‘Racialised facilitative capital’ and the paving of differential paths to achievement of Afro-Trinidadian boys

Abstract

Bourdieu describes capital as the political building blocks of social order that give meaning to social accumulation and consumption. Through a combination of Bourdieu’s sociology and critical race theory, this sojourn into Afro-Trinidadian boys’ achievement seeks to elucidate an approach to understanding capital as inherently raced. This is premised on an interrogation of Trinidadian society as pigmentocratically structured, where lightness is rewarded with a myriad of social advantages, and darkness denigrated as illegitimate and ‘other’. The premium placed on lighter skin is manifested interdependently in the forms of social, economic and cultural capital. As such, the operation of capital as politic not only reflects societal structures of power and domination, but importantly also contributes in the maintenance of said structures. The concept of ‘Racialised facilitative capital’ follows as inseparably both facilitator of social status and as racialised process.

Keywords:

• pigmentocracy
• Afro-Trinidadian boys
• capital
• Bourdieu
• critical race theory

Notes

1. See http://cso.gov.tt/statistics/pdf/Tables1-10,76-81_HBS.pdf.

2. See http://cso.gov.tt/statistics/pdf/Tables1-10,76-81_HBS.pdf.

3. Please note that the term ‘niggery’ implies the stereotypical views of blackness and darkness, and is indicative of the offensive, self-deprecating racialised discourse that underpins pigmentocracy in Trinidad.