I had never experienced this thing called classism until I moved back to Jamaica. I had left at age 16 and after almost 10 years in a foreign country which has been labelled the most expensive place to live in the world, it took returning to this small third world nation to experience my first real bout of discrimination.

As a young lawyer, things are clearly difficult. I moved to Kingston and met a young architect who was doing quite well for himself. He had dark skin and was from uptown Kingston. I noticed straight away that Kingston was quite segregated. Like most other people I had met there, he sized me up after introducing himself.

He concluded after asking me several questions that I was not good enough for him, simply because I did not own a car. “You have to call taxis?” he asked with a disgusted look on his face. This shocked me, as living in the UK most people decide against buying cars because taking the tube is much faster, plus parking is terrible.

I had no idea that in Jamaica owning a car was a must, it was this great status symbol that separates the ‘haves’ from the ‘have-nots’. I was unaware that it helped some men to decide if certain women were good enough for them. Mind you, this was the same man who had complimented me earlier for being ‘brown’ and so worthy of an actual conversation with him.

The fact that people in my own country are judged for something so minuscule broke my heart. I was even more disappointed in myself, as, for a split second I had allowed this ignorant person to make me feel inadequate and unimportant. I worked hard all my life and had returned to Jamaica under the naïve belief that I could actually contribute and make a difference in some way.

Discrimination from someone of the same race and country was completely new to me and led me to ponder if my experience was unique. I had lived in Kingston for only two months and already it felt like a different planet.

Classism is Kingston’s greatest enemy, second only to crime. At first glance, the city appeared more segregated than southern parts of the United States. I wondered if the segregation was a derivative of the classism or if the opposite was true. I noticed soon after that although the elite have made attempts to separate themselves (no fault of theirs as some places are quite violent) they were failing miserably as garrisons seemed to pop up close to a lot of these so-called ‘uptown’ communities in Kingston. That probably explains why owning a car is now used to judge those worthy of relationships rather than place of residence or even skin colour.

Why is Kingston so classist, and do poor blacks unwittingly contribute to this ongoing discrimination? The experiences of one of our greatest assets, Usain Bolt, is one of the greatest indicators that classism is alive and well and doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. However, I believe it is allowed to continue mainly because we let it.

We suffer enough with the pressure we face to conform to Eurocentric beauty standards. We should desist from putting people on a pedestal and then complaining when they want to stay there and won’t let us join them.

At times, we can be our worst enemy.

Black people make up about 92 per cent of the Jamaican population, yet we control less than 30 per cent of the wealth. Are we still going to blame ‘oppression’ for that?

Bob Marley put Marcus Garvey’s famous quote – “Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds” – to song.

During slavery, there were more slaves than slave masters, a hundred times over, and they were physically stronger. So why were they enslaved for hundreds of years? The reasons vary. One is that there was a major language barrier because of the vast number of languages in Africa. Also, the house slaves were pitted against the field slaves and made to feel superior.

House slaves were then used to help control the field slaves. Is that the concept that started classism in Jamaica? Though slavery was abolished over 100 years ago, why does the mentality still exist? Technically, we are all in the same boat, we all live in this economically depressed and politically corrupt nation, so no matter how rich someone is, they will still feel the effects of that.

When will our black men stop treating women of a lighter hue as if they are trophies to be dangled in front of their friends and family in order to show their ‘arrival’ in high society? Why do we fail to realise how great and talented we are as Jamaicans? The poor, black Jamaicans who are most affected by classism have done a lot for their country, so why are so many still made to feel like second-class citizens?

There appears to be a limit on social mobility for those who are not a part of the middle or upper class in this country. Attaining a top job in politics or otherwise seems to be less about knowledge and more about knowing the right people. In the end, people will not feel like they can advance as freely as they could in other countries. It is as if there is an invisible wall that prevents the ordinary man from taking the next step.

Our social divisiveness is why we have so much brain drain. Brilliant young people remain stagnant and hopeless. Classism, whether proliferated by the poor or instilled by the rich, is a major contributor to the subpar lives our young people are forced to endure.

People who excel should be encouraged, regardless of where they are from. A child from the country or the ghetto should be given the same opportunity to rise as a child born to a prominent family. They may not have as much money, but employers should not discriminate.

Nepotism is rife in every sector of our tiny island and it is destroying the Jamaican spirit. The popular expression ‘Jamaica no problem’ is rarely used nowadays as problems are all we know.

Everyone is good at something and nobody is good at everything. Upward mobility should be a right, not a privilege.

I believe that both social circles should be blamed for the persistence of classism. Poor blacks should be blamed for allowing this to continue for as long as it has because they accept that they are inferior. If we did not agree that lighter is better than darker, or that rich is better than poor, then a lot more would have been done to eradicate the classism that is still keeping us down. We have to stop playing the victims.

Stand up and do something. Defend your right to be a first-class citizen in your own country. Rich blacks and wealthy people of other races should be blamed for keeping nepotism alive and actively trying to separate themselves from perople that they do not see as good enough.

We all want a better Jamaica, so the mentality of every single person needs to change. Is that possible? Only time will tell.

– Sashakay Fairclough is a barrister, freelance journalist and mentor