West Indian

For the play by Richard Cumberland, see The West Indian. For the region on the west coast of India, see Western India.

A West Indian is a native or inhabitant of the West Indies (the Antilles and the Lucayan Archipelago). In the 1597 Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the term West Indian initially described the indigenous inhabitants of the West Indies, by 1661 the term defined "an inhabitant or native of the West Indies, of European origin or descent." In the 1950s, coinciding with decolonization and the arrival of Afro-Caribbean migrants in the United Kingdom, West Indian referred to those who were Black. Inclusively, in 1961 all inhabitants of the West Indies Federation were termed West Indian regardless of their descent, besides West indian Indo-Caribbean people sometimes also use the term East Indian West Indian. The OED now defines it simply as a citizen of any West Indies nation. Some West Indian people reserve this term for citizens or natives of the British West Indies only, to the exclusion of not just the Hispanophones, but also French and Dutch West Indians.

See also

• Caribbean people
• History of colonialism
• History of the West Indian cricket team
• Spanish colonization of the Americas
• West Indian American

Further reading

• Olwig, K. F. (1999). "The burden of heritage: Claiming a place for a West Indian culture". American Ethnologist. 26 (2): 370–388. doi:10.1525/ae.1999.26.2.370.
• Richards, B. N. (2013). "Ethnic identity on display: West Indian youth and the creation of ethnic boundaries in high school". Ethnic and Racial Studies. 37 (6): 1–10. doi:10.1080/01419870.2012.748212. S2CID 141059126.
• Robinson-Walcott, K. (2003). "Claiming an Identity We Thought They Despised: Contemporary White West Indian Writers and Their Negotiation of Race". Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism. 7 (2): 93–110. doi:10.1353/smx.2003.0023. S2CID 145632320.