Consequences of Class and Color West Indian Perspectives

DAVID mwENTEAL, a geographer and historian, bas devoted twenty years to research on the West Indks. Ha has taught at Vaswu College and has been visiting professor at a number of ' CONSEQUENCES universities in thc United States and at thc University of the West In* where he was Fulbright Research Fellow at the / OF CLASS Institute of Social and Economic Raiearch (195657). During 196162 he worked in thc Lesser Antillw with the assistance of a Rockefeller Foundation research grant and later received AND COLOR a Gnggenheim Fellowship. Until 1972. he was Secretary and Research Awdate at the American Geographical Socity, and he is currently Professor of Geography at University Col- West Indian Perspectives lege, London His most recent book is We~tIndian Societies, a comptehensive study of the non-Hispanic Caribbean. Lambma Comitas is Professor of Anthropology and Educa- Edited and Introduced by tion, Director of both the Center for Education In Latin Amer- 1 David Lowenthal and Lambros Comitas ica and the Center for Urban Studies and Programs, and As- sociate Director of the Division of Philosophy and Social Scienas at Teachers College, Columbia Univwaity. He is also hiate Dhctor of the Research Institute for the Study of Man, an institution for research and scholarship of the Carib- bean. Awarded a Fulbright Graduate Study Grant (1957-58) and a Guggenheim Fellowship (1971-72), Mr. Comitas' 6eld research was done in Barbados, Jamaica, Bolivia, and the Do- minican Republic. He has written numerous articles, he was editor of Cdbbeona 1900-1965: A Topical Bibliography, and serves as consultant or editor for several pubWg project^. Four books, edited and introduced by Lambros Comitas and David Lowenthal, provide a broad variety of material for the West Indics as a whole; each has the subtitle West Indian Perspectives: SLAW, PREB mN, CITIZENS WORK AND FAMILY LIPB CONSEQUENCES OF CLASS AND COLOR 'IHE WMOF SOMSeIONN Anchor Boob Anchor Press/Doubleday Garden City, New York, 1973 The Aochor Bwks edition is the CONTENTS first publication of Conrequences of Chand Color: West Indian Perspectives. Anchor Bwks edition: 1973 EDITORS NOTE ix ISBN: 0-385-04402-x Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 72-84928 INTRODUCTION: CULTURAL EXPRESSIONS OF Copyright @ 1973 by David Lowcnthal and hb~osComitas xv All Rights Reserved CLASS AND COLOR Printed in the United States of America I I RACE AND COLOR 1. Marcus Garvey I The Race Question in Jamaica (1916) 4 2. C. V. D. Hadley Personality Pattern, Social Class, and Aggression in the British West Indies (1949) 13 3. Rex Nettleford National Identity and Attitudes to Race in Jamaica (1965) 35 4. James A. Mau The Threatening Masses: Myth or Reality? (1965) 5. C. L. R James The Middle Classes (1962) vi Contents Contents vji I 6. Adrian Espinet 16. 0. R. Dathorne Honours and Paquotille (1965) 95 1 Caribbean Narrative (1966) 263 7. A Young Jamaican Nationalist 17. W. I. Carr Realism and Race (1961) 103 The West Indian Novelist: Prelude and Context (1965) 281 8. H. P. Jacobs Reality and Race: A Reply to 'Realism 18. Derek Walwtt and Race' (1961) 123 Meanings (1970) 9. Anonymous I SELECTED READINGS 313 The Favored Minorities (1970) 143 10. Eric Williams Education in the British West Indies (1951) 148 11. Edward P. G. Seaga Parent-Teacher Relationships in a Ja- maican Viage (1955) 169 12. M. G. Smith Education and Occupational Choice in Rural Jamaica (1960) 191 13. Mewin C. AUeyne Language and Society in St. Lucia (1961) 199 14. Edith Efron French and Creole Patois in Haiti (1954) 215 IS. Lloyd Braithwaite The Problem of Cultural Integration in Trinidad (1954) 241 EDITORS' NOTE The West Indies, the earliest and one of the most impr- tant prizes of Eumpe's New World and the firat to experi- ence the full impact of the black diaspra from Africa, were also the most enduringly colonized territories in the history of the Western Hemisphere. Here more than anywhere else mastera and slaves constituted the basic ingredi- ents of the social order; here more than anywhere else class and status were based on distinctions of color and race. Yet out of that past, here more than anywhere else sodeties with black majorities have emerged as self- governing, multiracial states. Tbi8 collection of four volumea4Iaves, Free Men, Citizens: Work and Family Life; Consequences of Ch and Color; and The Aftermaih of SovereiBnty--chroniclea the remarkable story, played out on the doo18tep of the North American continent, of transitions from slavery to freedom, from colonialism to self-government, and from self-rejection to prideful identity. The West Indies face a host of conthuing problems-- foreiga economic domination and population pressure, ethnic stress and black-power revolts, the petty tyranny of local rulers and an agoniziag dependence on expatriate culture. For these very reasons, the West Indies constitute an exceptional setting for the study of complex social