1/2 Similar portion to other upper middle income countries, obviously. Avg wage in Trini, Bbdos, Antigua, St Kitts etc about the same as Croatia, Bahamas avg higher than Spain. Even the economic laggard of the bunch (Jamaica) is odd because….
There are over a million ppl of Jamaican origin in the US, the avg Jamerican earns more than the avg US citizen and is more likely to have a degree than the the avg US citizen (or U.K. citizen for that matter)…
Aug 2, 2022 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
Framing Black English kids whose great grandparents came here as culturally ‘Caribbean’ may no longer be useful for these kinds of things, given the actual nations of the Caribbean take education so seriously/have pretty good outcomes when measured against comparable nations.
Similarly it may surprise people to learn that marriage rates in actual Black Caribbean nations are 2-4x higher than in Britain… so portraying English itinerant workers as representative of ‘Caribbean’ families does not really stand up either.
Aug 24, 2021 • 35 tweets • 5 min read
I haven’t studied it in deep detail but I suspect there are a number of reasons which i’ll outline below...
1 - The timing of the migration was concentrated from 48-62/73 thus b4 independence. While many terrible things happened in 70’s JA it was also the era of women’s empowerment, Black Power and the beginnings of social mobility of Black Jamaicans specifically...
Aug 23, 2021 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
While culture - beliefs, values, behaviours, qualifications, technical skills - are obviously ‘a’ factor in disparate outcomes between human groups these cultural factors are so bound up with material ones that they cannot credibly be separated imo... also...
If you expand your scope beyond the USA the gargantuan inconsistencies in the arguments of those that claim to place most weight on culture within the USA become clearer a few examples:
Aug 22, 2021 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
That may well be true for Britain - where there is a functioning welfare state, an NHS and free at the point of use tertiary education, easily accessible libraries, but person tweeting was USA where none of those things are true and certainly they not in place most places...
The welfare state and other class ameliorations means even poor ppl in Europe today have certain things that are middle class elsewhere... the relative cost of books to wages for another example.
Aug 22, 2021 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
1/2 We should be neither uniquely romantic nor uniquely cynical about China, Chinese people are people, capable of every virtue and vice of which other people are capable... but I’m bout sure we can *currently* level the accusation that...
2/2 Their development has been ‘no different’ than that of Britain, France, Germany the US or Japan... how future generations in China will behave when the country is fully rich and few remember what it was like to be part of the ‘third world’ we have no way of knowing..
Jul 21, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
And surely it’s one thing to require people to test... another completely for govts to try and demand vaccination for entry...
Artists, DJ’s and venues should not comply with this imo. Testing before events is understandable and seems logical/fair enough. *Requiring* vaccination to get a drink with your friends is a piss take...
Mar 31, 2021 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
How is this relevant to Jamaica? (and elsewhere)... Everyday in Kingston you will see workers from the slums of downtown, Spanish Town and Portmore travel to the rich part of Kingston to work on building sites, clean homes, do security work etc...
You will also see children from those same slums travel to uptown schools (often this means waking up @ 530am)
Mar 31, 2021 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
I’m happy to accept culture is ‘a factor’ but usually culture just really means class for people to lazy to think about how the spread of tertiary education and other material factors change populations for example...
Are those minority of Jamaicans (in Jamaica) that made it out of rural poverty or the Ghetto over the last 60 years from a different culture?
Mar 31, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Well given the amount of young British West-African boys being killed and going to prison that’s clearly already partially happening. There is ZERO gang violence among their middle class university educated cousins back in Ghana and Naija obviously... BUT
No I don’t think it will be to the same extent. Different times and contexts. If the children of University educated Jamaicans cane to Britain today they’d likely do much better than their more working class cousins...
Mar 31, 2021 • 22 tweets • 3 min read
Yes and no. The entire Black population of the Caribbean was poor in 1962 and almost all illiterate. Education and social progress for the most part had been deliberately restricted to whites, ‘mulattoes’ Syrians etc before then...
So while I don’t doubt for a second that highly educated East African Asians and Nigerians would obviously still be doing better on average than the children of Jamaican and English carpenters we are still left asking...
Mar 31, 2021 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
If the academic underachievement, lower occupational mobility etc of the Black English underclass is mainly due to the ‘Caribbean culture’ of their great grandparents we should expect to see similar disparities between Caribbean nations vs Nigeria, India, Pakistan shouldn’t we?
Except (with no disrespect intended to those other nations) it’s so blatantly obvious that the standards of living, size of the middle class, access to tertiary education and healthcare are VASTLY better in the Caribbean (though still poor of course) that what are we to say?
Oct 31, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I am not a pacifist, not even slightly. There are entirely legitimate reasons for violence - self defence for example - I just don’t think this is one of those cases.
Even more unfortunately the most powerful states in the world have continually taught us all that capacity for violence is the *only* way to ensure respectful treatment in this world. That does not mean said capacity should be applied wantonly but it is a prerequisite for a seat.
Oct 28, 2020 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
No doubt life for working people in the Caribbean is hard, just nowhere near as tough as in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Philippines, Brazil, Argentina and almost all of Africa (including north Africa) apart from probably Botswana.
With the exception of the garrisons of Jamaica and Trinidad of course.
Oct 14, 2020 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
I hear you and i’m happy to accept that there are consequential cultural differences between different groups of people but to what extent this are the result rather than the cause of material history is an empirical case by case question... for example...
Life expectancy, GDP per capita, press freedom, human rights and even University rankings in the Caribbean mostly compare favourably with India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Philippines but not with SK, Japan and Taiwan obviously. So ‘Asian’ culture does not tell us much
Oct 14, 2020 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
However we must caveat this with the Pan-African saturday school
movement. A movement the state was in fact quite often hostile to.
There is also the role of middle class liberals in policing the bounds of culture and intelligence... a personal anecdote:
Oct 14, 2020 • 32 tweets • 5 min read
Nope... they’re more interested in pretending that the children of University educated West African civil servants doing better than the children of yorkshire coal miners (and English-Jamaican plumbers for that matter) proves that the ‘white working class’ r being left behind...
It might be more honest to ask how/why so many University educated middle class West Africans ended up artificially working class in the first place and check if we find a similar pattern with similarly qualified migrants from NZ, AUZ or Germany for example...
Jun 6, 2020 • 19 tweets • 3 min read
What about ‘black on black’ violence? A thread for the ultimate pretend counter argument...
Firstly on a basic level just imagine being such a bootlicker that you would essentially attempt to justify unpunished extrajudicial killings by agents of the state on the grounds that civilians also kill sometimes...
Jun 5, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I think a lot of the push back against footballers having so much money by the mail etc is the subtle undertone of the chavs should not have so much p.. (especially the black ones of course) because...
Because push come to shove most footballers probably have the wrong class loyalties, despite being so rich. These last two/three months have made that quite apparent.
Dec 3, 2019 • 34 tweets • 5 min read
Also for any youngers struggling to step away from a friend group that’s not great for this at this time or trying to change their creative content hopefully this thread might help/be of some inspiration...
For any1 that’s listened to my fist mixtape you might be very puzzled why the content is so different from my first album as they were only two years apart...
Nov 22, 2019 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
I think many of the twitter warrior Uni grad intellectual set think we are having the same conversation or talking to the same people/have the same aims because I also use some big words and write books but let’s have a think...
There is absolutely nothing wrong with going Uni btw (I wish I went) I am just making a point about the intellectual arrogance (divorced from mere reality) that it can sometimes breed...
