ABSTRACT
For an agricultural country, St. Vincent is surprisingly dependent upon imported food. In good mercantilist tradition, all the crop is shipped to Trinidad for manufacture into cigarettes while St. Vincent imports all the raw tobacco for its own small cigarette factory from the United States. Less rigid and compartmentalized than the legally-prescribed slave society system that preceded it, contemporary Vincentian stratification continues to be based on distinctions of race and color, income and property, occupation and education, prestige and respectability, and power. To be sure, St. Vincent is a sovereign state with a fully-enfranchised Black electorate. The folk model of stratification—the perceptions, beliefs, and values of Vincentians about the ranking of individuals, positions, and groups-also displays internal 'contradictions' among the criteria of race, wealth, and style of life and this requires the occasional 'adjustment' of phenotypical ascription to match extant notions of social class.
