“Red legs”: Class and color contradictions in Barbados

In the colonies the economic substructure is also a superstructure. The cause is the consequence; you are rich because you are white, you are white because you are rich Fanon, 1966]. We must recognize that ever since emancipation Negroes have occupied the lowest positions of any biological group in the societies of the British Caribbean; and although there is no clearly drawn race or caste line in these areas, prominence and prestige, wealth and power, have historically been distributed in terms of light pigmentation. Smith, 1960].