West Indian family organization.

Abstract

West Indian Negro society is bounded by poverty and color frustration. The island of Jamaica is taken as typical of society in the Caribbean. The family or domestic group in this society can be regarded as a phenomenon sui generis. Four types can be distinguished: Christian family, faithful concubinage, maternal, or grandmother, family, and keeper family. These familial forms exhibit a marked degree of stability. But they can be regarded as indicative of the disequilibrium inherent in the society. The contemporary family structure of the Negro in the New World is the result of plantation slavery rather than of a West Arican tradition.