Structural Discrimination & Knowledge Production in PostColonial Societies: Examples from the Caribbean
©Verene A. Shepherd
The University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica
9th Session of the WGPAD
Geneva, April 13, 2010
Madame President, distinguished representatives of States, NGOs and Civil
Society, it is an honour to have been invited to join the other members of the Working
Group of Experts on People of African Descent to carry out their prescribed mandate. I
also wish to register my appreciation to the staff of the HRC Secretariat for the efforts
they made to get me to this meeting at such short notice. I recognize the presence of the
Distinguished Representative from Haiti and bring greetings and an expression of
solidarity from the Haiti-Jamaica Society. Caribbean people recognize the importance of
Haiti in the regional emancipation movement in the 19th century and in the global
struggle of people of African descent for dignity, human rights and justice; and we hope
that the post-earthquake reconstruction efforts will keep those ideals and historical legacy
firmly in the forefront.
I am saddened by the events that resulted in my appointment to the WGPAD,
especially the death of Prof. Rex Nettleford. I cannot hope to fill his shoes. In addition, it
is an enormous responsibility to hold the title of “expert” on people of African Descent.
But Prof. Nettleford would have wanted me to embrace the challenge and to contribute to
the on-going project of mental and political decolonization, intervening in the discourses
of structural discrimination, especially in the field of education in Africa and the African
Diaspora.
1
Nettleford often liked to recall that he, like so many of us, was bred in the crucible
of a colonial education. But he was proud of the fact that, as Bob Marley said in his
“Babylon System”, “we refused to be what they wanted us to be, [because]… we are
what we are”, people who, in his poetic formulation, used “guerilla” or Maroon strategies
to seek to proclaim and live a more liberating narrative of self. Such a liberating narrative
of self allows those affected by the triple effects of colonialism, slavery and patriarchy to
be anchored to a more empowering past. It has long been argued that education is a key
component of development, a needed investment in nation-building and a means of
empowering a nation’s people and developing their minds. Marcus Mosiah Garvey put it
well:”Education is the medium by which a people are prepared for the creation of their
own particular civilization and the advancement and glory of their own words”.1
It is with the obstacles to that post-colonial project of mental liberation through an
education system that promotes a more liberating narrative of self with which I am
concerned today. A related pre-occupation is the racism that masquerades as classism
even in contexts where African descended people are in the majority; as well as the
sexism in some of the texts used in the schools in many of our societies. In this regard, I
am addressing dimensions of structural discrimination in education that depart from the
usual, and very critical, preoccupation with access and physical infrastructure. The
typical definition is “the policies of empowered race, ethnic, gender institutions and the
behaviour of the individuals who implement these policies and control these institutions
which are race/ethnic/gender neutral in intent, but which have a differential and/or
harmful effect on minority/race/ethnic/gender groups.”2
2
But I am looking more at situations when a neutral, or seemingly harmless,
policy, rule or practice [such as competitive examinations that place children in
secondary schools], has a discriminatory effect against a certain group of people; when a
policy or procedure which appears to treat everyone equally [everyone is free to take the
exams and progress to a secondary school], has the effect of disadvantaging certain
groups.
So, let me stress that the problem in many post-colonial societies is not the laws
with regard to education – laws which appear to guarantee the right to access to primary
and secondary education for all - but their insidious practices. I am more concerned in
this particular presentation, therefore with quality, equity, relevance and impact on racial
identity and ethnic pride. More specifically, I wish to address:
 Differential access to quality secondary education because of the competitive
entrance process and the disadvantageous primary education in some cases
 Education that does not always accept cultural differences (e.g. Rastafari; nonChristians)
 The content of history education/history textbooks, which does not empower
people of African descent, Asians and indigenous peoples
 Sexism in history education
While some of my empirical examples might be grounded in the Caribbean reality, the
issues I will raise have broader application which can guide us as we search for a
meaningful agenda for 2011.
