Color, not wealth or education, governed social prestige in colonial Trinidad

Evidence

A correspondent to the Telegraph wrote that no amount of wealth or education enabled a man in Trinidad to enjoy social prestige, if he lacked “the correct tinge.” Planters of wealth, merit, and character were “tabooed,” being without the ‘colonial passport’ … more potent than education, habits, principles, behaviour, wealth, talent, or even genius itself. People outside the West Indies had no idea of the actual position of the educated man “of the incorrect tinge.” It was especially galling when coloured men of “good” family were subjected to discrimination. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1162

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ article theme of class/identity signaling, and more directly to skin-color stratification within colonial hierarchies the reader may have met in other Caribbean histories.