Colonial notions of white purity excluded Caribbean-born whites from power.

Evidence

To be “genuinely” white in the Caribbean is to be culturally and racially pure, untainted by absorption into the society of black former slaves. This taint of impurity, forged out of cultural and sexual contact with the African, became the basis for exclusion of white Creoles from colonial power and privilege. Paradoxically, the organic connection to the “territory” which was at the root of this exclusion assured the white Creole a position of privilege in nationalist construction. The inclusion of whites in the nationalist space was quite consistent with claims to the supremacy of culture over racial bases of privilege. It legitimized the wholehearted adoption by the nationalist movement of European institutional and cultural forms after independence was achieved. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3232

Categorization

• QUESTION: This resembles the creole-vs-peninsular tension in Spanish America — worth checking whether Caribbean white Creole exclusion parallels the mainland creole revolutions that produced independence movements.