In order to contextualize the discussion I need to revisit the colonial legacy, which
will no doubt be familiar to many in this audience. Historically, discrimination has been a
3
major cause of the lack of access to primary, secondary and higher education in the
Caribbean and Latin America because of the racism of the colonizers. In the case of the
British-colonized Caribbean, concern with popular education was not manifested until
1833 when the “Negro Education Grant” was introduced.3 Up to then, Caribbean society
was characterized by the presence of a majority of uneducated, under-educated or
downright illiterate people from all classes and ethnicities. When popular education was
introduced, it became a potential avenue for social mobility. But that potential was not
realized for the majority because colonial education was structured, since the nineteenth
century, to maintain class divisions and to narrow opportunities for such mobility. The
idea of popular education had been accepted as part of a system geared to producing
leaders and followers and preserving the region’s racial status quo. As Janice Mayers
emphasizes, the development of the English education system, the model for the Britishcolonized Caribbean’s system of education, is attributed principally to the philosophical
basis of the Platonic ideal. With its stress on inherited inequality and differing capacities
for performing appropriate social functions, this philosophical source supported a
stratified society and education for leadership.4 By the 1870s there had developed a 2-tier
system of education that cemented the class system. Thus in the late 19th century, a
governor in Jamaica, Sir Anthony Musgrave, would reject the suggestion of compulsory
elementary education in the interest of allowing the planters access to child labour.5 The
distinction between elementary and secondary education was effectively made by a
colonial official in Barbados in the early 20th century, as Mayers points out:
The purpose [elementary] is a school training which will end at a comparatively
early age, and may produce the intelligent and industrious labourer, or form the
groundwork on which may be built the technical skill required by the mechanic or
4
artisan. The latter [secondary] is carried on to an age when manhood is
approaching, and aims at fitting for their work the thinkers of the community, those
who follow the learned professions, the leaders and organisers, or at least those
who serve in the higher ranks of industry and commerce.6
Obviously, the desire for social control and character formation was still paramount
among decision-makers in the 19th and 20th centuries
OUR PROGRESS:
The former colonies in the African Diaspora have come a long way since
emancipation and independence, with improved access, resources and infrastructure,
allowing higher literacy rates (Table 1) and upward social mobility.
TABLE 1
COUNTRY
LITERACY RATE (% )
POPULATION SIZE
BAHAMAS
95.8
307,552
BARBADOS
99.7
257,083
GUYANA
99.0
777,000
JAMAICA
79.9
2,391,000
MONTSERRAT
97
11,852
ST KITTS & NEVIS
97.8
42,291
ST LUCIA
94.8
152,335
SURINAME
90.4
520,000
T’DAD & TOBAGO
98.7
1,116,595
5
ANTIGUA & BAR.
99.0
65,962
GRENADA
96.0
96,600
CUBA
99.8
11, 050,729
DOM REP
89.1
7,998,766
ST. VINCENT & GRENADINES
88.1
119,818
DOMINICA
88
71,183
BELIZE
75.1
307,899
HAITI
54.8
6,780,501
Source: UNDP, 20009
They have engaged in revisionist curricula to rid their societies of the legacies of
colonialism. But the impact of the colonial ideology of education has proven hard to
dislodge. And the multiple effects of colonialism, slavery and patriarchy are still evident
in their education system, a situation which promotes social exclusion. This is why many
argue that the region I come from still displays structural discrimination in its system of
education. States would deny that they intend to, but the effects are there as proof and we
have to continue our fight to eliminate them.
THE EVIDENCE OF STRUCTURAL DISCRIMINATION:
So how is structural discrimination manifested in some ex-colonial societies? One
manifestation in the former British colonies is the differential access to quality education
because of the competitive nature of the movement from primary to secondary level. Let
6
me elaborate for those unfamiliar with this system. The existence of the British colonial
relic, the Common Entrance examination, or its modern day reincarnations (see Table 2
below), means that there is no automatic progress of 11 year olds from primary to
secondary schools.
