In this article, I explore the impact of slavery and the Slave trade on the most fundamental relationship in human societies, the bond between mother and child. Firstly, I review European accounts of motherhood and childrearing (pre-enslavement) in the African cultures of origin. Secondly, I address the traumas of dislocation and enslavement during the Middle Passage. This is followed by some insights into the experiences of women and children in Caribbean Slave societies where I argue that, despite the harsh conditions, African-derived conceptualisations of motherhood and parenting endured. I conclude with a brief consideration of the reverberations of slavery into the post slavery era, specifically in relation to European attempts to change African-derived practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR];.
Journal Article, Taking an Afrocentric approach to the study of Africans who were enslaved by the Spanish in Mexico, the author traveled to Mexico on many occasions to study the retention of African cultural forms, concepts, practices, and values. This article provides the reader with a critical literature brief on the issues surrounding the current discourse.
The use and abuse of alcohol is prevalent in many nations across the globe, but few studies have examined within-group differences found in people of African descent in the United States, in Africa, and in the Caribbean. A review of current research about alcohol use, abuse, and treatment in people of African descent is presented, including information about risk factors and contributors to alcohol use.
Figueiredo,Maria Aparecida A. (Author), Rodrigues,Laura C. (Author), Barreto,Mauricio L. (Author), Lima,Jose Wellington O. (Author), Costa,Maria C. N. (Author), Morato,Vanessa (Author), Blanton,Ronald (Author), Vasconcelos,Pedro F. C. (Author), Nunes,Marcio R. T. (Author), and Teixeira,Maria Gloria (Author)
Format:
Journal Article
Publication Date:
2010
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Background: The physiopathology of dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF), a severe form of Dengue Fever, is poorly understood. We are unable to identify patients likely to progress to DHF for closer monitoring and early intervention during epidemics, so most cases are sent home. This study explored whether patients with selected co-morbidities are at higher risk of developing DHF. Methods: A matched case-control study was conducted in a dengue sero-positive population in two Brazilian cities. For each case of DHF, 7 sero-positive controls were selected. Cases and controls were interviewed and information collected on demographic and socio-economic status, reported co-morbidities (diabetes, hypertension, allergy) and use of medication. Conditional logistic regression was used to calculate the strength of the association between the co-morbidities and occurrence of DHF. Results: 170 cases of DHF and 1,175 controls were included. Significant associations were found between DHF and white ethnicity (OR = 4.70; 2.17-10.20), high income (OR = 6.84; 4.09-11.43), high education (OR = 4.67; 2.35-9.27), reported diabetes (OR = 2.75; 1.12-6.73) and reported allergy treated with steroids (OR = 2.94; 1.01-8.54). Black individuals who reported being treated for hypertension had 13 times higher risk of DHF then black individuals reporting no hypertension. Conclusions: This is the first study to find an association between DHF and diabetes, allergy and hypertension. Given the high case fatality rate of DHF (1-5%), we believe that the evidence produced in this study, when confirmed in other studies, suggests that screening criteria might be used to identify adult patients at a greater risk of developing DHF with a recommendation that they remain under observation and monitoring in hospital.
Preidis,Geoffrey A. (Author), Shapiro,Conor D. (Author), Pierre,Inobert (Author), Dyer,Monica J. (Author), Kozinetz,Claudia A. (Author), and Grimes,Richard M. (Author)
Format:
Journal Article
Publication Date:
May 2010
Published:
Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The HIV/ AIDS pandemic disproportionately afflicts regions of the world that have minimal access to formal schooling and low literacy rates. Health educational interventions are difficult to evaluate efficiently in these settings because standard approaches such as written questionnaires cannot easily be employed. Describes a method of rapidly assessing health interventions among large groups that does not require the ability to read or write. This evaluation tool was tested within the context of a community-based HIV/AIDS drama education program in a low-literate region of rural Haiti.
Reports on an empirical investigation into how small, family-owned businesses in Jamaica raise financing for business start-up and business growth. Access to finance has been one of the most critical issues affecting the growth and survival of these firms in the Jamaican economy but very little empirical work has been done in this area. This study uses survey data collected from over 250 family-owned enterprises from all the industrial sectors in the economy and analyzed, using multivariate statistical techniques. The results revealed that internal sources of financing are usually used to finance business start-up while external sources are used to finance business growth.
Research on Caribbean dance has revealed consistent ongoing contredanse-related practices since the 17th c. in the Spanish islands and since the 18th c. in the French, British, Dutch, and former Danish islands. The Caribbean forms that emerged do not stand together in an obvious manner because of diverse names for similar configurations and different forms. The discussion, based on comparative fieldwork and a survey of Caribbean dance practices, attempts to overcome some of these difficulties and to show pointedly that Caribbean quadrilles by many names express the ongoing but submerged agency of African-descended performers, that Caribbean dance history and categorization are lacking, and that the royal pageantry that is associated with quadrille performance is significant.
Archaeologists are studying changes in slaves' lives in the Caribbean and the United States. Some 57,000 artifacts have been recovered from Papine, ranging from tools to ceramics to glass bottles to beads. A number of ackee trees grow on the site, and oral tradition has it that ackee and other fruit trees are good indicators of historic habitation sites.
Background-Eligibility for rosuvastatin treatment for cardiovascular disease prevention includes a C-reactive protein (CRP) concentration >2 mg/L. Most observational studies of CRP and cardiovascular disease have been in Europeans. We evaluated the influence of ancestry on population CRP concentration to assess the implications for statin targeting in non-Europeans. Methods and Results-In a systematic review and meta-analysis among 221 287 people from 89 studies, geometric mean CRP was 2.6 mg/L (95% credible interval, 2.27 to 2.96) in blacks resident in the United States (n=18 585); 2.51 mg/L (95% CI, 1.18 to 2.86) in Hispanics (n=5049); 2.34 mg/L (95% CI, 1.99 to 2.8) in South Asians (n=1053); 2.03 mg/L (95% CI, 1.77 to 2.3) in whites (n=104 949); and 1.01 mg/L (95% CI, 0.88 to 1.18) in East Asians (n=39 521). Differences were not explained by study design or CRP assay and were preserved after adjustment for age and body mass index. At age 60 years, fewer than half of East Asians but more than two thirds of Hispanics were estimated to have CRP values exceeding 2 mg/L. HapMap frequencies of CRP polymorphisms known to associate with CRP concentration but not coronary heart disease events differed by ancestry. In participant data from the Wandsworth Heart and Stroke Study including European, South Asian and African, and Caribbean-descent subjects, body mass index, systolic blood pressure, and smoking contributed to between-group differences in CRP, but the majority of the difference in CRP was unexplained. Conclusions-Differences in CRP concentration in populations of diverse ancestry are sufficiently large to affect statin eligibility, based on a single CRP threshold of 2 mg/L, and only partially influenced by differences in variables related to cardiovascular risk. A single threshold value of CRP for cardiovascular risk prediction could lead to inequalities in statin eligibility that may not accurately reflect underlying levels of cardiovascular risk. (Circ Cardiovasc Genet. 2010;3:436-444.)
