This week I spoke to Patricia Chen, a woman who grew up in Jamaica giving us her own first encounter of growing up in Kingston to moving to Texas. Mrs. Chen grew up in a world where they viewed you based on your class status instead of the color of your skin. Even towards each other, Jamaicans tend to put each other down depending if you are upper or lower standard, education wise, money wise. (When she was growing up, people who wore dreadlocks and were rastafarians were considered outcasts and the lowest of the lows. It has seemed to be recent that upper class kids have dreadlocks.) So what happened to the woman who moved from a class based society to a race based society?
She spoke on how there’s a separation between immigrants and Jamaicans, looking down upon them because they would be taking the jobs that those in the upper middle class would never do. However, if Jamaicans were to migrate to the US they would do the same job that they looked down on because they view it as an economic gain rather than dropping in class status.
Mrs. Chen described that while growing up she could see the clear difference in status as it was right in your face. The government tended to encourage it since they didn’t encourage the programs that would help the poor when she was younger since it all depended on the two party system. They could be as close as one street over, seeing each other from across the street and what you’d see would be a run down neighborhood or a modern suburb. That wasn’t always the case though, she could recall a time in her childhood where everyone looked out for one another until it seemed that money and presentation became more important to an individual.
Patricia Chen described her life as nice, growing up in the middle class and meeting her husband, Will Chen, who was upper middle class. She was able to go to school, her father was able to migrate her education which was something valued in Jamaica. The basic education through high school was a success because it is the equivalent to having an associate degree in America which she was able to achieve.
When asked why she moved to America, she gave credit to her father who insisted that they migrate because he was coming to live in the US and wanted her nearby, but also because the country’s crime rate was starting to escalate. There were other outside factors such as acceptance of Rastafarians within the cultural society people were uncomfortable with after a long period of separation. Her husband also convinced her to leave because of the political instability of the country, due to the USA and the CIA intervention which led to a large amount of guns coming in. It felt unsafe to live there since the government started having conversations with Castro as a result. The fear that was building up and the influence of the two men in her life had given her enough reason to pack up everything and move.
It was sad and hard to leave her place of birth where she had an established life only to have to start new. It took adjusting, when they just moved to Texas in 1979, there were blue laws where they were not able to buy certain items. Mrs. Chen described moving to America right after the end of the Jim Crow era, she herself being able to enter into the same buildings, use the same restrooms, yet she found herself the source of unwanted stares. She and her husband were having to deal with other’s being upset about how they were able to just walk into a building even though they were not white because they were foriegn and didn’t know that others had such a hard time. She came from a culture where they looked at what class you were and not what tone your skin was. Mrs. Chen described a time when working with a coworker she had heard stories of how they were called names and were not allowed into a building because of the color of their skin. Yet she herself had never found herself in the same situation once coming to the United States. Luckily she and her husband were able to attend university in America, she was able to attend a historical black college for accounting which moved her to become an accountant at a bank for a significant period of time.
Her experience throughout the years, living, moving and meeting people- she found herself accepted. Loving America she was able to have new opportunities and a life, but was lucky enough to also return to Jamaica to visit family and reminisce on her childhood. In America, she was able to build a home and family, seeing the US as her country.
The last four- five years however have been the real strain, she describes how things have not been the same for her. This is the first time since she moved to the United States in 1979 that she’s had any discomfort or fear. She feels more hesitant to meet somebody when before she had felt southern hospitality and was able to give it back only to now be confronted with hostility. This is their home however, and hopefully things change because this country was a place she was proud of.