Colour-Class and Race Segregation: The Spatial Dimension

Abstract

It has already been shown that colour-class increasingly dissolved into class in the post-independence period in Kingston as the whites and the racial minorities left Jamaica, and the socially mobile blacks moved into middle-class and elite positions (Ch. 3). However, socio-economic neighbourhoods were still strongly set apart in 1991, and these distinctions were rooted in late-colonial residential patterns established on the Liguanea Plain (Chs. 1 and 2). This chapter is essentially a continuation of the previous one (Ch. 3), and builds on its findings. It concentrates on the spatial dimension of social processes by examining colour-class and race segregation—and desegregation—in the late-colonial and post-independence periods. Colour and race distributions are examined cartographically, and are supplemented by the index of dissimilarity, which measures the evenness/ unevenness of distribution of two categories or groups measured one against the other. The index of dissimilarity is also calculated for occupations, using them as a proxy for class, so that they may be compared to indices for race and colour. Finally, indices known as P* are calculated for colour, race, and occupational categories to measure a group’s comparative isolation, taking its size and the size of the group with which it is being compared into account. The spatial expression of the class structure of Kingston in 1960 and 1991 (to which the argument returns) provides the underpinning for the distribution of colour/racial categories at independence and since sovereignty (Figs. 1.8 and 2.6). The class mosaic was largely reflected in colour distributions in late-colonial times, and the location of the racial minorities was indicative of their degree of penetration of the creole colour-class hierarchy, and the level of their entrée. Likewise, changes in colour/racial distributions since independence may be used to examine the mobility into the elite and middle classes (and class areas) by the black and mixed populations, and to trace the social fortunes of the minorities, in the context of their demographic decline. The chapter begins with a discussion of changing colour and race distributions over the period 1943 to 1991, before examining the statistics for segregation. The white minority group in Kingston in 1943 was confined to the eastern, central, and northern suburbs and to some historic localities in the town centre, associated with business. The areas they occupied recorded at least median socio-economic status scores, and most of the heaviest concentrations were associated with areas of high rank.