Your reaction is very curious. I presented an alternative lens on the matter and instead of examining whether your assumptions about Caribbean people are correct you get defensive.

I am a Caribbean person, born and bred. Two types of people, university professors and foreigners, insist on telling us what are the motivations of our actions and don't listen to what we say.

Living in the Caribbean doesn't make you one of us. It doesn't make you an anthropologist. We may welcome you here but you see us through your lens and not ours. In fact, this entire thread is seeing Kamala Harris through an American lens not a Jamaican lens. The British approach to race and slavery was different from the American approach. If you are not white you are black. That does not necessarily mean Negro. Anyway, back to the issue of hair and skin bleaching.

Caribbean people like people anywhere enjoy fashion. We've worn our hair in Afros, Souls, Jerry Curls, S-curls, braiding, extensions, wigs and relaxed hair. We do it because it's cool, fashionable, and sometimes for practicality. Like fashion everywhere it changes over time. We aren't silly people who think that our straightened hair makes us look white. It hasn't even been popular in over twenty years.

As for skin lightening, when I was growing up people did it to relieve hyper-pigmentation from too much sun, scarring, acne and aging. Only recently, has it become a thing with some people to lighten their entire bodies and compared to rest of the population they are a small group. When asked about it they say they do it because they think it's cool and because their friends are doing it. The very same reasons that whites give for tanning. They certainly aren't doing it for social mobility because they are ridiculed and mocked for it.

You are judging us using the lens of the place from which you come. The university professors I mentioned before have their careers and political agendas, just as they do in other countries. A simple answer like fashion won't further their careers, sell their books or result in speaking engagements.

Racism exists in the Caribbean, I'll give you that but it doesn't express itself the way it does in other places. Yes, there was a time that Eurocentric styles made it easier to get office jobs but that was a long time ago. We have moved on and it's a little frustrating that some people won't let us get on with the business of no longer being slaves and instead be free people who can wear our hair or style our bodies any way we want.

African tribes have been wearing wigs and hair extensions as a part of their long tradition. Pretty soon someone is going to tell them it's because of the slave narrative. lol.

So in this case, it's people like you who keep telling us to shut up.

Edit: spelling