Kevin Baldeosingh
Since the death of Black Power leader Makandal Daaga, formerly Geddes Granger, commentators have universally agreed that the 1970 Black Power protests had positive effects on T&T in general and Afro-Trinbagonians in particular.
Former army officer Raffique Shah, who led the 1970 mutiny, in an interview with Yvonne Baboolal, noted that Daaga "opened the door for non-white, dark-skinned people to get jobs in banks."
In the same article, Khafra Kambon, chairman of the Emancipation Support Committee, said: "He had a significant influence on the major changes in the country in the 20th century, including the nationalisation of private entities. He made a serious dent in bridging the gap between Africans and Indians in T&T at the time and helped Afro-Trinidadians reaffirm their identity."
But are any of these views true? Everyone who makes these statements offers only anecdotal evidence, rather than empirical data. Even the claim that banks changed hiring policies does not distinguish between what economists call "animus" and "statistical discrimination." The former is racial prejudice, in which the individual would reject a transaction even if acceptance would be beneficial; the latter is where race is used as a proxy for expectation of a negative outcome.
In this context, the question is whether banks' practice of hiring white and light-skinned persons was based on racism or some other kind of discrimination. The only in-depth published study of the banking industry in the Caribbean is Depression to Decolonisation by historian Kathleen E A Monteith, who is based at the Mona campus of the University of the West Indies in Jamaica, and her book focuses on just one company–Barclays Bank (Dominion, Colonial and Overseas).
"In essence, the recruitment practices of Barclays Bank (DCO) reflected the racial and class divisions prevalent in the West Indian colonial societies of the 19th and early 20th centuries," Monteith writes. But, she adds: "As much as the social and political circumstances of the period influenced the recruitment of non-white West Indians, and greater numbers of West Indians overall, economic considerations were just as important."
Up to 1950s, white West Indians made up 70 per cent of total staff complement of Barclays Bank for the region. However, as far back at the 1920s, because of the world war, the bank had started hiring black persons and even sending promising individuals to their London office for training. However, it was only after 1951 that regular employment of black persons began. In British Guiana and T&T, most of the newly recruited local staff were persons of Chinese ancestry, which means that, if racism was the barrier, it wasn't equally applied to all non-whites.
Monteith writes: "The elite which formed the core of the bank's clientele was invariably white, or considered white by the general population, since they were not black and were rarely brown in complexion . . . this clientele . . . would certainly have objected to black and brown personnel in positions which allowed them access to knowledge of their financial status."
This might be an indicator of statistical discrimination rather than animus, although it could also be economic self-interest conflicting with racial prejudice. In order to reduce operational costs in the mid-20th century, Barclays Bank started hiring both non-whites and women. Moreover, as the customer profile itself became more mixed, the staff had to change to accommodate new customers. "There was now a greater need for information which was more readily available from West Indians than from British staff, who were less familiar with the society and the economy," writes Monteith.
Table One shows the increase in bank business in T&T in the 1970s. Not only would this drastic rise have required more staff than could be drawn solely from the white and even Chinese populace in T&T, but it is likely that the 300 percent increase in loans and savings reflected a new non-white customer base.
In respect to Kambon's second claim about nationalisation, it appears true that the Black Power protests, along with the 1973 oil boom, did catalyse the government's creation of State enterprises, totalling 62 at its peak. This level of government ownership was the second highest in the Caribbean, after Cuba. But was this good or bad for the country? In his book The Underachieving Society, economist Terrence Farrell writes: "The foreign private sector was vilified and attacked during and after the black power uprising of 1970 . . . The effect of this was a lower rate of foreign direct investment, which did not recover until the neoliberal phase of the 1990s."
A larger but more nebulous claim is that the 1970 protests helped black persons create an African identity. One often-cited assertion to support this is that the category of "Mixed" in the national census was reduced, as persons who had formerly labelled themselves in this category now told the census taker that they were African. Novelist Earl Lovelace, in a 1969 article in the Trinidad Express, wrote: "When we look at those who seek to dismiss Black Power in this unfortunate manner, we discover that most of them have black skins (or brown skins–it is all the same). They are sociological whites."
Table Two lists the population statistics for three groups: African, Mixed and Indian. Three details stand out. First, there certainly was a drop in the number of mixed persons, but this happened before 1970. This does not mean, however, that people weren't indeed re-labelling themselves because they were embracing their African ancestry, since the Black Power ideology, which started in the United States, would have reached T&T long before Daaga and his colleagues formed the National Joint Action Committee and started their protest actions.
