Racialized Emotional Labour: The Weight of Blackness in White Spaces

At the age of 17, from April 2016 to September 2016, I worked part-time at a yacht club on Toronto Island as a maintenance worker. I worked alongside another individual in the maintenance department, and we were both of Afro-Jamaican descent. The club had a predominantly white membership, with few customers who were people of colour. The staff was also mostly white, and there were only five other people of colour who worked there besides us, and none of them were black either. I found that, while interacting with members, I faced racialised remarks and assumptions based on my position as a maintenance worker and as a young black woman. To remain professional and avoid validating any of their racist assumptions, I employed a high level of emotional labour and restraint. In discussions with my Jamaican colleague, I found he faced similar racialised comments; he also felt it necessary to employ emotional control to uphold a palatable image. However, I also found that the non-black employees did not employ the same level of emotional labour. This is not an isolated experience. I have also had to engage in emotional labour in other workplaces. Moreover, it is common to hear about Black employees, especially Black women, performing emotional labour for non-black customers. Black female employees must employ more emotional labour when working in predominantly white spaces, especially in racialised occupations.

A Brief History of Race, Politics and Division in Trinidad and Guyana

This essay will act as an analysis of the Indo-Afro racial politics of two west Indian countries: Trinidad and Tobago, and Guyana. I will give the circumstances that led to the migration of large numbers of East Indians as indentured servants to Trinidad and Guyana, specifically. I will also explain how these conditions led to a distinct form of government and society. Through tables of electoral data in Trinidad, the racial voting patterns will be observed, and I will elaborate on how political parties do or do not pander to their respective racial communities. Finally, I will conclude by addressing how the racial divide in these two large Caribbean nations impact Caribbean regionalism on a larger scale.

From Trinidad and Tobago to the World: Determining the role of Calypso in a new Era

Calypso is a popular Caribbean musical genre that originated in the island nation of Trinidad and Tobago. The genre was developed primarily by enslaved West Africans brought to the region via the transatlantic slave trade during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Although West-African Kaiso music was a major influence, the genre has also been shaped by other African genres, and by Indian, British, French, and Spanish musical cultures. Emerging in the early twentieth century, Calypso became a tool of resistance by Afro-Caribbean working-class Trinbagonians. Calypso flourished in Trinidad due to a combination of factors—namely, the migration of Afro-Caribbean people from across the region in search of upward social mobility. These people sought to expose the injustices perpetrated by a foreign European and a domestic elite against labourers in industries such as petroleum extraction. The genre is heavily anti-colonial, anti-imperial, and anti-elitist, and it advocated for regional integration. Although this did not occur immediately, Calypsonians sought to establish unity across the region regardless of race, nationality, and class through their songwriting and performing. Today, Calypso remains a unifying force and an important part of Caribbean culture. Considering Calypso's history and purpose, as well as its ever-changing creators and audiences, this essay will demonstrate that the goal of regional integration is not possible without cultural sovereignty.