Race, Nation, and Diaspora in the Southern Caribbean: Unsettling the Ethnic Conflict Model

Abstract

In much of the southern Caribbean (i.e., Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana), ethno-political tensions between numerically commensurable populations of South Asian and African diasporic populations have structured narratives of postcolonial conflict between an “African” and an “Indian” political party, setting the limits of national narratives. This article challenges this narrative on a number of points, drawing on oral histories and ethnographic research. I look at how the assumption of homogenous African and Indian groupings ignores important differences of class and political ideology that disrupt racial essentialism and create what I have called “altered solidarities.” I argue that dominant postcolonial frameworks of creole nationalism, state multiculturalism, and securitization in the Anglophone Caribbean have been unable to recognize these alternate solidarities in the region. [race, nationalism, diaspora, Caribbean, ethnic conflict]