Afro-Jamaican Research Articles

How Parenting Facilitates Adolescents’ Tricultural Identity Development: A Mixed Methods Collective Case Study of Tridimensionally Acculturating Black Jamaican Immigrant Families

This article presents a mixed methods collective case study of the role of maternal socialization in shaping the tricultural identity development of Jamaican immigrant adolescents in the United States, who are known to acculturate tridimensionally. Seven Black adolescents (14–18 years; four male) completed online surveys and their Jamaican-born mothers completed online interviews during the dual COVID-19 and Whiteness pandemics. In-depth mixed methods case analyses and cross-case comparisons revealed both particulars and universals. Across all cases, adolescents had strong Jamaican private identities shaped by steady proximal and remote enculturation into Jamaican culture, and mothers’ skillful authoritative parenting supported their autonomy in acquiring and navigating U.S. cultural affiliations. Case particulars grouped adolescents into four profiles with one case fitting two profiles. 1) “Triculturals” had strong Jamaican or multicultural socialization with positive psychological and academic adaptation, but differing multicultural identity conflict. 2) “Reluctant Majority Culture Assimilators” had high achievement but differing psychological adaptation with mothers whose socialization first involved accepting their teens’ African American identities. 3) “Majority Culture Rejectors” had high belonging and no psychological distress but low average grades with maternal socialization that promoted the American Dream master narrative and resisted the alternative narrative of negative linked fate of ethnic minorities. 4) Finally, “Minority Culture Assimilators” had low multicultural identity conflict but differing psychological and academic adaptation and were being socialized by their mothers to resist being either victim or perpetrator of racial discrimination by harnessing cultural variability to play up and play down cultural identities and by avoiding use of ethnic-racial generalizations.

Skin color and socioeconomic inequality: the persistence of colorism among black Jamaicans

ABSTRACT Colorism is an important determiner of life outcomes among Black people. Yet, we know little about how it impacts socioeconomic conditions outside the United States. This study expands the existing literature on intraracial stratification by using Jamaica as a case example. Drawing on data from the 2010 and 2023 waves of the AmericasBarometer social survey, I examine the impacts of colorism on two key indicators of socioeconomic status. Although colorism is often regulated as a “public secret,” findings reveal that it is a significant determinant of socioeconomic outcomes. And while the penalty of skin color has lessened in 2023 for tertiary education and household amenities, it remains for incomplete primary education. Findings thus: (1) provide empirical evidence of the continued significance of colorism within Jamaica, (2) expand the extant literature, and (3) highlight the need for the consideration of “racial” inequality in fostering equity, even in majority African-descended nations.

“Anything Too Black Nuh Good:” Contouring the Everyday and Extraordinary Anti-Black Racism of Contemporary Jamaica

If asked, many Jamaicans will adamantly state that the country does not have a race problem; rather, it (openly) has a class problem. This series of "meditations on race" explore the tensions of living, loving, and dying in a "paradise" tenebrously held together by the country's motto "Out of Many One People." The excursion starts at the feet of an Indian grandmother, the counterpoint against which the writer’s earliest understandings of her own Blackness were formed. Along the way, it onboards and unpacks the experiences of the BlackPoor, the BlackQueer, the BlackWoman, the BlackChild, and Jamaica’s mostly Black diaspora, to grapple with the complex and far-reaching anti-Black reality of colonial and contemporary Jamaica. What does it mean when Black death is so normalized that it redefines grief and an entire genre of music? What decisions must be taken by people living in the chokehold of racism and cultural imperialism, as a matter of survival? And how do even the most intimate aspects of human existence deflate and reform under the pressure of persistent poverty, supported and exploited by the “Global North”? Through prose-like and poetic explorations of the every-day and extraordinary experiences of Black Jamaicans, this piece unsettles the easy equivocation of a majority Black population with a Black-accepting nation. It shifts the façade of "paradise" to explore the depth of its colonial roots. And it amplifies the breathless, relentless question of "should I stay or should I go?" that has haunted the writer and many like her for decades.

Social Construction of Barriers or Challenges to Parenting: Black Jamaican Fathers’ and Mothers’ Perspectives

Social Construction of Barriers or Challenges to Parenting: Black Jamaican Fathers’ and Mothers’ Perspectives

Ethical applications of digital community-based research with Black immigrant and refugee youth and families.

