Dear Editor,
As I contemplate more and more the challenges enmeshed in social cohesion and national unity, realization comes. For these to occur to any satisfactory degree, leaders and citizens, individual and community, and church and state, must think the unthinkable, and then do the undoable.
It is a tall, if not insuperable, demand. But ponder this: on the positive side, the unthinkable leads, however unwillingly, to the horizons and beyond the stars with obvious possibilities. On the other hand, the negatives of the reverse of non-cohesion and continuing disunity hurls one and all to the unthinkable of the precipice, so often skirted, and which looms even more formidably with each thin squeaky escape. Either way, the hoped for positives or the feared negatives, thinking the unthinkable points to destiny; destiny derailed or avoided.
The unthinkable must come to embody the exceptionalism of a settled revealing norm. In this land of many races, it is the norm of numbers and faces where they matter, and tell encouraging stories of effort, commitment, and implementation beyond the easy saccharine rhetoric. It is that today in 2016, the staffing norm cannot be that of the GT&T and NIS of three plus decades ago; or the private commercial strips on Regent Street during the same period; or the aristocracy of mainly one kind in too many government places during the last regime.
It is elusive to me how any HR managers, or hiring managers, or divisional heads can look at peers and the public, and at self and say that the only satisfactory high school and university graduates are of predominantly one colouration; how only these favoured are able to survive the intricacies and ordeals of interviews. How come others from across the spectrum always seem to fail to measure up? Surely, there can be more than one token face amidst a score, given the racial composition of this nation. This is part of the unthinkable that can fuel the undoable, and which must now transform into the exceptionalism of a sweeping persuasive norm through diversity.
There must be diversity in the workplace, in scholarships, in contracts, in community development and maintenance, and more. I do not expect 50/50 splits. I seek to behold the fluid meritocracy, the ethical odour, and buttressing reality of, say, a 70/30 or 65/35 composition, and the like. It provides satisfying examples of inclusion where such counts, of a reversal of the past, and of commitment to fairness, principles, and standards. Where I lived for most of my life, managers were rewarded for diversity in hiring and promotion. Diversity is the best messenger and could be the greatest prophet and sponsor of social cohesion and national unity right here.
The unthinkable and undoable, through the exceptionalism of the norm, must become the norm, whether in the Disciplined Forces or national awards. In terms of the latter, and as an aside, I read the names and the best compliment that comes to mind of some is that they have weathered the passage of time and no more. There is nothing about them that is outstanding. Give them a long service award, but let it stop there.
Editor, there is so much innovative, difference-making work waiting to be done here. This will only occur if there is dedication to doing the hitherto unthinkable, of going beyond the easy saccharine rhetoric and delivering, of carving out an incontestable reality. If not, then the character and practice will be best captured by the chortling self-satisfaction immortalized in that theme of the Mighty Sparrow: “All is mine!”
For these reasons, I say let us not bring back the long yesterdays. But let it be that a new morning has broken; a new and different one that starts with thinking the unthinkable and then doing and living it.
Yours faithfully,
GHK Lall
