Studies of racial subordination in Brazil usually stress the puzzling co-existence of racial inequality with Brazil's self image as a racial democracy. Frequently, they identify the absence of racial conflict and a clear white black distinction as explanations for the low level of black political mobilization. In doing this, these studies unreflectedly take the United Sates as a universal model of racial subordination of which Brazilian difference is a mere variation.
Discussion of the books Caribbean currents: Caribbean music from rumba to reggae (1995), by Peter Manuel, with Kenneth Bilby and Michael Largey; Bachata: a social history of a Dominican popular music (1995), by Deborah Pacini Hernández; and Merengue: Dominican music and Dominican identity (1995), by Paul Austerlitz.
Discusses the deportation of foreign-born youth with criminal convictions to Haiti, other Caribbean countries, and Central America, based on 1996 laws allowing the US Immigration and Naturalization Service to deny due process to non-citizens.
Examines social indicators of development and manifestations of poverty in Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic; profiles the poor, including geographic distribution, education, ethnicity, and consumption patterns.
