Their Modernity Matters Too: The Invisible Links Between Black Atlantic Identity Formations in the Caribbean and Consumer Capitalism

Abstract

Much work in the field of Black Atlantic studies has highlighted the lives and philosophies of liberation of black savants such as W. E. B. DuBois and Claude McKay. These and other black intellectuals, who combined anti-capitalist critique with the struggle against anti-black racism, have been heralded as planetary humanists eschewing exclusive nationalism. This article seeks to complement this body of work by revealing the underprivileged actions of the Afro-Caribbean working classes to tame capitalism and demolish racism. It focuses on Elza, Tica and Amelia Richardson, three sisters who were born in the Dominican Republic and whose travels and kinship ties connect the Dutch, English, French, and Spanish Caribbean to Canada, Western Europe, and the United States of America. Reading the life histories of the Richardson sisters, it is possible to see beyond race and recognise the power that consumer capitalism has had in shaping both blacks and whites in the Caribbean and its Diaspora.