Jamaican politicians embraced the principle of ‘equality of opportunity’ in education, especially after 1944. Yet access to high-quality education, ranging from private preparatory schools and elite secondary schools to university, was marked by race and colour in pre- and post-independence Jamaica. This chapter explores not only the various and complex ways in which race and colour affected access to high-quality education but also how race and colour shaped the experiences of Jamaican school children and students, including the curriculum and staff-student and peer relations, which in turn affected their ability to succeed in education.

As an elite secondary school education more than anything determined social mobility in pre- and post-independence Jamaica because it gave access to white-collar jobs, this chapter is largely concerned to determine the extent to which there was ‘equality of access’ to elite secondary schools and assess how race and colour affected those students who gained access. But as in the years leading up to and especially following independence tertiary education also became an important means of social mobility, the following also assesses how easy it was for poor and predominantly dark-skinned children to move all the way from primary to tertiary education.

This is not to say that primary education was free from discrimination. In fact, staff-student relations in primary schools were shaped by race and colour and this chapter will argue that this significantly affected the chances of dark-skinned students gaining access to elite secondary schools. The focus in this chapter, however, is on access to and the experiences of children in elite secondary schools as these factors offered the best chances of social mobility and as such were producing much of the racial inequality in colonial and independent Jamaica. Studies on other parts of the Americas have shown that education – the type and amount received – is one of the main means by which class inequalities are reproduced and which in turn reproduce racial inequalities. For example, after the revolution, the Cuban government eliminated the exclusive private schools of the republican era. Up until at least junior high, Cubans of different backgrounds received the same type of instruction. As a result, African-Cubans were able to enter professional occupations that had previously been racially exclusive.

Reflecting on his childhood in Jamaica in the 1930s and 1940s, the cultural theorist Stuart Hall remarked that ‘skin colour was, absolutely, an issue. But although everyone perfectly well understood what “black” meant, the very word was taboo, unsayable … It betrayed the prevailing prejudices too openly. Race depended on a more euphemistic, coded discourse’. Hall suggested, in other words, that in Jamaica race and colour ‘prejudices’ were what the anthropologist Michael T. Taussig has called a ‘public secret’ – something that is commonly known but which for one reason or another cannot easily be acknowledged. By examining a wide range of practices that firmly placed black people at the bottom of the social ladder and white and light-skinned people on top, this book will shed light on the public secret of race and colour in colonial and independent Jamaica. It examines different forms of white-on-black discrimination (overt, covert, individual, and institutional) and also colourism (or ‘shadism’ as it was locally known) – differential treatment according to skin tone. In addition to these forms of discrimination, the book explores practices which were devoid of racial content but equally helped to sustain a society stratified by race and colour, such as voting qualifications and entry criteria for elite secondary schools.

But this book is not just concerned to show the extent to which race and colour shaped social relations in colonial and independent Jamaica. It will also explore how the discriminatory and race-neutral practices and resulting racial disparities were able to remain a public secret, even though at times various groups and individuals, including the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), Rastafarians, and the Black Power movement spoke out about white-on-black discrimination or colourism. To do so, it examines various strategies used to talk about race, ranging from denial and minimisation to using ‘more euphemistic, coded discourse’, and also assesses what happened to those Jamaicans who transgressed the unwritten rule not to talk about race hinted at by Hall. One strategy increasingly used after the Second World War to keep race a public secret was the branding of the island as a racial paradise. One journalist, for instance, described Jamaica in 1951 as ‘the world's shop-window for racial equality’.

Reflecting on her experiences looking for work after she graduated from commercial college in the 1930s, Gladys Bustamante, the wife of the first prime minister of independent Jamaica, noted: ‘Because I was not of light complexion, I could not hold a job of any kind in a commercial bank. Though I was proficient in arithmetic and knew how to speak to people, I could not find employment selling cloth, shoes or books in any King Street store’. This chapter will illustrate that it was not only during the worldwide economic depression that African Jamaicans ‘not of light complexion’ struggled to find work. Even long after independence, there were parts of the labour market that were effectively closed to dark-skinned Jamaicans, while in others they were rarely found in management positions.

The following chronological sections explore, first, the various methods that contributed to a stratification of the labour market by race and colour and, second, the ways in which this stratification was (or was not) talked about. In doing so, this chapter will demonstrate some real advancements made by dark-skinned Jamaicans on the labour market but also point to the ways in which the government and individual African-Jamaican men and women helped to sustain an unequal labour market. This is not to say, however, that there was no opposition to exclusionary employment practices during the period under consideration. The following will in fact mention various instances whereby black politicians and others questioned hiring processes and made proposals to create a more level playing field. Through a careful analysis and contextualisation of their race talk, an explanation will be provided as to why their interventions failed to have a significant impact.

Although discrimination was most noticeable in the private sector between 1918 and 1980, it was not absent in the public sector. The civil service and the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) are used here as case studies for the public sector, while shops, banks, and tourism-related enterprises provide most of the evidence relating to the private sector. This chapter focusses largely on the concerns of middle-class African Jamaicans because race and colour ideas and practices particularly affected jobs for which a certain degree of education was needed.