The capacity to conduct psychology research online has expanded more quickly than have ethics guidelines for digital research. We argue that researchers must proactively plan ways to engage ethically in online psychological research with vulnerable groups, including marginalized and immigrant youth and families. To that end, this article describes the ethical use of internet and cell phone technologies in psychological research with Black immigrant and refugee youth and families, which demands efforts to both deepen and extend the Belmont principles of respect for persons, beneficence, and justice. We describe and apply four research frameworks-community-based participatory research, transdisciplinary team science, representational ethics, and cross-cultural psychology-that can be integrated to offer practical solutions to ethical challenges in digital research with Black immigrant and refugee youth and families. Then, as an illustration, we provide a case example of this approach using the Food, Culture, and Health Study conducted with Black Jamaican American and Somali American youth and families, who experience tridimensional acculturation due to their race and have been disproportionately impacted by the dual pandemics of COVID-19 and racism/Whiteness. We offer this article as a road map for other researchers seeking to conduct ethical digital community-based psychological research with Black immigrant youth and families and other marginalized communities. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Simultaneous initiation of quadruple therapy for heart failure with reduced ejection fraction: initial experience in Afro Caribbean Jamaican population

Background: Among Afro Caribbean Jamaican patients with heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF), improvements in cardiac function associated with simultaneous initiation of quadruple therapy, have not been previously reported and we aimed to assess this special population. Methods: Combined quadruple therapy (angiotensin-receptor neprilysin inhibitor, beta-blocker, mineralocorticoid receptor antagonist, and Sodium-glucose cotransporter-2 inhibitors) was simultaneously initiated in 120 Afro Jamaican patients with HFrEF from the Heart Institute of the Caribbean. Patient data was consecutively recorded in our electronic medical records. Changes in Ejection fraction (EF) and N-terminal pro b-type natriuretic peptide (NT-ProBNP) levels, were evaluated after 90 days and statistically analysed during this two-year study. Results: Patient mean age was 63 ± 12.7 years old, 68% male, with mean Body Mass index (BMI) 32.2±6.7 Kg/m2. Hypertension was observed in 62.5 %, T2Diabetes Mellitus in 31.7%, and history of old myocardial infarction in 15.7 %. Atrial fibrillation was present in 7.8% and left bundle branch block in 16.5 %. Other cardiomyopathies (idiopathic, peripartum and non-compaction) were noted in 16.6 %. After the quadruple therapy for a median follow-up period of 90 days, significant improvements of cardiac function were achieved. The mean NT pro-BNP level was significantly decreased from a Baseline of 3111.21 pg/mL ± 4535 to 1806.6 ± 2265.3 pg/ml. A mean change in NT Pro BNP of 1305 pg/mL ± 5069 (p < 0.001). The mean left ventricle ejection fraction (LVEF) improved from a baseline of 33.4 % ± 7.8 to 44.4 % ± 10.9. A mean change in LVEF of 11.3% ± 9.1 (p <0.001). Notably, an improvement of >10% in the LVEF was observed in 41.5% of the total population. In a separate analysis, the subgroup with T2 Diabetes mellitus showed more pronounced (mean change in EF 9.1% ± 11.0) improvement in LVEF than the non-diabetic (mean change in EF 7.7% ± 11.7) but no significant differences in the change of the NT pro-BNP levels were noted between both subgroups. The most frequent therapy adverse effect was hypotension (13.63%) followed by cough (6.81%) and kidney dysfunction (2.27%) but none of the patients presented Angioedema. Conclusion: Among Afro Caribbean Jamaican patients with heart failure and reduced ejection fraction, simultaneous initiation of the quadruple therapy was demonstrated to be feasible, well tolerated and associated with significant functional improvement.

"All Ways Open to all Men": Anthony Trollope and Mary Seacole in The Central American Transit Zones

This article focuses on two writers whose work on Panama and Nicaragua confronts Britain's supersession by the United States as the hegemonic power in Central America. Reading the nurse and memoirist Mary Seacole and the novelist and civil servant Anthony Trollope, I argue that these British subjects both understood the fate of the Empire as tied to that of the Central American transit zones, particularly the transoceanic route across Panama. They differed, however, on whom waning British influence in Central America would benefit. While Trollope saw commercial and cultural continuity in an uninterrupted Anglo-American dominance of the hemisphere, Seacole, a Black Jamaican for whom the Empire functioned as a guarantor of political status within a larger colonial framework, worried that the United States would subject the region to its regime of strict racial separation. Taken together, these accounts suggest a surprising inversion of imperial identifications: Trollope evinces an informal imperialist's disdain for official entanglements, while Seacole emphasizes that her status as a British subject entails a duty on the part of the Empire to protect the region and its people from American rapaciousness.

