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Kenneth ClarkKenneth Clark
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we should know something about Jamaica. And I can tell you about that year, because it was an important year for me.

I don't remember any specific reason why we, my sister and I, were bundled off to Jamaica with my grandmother. My mother stayed in America. Except, what I said, that they decided that we should be there.

Now, what did my grandmother do? During that year, she took us around and showed us where they lived before she split from her husband and took her three daughters to Panama. She showed us the places they still owned there. I guess what she was doing, either deliberately or inadvertently, was giving us some sense of origin or roots, because whether she intended this or not, this is what happened to me, you know. I got a feel for Spanishtown where my mother was born. I got a feel for Kingston and Drummond Street, where my grandmother lived.

But let me tell you -- and I've never said this to anybody -- it was also a very disturbing thing to me, because it was my first contact with class and status differences, and I to this day believe that my ulcers originated in Jamaica when I was eight or nine years old.

Because, what happened? Up until that time, I was struggling with the Irish, and it was democratic -- it was, you know, equality. I had no sense of class distinctions whatsoever in my early socialization in New York.

When I went to Jamaica, we had nurses, nursemaid, who waited an my sister and me night and day. We went to a public school, and in this school,-- (there's a fascinating angle) -- the principal's son and my sister and I were singled out, really, for special treatment.





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