It is not every day you find a Caribbean philosopher-politician (not every day you find one of those creatures either, I hear you say) who hits the mark - or rather hits it out of the park - on a subject close to six million hearts, West Indies Cricket.
But Camillo Gonsalves, who just happens to be the foreign minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines, delivers an incisive commentary of the abundance of racism in cricket commentary and writing, cloaked as it often is in the stereotypes of the tourism: sun, sand, skin.
The victory of the West Indies over the rest of the world in T20 Cricket at the teenage, women's and senior men's levels continues to reverberate through the region. Sadly, though, the road to victory has been strewn with the worst of our cricket critics abroad.
Here, Gonsalves dissects with the precision I'm sure he expects from a good Cabinet Paper, the hearts and masks of racial and ethnic prejudice that have toiled to set expectations of under-achievement on the black and brown skins of Empire; expectations that continue to shunted into the night sky of oblivion like that lost ball of Carlos Brathwaite's third six struck off a hapless Ben Stokes of England.
Stokes now lavishes in the tragic hero pity of thousands of fans, Brathwaite included, it has to be said. Magnanimity in victory or slight discomfort with jettisoning stereotype and prejudice? You be the judge...
Read on... Could you be loved?
But Camillo Gonsalves, who just happens to be the foreign minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines, delivers an incisive commentary of the abundance of racism in cricket commentary and writing, cloaked as it often is in the stereotypes of the tourism: sun, sand, skin.
The victory of the West Indies over the rest of the world in T20 Cricket at the teenage, women's and senior men's levels continues to reverberate through the region. Sadly, though, the road to victory has been strewn with the worst of our cricket critics abroad.
Here, Gonsalves dissects with the precision I'm sure he expects from a good Cabinet Paper, the hearts and masks of racial and ethnic prejudice that have toiled to set expectations of under-achievement on the black and brown skins of Empire; expectations that continue to shunted into the night sky of oblivion like that lost ball of Carlos Brathwaite's third six struck off a hapless Ben Stokes of England.
Stokes now lavishes in the tragic hero pity of thousands of fans, Brathwaite included, it has to be said. Magnanimity in victory or slight discomfort with jettisoning stereotype and prejudice? You be the judge...
Read on... Could you be loved?