MUST READ : Who is to be blamed for classism in Jamaica? Classism is Kingston’s greatest enemy, second only to crime. WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Sashakay Fairclough  Monday, May 02, 2016 

I had never experienced this thing called classism until I moved back to Jamaica. I had left at age 16 and after almost 10 years in a foreign country which has been labelled the most expensive place to live in the world, it took returning to this small third world nation to experience my first real bout of discrimination.

The poor, black Jamaicans who are most affected by classism
have done a lot for their country, so why are so many still
 made to feel like second-class citizens?

As a young lawyer, things are clearly difficult. I moved to Kingston and met a young architect who was doing quite well for himself. He had dark skin and was from uptown Kingston. I noticed straight away that Kingston was quite segregated. Like most other people I had met there, he sized me up after introducing himself.

He concluded after asking me several questions that I was not good enough for him, simply because I did not own a car. “You have to call taxis?” he asked with a disgusted look on his face. This shocked me, as living in the UK most people decide against buying cars because taking the tube is much faster, plus parking is terrible.

I had no idea that in Jamaica owning a car was a must, it was this great status symbol that separates the ‘haves’ from the ‘have-nots’. I was unaware that it helped some men to decide if certain women were good enough for them. Mind you, this was the same man who had complimented me earlier for being ‘brown’ and so worthy of an actual conversation with him. The fact that people in my own country are judged for something so minuscule broke my heart. I was even more disappointed in myself, as, for a split second I had allowed this ignorant person to make me feel inadequate and unimportant. I worked hard all my life and had returned to Jamaica under the naïve belief that I could actually contribute and make a difference in some way.

Sashakay Fairclough

Discrimination from someone of the same race and country was completely new to me and led me to ponder if my experience was unique. I had lived in Kingston for only two months and already it felt like a different planet.

Classism is Kingston’s greatest enemy, second only to crime. At first glance, the city appeared more segregated than southern parts of the United States. I wondered if the segregation was a derivative of the classism or if the opposite was true. I noticed soon after that although the elite have made attempts to separate themselves (no fault of theirs as some places are quite violent) they were failing miserably as garrisons seemed to pop up close to a lot of these so-called ‘uptown’ communities in Kingston. That probably explains why owning a car is now used to judge those worthy of relationships rather than place of residence or even skin colour. more