Examining Race in Jamaica: How Racial Category and Skin Color Structure Social Inequality
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Race and Social Problems https://doi.org/10.1007/s12552-020-09287-z Examining Race in Jamaica: How Racial Category and Skin Color Structure Social Inequality Monique D. A. Kelly1 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020 Abstract Jamaica’s social inequality is primarily held to be class-based due, in part, to the country’s perceived ethno-racial homoge- neity and to the particularities of its colonial past. However, whether “race” also systemically shapes inequality in Jamaica remains understudied. To address this empirical lacuna, I examine the efects of two measures of race—categorical race and skin color—on years of schooling and household amenities using data from the 2014 AmericasBarometer social survey. I fnd that access to household amenities and years of schooling are starkly structured by racial category, and even more robustly by skin color, across all dimensions. The fndings challenge long-held assumptions that marginalize race with regards to social inequality in Jamaica. They also suggest the importance of a multidimensional approach to studying the efects of race for understanding stratifcation dynamics in Jamaica. As an English-speaking, majority Afro-descent society in the Caribbean, the study’s fndings add a unique country case for comparison to Latin America and may also speak to other similar contexts in the region. Keywords Race · Skin color · Social inequality · Caribbean · Jamaica Inequality in the Anglo-Caribbean country of Jamaica is [We] are made up of…predominantly Negro or of substantial: about 20% of the population lives below the mixed blood, but also with large numbers of others, poverty line, while three-ffths of the country’s wealth is and nowhere in the world has more progress been held by only 10% of its population (World Bank 2013). This made in developing a non-racial society in which also inequality is primarily attributed to class factors given the color is not psychologically signifcant (as quoted in country’s deep income stratifcation and perceived ethno- Nettleford 1970, pp. 23–24). racial homogeneity; fully 91.6% of Jamaica’s population The ideology of creolization and its embodiment in self-identify as black or black-mixed (World Bank 2013). Jamaica’s national motto purports that there are no signif- The latter refects a presumed process of creolization, or cant racial cleavages that create problematic fssures (e.g., racial blending/mixing, in both its people and its culture racial stratifcation) among the population. (Bolland 1998; Braithwaite 1971), which is refected in the There is a signifcant body of research on the Latin Amer- nationalist ideology of “creole multi-racialism” (Levi 1992; ican region that examines ideologies of racial fusion/mixing Thame 2017; Thomas 2002, 2004). The state’s motto, “Out (referred to as mestizaje), the key elements of which may of many, one people,” encapsulates and echoes this creoli- mirror those of Jamaica’s ideology of creolization (Kelly and zation (Kelly and Bailey 2018). According to the frst Vice Bailey 2018). Latin American ideologies of mestizaje—a set Premier Norman Manley (who also helped coin the motto): of ruling ideas that positively characterizes a country’s pop- ulation as being largely comprised of “mixed” ethno-racial ancestries—were often viewed as blurring racial boundaries and thereby mitigating racial tension. However, some argue * Monique D. A. Kelly that such ideologies deny black and indigenous identities and [email protected] cultures by casting the nation as mixed race/homogeneous (Nascimento 1989). The resulting intellectual constructions 1 Department of Sociology, Michigan State University, 509 East Circle Drive, 317 Berkey Hall, East Lansing, obfuscate the stratifying efects of race (Canache et al. 2014; MI 48824-1111, USA Sue 2013; Warren and Sue 2011; Winant 1999). Vol.:(0123456789)1 3 Race and Social Problems These ideologies may be particularly evident where indi- are controlled for. Furthermore, the fndings suggest that viduals self-identify with racially ambiguous terminology skin color may provide a useful and robust perspective on and/or where populations vigorously embrace nation-based the role of race in Jamaica’s social stratifcation. This paper’s categories while downplaying race-based classifcations analytic approach and fndings thereby contribute uniquely (Bonilla-Silva and Glover 2005; Twine 1998; Warren and to two important research angles: the role of race in structur- Sue 2011). Some scholars even argue that racial fusion ide- ing social inequality in the Americas (even amid purported ologies may be increasingly producing similar efects in racially fused populations) and how a multidimensional the