Out of Many, (Some) People: Race, Identity, and Beauty in Jamaican Nationalism

Authors: Shamoy Dixon, Ramaesh Bhagirat-Rivera

SUNY Campus: Binghamton University

Presentation Type: Poster

Location: Old Union Hall

Presentation #: 55

Timeslot: Session A 9:00-10:00 AM

Abstract: When Jamaica gained independence in 1962, it grappled with the question of how to define its national identity. With the absence of Indigenous culture, Jamaican Nationalism sought to develop an identity that would unify its diverse population that comprised the descendants of African, Asian, Middle Eastern, and European peoples. Despite this approach towards racial inclusion, the biggest proponents of Jamaican Nationalism, the mixed-race government, were invested in valorizing a mixed ‘Brown’ identity over and above the Black identity shared by the majority of Jamaicans. As a result, I argue that the government’s approach to Jamaican Nationalism, Creole Nationalism, during the mid-late 20th century maintained colonial social hierarchies which continued the oppression of Afro-Jamaicans under a new regime and maintained Whiteness as a powerful social capital through mobility and the accepted beauty preference. This undesirableness of being Black within Jamaican Nationalism is defined through enacted violence against the Afrocentric expressions of Rastafarians, and Whiteness becomes amplified through beauty standards and pageants. The multiculturalism of Jamaican identity valorizes the cultural mixing of the tiny mixed race and White minority as representative of the larger Black population, actively erasing the history of class and colorism within Jamaican society. Rather than addressing the racial tensions and problems in society, the government masks it under the motto, “Out of Many, One People,” and race is no longer a problem. This further perpetuates Jamaica’s racial issues.