I guess it was my conversation last week with my friend, Miller, who again asserted that today's African youths are not carrying forward what he sees as the "Frantz Fanon consciousness" of the 60s and 70s.

It may have been, too, my sad experience, weeks earlier, with a young African female, who, in a strident tone, told me that she was born in 1980, had done a course in history, and considered "talk about African slavery" as just an excuse she was fed up with.

Probably, it may have been the papier-mâché appearance of the Prime Minister at celebrations at Rienzi Complex last Tuesday, but something compelled me to return to Jean-Paul Sartre's "Authentic and Inauthentic Man"- an essay written in 1948, the year in which the state of Israel was established - which I had read years ago.

Probably, just the word "authentic" may have triggered something, because Sartre's essay is really about the Jewish question that was raging in post-war France.

Sartre, who declined a Nobel Prize for literature, saw "authentic" persons as those who hold true and lucid awareness of a situation, accept the related pride or humiliation, even its horror or hate, with integrity, and, importantly, they assume responsibility for the involved risk. It was a perspective that resonated with me.

Most people, he wrote, conceal "certain parts of themselves from themselves" because "authenticity" demands rare human courage. "Inauthenticity" is easy, therefore, as it allows most people to deny, or escape from, the state of "authenticity".

The two words, "authentic" and "inauthentic", triggered something in my imagination, as I tried to link Miller's assertion, the young woman's comment, and the Prime Minister's performance.

First, I recalled that the Jews have placed, quite forcibly, Hitler's extermination of six million of their ancestors on the world's conscience, but that wretchedness can never compare with the African experience in which one estimate says that between 1550 and 1850 some 50 million slaves were shipped to the Americas, and only 15 million of our ancestors are said to have landed.

"It was the capital gained from the slave trade, which fertilised what became the Industrial Revolution," our CLR James - from Arima and Tunapuna - explained to the world. That's a fact I would like the young lady to absorb.

James was echoing that monumental German philosopher/economist Karl Marx who, a century earlier, determined that "without slavery North America, the most progressive of continents, would be transformed into a patriarchal country".

Should slavery be wiped off the map, Marx wrote, there would be anarchy and the complete decay of 19th century commerce and civilisation.

"Cause slavery to disappear and you will have wiped America off the map of nations," Marx emphasised.

And as I pointed out weeks ago, Dr Eric Williams also charted the course of British capital, built from the brutality of West Indian slave labour, that was responsible for the "take-off" of 19th century India.

The significant contribution of African slavery to world development — absent from the consciousness of the young lady's generation — is what Miller believes should frame the conversation of every African youth as they search for their identity, seek a place in Trinbago's new matrix, and confront the challenges of a globalised world.

So last Tuesday, as I observed the Prime Minister, I struggled with both "authenticity" and "inauthenticity" in my mind, as she attempted to "celebrate" her achievements on assuming leadership of the UNC.

Only "inauthenticity" filled my television screen, however. Crime and the economy - now stagnated and with further decline anticipated - are the two most pressing issues facing Trinbago.

So any prime ministerial "celebrations" could be, at best, only shambolic and inauthentic. How could there be celebrations when taxpayers are to pay Brigadier Peter Joseph $1 million for wrongful dismissal. What of the US$15 million blimp, sold off to persons unknown for US$50,000, and to be replaced by another of the numerous questionable deals, a $900,000 Air Scout.

There was:

** Inauthenticity in the Foreign Minister's claim that the PM, the head of our Government, made "a State visit" to India.

** Inauthenticity in the body language of Jack Warner, snubbed at the UNC celebrations, as he tried to put on a brave and bold face.

** Inauthenticity in the pathetic figure of NJAC's Makandal Daaga, waving a UNC flag, as if to confirm publicly that he had defected from the 1970 cause.

** Inauthenticity in the Prime Minister's decision "to personally micro-manage" the re-direction of the $7.2 billion Point Fortin Highway project, with no mention of whose lands will now be purchased and at what price.

Last Thursday, former prime minister Basdeo Panday was asked at UWI what advice he would give the current PM. He replied tersely: "Speak less, act more."

I would have added: "PM, try to be authentic!"

* Keith Subero, a former

Express news editor, has

since followed a career in

communication and management.