TABLE 2
BAHAMAS
Grade Level Assessment Test
BARBADOS
Common Entrance Exam (CEE)
GUYANA
National Grade 6 Assessment
JAMAICA
Grade 6 Achievement Test (GSAT)
MONTSERRAT
Continuous Assess’t Programme
ST KITTS & NEVIS
Continuous Assess’t Programme
ST LUCIA
Common Entrance Exam (CEE)
SURINAME
High School Practice Tests (HSPT)
T’DAD & TOBAGO
Secondary Entrance Assessment
ANTIGUA & BARBUDA
Common Entrance Exam (CEE)
GRENADA
Common Entrance Exam(CEE)
Source: caribbeanexams.com
Must pass to progress to Sec. Sch.
7
In addition, despite protestations to the contrary, certain schools get all the so-called
“bright” children, leaving other schools to cope with more academically challenged
students. So, some students are exposed to good teachers, good infrastructure, smaller
classes and co-curricular activities that balance their educational experience. Others have
never touched a computer, sit in hot, overcrowded classrooms with barely trained
teachers. They typically have less facility in the formal language of education, being
more fluent in the creole language, which, they are told, should not be spoken in the
classroom. Language, then, constitutes one key element in discriminatory practices in
education.
Another issue, and this applies more broadly, is the content of the history
curricula. For developing countries, the issue cannot only be related to that of the
provision of hardware and software but also of inputs. More specifically the provision of
quality inputs in terms of the textbooks used, must be related to the overall objective of
education as articulated by governments, which is to improve not just access, but also
quality, equity and relevance.”7 The debate surrounding the factors responsible for the
lingering racist and sexist content of the syllabus (like the quarrel over classism in the
movement from primary to secondary), ebbs and flows, but it cannot be denied that
structural discrimination is the result if not the intent.
I have singled out history education because alongside its socializing function,
post-colonial education has a major responsibility for identity formation; and this identity
can best be fostered though history education that also incorporates gender identity. We
do not often include the content of education in discussions of institutionalized racism,
8
but increasingly textbooks and curricula are coming under scrutiny because of the effect
they can have on people of African descent, especially women. An education that
empowers boys by teaching that they were naturally in the leadership and managerial
positions while women existed in the private sphere; that empowers Asians (who are
represented as innately business savvy as opposed to people of African descent who are
lazy and non-entrepreneurial) and that does not stress the non-slave dimension of the
African experience is potentially damaging to the psyche of people of African descent.
With respect to the matter of sexism, my contention is that several of the books
used to teach history to children reinforce hegemonic masculinity and therefore the
images about masculinity already perpetuated by the larger society, the home and the
media. The school curriculum, like the media and other external forces, gives boys a
role-identity, an imaginative view of themselves, the basis on which they continue to
aspire to hegemonic models of masculinity.8 Thus while the forces of production are
reproduced through the capitalist economic system, ideological state apparatuses
reproduce the social relations of production.9
In the specific case of history education, despite great strides since the 1970s, the
texts do not all provide boys with the kind of information they need to overturn their
views of women as the subordinated sex; and gender stereotypes abound. Many still
believe that the woman’s place is in the house (and they do not mean the House of
Representatives); that women are more suited to inside work and that females have
certain inherently physical and psychological characteristics which predispose them to
non-marketable roles such as child-rearing and home maintenance. Masculinity is
presented as essentialist; i.e. intrinsically different natures are attributed to men and
9
women. These attitudes find legitimacy in the larger society and are reinforced through
education. The treatment of resistance is a case in point, with many texts ignoring
women’s fundamental role in armed revolt. If anyone is in doubt, then this sample of
those who participated in the 1831/32 emancipation war in Jamaica and were punished
for such role, should provide evidence.