Multiculturalism as a negotiated citizenship: voices of second-generation Black Jamaicans

ABSTRACT This study examines the lived experiences of second-generation Black Jamaicans and investigates how they interpret Canadian multiculturalism while navigating racism in their everyday lives. There is no dearth of research on multiculturalism in Canada. However, this article makes a fresh contribution to debates on multiculturalism by exploring how multiculturalism is understood and articulated as a claim-making process by a racialized group under lived citizenship framework. It extends the discussions on multiculturalism from a state-centered analysis to citizenship from below. Drawing from 22 interviews with second-generation Black Jamaicans, this study maintains that citizenship is a dynamic process through which research participants make claims to rights and belonging and negotiate their position vis-à-vis the state and other citizens to put the ideals of multiculturalism into practice.

Skin for Skin: Biblical Language in Jamaica’s Morant Bay Rebellion

AbstractIn October, 1865, Paul Bogle and a few hundred Black residents of rural Jamaica rebelled against the vagaries of an overly zealous magistrate. They set the courthouse at Morant Bay on fire and killed over a dozen people, mostly white. In the savage government reprisals that followed, over 430 Black Jamaicans were executed. Here, I observe how biblical language played a central role in public discourse about the rebellion. I focus on the rebellion’s slogan: skin for skin. I trace the interpretive history of this phrase drawn from the book of Job, showing how it became associated with advocacy for Black rights. And I examine the social context of Bogle’s use of the phrase to call for a Black alliance that crossed ethnic, religious, and class lines. I thus further a critical trajectory that has recognized the importance of biblical language to race talk in the age of emancipation.

Black Women’s Mothering Practices in the Canadian Racial State: Reflections on Maternal Sufferation in the Afterlife of Slavery

This article foregrounds a Black feminist analysis of a bereaved Caribbean-Canadian mother, Cecile Case Holder, whose 24-year-old son, Andre Burnett, was murdered in Toronto on 10 September 2005. The article reframes her grief through the lens of maternal sufferation to explore a distinctly Jamaican reality in a transnational context. Burnett was one of 52 people who died by gun violence in what became known as “The Year of the Gun.” In an extensive interview with Holder about the life and death of her youngest child, Toronto Star reporter Jim Rankin addresses the forms of structural violence that contributed to the conditions that led to Burnett’s demise. Reading her narrative from a Black feminist perspective, the author explores the politics of Holder’s mothering practices to keep her children safe. Her narrative is located in the scholarship on Black motherhood in the African diaspora, focused on the exigencies of the afterlife of slavery. Cecile Holder’s reality is particular to her circumstances. Yet, her experience as a Black Jamaican mother in the Canadian racial state provides a snapshot of the quotidian navigations that frame women’s parenting practices at the nexus of structural violence and the demands of the global economy unique to African-Caribbean women.

Correction to: Impacts of Religion on Established Adult Women’s Lives and Development: Black Jamaican Women’s Perspectives

Correction to: Impacts of Religion on Established Adult Women’s Lives and Development: Black Jamaican Women’s Perspectives

Impacts of Religion on Established Adult Women’s Lives and Development: Black Jamaican Women’s Perspectives

Impacts of Religion on Established Adult Women’s Lives and Development: Black Jamaican Women’s Perspectives

Baptists, Race and Empire, 1792–1914

ABSTRACT This article compares the stances on race and empire of four British who featured in the overseas missionary movement in this period. William Ward of the Serampore Mission brought some elements of his early political radicalism into his attack on Hinduism as a system of priestly oppression. The writer and BMS secretary Edward Bean Underhill blamed the Jamaican plantocracy for the plight of the former slaves after emancipation, and defended black Jamaicans against racist attacks on their character. In contrast, Herbert Sutton Smith, a BMS missionary on the Congo from 1899 to 1910, wrote a book about his years at Yakusu that is full of racial stereotypes. Finally, Joseph Booth, a Baptist from Derby who began his own self-supporting mission in Malawi in 1892, became an outspoken critic of British involvement in the region, while still retaining a theoretical hope that Queen Victoria would intervene on behalf of exploited Africans.

Moments of Cooperation and Incorporation: African American and African Jamaican Connections, 1782–1996, by Erna Brodber

Moments of Cooperation and Incorporation: African American and African Jamaican Connections, 1782–1996, by Erna Brodber

Seeing is Believing: How the Layering of Race is Obscured by “White Epistemologies” in the Criminal Justice Field

Criminology has been slow in recognizing the central organizing logic of race in (post)colonial societies. It is therefore unsurprising that research practice falls behind that proffered through other disciplinary epistemological critiques. In this paper, we interrogate the tools of whiteness that are obscured in the widely used research method of in-depth interviews. We scrutinize what is not “seen” but which can be made evident in research interactions, using three interview case studies conducted in England. Warren, a white man interviewed by a white man (Earle), exposes the occlusions and upholding of race and racism in prison settings. Rafan, a British Bangladeshi man interviewed by a British Indian woman (Parmar) reveals a socio-cultural backstory in which coloniality is deeply implicated but seems just beyond view, within and outwith the criminal justice system. Finally, the interview of Cairo, a black (British) Jamaican man by a mixed-race black British woman (Phillips), articulates a poignant yet defiant response to structural and cultural racism, which begins long before interaction with the criminal justice system. Laid bare are the limitations of existing research where over-represented white researchers typically conduct research involving under-represented minorities who are vulnerable to exclusion, criminalization, and state violence. Our three case study interviews offer a step beyond traditional qualitative research instruction for students and apprentice researchers. It aims to impart a reflexive pedagogy which intertwines biography with politics in training the next generation of criminal justice researchers.

