Reviews a book that finds that Jews had a minuscule role in the slave trade and played only a minor role as slave owners wherever they resided in the New World
Fischer reviews the two-volume work Blackness in Latin America and the Caribbean: social dynamics and cultural transformations, by Norman E. Whitten Jr. and Arlene Torres>
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
415 p, This comprehensive volume takes the reader through more than 500 years of Caribbean history, beginning with Columbus's arrival in the Bahamas in 1492. This revised and updated edition, with new chapters that reflect the islands' most recent social, economic, and political developments, features maps, charts, tables, and photographs.
The African heritage hypothesis posits that the substantial African ancestry of Puerto Ricans explains why this group is less segregated from African-Americans than non-Hispanic whites. This pattern is unlike that of other Hispanic groups, who have been found to be highly segregated from African-Americans but modestly segregated from whites. The research presented here shows that Dominicans, another Hispanic group with substantial African ancestry, are also less segregated from African-Americans than whites. Dominicans, therefore, also appear to be conforming to the African heritage thesis by residing in neighborhoods with greater proximity to African-Americans than whites.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
371 p, This handbook features a concise and authoritative history of the entire region, covering the large islands such as Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Bahamas as well as the smaller islands in the Netherlands Antilles, the islands of the Eastern Caribbean and the French and British dependencies.