TABLE 3
Name
Property/
Enslaver
Parish
Sentence10
Catherine Brown
Cascade Pen –
Mrs. Griffiths
Hanover
Death – commuted to
50 lashes & 6 weeks
imprisonment.
Catherine Clarke
Dr. W. Skirving
Hanover
50 lashes & 3 months
in prison at hard
labour
Name
Property/
Enslaver
Parish
Sentence
Ann James
Free
Hanover
Death/executed
Christina James
Cascade Pen –
Mrs. Griffiths
Hanover
50 lashes & 3 months
in prison at hard
labour
Eliza James
Coventry
Hanover
100 lashes, 2 months
& 50 lashes when
discharged
10
Susan James
Coventry
Hanover
200 lashes, 2 months
& 50 lashes when
discharged
Ann Ramsay
H. Bean
Hanover
100 lashes, 6 months
& 50 lashes when
discharged
Mary Campbell
Not stated
St. Elizabeth
150 lashes
Nancy Campbell
Ipswich
St. Elizabeth
50 lashes
Sarah Darling
Mitcham
St. Elizabeth
15 lashes
Anna Freeburn
Ipswich
St. Elizabeth
50 lashes & 3 months
in prison
Sarah Jackson
Ginger Hill
St. Elizabeth
Transportation for life
Sophia Maitland
Not Stated
St. Elizabeth
25 lashes
Jane Maitland
Not Stated
St. Elizabeth
25 lashes
Matty
Ipswich
St. Elizabeth
50 lashes
Amelia Murray
Not Stated
St. Elizabeth
100 lashes
Betsy Powell
Not Stated
St. Elizabeth
20 lashes
Priscilla
Ipswich
St. Elizabeth
Transportation for life
Caroline Smith
Lacovia
St. Elizabeth
100 lashes
Charlotte Smith
Ipswich
St. Elizabeth
50 lashes
11
Mary Walker
Not Stated
St. Elizabeth
10 lashes
Suzanna Wright
Mitcham
St. Elizabeth
25 lashes
Nancy Wright
Mitcham
St. Elizabeth
20 lashes
Rosanna Wright
Not Stated
St. Elizabeth
25 lashes
Elizabeth Ball
Free
St. James
24 lashes
Jenny
Kirkpatrick Hall
St. James
Death
Eliza Lawrence
John H. Morris
St. James
50 lashes & 6 months
in prison
Kitty Scarlett
Cambridge
St. James
Death/commuted to
transportation
Rebecca Grant
Content
St. Thomas - East
100 lashes
Frances Douglas
Charlton
St. St. Thomas Vale
39 lashes
Frances Duncan
Dumfries
Trelawny
Death
Eve
Pantrepant
Trelawny
1 year in prison
Mary Fowler
Dromilly
Trelawny
6 months in prison
Elizabeth Samuels
Bunkershill
Trelawny
100 lashes & 6
months in prison
Annie Steele
Orange Valley
Trelawny
3 months in prison
Charlotte Reid
Lambs River
Westmoreland
6 months in prison
12
Eliza Whittingham
Cowpark
Westmoreland
Death
Jane Whittingham
Cowpark
Westmoreland
Death/hanged
Another issue relates to the cues that history education send out to children of
African descent. Despite the efforts of post-colonial regimes, misrepresentations and
stereotypes about people of African descent persist in some of the textbooks used to teach
history. Indeed, the Caribbean has been affected by a historically constructed image that
still influences self-knowledge as well as global attitudes towards its citizens. This image,
paraded as ‘truth’ and ‘ knowledge,’ was the product of the minds and pens of
generations of writers from the North Atlantic System, who appropriated the project of
producing knowledge on the Caribbean for overseas consumption. The knowledge
produced had a discrete political purpose: to support European imperialism and “dislodge
and disorient” the Caribbean in the same manner that it did Africa and the Orients,
following Dani Nabudere’s and Edward Said’s formulations.11 Caribbean scholars were
forced to engage in a project of reconstruction, constructing indigenous interpretations of
the Caribbean experience, fashioned by explicit formulations and theoretical constructs
and offering the antithesis to the imperialist view of the Caribbean world.
