Ulysse - Downtown Ladies

In Downtown Ladies, Gina Ulysse describes her journey as a Haitian Anthropologist studying social construction in Jamaica’s culture and society, particularly gendered class and culture. Ulysse begins by explain the marginalization of women in Jamaica’s society, and the differences between a lady and a woman, a haggler and an Informal Commercial Importer (ICI).

Much in the same as previous texts that have studied “third-world” countries, Ulysse breaks down not only the differences in humanity in skin color, but also in gender, as well as how social class reinforces the social hierarchy that oppresses black women — particularly poor black women — in the first place.

Ulysse’s descriptions throughout the introduction and the first four chapters gave me flashbacks to “A Small Place” and “Babel.” The permanent and privileged existence of the whites juxtaposed with the poor, unprivileged and transient “blacks” with different variances of privilege, beauty and social class in between. I say permanent to describe the whites and transient to describe the blacks, to further prove the view of whiteness where while whites can remove themselves from the disadvantages of being black (transient), blacks cannot remove themselves from the advantage and privilege of being white (permanent). 

Each individual intimately affects another, through trade, government relations and self-worth, yet the black people can never transcend that barrier. Ulysse talks about the Jamaican culture’s view of the black “woman” and the white “lady,” and how it reinforces the idea of whiteness through beauty. Ulysse describes whiteness as a symbolic and material property that is a “possessive investment.” European ideals, features, even jewelry is used to determine one’s self worth and beauty, yet a black woman in Jamaica with all the jewelry in the world cannot transcend a white woman’s social class.

Ulysse uses the lengthy descriptions of the introduction and first two chapters in order to set up her personal introduction to the Jamaican culture that she begins in chapters 3 and 4. Ulysse, being a black Haitian woman, studying her region yet not her local community, as a privileged academic woman studying the privilege and lack-thereof in Jamaican society had to position herself in the best way possible in order to receive the most accurate results for her study.

So she enters her study through customs —seemingly invisible to the customs’ officers yet hyper-visible to the locals around he — and taking a car — that holds “greater importance in defining class status in Jamaica” than any other commodity. Ulysse goes to great lengths to not only position herself correctly in social class, but also to identify those privileges in which she holds by being in that social class. She does this, ultimately to show her knowledge that she is an American student and a Haitian native studying a local culture — that is not her own — and the benefits and issues that come along with that.