This article traces the reproduction of whiteness in Jamaica during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries through the lens of domestic labor. Articulated in dialogue—and at times in tension—with Britain, what it meant to be white was forged through representations and practices of domestic service and household management, shaped by the legacies of slavery and the shifting colonial relationship. Anxieties about a declining white population and attempts to rejuvenate the island's image contributed to prescriptions of domestic labor management that positioned the white creole mistress as a model of respectability and colonial modernity. Black domestic servants were repeatedly presented as the mirror through which white creole womanhood was constructed, and this article argues that these representations served to consolidate class/color hierarchies that privileged whiteness into the twentieth century. Yet mapping these discourses onto the daily interactions between mistress and maid also exposes the persistent work required to secure racialized hierarchies. Through photographs, diaries, and correspondence read alongside published oral histories, the article argues that domestic servants persistently exercised agency that disrupted and spoke back to popular depictions, demonstrating the fraught reproduction of creole whiteness at the intersections of race, class, color, gender, and colonial identity.

本文通过家政劳动的镜头追溯了 19 世纪末和 20 世纪初牙买加白人的繁殖。在与英国的对话中——有时是紧张的——表达了白人的意义，是通过家政服务和家庭管理的表现和实践而形成的，这些表现和实践是由奴隶制的遗留问题和不断变化的殖民关系塑造的。对白人人口下降的焦虑和试图振兴该岛形象的尝试促成了家庭劳动力管理的处方，将白人克里奥尔情妇定位为体面和殖民现代性的典范。黑人家庭佣人被反复呈现为构建白人克里奥尔女性身份的镜子，本文认为，这些表现有助于巩固在 20 世纪享有白人特权的阶级/肤色等级制度。然而，将这些话语映射到情妇和女仆之间的日常互动中，也暴露了确保种族化等级制度所需的持续工作。通过与已出版的口述历史一起阅读的照片、日记和信件，文章认为，家庭佣人坚持不懈地行使能动性，破坏并回应流行的描述，展示了克里奥尔白人在种族、阶级、肤色、性别和殖民身份的交叉点上令人担忧的再现。