Abstract
This chapter provides two brief international case studies of multiracial identity via the South African and Jamaican experiences. The two nations have particular histories that both complement and give contrast to an understanding of multiracial identity in the UK and US. In examining the social construction of ‘race’ in South Africa and Jamaica we shall see how racial labelling often acts as a useful mechanism in gaining social and economic power for one group at the expense of another.
Without use of history and without an historical sense of psychological matters, the social scientist cannot adequately state the kinds of problems that ought now to be the orienting points of his studies.
C. Wright Mills1
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Notes
C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination (London: Oxford University Press, 1959), p. 143.
P. L. van den Berghe, Race and Racism: A Comparative Perspective, 2nd edn (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1978), p. 96.
M. Benson, Nelson Mandela (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986), p. 35.
N. Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela (London: Little Brown, 1994), p. 104.
G. M. Fredrickson, White Supremacy: A Comparative Study in American & South African History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), p. 133.
H. Hoetink, “’Race” and Color in the Caribbean’, in S. W. Mintz and S. Price (eds), Caribbean Contours (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1985), p. 69.
W. Rodney, The Groundings with my Brothers (London: Bogle-L’Overture, 1975), p. 16.
L. Spencer-Strachan, Confronting the Color Crisis in the African Diaspora: Emphasis Jamaica (New York: African World Infosystems, 1992), p. 17.
See also E. Braithwaite, The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica: 1770–1820 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971);
M. Kerr, Personality and Conflict in Jamaica (Liverpool: University of Liverpool Press, 1952).
A. Trollope, The West Indies and the Spanish Main (New York: Hippocrene, 1985; first published in 1859), pp. 56–7.
For a discussion relating to the British empire and its concomitant racial theories, see S. K. Yeboah, The Ideology of Racism (London: Hansib, 1988);
P. B. Rich, Prospero’s Return?: Historical Essays on Race, Culture and British Society (London: Hansib, 1994), chs 1, 2, 4 and 5.
See P. L. van de Berghe, South Africa: A Study of Conflict (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1967);
I. Goldin, Making Race: The Politics and Economics of Coloured Identity in South Africa (London: Longman, 1987).
See for example L. Funeburg, Black, White, Other: Biracial Americans Talk About Race and Identity (New York: Quill, 1994). This qualitative study relates to the US experience of 42 adult multiracial persons. Yet it fails to give a historical account of how ‘race’ in the US was socially engineered via enslavement, colonialism, segregation and second-class citizenship for ’people of colour’. Instead it merely examines the views of the respondents in a contemporary sense, a major flaw in the analysis.
Interview with Professor Barry Chevannes, Dean of Social Sciences, at the University of West Indies, Mona, Jamaica, 4 June 1998. See also B. Chevannes, Rastafari: Roots and Ideology (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1995).
For a classic disscussion relating to the social consequences of ‘labelling’ and how the process often has consequences that trap the individual into a particular social identity, see H. S. Becker, Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance (New York: Free Press, 1973).
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© 2000 Mark Christian
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Christian, M. (2000). South Africa and Jamaica: ‘Other’ Multiracial Case Studies. In: Multiracial Identity. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230501744_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230501744_4
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