MARION O'CALLAGHAN Monday, July 9 2007

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WINSIE-ANN CUFFIE...

On the Friday before Father’s Day, Pastor Winston Cuffie’s weekly Pentecostal advertisement was replaced by a song — or poem — written by his daughter Winsie-Ann Cuffie.

Children writing poems to mother, father or both, happens frequently and are usually of no importance outside of the circle of the family. Winsie-Ann Cuffie’s father however is a Pentecostal preacher who has suggested that we had it wrong on Our Lord’s parable of the foolish Virgins — they were only a little spiritually immature. Pastor Cuffie went on to suggest that every political leader should have someone in the woodworks, who advises him spiritually. Given this, it is wise to look carefully at the image of men — and incidentally of women — in daughter Winsie-Ann’s poetry.



Sex and class

There is another reason. Over the last few years there have been a number of comments which have suggested that, if anything is wrong in Trini society, look in the family. There is also a fair amount of evidence that Black men of the African Diaspora are in crisis. If we take the British statistics for academic achievement, women will do better than men at A’levels or its equivalent, in all but two subjects. Black men from the Caribbean will do worse than all while Africans and Black Caribbean women will do better than all. We know that this pattern is repeated in Jamaica and would seem to be repeated in New York.

In the case of the family we known that over fifty percent of births to women under 25 in France or in Ireland, would be to unmarried parents. Moreover an increasing number of people will belong to families where separation and/or divorce has changed family relationships. It may well be that the “family” as we have known it is in transition. It certainly means that it is in crisis. However, in the case of Trinidad and Tobago, “crisis of the family” is not meant to apply to the upper middle class family.” Nor is anyone interested in what is really happening to the family, and why.

Rather talk of the “family” in crisis in Trinidad and Tobago, is just another way of talking about the lowest status ranking in our society: working class and underclass Afros. Precisely because the discourse has to do with class and not primarily to do with family or primarily to do with roles which are sexed, the upper class family and upper class male- female relationships, rarely form part of the debate. Indeed the social distance, there generally in social relationships, is in part maintained by the fiction of radically different upper class families with radically different male-female relationships. And that upper class sexual behaviour largely approximates to what is declared as Biblical and Religious normative behaviour.



Pa Pa as Provider

Winsie-Ann Cuffie’s song or poem, published in honour of God, Fathers and Father’s Day, illustrates the model of the family. That God is also supremely “Father” makes the poem more than that: it is also the model of the relationship of ourselves to God. Moreover it is also the relationship of Manning as PM, to the rest of us. I would argue that when Mr Manning called himself “Father of the Nation” it was in no way to displace Eric Williams nor yet to claim himself as responsible for the birth of Trinidad and Tobago. Rather, the sense of the claim is in Winsie-Ann Cuffie’s poetry, ie, Providing Father who corrects, directs, protects and advises.

“They call him Pa Pa

They call him Daddy

‘cause he is provider

For children and mummy.”

The very definition of father is therefore provider. The definition is not that of biological descent. It does not ipso facto, include a husband-wife’s legally declared relationship from which flows paternal relationships. In addition “Provider” is only related to the nuclear of nuclear families – man, woman and children – it does not include say, Pa Pa’s Mummy.

Within this first verse of song/poetry, is not only the definition of Father / Pa Pa / Daddy. There is also the relationship of Pa Pa/Daddy to Mummy. Pa Pa / Daddy is first of all — as for children — “provider.” When “provider” is the first and crucial relationship and when it is the same for “mummy” as the relationship to children, we are speaking of a structure of dominance. In that case all other relationships within the family will also be structured in the dominance allocated to Pa Pa.

A charge from heaven

This is explicitly there in Winsie-Ann Cuffie’s poem/song:

“He is to guard and govern

That is the charge from heaven (my underlining)

He is the one to protect

And he is the one to direct

He is the one to detect

And he is the one to correct . . .”

Pa Pa therefore has a dominance that is not only given, to him by God. Governing, directing and correcting are commands of God. This gives to Trini men expectations of extreme power over women and children — including the power “to correct.” It is not surprising that following this, there is a high incidence of physical abuse, of incest and of rape. All three are manifestations of power relationships. But it also explains the extraordinary thirst for power in every area from politicians to the man who has the power to shove you out of an office or to leave you waiting for that plumber or that electrician. As one would expect, there is not a word of love as a factor in the relationship. Tant pis for that great hymn to a Father’s love — the Prodigal Son.

De child fadder

This is not only Winsie-Ann Cuffie. Talk to some of the members of the Trini working class or underclass. Ask why with children for X man or with children with Y woman, they don’t marry “de chile fadder” or “de chile mudder.” Love will rarely be mentioned. What will be mentioned is waiting to have enough money to be able to fulfil the role of “provider,” and to symbolically mark this, by being able to “provide” a “nice wedding.” If you suggest that with two working, they could perhaps together “provide” for themselves and children who, in any event, they now provide for — or ought to provide for — you may well be met with incomprehension.

Marriage entails, and publicly marks, a change in social status, a crucial part of which is “providing.” Marriage is not linked to “becoming” mother or father.

Moreover since Pa Pa’s link is primarily through “providing,” links of affection are not in the first place between husband and wife while links of affection between father and child, while there, are often weak. Links of affection are primarily between mother and children. It is this which, in large part, explains the immaturity of what are supposed to be adult relationships. Indeed it may be expected that a son “provides” for his mother before taking a wife to whom he would owe “provision.”

The son

It is not surprising that a son had a particular place in family relationships. Males were — and sometimes are — served first at meals. This serving wold begin with “Father” or who stood in for “Father” and then first son and so on. Choice of meat, particularly where this was limited, followed the same ranking: men and boys first. Mothers often were served after, or ate after, everyone else.

Housework was — and often is — seen as women’s work. Unlike Britain or France, “housework” often includes gardens. Women are expected to see after the young, the sick, the aged, the dying and the dead as well as keep networks of family friends. Men see about the “outside.” Nowhere was the division seen as at a “house” party. Women sat with other women. They discussed “home” things. Men sat with men and discussed politics or economics. One would never have thought that a Golda Meir, and Indira Ghandi or a Margaret Thatcher ever existed — not to talk of an Isabella of Spain or an Elizabeth I of Britain.

The Victorian model

The basic model is the Victorian model. It is this which informs Winsie-Ann Cuffie and which also informs the “deviant’ family of Trini underclass or working class. It is this model, evolved in the last half of the 18th century and particularly important in the 19th and early part of the 20th century, which was seen as the Christian family. But this model in Europe where it evolved, never served aristocracy, sections of the upper middle class, small farmers or the emerging working class.

What informed us here was not the reality of Britain, France or Spain or even our local plantocracy. It was the grafting of this Victorian model, on to the colonial perception of a “perfect” and God reflecting, European and/or white family.

We would be wrong to see this image of Father and of men as only Winsie-Ann Cuffie. Rather the answer to a macho whose failure we cannot help seeing is often the search for some substitution macho. Well that wont work either.