Like many other countries, Jamaica has adopted a Vision 2030 to implement the UN's Millennium Development Goals and achieve developed nation status by 2030. This national development plan is guided by several principles, including ‘equity’ – to ensure ‘equality of opportunity and equal rights for all citizens’. Although Vision 2030 mentions gender and sexual discrimination, it does not, like those of some other countries, include a commitment to end race and colour discrimination. Like the reports that Jamaica submitted to the CERD in the 1960s and 1970s, then, Jamaica's Vision 2030 presents a nation that has overcome the problem of race and colour. Drawing upon newspaper accounts, social studies, reports, blogs, and other sources, the first section of this chapter contrasts this silence on race with the salience of race in contemporary Jamaica. It will provide evidence that Jamaican society remains marked by differential treatment and opportunities based on race and colour and that similar rhetorical strategies as in the past are used to deny their importance.

The second section provides an explanation for the ‘absent presence’ of race in Jamaica from 1918 till the present. Drawing upon the work of the American sociologist Barbara Reskin on racial inequality, it will argue that discrimination in different domains – employment, education, the criminal justice system, etc. – are linked, and that because of cumulative (dis)advantage, many race-neutral practices have exerted racial effects which, along with differential treatment based on race or colour, have upheld a racially stratified society. It also suggests that the image of Jamaica as a racial paradise has done much to keep race a public secret and that it was not just the vested interests of some groups in society that enabled the continuation of a colour-class hierarchy. The final section of this chapter moves from the past and present to the future. As a historian, it is beyond my expertise to offer suggestions on how to ensure that all citizens will have ‘equality of opportunity’ regardless of race or colour, so what this section offers instead is a starting point for a discussion to change the racial status quo.

Race in contemporary Jamaica

Reforms of the electoral system in the 1990s and the formation of an independent electoral commission in 2006 have removed opportunities for fraud but this has not eliminated violence.

The 1962 constitution not only enshrined the right to ‘freedom from discrimination’ but also various other ‘fundamental rights’, including the right to vote in free and fair elections, the right to equality before the law, the right to freedom of expression, and the right to peaceful assembly and association. Proceeding in a chronological order and focussing on the right to participate in politics (as voters and politicians), the right to participate in civil society, and the right to procedural fairness in law, this chapter tries to assess whether there was a correlation between the enjoyment of ‘fundamental rights’ and race and skin colour. Was it more difficult for dark-skinned Jamaicans to cast their vote or get a fair hearing in court than white or light-skinned Jamaicans? If so, why? And did this change over time as dark-skinned politicians and judges became more numerous? In addition, this chapter will explore how committed the pre- and post-independence governments were to colour-blindness. What did they do or fail to do to achieve a nation where race and colour no longer affected a person's life chances? How much and why did they insist that Jamaica was a nation where all races and colours lived in harmony? And how did they respond to challenges to this ideology of racial harmony?

The following will show that although there was no de jure discrimination before independence, lawful practices had racial effects so that dark-skinned Jamaicans struggled more to enjoy civil and political rights than white or light-skinned Jamaicans, and that a more diverse body of politicians and justices after independence did not result in a colour-blind nation. In fact, it will be argued that for various reasons in the years leading up to and following independence, African-Jamaican politicians were more committed to presenting Jamaica as a racial paradise than undertaking action to create a nation where race and colour truly no longer mattered. Consequently, in Jamaica as in other parts of the Caribbean and Latin America in the post-war period, a rhetoric of inclusion coexisted with exclusionary practices.

1918–43

Crown Colony government was in place in Jamaica until 1944 and centred around the LegCo. It was not until 1920 that the first African Jamaican was nominated to the LegCo: The Reverend Alexander A. Barclay. In 1925, Barclay became an elected MLC and it took the adoption of a new constitution in 1944 for another African Jamaican to be nominated.

The previous chapters have shown that over time race and colour came to play a less prominent role on the labour market and in schools. But even with advances in education, within the private sphere of the home and in such semi-private and semi-public spaces as clubs, churches, and hotels, race and colour relinquished little of their power. This chapter demonstrates and explains the power of race and colour in everyday interactions and is divided into two parts. The first section explores the overt and covert, verbal and non-verbal practices that conveyed to Jamaican children the complex meanings of race. Drawing largely upon anthropological studies and memoirs, it illustrates that class and colour were closely entwined but that colour in and of itself exerted power over individuals by bestowing or withholding privilege. The practices discussed instilled a strong white bias, leading to self-contempt in those furthest removed from whiteness. But as soon as children had understood the complex meanings of race and colour, they were taught not to talk about race. To illustrate the discursive strategies they used as adults to talk about this forbidden subject, the first section also examines several racial incidents that attracted wide media attention.

Yet colour-blindness in Jamaican society coexisted with colour-consciousness. Children learned to distinguish between a vast range of skin tones and soon began to treat people differently on account of their shade. The second section deals with physical segregation by race and colour, focussing not just on residential segregation but also the extent to which ‘shades’ mingled in private homes and in a range of semi-public and semi-private spaces. This section is not only concerned to demonstrate the existence of exclusionary race and colour practices even long after independence, it also provides further evidence that colour-blindness was the dominant racial ideology in colonial and independent Jamaica by exploring responses to accusations of racial discrimination in a variety of settings, focussing particularly on racial incidents that took place in hotels. From an early age, children learn about race in a variety of ways. Studies on racial socialisation – the implicit and explicit, deliberate, and inadvertent, and verbal and non-verbal messages about race – have shown that parents are the primary source of race socialisation messages.