Explores ethno-political identity in the English-speaking Caribbean & its Diasporas. Although being black was non-problematic in the early days of decolonization when most of the population was black, immigrants to European & North American cities where whites were the majority often suffered discrimination, a decline in social status, & a life filled with resentment. Following independence, ex-dentured East Indians, Chinese, Syrians, & light-skinned creoles in the Caribbean began to reassess their "blackness" & lighter skinned people were granted privileges not available to darker-skinned citizens. Meanwhile, black leaders who accepted the logic of capitalism ignored class critiques of capitalist structures of exploitation.
The emergence of a modeling industry in Jamaica that valorizes idiosyncratic style has opened up a space in which black images of beauty take center stage. Caribbean Fashion Week is the major platform for displaying internationally acclaimed Jamaican models. Showcasing a high percentage of decidedly black male and female models wearing spectacular designer clothes, Caribbean Fashion Week enables multiple readings of the body as cultural text. The permissive modeling aesthetic engenders capricious images of beauty that contest the very conception of the 'model' as a mold into which a singular figure of beauty is impressed.
For most Ghanaians, the tenets of Pan-Africanism are remote principles that bear little relevance in daily life, in which kinship, linguistic, ethnic, and national affiliations are primary markers of identity. This presents challenges for repatriated Rastafarians from the Caribbean, United States, and Europe, who attempt to establish a home and a place within Ghanaian society while retaining Rastafarian ways of living and spiritual philosophies drawn from a Pan-African ethos.
The United States Virgin Islands (USVI) is a complex society with multiple diverse ethnic groups: Black Virgin Islanders, Eastern Caribbean islanders, Puerto Ricans, Spanish Dominicans, French Islanders, Americans (Continentals), Arabs and Asians. These ethnic differences as well as United States cultural imperialism have stymied any uniform Virgin Islands identity. Nonetheless, social identity in the USVI can be conceptualized into the bi-level structural analysis of national and trans-Caribbean.