Feelings of closeness toward Asian Americans: an analysis of African Americans and Black Caribbeans

Using data from a national sample, I examine Blacks’ feelings of closeness toward Asians in the United States. More specifically, I explore the following: (1) perceived closeness toward Asians, (2) correlates of perceived closeness, and (3) ethnic and national/cultural origin differences in perceived closeness. Results show that feelings of closeness toward Asians are rather similar between African Americans, Jamaicans, Haitians, Spanish-speaking Caribbeans, Trinidadians, and other English-speaking Caribbeans. Ethnic subgroup regression analyses reveal several interesting findings. Only among African Americans, everyday discrimination was negatively associated with feelings of closeness toward Asians. Living in the Northeast was positively correlated with perceived closeness toward Asians. Living in the Midwest, being married, financial strain, and higher educational attainment were correlates of closeness toward Asians only among Black Caribbeans. For Blacks overall, having immigrated to the United States more than 20 years ago was positively correlated with feelings of closeness toward Asians compared to native-born Blacks. While being female and everyday discrimination decreased feelings of closeness, positive Black group evaluation and higher religiosity levels increased feelings of closeness. Considering the growing diversity within the Black population in the United States to assess Black-Asian relations, these findings identify several correlates of their felt closeness toward Asians. These results can improve our understanding of Black-Asian relations more broadly, which is especially crucial given the unique dynamic between these two racial groups and ongoing perception of Black-Asian conflict.

Introduction: “The Unexpected Caribbean” Part II

Introduction: “The Unexpected Caribbean” Part II

Adolphe Duperly's rebellion prints and the historical moment of emancipation

ABSTRACT French lithographer Adolphe Duperly created three remarkable prints in 1833, between Jamaica's last slave revolt (1831–1832) and Emancipation (1834). He appropriated images from James Hakewill's Picturesque Tour of [ … ] Jamaica, calling his prints “occurrences,” a designation whose historical specificity contrasts with the timelessness of the picturesque. Duperly adds rebelling slaves, depicting them in ambiguous ways evoking both threat and celebration. Their figures are individualized, unlike earlier depictions of the enslaved as staffage figures or disciplined laborers. Colored by white paranoia, Duperly's images nonetheless suggest an incipient coming to terms with a changed relationship between free and formerly enslaved Jamaicans. His 1838 lithograph, Commemorative of the Extinction of Slavery, continues this trend. Unlike contemporaries Hakewill and Joseph Kidd, Duperly settled in Jamaica, establishing a business maintained by his family into the twentieth century. His commitment to the colony helps explain the unprecedented visibility given to black Jamaicans in his art.

R O C K S T O N E: On Race, Politics, and Public Memorials in Jamaica

ABSTRACT Public memory of slavery and resistance has been contentious terrain in Jamaica. During the island’s more than three centuries of British rule, memorials reflected an imperial narrative in which emancipation was the outcome of a benevolent crown, reflected in statues and venerations of monarchical figures. Independence in 1962 changed this practice. New memorials honoured prominent black Jamaicans. Independence also created charged debates over state and public representations of Jamaican history. This essay reflects on these matters, and the lessons they hold for global discussions on how the history of slavery should be publicly remembered.

Provision Grounds Against the Plantation

Robert Wedderburn’s London-based periodical, Axe Laid to the Root (1817), disseminates his vision for a transatlantic alliance between the radicals of England’s lower classes and the enslaved people in the West Indies. Throughout the Axe’s six issues, he challenges the abolitionist narrative that liberal, individualist freedoms should be spread from England to the West Indies. Wedderburn instead instructs his white, lower-class readers in London about already existing African Jamaican practices of insurrectionary land and food reclamation. First, he champions the provision grounds as a land commons that produce food sovereignty and communal identity. Then he represents the Jamaican Maroons’ local ecological knowledge as a source of resistance to plantation economies. Using Sylvia Wynter’s environmental theories of resistance, this essay argues that Wedderburn’s political theories champion African Jamaican land and food commons as a model for abolitionist futures.