interesting. i was there in about 72/3. talked to some US expat biz owners who were leaving. they said that the anti white corruption and discrimination was impossible to deal with. did you see that kinda thing? maybe not when a cash fix was in?
That was still accurate decades later. I was diving, on the water, and around hotels, so I didn’t have a whole lot of contact with the West Indians unless I went shopping. They are totally fine with tourists. They know which side of bread the butter goes on, but they knew if you lived and worked there and they hated us. There was one bar in Red Hook, the Warehouse, where all the white St. Tomians would go to drink where we wouldn't get fucked with. Pretty much both kinds of music on the jukebox, and fist fights over how you hunt deer (not kidding). The place was fucking great. Double or nothing with five dice against the bartender, and if you ordered a $5 rum and coke they would put a glass of ice in front of you with a can of coke and the bottle of rum. It was pour your own (because the coke cost more than the rum).
If I went to Napa, or Kmart, or the grocery store half the men and all the women would suck their teeth at me, which is the West Indian FU. They didn't want us there, but since most of them can't swim and most are scared of the ocean and petrified of sharks we pretty much have everything that's good to ourselves...
When I went down there I thought Rastas were kind of cool...till I met them. Honestly, nothing to recommend with West Indian culture. Most of their food is more Puertorriquena than anything else. The only people they hate more than whites are African Americans. They cannot fucking stand mainland blacks.
I took the written driving test five times because it was written in a form of English with no grammar and a heavy dose of double negatives meaning you had a fifty fifty shot at getting the question right. The first time I took it I loudly told the asshole grading it that it was not written in English, and that a first grader could have written it better. They would not tell me which questions I got wrong. I think they finally just gave it to me when they saw I would not quit and keep coming back till I randomly answered enough questions correctly. West Indians are worthless. Even the hotels preferred not to hire them if they could avoid it because they are so surly, lazy, and entitled.
I have always had a bunch of black friends in the States. The only black people on St. Thomas I was friends with were a captain from Baltimore and his white wife, and the Federal Prosecutor, who was from Georgia, and his Puerto Rican wife is wife. I did not make a single West Indian friend, mostly because they all seemed to resent me and treated everyone who lived there like shit. That is not to say you will have problems as a tourist, you won't. They can be charming if they want your money. There are a lot of really good restaurants on St. Thomas too.
So, yea, same same. Wouldn't trade the experience for anything.