   Race and identity issues still factor in Caribbean politics today, particularly when elections are approaching – and likewise Saint Lucia, where elections are on the horizon and one word in a recent statement by an opposition politician evoked a storm of public reaction.

   Castries businessman and opposition politician Timothy Mangal last weekend used the phrase ‘Black like Philip J. Pierre…’ to compare the difference between how roadside projects looked (in his eyes) in the Castries East constituency Pierre represents in parliament, vis-a-vis the neighbouring Castries South-East constituency (where Mangal once unsuccessfully contested).

   Mangal spoke on a United Workers Party (UWP) campaigning platform, but his use of that word would so haunt Mangal later, that he embarrassingly and repeatedly failed to do the impossible: trying to explain the inexplicable. He simply couldn’t convince Doubting Thomases he didn’t mean to associate ‘Black’ with negativity.

   But then, there’s a history behind this silly chequered debate about black and white skins and masks in West Indian politics. Back in the 1990s, the derogatory term ‘Little Black Boy’ was used by the region’s privileged classes to describe young men the System had failed.

   This insulting label angered Trinidad & Tobago’s legendary calypsonian ‘Gypsy’, who wrote and sang a virtual anthem for the young Caribbean men labelled and condemned by those who blamed their sufferance and wretchedness on their colour.

   Gypsy released ‘Little Black Boy’ in 1997, but it wasn’t about what was meant by the lighter-skinned local high-ups in the then ruling party, who applied the term to Pierre simply for daring to become an opposition Saint Lucia Labour Party (SLP) candidate for the Castries East seat in 1997, against the supposedly indefatigable UWP MP, Romanus Lansiquot.

   Due to Pierre’s humble beginnings (his father was a policeman and his mother a teacher), he was seen as insufficiently pedigreed to win the electoral horse race against a proven UWP thoroughbred.

   But the young Pierre (just back home as a graduate from University of the West Indies) was seen as ‘just another’ poor boy from just-another poor family. Gypsy’s song, however, wasn’t singing about well-educated and good-mannered young Caribbean men like Pierre.

   Instead, it was about those who ‘Went to school, but never learned’, those ‘Only caring about how to dress and pose, but with no job’ and ‘ending-up living lives of crime, or being shot dead in the head by the police…’

   Gypsy urged them to ‘Go to school and learn,’ because ‘Education is key to get off the streets and off poverty…’.

   ‘Don’t be a fool, keep yourself in school’, he sang a clarinet call for ‘Rude Boys with rings in their noses’ who got hooked on coke’ to ‘Stop taking life for a joke’, but instead to ‘Take a look at yourself and put your pants on the shelf…’

   He urged the badly-branded Caribbean youth to ‘Find your place and don’t stay in the back just because you’re Black.’

   The singer invited the region’s troubled, neglected and rejected young men to ‘Think about your race and find your place’ -and to ‘Be Black, but also be conscious…’

   The young Philip J. Pierre obviously listened well-enough and followed Gypsy’s sound advice -and has, since 1997, turned-out to be the very opposite to what he was framed as through the dim lens of his vision-impaired critics: he won in Castries East and has been re-elected five times, successively.

   The degrading title was revived by the UWPs in 2016, when, as the new SLP Leader, Pierre pledged to defeat the UWP (then led by Prime Minister Allen Chastanet) at the next elections, then five years away -and he eventually did.

   Chastanet and Pierre’s stark complexion contrasts -like their class backgrounds and interests- are as plain opposite as black and white.

   Yet, the UWP Leader’s short-sighted critics even claimed ‘Saint Lucians have shown they don’t want a Black prime minister’, echoing another that: Saint Lucians always “prefer Prime Ministers with un ti couleur wa-ya-yai…” (“Prime Ministers with lighter skins…”)

   The supposedly ‘Red-eyed’ Pierre continues confounding his critics: Nine years later, as promised in 2016, he not only led the SLP to a sound 13-4 victory in 2021 that broke earlier trends, but it was soon enhanced by two former UWP ministers who’d contested as Independent Candidates (one a former prime minister) joining his Cabinet.

   With a 15-2 parliamentary majority, Pierre removed the island from the Privy Council -and indicated his interest in the island also becoming a republic. So, this poor son of a poor Black family in Saint Lucia has delivered on every lofty dream Gypsy had for the likes of him across the Caribbean, while he continues to utterly disappoint those who might have anointed him rightly, but for the wrong reasons.

   Mangal’s reference to Pierre’s complexion is, therefore, simply another tired expression of the UWP’s continuing regret that he’s done and delivered so-well to date in his first outing as Prime Minister, that even UWP supporters who’ve seen his light are publicly saying he deserves a second term.

   They’ll also willingly invoke and rephrase the question begged in song by iconic American singer Tina Turner and ask: “What’s COLOUR got to do with it?”