Racism, colourism and classism

Across the world, Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests have been held in the wake of the George Floyd killing. In the US and Europe, they have led to the toppling of colonial and slavery monuments and demands for far-reaching changes to address systemic racism. But BML protests have also taken place in black-majority countries, such as Jamaica, where they have raised some uncomfortable truths.

Protest

On Saturday 6 June a small BLM protest was held outside the US embassy. Protesters focussed particularly on extrajudicial killings. According to Amnesty International, Jamaica has one of the highest rates of lethal police shootings in the world. Two days after George Floyd was killed, Susan Bogle, a poor woman, was shot in a police-military operation in her own home. Protesters carried placards with her name and those of other victims of police brutality, including Mario Deane, who died in police custody in 2014 around the same time that Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson, Missouri. Protesters stressed that these victims of police brutality had one thing in common: they were poor, and because of Jamaica’s complex class and colour relations, mostly dark-skinned. Several days after Bogle’s killing, Prime Minister Andrew Holness visited Bogle’s family. Online many accused him of hypocrisy as his government, like many before it, has ignored the high the rate of extrajudicial killings, the gang violence, and the plight of poor Jamaicans more generally.

Colourism in Jamaica

But while public debate largely focussed on extrajudicial killings, questions were also raised about the role of colourism in Jamaica – discrimination against individuals with a dark skin tone. On ‘Blackout Tuesday’ various Jamaican artists used their social platforms to express solidarity with the BLM movement in the US. Many received negative comments online because they had glorified violence in their songs, bleached their skin, or were light-skinned and had previously never expressed sympathy for poor black Jamaicans or worse discriminated against ‘ghetto’ people.

The prevalence of skin bleaching is but one expression of colourism in Jamaica, which is a practice that has its origins in slavery when slave children fathered by white planters or overseers – often as a result of sexual violence – were given special privileges, such as exemption from field work all on account of their closeness to white men and, by definition, whiteness. Colourism and white-on-black discrimination in Jamaica, the US and other parts of the Americas, then, should be seen as two sides of the same coin: colourism would not exist without European colonialism and the use of enslaved Africans on sugar plantation.

In my most recent book, I have argued that colourism in Jamaican society has been a public secret; something that is commonly known but which for one reason or another cannot be openly acknowledged. Those who have dared to expose this secret have usually been vilified and today that increasingly means being harassed on social media.

A welcome debate

The public debate in the wake of the George Floyd killing suggests that more Jamaicans are willing to acknowledge that light skin bestows privilege and that this constitutes racism. And this includes not just those who have been at the receiving end of colourism. One light-skinned man, for instance, tweeted: ‘How are you going to act like racism/colourism is not a thing in a post-colonial society? I know for a FACT I regularly get better treatment/leniency because I’m brown/lightskin. How can you live in Jamaica and not recognize the reality of it’. But there are also still many who argue that racism is something that happens in the US and that ‘classism’ takes place in Jamaica. In other words, that some Jamaicans get good jobs or the best seat in a restaurant is simply because of their class privilege and has nothing to do with skin colour.

Since Jamaica gained independence in 1962, the country has witnessed various ‘racial eruptions’ – racial incidents that have led to a public debate about race and colour – but none has changed the racial status quo as light skin has continued to bestow privilege in both the public and private spheres. For instance, most of the highest-paid employees in the top 100 Jamaican firms are light-skinned and many Jamaicans want to date or marry someone with a lighter skin tone. It remains to be seen whether this most recent racial eruption will lead to action to address colourism but that it is now more openly debated is a positive step forward.

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