I cannot go into all the details of how the Caribbean was represented. I will
simply select a few examples relevant to the writing of slavery and the post-slavery
period. The early writings produced, especially descriptive accounts of Africa and
Africans, were not necessarily the result of careful research grounded in truth and
objectivity. Yet, this ‘knowledge’ was powerful enough to result in the condemnation of
13
indigenous and African ethnicities to the experience of the colonial ‘Other’ and to have a
lasting impact on Caribbean and African diasporic identity, imagination and
consciousness. In the specific context of slavery, the purpose of the production of
knowledge about Africa and Africans was to prolong slavery and colonialism and
discourage self-confidence among Black people by demonizing blackness and the
geographical origins of African diasporic peoples and promoting whiteness (or even
Creolité/hybridity) as the ideal.
Of the works produced by contemporary and modern writers, it is perhaps the
subject of slavery that has attracted the most attention, however; and the existence of
enslaved and free Africans within a white supremacist social order fuelled a spate of
writing that painted a less than empowering image of Blacks. A sampling of some of the
works produced about Africa and Africans by writers such as Edward Long (1774),
Maria Nugent (1802-05), M. G. Lewis (1815-17), Cynric Williams (1823), A.C.
Carmichael (1833), Thomas Carlyle (1845), Anthony Trollope (1860), James Anthony
Froude (1888) all originated the negative representations of Africa, which are still
embedded deeply within the consciousness of Caribbean people.12
The misrepresentations of Africans in the Caribbean intensified after 1791 and
the outbreak of the Haitian revolution and 1804 after the declaration of independence,
and were geared towards maintaining slavery and avoiding the Haitian experience.
Slavery and its systematic brutalities had long engendered a deep-seated insecurity
among colonizers in the Caribbean, but such fears intensified after 1791 and the news of
violence against the colonizing population in Haiti during the emancipation and
independence struggles.
14
Some writers demonized Africa itself and produced ‘knowledge’ that gave the
impression that Africa’s citizens were loath to return to homeland. Thomas Carlyle, in his
proslavery essay entitled “The Nigger Question” gave political imagery to the concept of
“Quashie” as ‘Black mind and body that was unprepared for freedom.’13 Ignoring the
evidence of a workforce that had produced commodities that energized the English
industrial revolution, he insisted on categorizing the Caribbean black person as someone
who emerged out of slavery unable to rouse himself/herself to continue to work. A
century and a half later, Jamaican poet Lorna Goodison, armed with a battery of
metaphorical representations, reacted to the epistemic violence of the imperial project by
calling for a renegotiation of such ‘bad words’ to create an internal liberating narrative of
self.14 .
Colonization, slavery and patriarchy then, were grounded in racism. Such racism
was not only manifested in the treatment of our ancestors but in the way in which their
story was told. As a result, since the period of modernity, Caribbean people have sought
to eradicate and dismantle historical representations of the Caribbean in text and image
that mostly reflected European colonial subjectivity and authority”.15 The production of
alternative knowledge was a particularly critical aspect of what Bill Ashcroft et. al refer
to as the counter-colonial resistance16.
Now, even a cursory survey of the historiography of slavery and the transatlantic
trade in Africans, of decolonization and the emergence of modern Caribbean societies
will indicate that there is abundant evidence that can be used to convince Caribbean
people of the achievements of their ancestors.17 We no longer have to look too hard to
prove the glorious and free African origins of Caribbean black people; of the role of
15
enslaved people’s agency in opposing the Middle Passage18 and in destabilizing the slave
system; to find the political role of enslaved communities of men and women in the
Caribbean, who in the context of the wider Atlantic dimensions of the trans-Atlantic
Trade in Africans, were its fiercest foes. We do not have to dig too deeply to find
evidence of the search for self-worth and economic identity; in fostering a sense of selfreliance; of cultural survival.
