We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2018
To compare race relations is even harder than to compare systems of slavery. However variously slavery may be defined, it is at least systematized—that is, slave trading, labor, provisioning, punishment, rebellion, and manumission are viewed as clear-cut categories, often formally codified and self-consciously compared with conditions elsewhere.
In race relations none of this is true. Race itself may refer to anything from a linguistic community to a genealogically isolated population, and contexts shift through time as well as across cultures. In the narrower sense, races, as distinct from ethnic elements, are not even groups; individual behavior and self-images are not congruent with external identifications. Relationships considered “racial” may be limited to certain public or legal institutions in one society, but in another may include psychological responses in most realms of life. In short, race relations can be compared only in the context of entire social systems.
Revised from a paper read in a symposium on comparative race relations at the Southern Historical Association meeting, Louisville, Kentucky, 13 November 1970.
1 Degler, Carl N., “Slavery in Brazil and the United States: An Essay in Comparative History,” American Historical Review 75 (1970): 1004–1028.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2 van den Berghe, Pierre L., Race and Racism: A Comparative Perspective (New York: John Wiley, 1967).Google Scholar
3 Lowenthal, David, “The Range and Variation of Caribbean Societies,” Annals New York Academy of Sciences 83 (1960): 786–795.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4 Goveia, Elsa V., Slave Society in the British Leeward Islands at the End of the Eighteenth Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965), pp. 232-33, 258-59.Google Scholar
5 Millette, James, “The Civil Commission of 1802: An Account and an Explanation of an Issue in the Early Constitutional and Political History of Trinidad,” Jamaican Historical Review 6, nos. 1 and 2 (1966): 38.Google Scholar
6 Jordan, Winthrop D., White over Black: American Attitudes toward the Negro, 1550-1812 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968).Google Scholar
7 Hayot, E., “Les gens de couleur libres du Fort-Royal, 1679-1823,” Revue Frangaise d'Histoire d'Outre-Mer, 106, no. 203 (1969): 127 Google Scholar; Duncker, Shelia J., “The Free Coloured and Their Fight for Civil Rights in Jamaica, 1800-1830” (M.S. thesis, University of London, 1961), pp. 39–48.Google Scholar
8 Smith, M. G., A Framework for Caribbean Studies (Jamaica: University College of the West Indies, Extra-Mural Dept, 1955).Google Scholar
9 Rex Nettleford, “The African Connexion—The Significance for Jamaica,” in John Hearne and Rex Nettleford, Our Heritage, Public Affairs in Jamaica, no. 1 (Mona, Jamaica: University of the West Indies, Department of Extra-Mural Studies, n.d.), p. 52; Nettleford, Rex, “National Identity and Attitudes to Race in Jamaica,” Race 7 (1965-66): 62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
10 Lynch, Hollis R., Edward Wilmot Blyden: Pan-Negro Patriot, 1832-1912 (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), pp. vii, 118,139.Google Scholar
11 Marcus Garvey to Major Robert R. Moton, 29 February 1916, Robert Russa Collection, Tuskegee Institute Archives (courtesy of Carl S. Matthews).
12 Meier, August, Negro Thought in America, 1880-1915: Racial Ideologies in the Age of Booker T. Washington (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1964)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cronon, Edmund David, Black Moses: The Story of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964).Google Scholar
13 Daly, P. H., Revolution to Republic (Georgetown, Guyana: Daily Chronicle, 1970), pp. 67, 69.Google Scholar
14 “After the Carnival,” Embryo (St. Augustine, Trinidad: University of the West Indies), Supplement, n.d., p. SI.
15 Naipaul, V. S., “St. Kitts: Papa and the Power Set,” New York Review of Books (May 8, 1969): 23.Google Scholar
16 “Black Pride or Black Power,” Dominica Star (16 November 1968): 1.
17 “Tapia Special on the Current National Crisis,” Tapia (Port-of-Spain), no. 6, (8 March 1970): 2.
18 “Rt. Hon. Dead Horse, C.H.: Filling the Political Vacuum,” Tapia, no. 7 (19 April 1970):2.
19 Williams, Eric, Massa Day Done: A Masterpiece of Political and Sociological Analysis (Port-of-Spain: P.N.M. Publishing Co., 1961), p. 7.Google Scholar
20 Cruse, Harold, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual (New York: William Morrow, 1967), p. 435.Google Scholar
21 Clyde K. Picon, letter, 19 July, in Trinidad Guardian, 31 July 1967.
22 Lewis, Gordon K., “Race Relations in Britain: A View from the Caribbean,” Race Today 1 (1969): 79.Google Scholar
23 Cruse, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, p. 135.
24 James, C. L. R., “Introduction,” in Hill, Errol, ed., Caribbean Plays, 2 (St. Augustine, Trinidad: University of the West Indies, Extra-Mural Department, 1965), p. vi.Google Scholar
25 Naipaul, V. S., “Power to the Caribbean People,” New York Review of Books 15, no. 4 (3 September 1970): 33.Google Scholar
26 Rose, Harold M., “The All-Negro Town: Its Evolution and Function,” Geographical Review 55 (1965): 362-81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
27 Valentine, Charles A., “Blackston: Progress Report on a Community Study in Urban Afro-America,” New York, 1970, mimeo., p. 73.Google Scholar
28 Cumper, Gloria, “In Search of a New Identity,” in “Jamaica A Special Report,” The Times (London, 26 September 1968): IGoogle Scholar; Hall, Douglas, “The Colonial Legacy in Jamaica,” New World Quarterly 4, no. 3 (High Season, 1968): 7–22.Google Scholar
29 Lamming, George, “The Pleasures of Exile,” Tamarack Review, no. 14 (Winter 1960): 40.Google Scholar
30 Hackett, Winston, “Identity in the Poetry of Walcott,” Moko (Port-of-Spain) no. 8 (14 February 1969): 2.Google Scholar
