The Pervasiveness of White Supremacy

How a black-majority country can still have racial tension

Photo by Koshu Kunii on Unsplash

I’m no stranger to the racial unrest in North America, or even South America for that matter.

Thanks to the twenty-four hour news cycle and globalization, anyone can know anything about everything. We have cameras and microphones in our pockets. We can transmit what we’ve experienced to the entire world and all we have to do is pick a platform.

Whether the news involves George Floyd in the U.S. or fourteen-year-old João Pedro Mattos Pinto in Brazil, black lives appear indispensable to armed forces and their governments.

Many have covered these topics and more, but I want to illustrate a different dynamic. One that may not be as obviously tragic or violent but is nevertheless corrosive to the black community.

I’m a Jamaican who lives in Jamaica. You would think that a country that is overwhelmingly black would not suffer from racial issues. After all, there are black people in the government and there are black businesses for black people. Right?

Well, no. It isn’t that simple.

Colonialism

Christopher Columbus and the Spaniards came to Jamaica in 1494 and found that the island was inhabited by the…