In the age of COVID-19 the death of a black man, Mr George Floyd, under the knee of a white policeman in the USA has triggered global protests and outrage on a scale not seen in decades — probably not since people railed against involvement by America and its allies in the Vietnam War 50 years ago.

As was said in this space yesterday, those who had kept aloof from talk of police abusing black people suddenly saw “a white policeman…kneeling for almost nine minutes on the neck of a black man, Mr George Floyd, until he ceased to breathe”.

Everything changed after that.

We suspect that not just anger and revulsion, but shame, combined in motivating people of all races to take to the streets in North America and Europe, especially.

Protesters have focused not just on the death of Mr Floyd and racism in the United States but also on experiences in their neck of the woods. Hence, the pulling down in Britain of the statue of an 18th-century slave trader.

In Jamaica, protests relative to the death of Mr Floyd stayed muted, until Saturday.

In truth, racial division in Jamaica is not straightforward — rooted though it is in the kidnapping of Africans, their shipment across the Atlantic in atrociously inhumane conditions, and their enslavement here between the 16th and early 19th centuries.

Subtle manipulation by British colonisers meant that racial divisions often got lost in the discourse, as the Jamaican nation gradually found its feet in the approach to Independence.

For example, prior to Universal Adult Suffrage in 1944, the great majority of black people could not vote, because only property owners had that right. Since the descendants of African slaves were deprived and mostly incapable of acquiring land and property, the desired end was achieved — so far as the colonisers were concerned.

Also, while stark racism may not be a major issue in today’s Jamaica, a worrying inferiority complex dating back to slavery afflicts many Jamaicans. It has led to such manifestations of self-contempt as skin bleaching and the oft-repeated phrase “black people nuh good”. To what extent does such self-hate contribute to abuse and negligence of the very poor by constituted authority?

Such subtleties have dominated modern Jamaican life. Protesters outside the US Embassy on Saturday condemned not only obvious racism but the brutality meted out by the security forces against poor people in Jamaica; the impoverishment of far too many Jamaicans; and outright negligence which has led to mentally ill people being ‘forgotten’ in prison, such as Mr Noel Chambers who died after 40 years behind bars, without a trial.

The evolution of human relationships and attitudes mean that most people here probably don’t see themselves as being discriminated against because of race.

But, inevitably, because of a history dating back to slavery, class and status discrimination is intricately entangled with race and skin colour.

What is very obvious is that those at bottom of the socio-economic ladder — whether they be black, brown or some in-between hue — are increasingly feeling the “knee on their necks”.

Hence, one placard at last Friday’s protest against a police killing in Kingston proclaimed, “Ghetto lives matter!”

These are discomforting, indelicate issues, but sooner or later Jamaicans will have to deal with them.