LIMING ON THE AVENUE: ANTIBLACKNESS AND MIDDLE- CLASS LEISURE CULTURE IN PORT OF SPAIN, TRINIDAD AN ABSTRACT SUBMITTED ON THE SEVENTH DAY OF DECEMBER 2020 TO THE DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS OF THE SCHOOL OF LIBERAL ARTS OF TULANE UNIVERSITY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY BY Dan C. Castilow II APPROVED: A.Mohan Mohan Ambikaipaker, Ph.D. Director Allison Truitt Allison Truitt, Ph.D. Sabia McCoy Torres, Ph.D. ___________________________________ Laura Rosanne Adderley, Ph.D. Dissertation Abstract The present study interrogates the intellectual history of hybridity discourses in the Caribbean and ethnographically illustrates how multiculturalism and hybridity discourses in Trinidad and Tobago are, in fact, incongruent with the lived experiences of Black Trinidadians. Recent ethnographies wholly accept hybridity as cultural models for the nation. This easy acceptance prompts important questions: how have creolization and hybridity discourses become commonsensical in the Caribbean, and what are the implications of the uncritical application of these frameworks to racially heterogeneous societies? Also, do hybridity projects in Trinidad and Tobago operate in a way similar to the way that Mestizaje and Mulataje operate in Latin America and other Caribbean islands? Based on ethnographic observations and the history of racialization in Trinidad, this dissertation explores how Black and mixed-race Trinidadians understand and negotiate implicit antiblackness in a racially "hybrid" nation? These questions are explored through deep ethnographic research that occurred in the context of the cosmopolitan Trinidadian capital city of Port of Spain. Through participant observation and engaging with Trinidadians at sites of liming, including the nightclubs and bars of Ariapita Avenue, cricket games at Queens Park Oval, and the annual pre-Lenten Carnival, this dissertation explores global antiblack racism, colorism, and the intersection of these social conditions with the middle-class. LIMING ON THE AVENUE: ANTIBLACKNESS AND MIDDLE- CLASS LEISURE CULTURE IN PORT OF SPAIN, TRINIDAD A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED ON THE SEVENTH DAY OF DECEMBER 2020 TO THE DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS OF THE SCHOOL OF LIBERAL ARTS OF TULANE UNIVERSITY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY BY Dan C. Castilow II APPROVED: A.Mohan Mohan Ambikaipaker, Ph.D. Director Allison Truitt Allison Truitt, Ph.D. Sabia McCoy Torres, Ph.D. ___________________________________ Laura Rosanne Adderley, Ph.D. Table of Contents List of Illustrations ............................................................................................................. iii Introduction: ....................................................................................................................... 1 The Lineage of Creolization and Hybridity Theory .................................................................... 8 Chapter Descriptions .................................................................................................................. 20 Situating Blackness: Who is Black? .......................................................................................... 23 The Field .................................................................................................................................... 26 Methodology .............................................................................................................................. 35 Chapter 1: Historical Groundings .................................................................................... 50 “Creoles” and Colonial Racial Hierarchies ............................................................................... 55 Eric WilliaMs., C.L.R. JaMes and Black Anxieties ................................................................... 61 U.S. Occupation and Racial InterVention .................................................................................. 66 Postcolonial Promises ................................................................................................................ 72 Chapter 2: Racial Antagonisms and Anti-Blackness in Trinidad ..................................... 81 On Black and Indian AntagonisMs ............................................................................................ 82 Creolization and the “Brown” Middle Class ............................................................................. 95 ConteMporary Trinidadian and Global Antiblackness ............................................................ 100 Antiblackness and AfropessiMisM ........................................................................................... 105 Antiblackness in Trinidad ........................................................................................................ 117 Chapter 3: “How We Vote is Not How We Party” ......................................................... 120 Citizenship and LiMing ............................................................................................................ 130 Race, Masculinity and Wining ................................................................................................. 135 Stush: “Black” Respectability, Wining and Heteropatriarchy ................................................. 140 Rally ’round the West Indies ................................................................................................... 146 LiMing at the Oval ................................................................................................................... 151 Woodbrook Meets the OVal ..................................................................................................... 154 Chapter 4: Like Yuh Playing Mas ................................................................................... 162 CarniVal: Black, Brown, and In-Between ................................................................................ 170 PerforMative Citizenship, Race, and Resistance ..................................................................... 175 The RhythM of CarniVal: Pan, Calypso, and Soca .................................................................. 179 Modern Soca and Racial Unity ................................................................................................ 185 J’ouVert and Rebellion ............................................................................................................. 191 Pretty Mas, Gender, and Neoliberal Carnival .......................................................................... 195 i Racial Ambiguity, Gender, and Sexuality ............................................................................... 207 Ash Wednesday: Afterthoughts on CarniVal ........................................................................... 216 Chapter 5: The Reluctant Advocate ............................................................................... 219 The Making of an Antiracist ActiVist ...................................................................................... 228 Elise on Race and Class ........................................................................................................... 236 Whose CarniVal? ...................................................................................................................... 239 Elise on Antiblackness in CriMinal Justice .............................................................................. 244 References ....................................................................................................................... 264 ii List of Illustrations Illustration 1: Map of Trinidad ......................................................................................... 26 Illustration 2: Map of Port of Spain .................................................................................. 27 Illustration 3: Residential Street in Westbrook ................................................................. 49 Illustration 4: Evening at Maracas Bay Beach .................................................................. 68 Illustration 5: Students vent their feelings during the funeral procession for Basil Davis on 9 April 1970. ................................................................................................................ 78 Illustration 6: Ariapita Avenue at Dusk .......................................................................... 126 Illustration 7: A Twenty20 Cricket Match at Queens Park Oval .................................... 147 Illustration 8: Picture of billboard across from the Savannah during Carnival. ............. 178 Illustration 9: Typical pretty mas backline costume. ...................................................... 195 Illustration 10: Typical frontline costume. ...................................................................... 207 iii 1 Liming on the Avenue: Antiblackness and Middle-Class Leisure Culture in Port of Spain, Trinidad Introduction: In the study race in Trinidad and Tobago, scholars across disciplines have mostly focused on the perceived antagonisms between Blacks and Indians1. Trinidad's ethnic and racial diversity makes it a nation ideally suited to the application of cultural creolization models that have been used to describe the Caribbean (Brathwaite 1971, Mintz and Price 1976, Yelvington 2001). Previous ethnographies of Trinidad seized on the applicability of hybridity and creolization discourses to argue that Indians have, as