Caribbean regional identity was forged in London’s diaspora, not at home

Evidence

So very strange. And then suddenly we discovered what was common between Caribbean people. In spite of the fact that the islands are all different, nevertheless there’s a kind of core commonness. So I discovered myself as a West Indian at that point. That was a very liberating moment for me. I mean, there’s a dark moment in that as well because what that meant was that politically the idea of West Indian Federation became the focus of all of our hopes. We thought, “We can’t do this without each other.” It works in London. It produces wonderful literature. Each place is too small to sustain independently. And I suppose if eventually a West Indian Federation had come off, I might well have gone home. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 1081

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the imagined community of the nation (Anderson) — Hall shows nationalism/regionalism being constructed in the metropole, a key building block for the Islamophobia scaffolding.