251 p., Argues that there is a difference between biological essentialism and racial authenticity. Essentialism is reactionary, whereas racial authenticity is thoughtful, constructed and aimed at countering common beliefs. Once authenticity is positioned as a means to an end and not an end itself, authenticity can be used as a way of reading social situations, questioning how authentic arguments are used in culture, and understanding why their use is sometimes necessary. Also, using authenticity as a way of reading social situations takes the focus off of the authentic representation of race and places attention on American society by examining how the authentic representation works in dialogue with other arguments about race. This study uses the Harlem Renaissance as a backdrop to view how Afro-Caribbeans inserted themselves into African American discourses on race. The dark skinned immigrants blended in visually, but were far removed from many of the formative racial experiences of their American peers. These people may have come to align with African Americans and fight white racism, but they were in fact taking up new identity positions and learning to perform forms of blackness on the fly. The works that are examined in the various chapters of this dissertation show Black writers as critical agents of change who work hard to balance their own personal needs with the needs of their race and position themselves within a racist society.
295 p., In the Bahamas, racism disguises itself under nationalism, education,language, and immigrant status. This study describes the racial dynamics (within African- Diasporic populations) rooted in European colonialism. The Bay Street elite represented European colonialism in the Bahamas as late as the 1970s and transformed the Bahamas into a liberalized economy that relies primarily on tourism. The tourist industry began in the late 1950s, when the Bay Street elite recruited Haitian workers as Cuba denounced tourism at the beginning of the Castro regime. As the profits from the tourist industry declined during the 1970s, Bahamians accused Haitian migrants of being a threat to national security rather than a necessary source of cheap labor. Bahamian print media is the main vehicle for the practices of discrimination against Haitians. This study examines editorials, articles, letters to the editors, and cartoon images from 1959 to 2012 to understand how Bahamians marginalize Haitians and their descendants.
78 p., Examines the ways in which the African American identity articulates and constructs itself through dance. Norman Bryson, an art historian, suggests that approaches from art history, film and comparative literature are as well applicable to the field of dance research. Therefore, as his main critical lens and a theoretical foundation, the author adopts the analytical approach developed by Erwin Panofsky, an art historian and a proponent of integrated critical approach, much like the one suggested by Bryson. Demonstrates that Erwin Panofsky's iconology, when applied as a research method, can make valuable contributions to the field of Dance Studies. Uses Katherine Dunham's original recordings of diaspora dances of the Caribbean and her modern dance choreography titled L'Ag'Ya to look for evidence for the paradigm shift from "primitive" to "diaspora" in representation of Black identity in dance also with the aim of detecting the elements that produce cultural difference in dance.
147 p., Discusses how blackness, femaleness and Puerto Ricanness (national identity) is presented in commercial media in Puerto Rico. National identity, no matter how differently defined, is often constructed through claims to heritage, "roots," tradition, and descent. In the western world, these claims, almost inevitably allude to questions of "race." In Puerto Rico, it is the mixture of the Spanish, the Taino Indian, and the African, which come to epitomize the racial/traditional stock out of which "the nation" is constructed, defended, and naturalized. This mixture is often represented by images, statues, murals across the island that display the three racialized representatives, as the predecessors of the modern, racially mixed Puerto Rican people. In their portrayals of black women, figures as Mama Ines (the mammy) and fritoleras (women who cook and sell codfish fritters), Caribbean Negras (Black Caribbean women) contemporary media draw upon familiar representations to make black women bodies intelligible to Puerto Rican audiences.