United States, for example, in the case of Latin Ameri- approach may be particularly useful in furthering empirical canization (Bonilla-Silva and Dietrich 2008; Bonilla-Silva demonstration and theory building. and Glover 2005). While some scholars disagree about this obfuscation of ideologies of racial mixing in Latin America (Bailey 2009; Bailey et al. 2016; Telles and Bailey 2013), Background the empirical research clearly demonstrates that racial strati- fcation is very much present throughout Latin America and Historical Antecedents of Race‑Making the United States (Bailey et al. 2014; Monk 2016; Perreira and Telles 2014; Telles 2014; Telles et al. 2015; Villarreal The racialized demography of the Caribbean, also found 2010). in all the greater Americas, is rooted in the region’s colo- Jamaica is the third-largest English-speaking country in nized past. During periods of colonization, the diferences the greater Americas (following the United States and Can- between West Africans and Europeans “were rendered by ada) and the largest in the Anglo-Caribbean; its population is the dominant Europeans in terms of ‘race’ as evidenced in overwhelmingly Afro-descendant. Despite the demographics color and other attributes imagined and construed to ide- of Jamaica, I argue that race does matter in the structur- ological ends” (Austin-Broos 1994, p. 213). Through the ing of social inequality in the country. Although existing race-making enterprise of colonization, whiteness became literature has explored the contours of nationalist fusion associated with power and freedom while blackness came to (Austin-Broos 1994; Thame 2017; Thomas 2002, 2004) signify being sub-human and property. However, the subse- and its infuence on understandings of racial discrimination quent racialized systems of social closure (Wacquant 1997) (Kelly and Bailey 2018), there is a dearth of quantitative that emerged in Jamaica and in parts of Latin America often research on how race may or may not structure inequality in contrasted with the racial caste system of hypodescent that Jamaica. This paper addresses that empirical lacuna using characterized the United States (Davis 1991). Scholars argue data from the 2014 AmericasBarometer social survey (Latin that the social creation and wider acceptance of “free color- American Public Opinion Project [LAPOP]) on Jamaica to eds”—who were the lighter-skinned ofspring of oftentimes analyze two distinct measures of social inequality: access violent and forced sexual assaults between white planters to household amenities and years of schooling. To more and their slaves, whom the planters manumitted or freed stringently test the infuence of race on social inequality, I upon their death—actually worked to strengthen slave soci- employ two measures of the construct. The survey includes eties in the Caribbean and Latin America (Hellwig 1992; a unique item about skin color in addition to one about racial Higman 1976; Johnson 2004; Ward 1988). category, which makes it possible to examine race as a mul- While free coloreds sometimes resisted slavery alongside tidimensional construct (e.g., Campbell et al. 2016). The fellow Africans (Johnson 2004; Sio 1976), they often aided analytical strategy of leveraging multiple measures of race to whites in subjugating blacks by sustaining the oppressive unravel its complex efects on social stratifcation is growing system of slavery and by reinforcing a system of social clo- in importance in both Latin America and the United States sure that was based on skin color. In fact, Livesay (2018, (Bailey et al. 2013; Saperstein 2008; Telles 2014; Telles and p. 15) noted that free-colored (or mixed-race) Jamaicans, Lim 1998). Moreover, leveraging skin color may be par- during the years 1733–1826, often petitioned for legal white ticularly important for the study of race in a context such as status via privilege petitions (these petitions became little Jamaica, where the overwhelming majority of the popula- more than nominal forms of distinction from free black tion self-identifes as a single racial category—black—but Jamaicans by the mid-eighteenth century) to be exempted also where signifcant intra-category diferences along the from race-based inheritance regulations and other policies. lines of skin color may play an important role (Keith and These exemptions thus enabled free coloreds to own land Herring 1991). and later to have access to the Jamaican Assembly. Though Results show that both categories—racial category and never equal to their white counterparts, free coloreds held skin color—shape a person’s access to household amenities substantially more power and rights as compared to black and educational attainment in Jamaica, even when class- Jamaicans, free or otherwise (Altink 2009). Free coloreds, based proxies and numerous other population