What Do Jamaicans Mean by Ole Negar?

Abstract

The author's thesis is that the patois term “Ole negar” which Jamaicans use to vilify and categorize the uneducated among them is more than a simple pejorative meant to stigmatize a whole class of people. From the various contexts in which the phrase ole negar is used can be inferred a begrudging admiration for the defiance of this lowly, downtrodden Jamaican who stuck tenaciously to his own culture and refused to play the game of colonialism by the Englishman's elitist rules. Ole negar, in sum, was the Jamaican who clung to the African ways of his ancestry while rejecting the dandified pretensions of the usurping English.