Racial Hierarchy and the Elevation of Brownness in Creole Nationalism

This essay looks at the place of race in Creole Nationalism in Jamaica. It asserts that Creole Nationalism is also Brown Nationalism in Jamaica and that its racial ideas can be seen through the thought of Norman Manley, the father of Creole Nationalism; his wife Edna, its cultural mouthpiece; and the politics of Alexander Bustamante. The essay contends that Creole Nationalism rooted itself in notions of indigeneity and the elevation of hybridity as the basis of the state’s claims to legitimacy; legitimized a racial hierarchy that centered brownness; and provided a way to think self and nation in independence through the national motto. It contends that an aspiration to brownness was embedded in the identity politics emerging therein, which served to obscure the racial order and maintain the subordinate place of blackness in postcolonial Jamaica.