Caribbean historians have told the other side of the abolition story, centering the
role of Black activists in the campaign. We have no shortage of writers telling us about
our ancestors’ attempts to create an Atlantic world citizen out of the culture inequality in
a world of partners that were not really partners. We can produce evidence from Eric
Williams, Joseph Inikori, Selwyn Carrington and most recently Robert Beckford in his
documentary ‘The Empire Pays Back’ and even in former British Prime Minister Blair’s
2007 non-apology, that our African ancestors were fundamental to the industrial
development of Europe.19 By his own admission, former Prime Minister Blair stated that:
“Britain played an active role in the transatlantic trade, which had a profound impact on
Africa and the Caribbean; and acknowledged that Britain’s present-day economic
prosperity and rise to global pre-eminence was due partially to its participation in the
trade”20 - a strong case for the reparation movement if you ask me.
Whether reflected in the research on colonial, post-colonial or postmodern
Caribbean societies, our scholars have intervened in and destabilized the dominant
discourse that used to argue that the Caribbean was a place devoid of ideas and
intellectual thought. Political ideology and concepts of human rights were already
sophisticated in the political philosophies and ideologies of black abolitionists 21 long
16
before the emergence of the philosophical teachings of Marcus Garvey, Aime Cesaire,
Franz Fanon or Bob Marley.22
But, despite the fact that Caribbean historians have spent the last 60 or so years
writing a more empowering history; and UNESCO has, since 1998, embarked on an
elaborate project to break the silence and address the issues of shame and guilt
surrounding the teaching and learning of topics related to Africa and enslavement,
especially among vulnerable children, ignorance and shame about the past persist. New
knowledge has not resulted in the transformation of our societies in ideological,
philosophical and psychological terms, small steps along the way notwithstanding. And
despite the evidence provided by slavery scholars about the brutality of the enslavers, the
feelings of ‘shame’ continue to be attached firmly to the descendants of enslaved people
– to the victims of the system rather than to the perpetrators. This influenced the late
Caribbean historian, Elsa Goveia to observe, with reference to Jamaica, that“… In a
country such as ours, where shame about the past too often fills the place that should be
held by knowledge, knowledge of the past must play its part in our liberation from the
bonds of the past.”23 The perpetrators, though, even in the midst of overwhelming
evidence, have refused to take the reparation issue seriously. Indeed, there is apparent
strengthening of their 2001 Durban position, noises from former British Prime Minister
Tony Blair, the Anglican and Methodist Churches, notwithstanding. Former British
Prime Minister Blair stopped short of an apology in the midst of the 2007 Bicentennial
when he declared:
“…the bicentenary offers us a chance not just to say how profoundly shameful the slave
trade was – how we condemn its existence utterly and praise those who fought for its
17
abolition, but also to express our deep sorrow that it ever happened, that it ever could
have happened and to rejoice at the different and better times we live in today.”24
Education has a critical role to be play in the process of mental liberation and
symbolic decolonization. So, there is still much work to be done. For one, we need to
lobby Education Ministries to ensure that the textbooks used in the schools support the
project of Black liberation; that history becomes a compulsory subject. The legacies of
colonialism are proving hard to dislodge. Critically, the inequality based on existential
awareness, feelings of social worth and spiritual value, the contemporary core of the
ranking game that has derailed our journey towards social integration, nationhood and
human development, must be fought and defeated.
