Examining Race in Jamaica: How Racial Category and Skin Color Structure Social Inequality
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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 homogeneity 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 effects 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 find 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 findings 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 effects of race for understanding stratification dynamics in Jamaica. As an English-speaking, majority Afro-descent society in the Caribbean, the study’s findings 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 substantial: about 20% of the population lives below the poverty line, while three-fifths of the country’s wealth is held by only 10% of its population (World Bank 2013). This inequality is primarily attributed to class factors given the country’s deep income stratification and perceived ethnoracial homogeneity; fully 91.6% of Jamaica’s population self-identify as black or black-mixed (World Bank 2013). The latter reflects a presumed process of creolization, or racial blending/mixing, in both its people and its culture (Bolland 1998; Braithwaite 1971), which is reflected in the nationalist ideology of “creole multi-racialism” (Levi 1992; Thame 2017; Thomas 2002, 2004). The state’s motto, “Out of many, one people,” encapsulates and echoes this creolization (Kelly and Bailey 2018). According to the first Vice Premier Norman Manley (who also helped coin the motto):
* Monique D. A. Kelly [email protected] 1
Department of Sociology, Michigan State University, 509 East Circle Drive, 317 Berkey Hall, East Lansing, MI 48824‑1111, USA
[We] are made up of…predominantly Negro or of mixed blood, but also with large numbers of others, and nowhere in the world has more progress been made in developing a non-racial society in which also color is not psychologically significant (as quoted in Nettleford 1970, pp. 23–24). The ideology of creolization and its embodiment in Jamaica’s national motto purports that there are no significant racial cleavages that create problematic fissures (e.g., racial stratification) among the population. There is a significant body of research on the Latin American region that
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