Out of Many, Many
Whether or not the exposé is accurate that some businesses have expressed to HEART Trust/NTA a preference for trained 'brownings', most of us are prepared to believe it, because of the reality that is Jamaica.
Jamaica was founded on racism, and racism is still very much with us 177 years after Emancipation and 49 years after political Independence.
Jamaican sugar plantations needed labour, and Christian Europe, from the 16th to the 19th centuries, invested heavily in African slaves to enrich their personal and national economies. To keep the slave system going, the Europeans had to convince themselves that black people were not fully human (and, therefore, not deserving of the love their religion demanded for others like themselves). The whites developed the ideology that black people were a different (but related) human species to themselves. Just like horses and donkeys, even though they were different species, could produce offspring (mules), this is why the offspring of whites and blacks were called 'mulattos' (little mules).
The slave system would not work unless the white masters convinced themselves that they were inherently superior to their black slaves.
But there was a major challenge: The ratio of whites to blacks was drastically disproportionate. In 1739, there were 99,000 African slaves in Jamaica, and only 10,000 whites (or approximately 10:1). By 1787, there were 210,894 slaves and only 25,000 whites.
Power of violence
To keep the system from falling apart, to prevent the slaves from rising up and taking over the society, all sorts of methods of control had to be employed. Violence had to be employed locally on the plantation (with the whip and the bilboes) backed up by state violence where necessary (the military, the militia, and the workhouse). But more subtle (and effective) means were soon developed.
The black slaves had to be socialised to believe that they were inherently inferior to their white masters, that resistance was futile, that open resistance would inevitably be detected and punished. White superiority had to go a step further and become white supremacy.
But still, the disproportion in numbers was too great. Active efforts were made to co-opt the browns (offspring of the whites and the slaves) on the side of the whites. A system of skin shade was developed, with a different legal status: (mulatto + black = sambo; mulatto + white = quadroon; quadroon + white = mustee; etc.). Many slave masters freed their brown children, and gave them the plum jobs on the plantations. Brown persons could be bookkeepers on estates, and officers in the militia. Being 'brown', actually a mixture of races, became considered as being a separate race unto itself.
And then the system demanded that brown people be socialised to believe they were superior to blacks, but inferior to whites. And blacks were socialised to believe it too.
Benefits of brownings
But soon the ideology of the supremacy of light skin took on an economic character. The white parent gave their brown children access to education, and then to land and, therefore, to the vote, and eventually to become electoral candidates themselves. Black women realised that their ticket to freedom (and to prosperity) was through the bed of a white (or brown) man; the favoured status of a brown child could redound to the benefit of the black mother. Miscegenation increased.
It was when the browns in Haiti switched allegiance from the whites to the blacks that the Haitian Revolution could succeed.
Despite having the example of Haiti on its doorstep, Jamaica never had a successful slave revolt, because Jamaican brown people continued their alliance with the whites (until now).
The system of social control worked, and its effects are still being felt today. The history of relations been the races in Jamaica has always been exploitative, and continues to be exploitative. The average brown person in Jamaica is usually much better educated than the average black person, is 'better spoken', has access to more resources, and so on. There are few brown persons in government primary and all-age schools. There are few brown people cutting cane and weeding bananas and coffee. Black people have to be kept uneducated, so they can continue to be looked down upon.
We may be 'Out of Many', but we are still 'Many', for the colour and class divisions in Jamaica are real and deep. And there is still deep racial resentment here - brown against black, and black against brown, and black against black, just to name a few of the combinations.
It does not appear to be about to end any time soon.
Peter Espeut is a sociologist and Roman Catholic deacon. Email feedback to firstname.lastname@example.org.