Race, class and new economic directions for Barbados
One Caribbean Nation.
Issues of race, class and money are so intertwined in Barbados that they will require quite some disentangling if constructive conversations are to be had. The panel discussion Race relations in Barbados held by Barbados TODAY on Sunday July 5th made significant inroads into this topic. In my view, if we pursue these discussions they will take us well beyond considerations of race into a discussion of a new economic perspective for Barbados.
Race, class and new economic directions for Barbados
Professor Robin Mahon
The race issues are so complicated that statements like ‘white people this…’ or ‘ black people that...’ are meaningless. Yes, there are white people in Barbados who may ‘hate’ black people just because they are black. But they are few and becoming fewer with every generation. Many left at independence and took their attitudes with them.
There are other white people who discriminate against black people economically in various ways partly through fear of losing their economic advantage. This economic advantage was often inherited directly from the gains of slavery and subsequent oppression of black people, but also indirectly inherited through associated privileges such as education, travel, and connections with those who have money and influence, all of which make it easier for them to get ahead. The latter set of advantages is much more subtle and difficult for white people to acknowledge, especially if they perceive themselves as having worked hard to get where they are.
But, before we can move forward, it is essential that those who benefitted from these advantages understand them fully and acknowledge the important role they played in their wealth. This latter point is not entirely a white-black dichotomy either as many lighter brown people with whiteness in their ancestry have benefitted from this indirect inheritance as well.
I would further argue that the majority of white people in Barbados discriminate against black people through “classism”; itself a complex issue built on a racist foundation.
Nonetheless, people of similar economic means do tend to move together. They can afford the same stuff and activities, travel, material things, etc.; in short, they have more in common.
Finally, there are also cultural differences between black and white that may lead to both white and black feeling social discomfort in one another’s circles. Unfortunately, instead of celebrating those cultural differences, something we often pay a lot of money to travel elsewhere to experience, here we may fear or avoid them.
I cannot count how many times I have heard white people say that when they went away to university in predominantly white countries (e.g. UK, Australia and Canada) they thought they would feel at home in a majority white environment, but didn’t. They quickly realized that they had more in common with black Caribbean students than with the white students from those countries and often built interracial friendships that persisted, helping to break down race barriers.
I would argue that white people who feel that they are inherently racially superior to black people are few and far between. They are a small residual that will be mostly dead in the next 20 years. A white person would have to be a complete idiot or deeply brainwashed not to be able to look around Barbados and see that there are black people whose intellectual capacity and acumen for business, governance, culture and you name it, matches and often exceeds that of white, or indeed people of any race or color, here or anywhere in the world.
Conversely, to the above, there are some black people who may ‘hate’ white people simply because they are white. This also has a complex nature. It may be due to actual experience with white people who have been overtly racist towards them, whether here or while travelling to countries where black people are targeted by police, immigration, etc.
As an aside, I have to say I can understand why black Barbadians would hesitate to subject themselves to travel to the US. It may also be due to what they have learned about the past injustices that were inflicted through slavery and the economic and other abuses that followed that abolition of slavery, remnants of which are still with us today, even though these were never experienced. Some of this learning may have been in school. Although, as I recall, Caribbean history was not taught in a way that promoted reflection on race. Much of it was probably home and community based.
I recall, in a group discussion held during the National Commission on Reconciliation, two women who said basically that white people were evil and should not be here. They went on to say that they did not know any white people and had no desire to know any. They went to all-black schools, worked in all-black work places and socialized only with black people. I wondered at the time what had taken place in their upbringing and socialization to bring them to such a strong conviction despite any personal experience with white people.
I would be interested in knowing how many black people in Barbados think and feel that way and are just keeping it to themselves. After all, if a large proportion of the population intrinsically hates white people but never comes into contact with them, how would we ever know? I know from experience there are strong negative feelings not far below the surface, because it is not uncommon, in even a relatively minor conflict situation, for race to surface in the form of a ‘you white this or that’. That’s a reality of being white in Barbados.
That said, in most of my everyday dealings with black Barbadians I do not get the feeling that I am hated, feared, or even envied for my race and obviously ‘better-off’ economic situation. In contrast to the above situation where many black people may have had little contact with white people, it is impossible to be white in Barbados without having a lot of contact with black people, professionally, in commerce and as an employer.
Frequently, I have been the only white person in a professional grouping, but I cannot recall ever being made to feel that I was not wanted because of my race. I have also worked all over the island in community groups and have not ever felt that I was unwelcome because of my race. Perhaps, the people that did not like white people did not participate because they heard a white man might be there, or if they did, they kept their feelings to themselves because they thought there could be benefits; but I never saw it out in the open.
Then there is a whole discussion to be had about the voluntary apartheid between ‘better off’ white and black Barbadians of similar educational, and economic background. That is gradually changing, but it is still very much there, for a variety of reasons, some of which are discussed above. But, even there, I do not believe there is a widespread animosity or anger in either direction; mainly social discomfort, some uncertainty about how each would be received by the other and probably a great deal of playing it safe socially – sticking with the status quo. Indeed, this all offers a fascinating opportunity for a sociologist interested in exploring it through case histories.