Of course, many Caribbean and Latin American countries will deny that their
education systems contain features of institutionalized or structural discrimination, even
sexism, racism and classism. They posture as independent states where the legacies of
colonial rule have long disappeared; as multicultural societies where the constitution
protects citizens from discrimination on the basis of race/ethnicity, colour, gender or
religious persuasion. They are more likely to point to the existence of such
institutionalized racism in European countries, even those that have an international
reputation as successful, advanced capitalist states; highly networked, knowledge
societies, imbued with human rights and gender equality, and with a strong commitment
both to the environment and to the welfare of their citizens. 25
Such countries are fast becoming culturally diverse, but in them, the immigrant
student, normally of African or Asian descent, is targeted as having a language and/or
18
behavioural problem not conducive to the receipt of European education. Many such
“problem” students are then steered in the direction of sports or technical education,
apparently more suited to their so-called “natural abilities”. In these societies, they would
argue, government policies regarding multiculturalism and antiracism in education have
favoured rhetoric over actual strategies aimed at change.26
But what is referred to as “unintended” or “structural” discrimination, is clearly
evident, even in states with black majorities. In such scenarios, racism masquerades as
classism, because low-income students, (usually black even in multi-ethnic societies)
from non-elite neighbourhoods have differential access to quality education. Clearly,
social forces or policies that have racially disparate adverse effects are “discriminatory”
by result, whether intended or not.
The situation is compounded in ethnically diverse populations where those who
are descended from the indigenous peoples, indentured labourers and enslaved Africans
are exposed to a type of education that is far from empowering. The content of education
then serves to reinforce stereotypes rather than be mentally liberating. Part of this is
related to the fact that there is an inherent failure to regard cultural differences in an
egalitarian way and ranking remains the engine that drives the political sociology of too
many countries. In its simplest definition, ‘ranking’ is a metaphor for social ordering,
social and cultural hierarchizing. It represents the linguistic, oral and literary aspects of
social culture that is the ritualized and politicized codes and consciousness of difference.
I am less concerned with ritual in Foucault’s sense of “signs taken as wonders”, 27and
more with the phenomena associated with the wonder of how signs have been taken. For
19
some, situating difference establishes the boundaries of belonging; for others, situating
difference is a way of signifying the opposite tendency of ‘unbelonging.’ This tension
between ‘belonging’ and ‘unbelonging’ is a fundamental characteristic of the ‘ranking
game’, a ritual that is invested with all the social and political capital available to the
society.
Stuart Hall is correct to assert that the persistence of such colonial creations as
ranking contradicts the cultural desire of postmodern mentalities for the celebration of
difference in an egalitarian fashion rather than hierarchically.28
Conclusion:
As we plan for 2011 and the International Year for People of African Descent, let us
vow to address structural discrimination in education, especially in the Global South. We
will have to give Haiti a large portion of our attention but let us not forget other hotspots in
the Caribbean and Latin America, especially where African descended people are in the
minority. Above all, let us be clear that racism often masquerades as classism in countries
where African descended people are in the majority. In such cases, inferior educational
opportunities and facilities trap them in a cycle of poverty. This too must be eradicated.
ENDNOTES:
1
Amy Jacques Garvey, Compiler, The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey (Massachussett, 1986: p.
6)
2
It would be useful to consult Fred L. Pincus, “Discrimination Comes in Many Forms: Individual,
Institutional, and Structural,” in Maurianne Adams, et. Al., eds., Readings for Diversity and Social Justice
(New York, 2010 edition)
3
See Shirley Gordon, A Century of West Indian Education: A Source Book (London, 1963)
4
Janice Mayers “Access to Secondary Education for Girls in Barabdos, 1907-1943: A Preliminary
Analysis”, in Verene Shepherd, ed., Engendering Caribbean History: Cross-cultural Perspectives
(Kingston, 2010)
5
UK National Archives, C.O. 137/495, Despatch No. 138, Gov. Musgrave to the Earl of Kimberly, 16 th
June 1880.
20
6
Report of the Education Commission 1907–09 (hereafter Swaby Report), Barbados, p. 2, quoted in
Mayers, “Access to Secondary Education…”.
7
Economic and Social Survey: Jamaica 2001, section on Education and Training (chapter 22)
8
Kay Deaux and Brenda Major, “A Social-psychological Model of Gender”, in Michael Kimmel, ed., The
Gendered Society Reader, (New York & Oxford, 2000), p. 85.
