Trinidad’s black middle class split into old French-Creole families and self-made arrivals

Evidence

[T]he coloured and black middle class consisted of two distinct groups. There was a small group of families of mixed African and European descent who were the descendants of the French free people of colour settled in Trinidad since the 1780s. Secondly, there were the people, both black and coloured, who can be described as “self-made.” They were the descendants of the Trinidad ex-slaves, or of “Liberated” African immigrants, or of immigrants from the eastern Caribbean. And they had acquired their middle-class status mainly through their command of British culture and their white-collar jobs. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1158