To summarise before I move on, clearly the racial situation in Barbados is very complex and cannot be properly explored in a brief commentary. In my lifetime I have seen a huge amount of progress. When I compare attitudes to race over four generations — my grandparents generation and before (white people were superior), my parents’ generation (white people not seen as better than black people but different, so avoid mixing), my own generation (white people experiencing social discomfort and fear of being subsumed and marginalized as a minority), my children’s generation (seeing black people in positions of power, wealth and success and experimenting with interracial social relations) - we have moved significantly in a better direction; but perhaps too slowly for many. Of course, these are very broad generalizations each of which may actually span several generations; but the trend is there.
So why do we still have an issue in Barbados with what appears to be economic disenfranchisement, even suppression, of people of lower income who are almost inevitably black and the apparent clinging to wealth by a small group of people who appear to be predominantly white. I say apparent, because I would very much like to see real data on the distribution of wealth by race in Barbados. I realize that would be challenging because first we would have to decide who is white and who is black, and also because we would need to know the value and ownership of private and publicly traded companies and many other things that are difficult to know. We would also need to see employment income figures across large companies in Barbados. This would be a worthwhile endeavor for anyone seeking to shed light on race relations in Barbados, especially if temporal trends could be revealed.
In my view, we have an issue with what appears to be a strong racial component because we inherited and retained an economic system that tends to prevent redistribution of wealth and which promotes wealth and income inequity regardless of color. I suspect that under the current economic system, even if all the white money in Barbados were in the hands of black people we would still have the same wealth and income inequities that we have now. And, by the way, these inequities are much worse in many other developing countries than they are in Barbados.
To be fair to our political leaders, as a small country, shaking off an outdated, unfair economic system in a world where this system is the predominant economic mode would not be easy. It is even more difficult when the country is in the hands of the IMF, which is still, despite reforms, a major global promulgator of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a measure of economic success for a country. That economic model predisposes the economy towards big investment, big companies, big hotel chains, big banking, big corporate everything, all of which the little person is in service to. Sadly, a high GDP can be achieved with a thriving top end and a struggling lower end, even significant levels of poverty. Increased crime will even contribute to GDP as security companies thrive.
Getting from where we are to where we need to be, with a dramatically leveled playing field in which inequity is significantly reduced and there is greater opportunity for grassroots small and medium enterprises to thrive and to grow will, in my view, contribute hugely to breaking down real or apparent racial inequities in this country.
Our leaders are not unaware of this, and we see many initiatives and institutions that can move us in that direction, but the policy direction needs to be explicit, clear, radical and marketed to the public; and I am not talking about a revolution or anything socially disruptive. I am talking about growing what we eat (with pride), producing as much as possible of what we need, significant employee ownership of large, local private and publicly traded companies, banking institutions that favour small entrepreneurship, livelihoods as well as jobs, and especially, a reorientation of thinking regarding what will bring us well-being and happiness.
One thing we know for sure now from global studies is that after a certain point an increase in material possessions does not result in the wellbeing and happiness we all seek. We have heard all this before in bits and pieces; now it needs to be packaged as a sustainable development policy with a human well-being focus and popular buyin.
The business of moving from a GDP based economic model to a human well-being based one is also very complex. We are talking about rethinking what we consider to be success, developing new ways of doing things that will take us towards this success, and showing that it has been achieved. We are talking about demonstrating to a disadvantaged population that material possessions are not the best route to economic security, good health, job satisfaction, and social and spiritual comfort. This is not an easy sell.
Much has been written on the topic. I am thinking of works like Agenda for a New Economy by David Korten (2009), Prosperity without Growth by Tim Jackson (2009), The Price of Inequality by Joseph Stiglitz (2012) and there is much more. A few countries are looking seriously in this direction. I am convinced that this is the type of thinking that will allow us to constructively redesign the economic model that we seem to be stuck with in Barbados. If we do not shed this model, we will overdevelop and destroy our island for the benefit of a small number of wealthy people, some black some white, some Barbadian and many not, and leave ourselves with yet another round of bitterness.
The final sentence of the previous paragraph takes us from racial and social economics into environment and development and beyond.
There is much more to be discussed and developed here to take us forward. We will need many inputs from many people with wideranging experiences and skills to contribute to this direction, or at least to present convincing arguments for why we cannot and should not be going down the road suggested above. This could be an exciting path for Barbados, one that has the potential to put hope in even the most skeptical or dispirited, and one that could see Barbados once again being a world leader in sustainability and resilience of small island and developing states.
Robin Mahon
Professor Emeritus
Centre for Resource Management and Environmental Studies (CERMES) University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus
(From Barbados Today 7/10/2020)
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