relations. The archipelago is a set of mirrors in which the lives of black, brown, and white, of American Indian and x Editors' Note Editors' Note xi East Indian, and of a swre of other minorities continually pression in the smaller French and Netherlands Caribbean interact. Constrained by local circumstance, these inter- and larger but less well-known Haiti lie in the future. actions also contain a wealth of possibilities for a kind of In the Caribbean, a real understanding of any problem creative harmony of which North Americans and Euro- requires a broad familiarity with all aspects of culture and peans are scarcely yet aware. Consequently, while these society. Thus the study of economic development relates volumes deal specScally with the Caribbean in all its as- intimately to that of family organization, and both of these aspects systems pects, many dimensions of life and many problems West interlink with of political thought, of education, and patterns of speech. Consequently. the subject Indians confront have analogues in other regions of the matter of this collection lies in the domains of history, world: most dearly in race relations, economic develop geography, astthropology, sociology, economics, politics, ment, colonial and post-colonial politics and government, polemics, and the arts. For example, easays on work and and the need to Bnd and express group identity. family life by economists and anthropologists are comple- It can be argued that the West Indies is a distinctive mented by other studies tracing the historical background and unique culture area in that the societim within it dis- and sociological interplay of these with other themes. play profound similarities: their inhabitants, notwitbstand- Throughout the volumes economists and geographers ing linguistic barriers and local or parochial loyalties, see indicate bow social structure bears on and is influenced themselves as closely linked. T%eae resemblances and by economy and land use, and linguists, littbrateurs, recognitions, originally the product of similar economic lawyers, and local journalists provide insights on the im- and social forces based on North European settlement. pact of these patterns in everyday life. plantation agriculture, and -can slavery, have subse- The reader will 6nd here not a complete delineation of quently been reinforced by a wideapread community of the Caribbean realm but rather a sketch in breadth, with interest, along with interregional migration for commerce, fuller diision of significant themes, given depth and personality by picaresque flavor. He may gain a sense of employment, marriage, and education. These volumes what West Indians were and are like, how they live, and focus mainly on these underlying uniformities. Within the what problems they confront; he can sea how their own Caribbean itself, however, one is more conscious of dif- view of themselves differs born that of outsiders; he will ferences than of resemblances. While each Caribbean land know where to look for general studies and for more de- is in part a microcosm of the entire archipelago, local tailed iaformation. And if there is such a thing as a conditions-&e, resources, social structure, political status regional personality, this collection may enable him to ac- -also make it in some significant fashion unique. quire a sense of it The range of these essays is the entire non-Hispanic What is currently available to most students of Carib- Caribbean, but most of the material that is not general in bean dah is woefully inadequate by comparison with character deals with the Commonwealth Caribbean, a pre- most other regions of the world A few general histories, ponderant share of this specifically with Jamaica and technical analyses on particular aspects of Caribbean Trinidad. This reflects neither a bias in favor of these ter- society or culture, and detailed studies of one or two ritories nor a belief that they are typical, but rather the individual territories comprise the holdings of all but the fact that most recent scholarly attention has concentrated best-equipped libraries. Moreover, no book has yet been on, and literary expression has emanated from, the Com- published that includes a broad variety of material for the monwealth Caribbean. Close understanding of and ex- area as a whole, and few studies transcend national or xiii xii Editors' Note Editors' Note linguistic boundaries. We therefore aim to make available owe a special thanks to Marquita Riel and Claire Angela a wide range of literature on the Caribbean that is not Hendricks, who helped with the original selections and readily accessible anywhere else. styled the references. Mi Riel also made the original Most of this collection is the work of West Indians translations from the French. We are indebted to the Re- themselves, for they contribute forty-five of the seventy- search Institute for the SNdy of Man, and its Director, two selections.

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