Altink, Henrice orcid.org/0000-0001-9123-0722 (2019) "Marrying light":skin colour, gender and marriage in Jamaica, c. 1918–1980. The History of the Family. pp. 608-628. ISSN 1081-602X
Abstract
While historians have increasingly examined inter-racial marriage, they have so far paid scant attention to intraracial marriage. This article tries to fill this gap in the scholarship by examining the practice of ‘marrying light’ in Jamaica from c. 1918 to 1980. Based on a wide range of sources, including memoirs and autobiographical fiction, it is particularly concerned with the motives for cross-colour marriage and the ways in which African-Jamaican children learned that ‘marrying light’ was an ideal to aspire to. It shows that colour, gender and class intersected in complex ways in ‘marrying light’ and that in most instances cross-colour marriages in Jamaica, like elsewhere, were a trade-off between one high-ranking variable and another. Due to the limitations of the source material, the article does not fully explore the extent of ‘marrying light’ and the quality of cross-colour marriages.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an author-produced version of the published paper. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self-archiving policy. Further copying may not be permitted; contact the publisher for details. |
Keywords: | marriage,race,Jamaica,intraracial,colourism,gender,discrimination,Caribbean,class |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of York |
Academic Units: | The University of York > Faculty of Arts and Humanities (York) > History (York) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number THE BRITISH ACADEMY UNSPECIFIED |
Depositing User: | Pure (York) |
Date Deposited: | 13 Mar 2019 17:30 |
Last Modified: | 03 Apr 2025 23:10 |
Published Version: | https://doi.org/10.1080/1081602X.2019.1582433 |
Status: | Published online |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1080/1081602X.2019.1582433 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:143650 |