9
L. Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses”, in B.R. Cosin, ed., Education Structure and
Society (Middlesex, 1972) p. 1, quoted in Cole, ”Official Ideology”, p. 2
10
National Archives, Britain, C.O. 137/185
11
This was discussed in Dani Nabudere, “Development Theories, Knowledge Production and
Emancipatory Practices”, 50th Anniversary Conference Reviewing the First Decade of Development and
Democracy in South Africa, Durban, October 2004. See also, Edward Said, Orientalism (London, 1992)
12
Edward Long, History of Jamaica, 3 vols. (London, 1774), Maria Nugent, Journal of a Residence,
Matthew Gregory (“Monk”) Lewis, Journal of a West Indian Proprietor Kept During A Residence in the
Island of Jamaica (Orig. pub. London, 1834. New edition, Oxford, 1999), p.87. Cynric Williams, A.C.
Carmichael, Domestic Manners and Social Conditions (London, 1834); Thomas Carlyle, Occasional
Discourse on the Nigger Question (Fraser’s Magazine, 1849), Anthony Trollope, James Anthony Froude,
The English in the West Indies: The Bow of Ulysses (London, 1888);
13
Long, History of Jamaica; Froude, The English in the West Indies, Carlyle, Occasional Discourse on the
Nigger Question.
14
Poem read by Lorna Goodison at the Opening Ceremony of the 2 nd Conference on Caribbean Culture,
UWI, Mona, January 9, 2002.
15
Petrina Dacres, “Monument and Meaning”, Small Axe, No. 16 (Sept 2004), p 149. See also in the same
volume, Carolyn Cooper, “Enslaved in Stereotype: Race and Representation in Post-Independence
Jamaica”, 154-169
16
Bill Ashcroft, et. al, eds., The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, (London& New York, 1995), p. 1
17
Elsa V. Goveia, A Study on the Historiography of the British West Indies to the end of the 19 th century,
(Mexico, 1956)
18
See Anne C. Bailey, African Voices of the Atlantic Slave Trade: Beyond the Silence and the Shame
(Kingston & Miami, 2007)
19
Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (Chapel Hill, 1944)
20
Bicentennial Watch, #1 Sunday Herald, Jamaica, Jany 7, 2007
21
See for example, Denis Benn, The Caribbean: an intellectual history, 1774-2003 (IRP, 2004; O. Nigel
Bolland, The Birth of Caribean Civilisation: A Century of Ideas about Culture,Identity, Nation and Society
(Kingston & Oxford, 2004); Brian Meeks and Folke Lindhal, eds., New Caribbean Thought: A Reader (
Mona, Kingston, 2001); Veronica Marie Gregg, Caribbean Women: An Anthology of Non-fiction Writing,
1890-1980 (Indiana, 2005)
22
Garvey, The Philosohy and Opinions
23
Elsa Goveia,”An Introduction to the Federation Day Exhibition on Aspects of the History of the West
Indies”, in W.K. Marshall’s “Foreword”, in Hilary Beckles, ed, Inside Slavery: Process and Legacy in the
Caribbean Experience (Kingston, 1996), p. vii
24
See the New Nation Newspaper, November, 2006
25
For a discussion on direct and structural discrimination in Europe, see Paul Lappalainen,” Institutional
Racism in Sweden and Europe”, http://www.rijo.homepage.t-online.de/pdf/EN_EU_ZE_racism.pdf
26
Ibid.
27
Michel Foucault, “The Subject and Power”, Critical Inquiry, 8 (1982), pp. 777-795 and The
Archaeology of Knowledge (London, 1972)
28
Stuart Hall, “The Local and the Global: Globalization and Ethnicity”, in Anthony King, ed., Culture,
Globalization and the World System (London, 1991), pp. 19-41.
21