Examines how marginalized Maroon youth in Paramaribo, the capital of the Caribbean nation of Suriname, employ musical strategies in combating ethno-racial stigmatization and improving their socio-economic position. Traditionally, Maroons, after escaping the plantations during slavery, have lived in semi-isolation in Suriname's dense rainforest. In recent decades, they have become increasingly urbanized, to the discontent of many in Paramaribo, who view Maroons as backward, violent criminals. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and popular culture analysis, the article discusses how young Maroons use reggae and dancehall to create and recreate physical and social spaces of their own within the city and outside the forest. They protest local conditions and inequity by drawing on regional images of marginality that have been shaped by Rastafari musicians in Jamaica.
Examines the ethnic identity adaptations of recently arrived immigrant children from China, Haiti and Mexico. Overall, three main types of ethnic identity categories emerged: country of origin (e.g. Chinese), hyphenated (e.g. Chinese American), and pan-ethnic (e.g. Asian or Asian American). These three ethnic identities were examined to assess their relationships with various social and structural variables.
Christina A. Sue commented on my 2004 article in Ethnic and Racial Studies on the Latin Americanization of racial stratification in the USA. Almost all her observations hinge on the assumption that racial stratification in Latin American countries is fundamentally structured around ‘two racial poles’. I disagree with her and in my reply do three things. First, I address three major claims or issues in her comment. Second, I point out some methodological limitations of American-centered race analysis in Latin America. Third, I conclude by discussing briefly the Obama phenomenon and suggest this event fits in many ways my Latin Americanization thesis.
About a unique case of assimilation: the entry of descendants of nineteenth‐ and early‐twentieth‐century European immigrants to southern Brazil into Afro‐Brazilian religious groups, some as heads of their own centres. The discussion is placed within the framework of the contemporary multiculturalist debate over assimilation. The emigration of Europeans to rural southern Brazil is summarized. African slaves are shown to have been established ‐ with their syncretized Afro‐Catholic religions ‐ in the incipient urban centres. T
Ethnic and national identities of 11-16-year-old British Africans and Caribbeans were examined. Adolescents ranked ethnicity as more important than age, gender or nationality, stereotyped Caribbeans/Africans more positively than British and derived more pride from ethnicity than nationality. England was the least popular answer to 'where are you from', but more Caribbeans versus Africans chose this category and older Caribbeans described themselves as more 'British' than older Africans.
In 2004, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva published an article in which he argued that the US system of race is beginning to resemble that of Latin America. This article is a critical reply to Bonilla-Silva’s Latin Americanization thesis. The author introduces a Latin American perspective.
This paper explores how French activists use claims about the history and legacies of slavery to combat stigmas associated with their group membership. Using a case study of a French Caribbean association (CM98) and a pan-African association (COFFAD), I examine how two organizations produce competing models for challenging and reversing the stigma of slavery. Through a process of normative inversion, activists assert the moral inferiority of dominant groups. CM98 rejects both a racial and an African identity, and seeks recognition for 'French descendants of slaves', using the language of citizenship to criticize the French government. COFFAD, by contrast, asserts an Afro-centric black identity and stigmatizes white Europeans. I argue that both destigmatization strategies unwittingly reinforce the stigma of historical enslavement.
The status-caste exchange thesis has been a theoretical workhorse for the study of racial intermarriage in the United States since its introduction in the 1940s, and has enjoyed a revival in recent decades. Some recent studies, however, challenge this view. We test the thesis with multinomial logit regression using data on black-white marriages in the US and Canada. We find modest support for the theory in the US but not in Canada. In the US, white women married to African American men are somewhat more likely to marry up on education than white women in same-race marriages, but the same pattern is not observed when the intermarriage involves Caribbean blacks and whites. These statistically significant tendencies, however, reflect rather modest differences in the proportion of couples in interracial marriages with different educational levels compared to those found among same-race couples.
Interethnic friendships can reflect intergroup relations and immigrants' integration into host societies. Using pooled 2007-09 Citizenship Surveys, this study investigates interethnic friendship patterns and determinants of friendship choice in Britain. The paper focuses on generational, ethnic and religious diversity in forming interethnic close ties. The most common friendship pattern is having co-ethnic close friends. This ethnic boundary in interethnic ties, however, weakens across generations whereby those born in or migrated to Britain at young ages have a higher chance of having close friends from other ethnic groups. We find that interethnic friendships are formed in a pan-ethnic' pattern by which those with similar ethnic/racial and religious background such as Muslim Indians and Pakistanis, or mixed white and black Caribbean and black Caribbean, are more likely to nominate one another as close friends.