Secondly, the number of white Trinidadians dropped drastically, seeming to confirm that Black Power aroused the greatest unease among this group in T&T.
And the third noteworthy detail is that, between 1970 and 1990, the African populace increased by 11 per cent, the Indian populace by 21 per cent, but the mixed populace rose by a whopping 57 per cent. This is much larger than can be accounted for by natural increase or by re-labelling, so the figure may be the result of a combination of the two. If so, this would mean that, contrary to race identity rhetoric, more people started identifying themselves as mixed and interracial relationships became more common.
If it was the latter, however, this does not necessarily confirm that Black Power raised the status of Afros, or at least it didn't do so for Afro-Trinidadian men. This is because it is entirely possible that, whereas the pre-1970 dougla populace may have been born from relationships of African men and Indian women, the post-1970 dougla cohort was the offspring of Indo men and Afro women. If this is so, it would mean that Indian men had gained in status even as Afro men were dropping on the social ladder. In a 2008 lecture titled Contesting the Past, historian Bridget Brereton, author of A History of Modern Trinidad 1783-1962, said: "Most Indo-Trinidadians opposed the movement and rejected the label 'black', which, most felt, subsumed their ethnic identity under a blanket term always primarily associated with people of African descent. It seems clear that the rediscovery of African roots associated with Black Power stimulated a similar process among the Indians."
Another proxy for enhanced African identity would be religious affiliation. If this identity formation did happen post-1970, it would be reasonable to expect that black persons would leave historically white denominations like the Catholic and Anglican churches and align themselves with more African-oriented religions like Spiritual Baptist, Orisa and other sects. Table Three indicates that this did happen to some extent, but the increase happened 20 and 30 years after 1970, implying that it was the children of that decade who turned away from traditional religions.
Another proxy is marriage rates, since a high marriage rate is a common factor between successful socio-economic and ethnic groups, in part because marriage increases the wealth and other resources of a household and in part because children from two-parent homes generally have developmental advantages over children from single-parent homes. Table Four suggests that mating patterns among Afro-Trinidadian women have not changed significantly between 1970 and 2000.
Finally, Table Five provides a profile of Afros in T&T
Apart from being equitably represented among legislators, senior officials and managers, most of the other indicators, such as representation among top students and prison inmates, are negative. From this viewpoint alone, Black Power either did not improve the relative status of Afro-Trinbagonians or made their state worse.
TABLE 1. Commercial Banks finances TT$000
Year Assets Mortgage Loans Personal Savings
1974 $1,191,085 $35,308 $345,581
1975 $1,570,421 $44,747 $479,165
1976 $2,085,003 $56,910 $663,711
1977 $2,665,443 $78,475 $802,133
1978 $3,475,058 $94,901 $963,598
Source: Central Statistical Office
TABLE 2: Selected racial categories in four censuses.
Year Total African % Mixed % Indian % White %
1960 827,957 358,558 43% 134,749 16% 301,946 36% 15,718 1.8%
1970 931,071 398,765 42% 131,904 14% 373,538 40% 11,383 1.2%
1980 1,079,791 430,884 39% 172,285 15% 429,187 39% 9,946 0.9%
1990 1,125,128 445,444 39% 207,558 18% 453,069 40% 7,254 0.6%
Source: CSO
TABLE 3: Religious membership in selected decades
Religion 1970 1980 1990 2000
TOTAL 827,957 1,055,763 1,125,128 1,114,772
Roman Catholic 299,649 347,740 330,655 289,711
Anglican 175,042 155,155 122,787 86,792
Baptist 18,522 25,333 33,698 79,899
Other/Not Stated 52,5443 64,760 98,936 135,836
Source: CSO
TABLE 4: Afro-Trinidadian women marital profile
Marital status 1970 Marital status 2000
child-bearing marital patterns
Single (never married) 25% Never had partner 32%
/husband
Before marriage 40% Married 30%
Year of marriage 6% Common-law 12%
One year or 29% Visiting 0.6%
more after marriage
Sources: Bell, R, 1970; CSO
?TABLE 5. Statistical profile
of Afro-Trinbagonians
Indicator %
Population 37%
Legislators, senior officials, 29%
and managers
Professionals 38%
Elementary occupations 35%
Top SEA students 30%
CXC scholarship winners 30%
Marriage rate 30%
Common law unions 12%
Divorced 7%
Convicted prisoners 58%
Homicide victims 80%
Sources: CSO, Ministry of Education, Survey of Living Conditions, 2005
