Trinidad’s Black middle class mimicked white hierarchy yet faced an absolute caste ceiling

Evidence

The society arranged by these generations of the colored and Black middle classes of Trinidad was a chiaroscuro of the white upper classes. Its priorities had little to do with the elements of the radical tradition sounded in Thomas’s Froudacity. In their society, the shadings of privilege and status, acceptability and tolerance, the play etiquette of Brown upon Black were as subtle a social art as could be devised with the cultural, historical, political, educational, familial, and financial materials in their hands. One almost had to be a Trinidadian, one with a special intuition at that, to know what was required and expected, what indeed were the possibilities for any of their young launching into the orbit of adult intercourse. While the white elite seemed to possess the convenience of bold denominational distinctions, the more easily measured amassed acreage or fortune, and the property of names that could be located in the historical traditions frankly elaborated in Trinidadian literature and journalism, the standard deviations among the colored and Black middle classes were many times of such tiny gradation that an instinctive social subtlety was a sine qua non. Gross disparities, to be sure existed, but they occurred too infrequently for custom or habit to be unerring guides. In any case, the highly esteemed place of the light-complexioned elite was easily enough achieved over a generation or two. Though its value was not appreciably lessened by “mixed” marriages, simple color was considered a crude and rude measure at best. Any Black aspirant sufficiently talented, ambitious, or sponsored by professional training or family affluence could ensure his/her grandchildren would be phenotypically eligible for the pinnacle of intra-class recognition. There was though the ceiling beyond which the Black could not rise. Anticipating that closure, many of the Blacks, particularly the intelligentsia, sought to substitute education and literature as currency in the inter-class exchange. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1166

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the Black radical tradition’s origins — this society is the milieu James and Thomas react against, so it frames their dissent within this class’s world.