Creole nationalism conceals racial capitalism beneath a discourse of cultural difference

Evidence

An examination of the Caribbean raises profound conceptual questions about race, ethnicity, and nationalism. Nationalism, according to Benedict Anderson (1983:19), is to be understood in terms of “the large cultural system that preceded it, out of which - as well as against which - it came into being.” And culture constitutes the representations and practices of ethnicity. From this perspective, Caribbean ethnicity is constituted by its representations and practices of creolite. The problem, however, is that Creole culture serves to hide a racialized division of labor and a racialized allocation of power and privilege. It renders these divisions invisible. The discourse of racial difference is shifted to distinctions between the Creole and non-Creole. Such a shift serves to hide commonalities in social practice that can form the basis of counterdiscursive challenges to power. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3277 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

In the Caribbean, purity has emerged as a boundary defining and maintaining principles separating Creole society from the external world. It was fashioned historically out of the discourse of difference that authenticated colonial society. Eventually, notions of purity became the basis for separating the “local” Creole white grouping from the foreign presence of the “pure” European. This distinction became quite important in assertions of cultural paramountcy made by the national elite. It allowed the accommodation of the white local elite in the nationalist construct. More importantly, it catapulted blacks and coloreds with cultural capital into a position of social ascendance over the local white descendents of the merchant plantocracy. This was symbolically important for nationalist and postcolonial contestation of white supremacy. Having demonstrated the supremacy of culture, the nationalist elite could make claims to inclusion in a new global order of North Atlantic universalism based pre-eminently on cultural grounds. By such a demonstration, they were able to reject claims to racial supremacy that historically privileged whites. Manifest demonstration of acquired European cultural forms as both symbolic capital and cultural capital (acquired knowledge, skill, and capabilities) has become the sole basis of claims to power and privilege in nationalist formation. These cultural acquisitions are at the root of the European aspirations of the contemporary nationalist elite. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3229 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Ethnicized creole discourse masks the racial basis of power; Creole discourse served colonial power by rendering racial difference benign; Creole identity institutionalized divide and rule in colonial society (+9 more)

Broader Connections

• Creole culture masks racial hierarchies by re-framing difference as creole versus non-creole #corroborates (0.92) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3277
• Caribbean nationalism inverted racial hierarchy by making cultural capital outrank whiteness. #complicates (0.82) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3229