Many Jamaicans are bi-racial.
Cedella and Norval Marley, parents of Bob Marley
Bob Marley's father was Norval Sinclair Marley who was born in Sussex. Marley was a captain in the British Army who settled in Jamaica after retiring from the army. Norval Marley was 50 years old when he fathered Robert Nesta Marley with 17 year old Cedella Booker, an Afro-Jamaican servant at a plantation where Norval worked as a field supervisor. The couple married, but Norval moved to Kingston to accept a job offer and never really lived with with his wife and son in their home in rural St. Ann's parish.
According to Marley biographer, Steven Davis: "
Every month or so, when he could get away, Norval Marley came up to St. Ann to visit Cedella . However, as the years passed and pressure mounted from Norval’s family, most notably his mother, the relationship between the “white army captain and the black country girl cooled off” As Marley became older, his father’s visits became increasingly less frequent until the man eventually completely abandoned Marley and his mother by severing all contact."
Bob Marley grew up resenting the absence of his father but gradually accepted his outsider status as a "mulatto" saying, “
My father was white and my mother black, you know. Them call me half-caste, or whatever. Well, me don’t dip on nobody’s side. Me don’t dip on the black man’s side nor the white man’s side. Me dip on God’s side, the one who create me and cause me to come from black and white, who give me this talent.”
Bob Marley's facial bone structure and eyes bear a strong resemblance to his father. It also appears that Marley inherited his father's lanky and slender body type. Cedella was a very pretty but large boned woman who probably weighed more than her husband.
Peter Tosh's father was a white Scottish man named James McIntosh, who abandoned Peter's mother before he was born. Out of bitterness toward his father, Peter refused to use his McIntosh birth name and eventually he legally changed his last name to Tosh.