So it was that I became one of those dark men whose 'surest sign of ... having arrived is the fact that he keeps company with people lighter in compl… - C. L. R. James

It seemed like a classic ploy by the conquerors: games, particularly so restrained and ritualistic a game as cricket, could be imposed upon the colonies to tame them, to herd them into the psychic boundaries where they would learn the values and ethics of the colonist. But once given the opportunity to play the master's game, to excel at it, the colonials gained a self-esteem that would eventually free them.

Here, on the cricket field if nowhere else, all men in the island are equal, and we are the best men in the island.

These are no random reminiscences. ... The Negroid population of the West Indies is composed of a large percentage of actually black people. ... Then there are the browns, intermediates, who cannot by any stretch of imagination pass as white, but who will not go one inch towards mixing with people darker than themselves.