Major Caribbean Ideologies Defined

Background 

The twentieth century the Caribbean region continued to be characterised by inequalities of races, class, poverty and general economic backwardness.

Formal independence and political sovereignty was rendered null and void in large part by the economic sovereignty exercised by the metropolitan business forces.

The Caribbean under formal independence remained as slums of empire, only now with a new cast of actors.

Where do you belong?

The crude system of classification of the Caribbean society (as identified in Jamaica) was that of:

-          European e..g absentee English landowner

-          Euro-Creole e.g. born in the Americas of European ethnicity 

-          Afro-Creole e.g. A colored intellecutal 

-          African e.g. the worker

Whose National Identity?

As with all slave societies, there was never a unified national identity, rather there existed an ideology of narrow interest.

Questions remain as to concepts of national character, i.e. the assumption that every national group possessed certain idiosyncratic and peculiar features making it different from others –concept borrowed from 19th century English thought.

‘National character’ is no more than a series of stereotypes arising not out of national cultures as a whole, rather from selected mini-cultures of the ruling elites. For it is always the character type of the dominant class segment that presents to the outside world and thus sets the yardstick of analysis.

The transition of the 'national-character' mythology:

Affluent West Indian Planter

The Slave

The Labour Unionist

Affluent West Indian planter –The Slave –Independent Peasant Proprietor –Lower Class Carnival Reveller –The Man/Woman of the Caribbean Street –Selfeducated Proletariat –Labour Unionist

Caribbean Ideologies Defined

The proslavery ideology –this was essentially pro-capitalist, pro-imperialist. It was a rationalisation of white supremacy and its implicit correlate, non-white inferiority.

The antislavery ideology –was in part anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist. Intrinsically revolutionary; an ideology of protest on the part of the Caribbean masses against an exploitative economic and political system seeking to justify itself in terms of a pseudoscientific doctrine of race.

The nationalist ideology –a product of the 19th century; it was not necessarily anti-colonialist, possessing its own internal doctrinal contradictions. Interesting to note, the nationalist ideology was not always anti-slavery either. 

The federalist ideology –a system whereby a unified Caribbean would combat the artificial boundaries and irrational loyalist psychologies imposed by colonialism; a New World geographical determinism in which the Caribbean was perceived as the appropriate centre of the Americas.

Cultural Philistinism – a system based on excessive materialism unconcerned with ethical or spiritual matters. Such an ideology was the formation of the Caribbean society under European colonialism.

Caribbean (American) Humanism –the formation of Caribbean thought, values, attitudes and belief system involving the process of interpenetration of civilisations giving birth to a society that is multiracial, multilinguistic, multicultural, multireligious living in relative peaceful coexistence.

[Notes from Lewis, G. K. (1983). Main currents in Caribbean thought: the historical evolution of Caribbean society in its ideological aspects, 1492-1900. Unp-Nebraska Paperback.]