Afro-Guyanese
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Afro-Guyanese are the inhabitants of Guyana of African origin. When planters made land available to East Indians in the late 1800s when they had denied land to the Africans several decades earlier, Afro-Guyanese resentment of other colonial ethnic groups was reinforced. The Afro-Guyanese people's perception of themselves as the true Guyanese derived not only from their long history of residence, but also from a sense of superiority based on their literacy, Christianity, and British colonial values.
By the early twentieth century, the majority of the urban population of the country was Afro-Guyanese. Many Afro-Guyanese living in villages had migrated to the towns in search of work. Until the 1930s, Afro-Guyanese, especially those of mixed African and European descent, comprised the bulk of the nonwhite professional class. During the 1930s, as the Indo-Guyanese began to enter the middle class in large numbers, they began to compete with Afro-Guyanese for professional positions.
[edit] Reference
- This article contains material from the Library of Congress Country Studies, which are United States government publications in the public domain.
