At the bottom of the Caribbean islands' white ranks come the so-called "poor whites," often given such pejorative names as "red legs" in Barbados or "walking buckras" in Jamaica.

This group includes small independent farmers, servants, day laborers, and all the service individuals from policemen to smiths, as well as the various hangers-on required by the curious "Deficiency Laws."

These are laws designed to retain a minimum number of whites on each plantation to safeguard against slave revolts.

A Jamaica law of 1703 stipulates that there must be one white person for each ten slaves up to the first twenty slaves and one for each twenty slaves thereafter as well as one white person for the first sixty head of cattle and one for each one hundred head after the first sixty head.

The law is modified in 1720, raising the ratios and lowering the fines for noncompliance, but the planters seem more prepared to pay the fines for noncompliance than to recruit and maintain white servants, so the law degenerates into another simple revenue measure for the state.

This is true throughout the British Caribbean islands during the eighteenth century.