The purpose of this study was to identify the ways in which urban Jamaican mothers influence their adolescent daughters' sexual beliefs and behaviors in order to incorporate them into the design of a family-based human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) risk reduction intervention program.
Probes the anticipated implementation challenges of the freedom-of-information (FOI) law in Jamaica, and the lessons Ghana stands to learn to improve on its FOI bill, currently at a deliberative stage. The lack of transparency in government or the public sector as a result of lack of access to governmental or public information will be tackled in this study.
Examines debates over the role of absentee fathers in gun violence among Black youth in Toronto, Ontario. Particular focus is given to the historical, cultural, economic, and social conditions that affect Caribbean-Canadian men and women's parenting.
Examines recent aspects of the debate on the legalisation of abortion in Jamaica. Highlights the recommendations of the Abortion Policy Review Group which reviewed health implications in Jamaica and assessed existing laws in the wider Caribbean on abortion. Using feminist analysis the paper also explores the challenges faced by those arguing for legislative reform on abortion services in Jamaica within the larger framework of reproductive health and rights.
Brazil's tourist-jammed cities are some of the most violent on the planet. A considerable number of the country's 43,000 annual murders occur on the streets of Sao Paulo, Recife, and Rio de Janeiro. And Brazilian cities are not alone in what might be called a bad neighborhood. The fact is that most major Latin American and Caribbean cities are today plagued by an epidemic of violence. With more than 20 murders per 100,000 people, the regional homicide rate is roughly three times the global average. Many of the larger urban centers -- from Caracas and Ciudad Juarez to Kingston and Port-of-Spain -- register the highest rates of lethal violence in the world.
Argues that skilled members of the Jamaican diaspora are becoming important actors in an ongoing development strategy to extend the rationality of the market into everyday social relations and institutions. Diaspora members are imagined by states and development institutions to be ideal development partners because of their access to potentially lucrative business, knowledge and capital networks, and their desire to direct them towards socially transformative ends.
International Bank for Reconstruction and Development
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
323 p., Despite sustained economic growth at the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century, Latin America and the Caribbean still faces high inequality and weak indicators of well-being among certain population groups. Women, people of African ancestry, and indigenous peoples are often at the bottom of the income distribution. The share of female-headed households rose in the past 20 years. By the beginning of the 1990s, women headed 1.2 percent of complete households (households in which both husband and wife are present) and 79.8 percent of single- head households. This book presents a regional overview of gender and ethnic disparities in labor earnings during this last turn of the century. Latin America and the Caribbean provide a rich environment for studying social inequality, because historical inequalities along gender and ethnic lines persist, despite positive indicators of economic development.
Seventeen years after Guyana introduced a positive, liberal abortion law, the government, professional bodies and civil society together have failed to give any leadership in implementing that law. How can one explain that after an outstanding campaign of extensive ministerial and parliamentary consultation, as well as widespread engagement from religious organisations and the media, so little has been done by way of implementing the law? This paper seeks to trace some aspects of the campaign for law reform and to learn from the difficulties of providing services over the last seventeen years.
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development/Organisation de Cooperation et de Developpement Economiques
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
164 p., Even in the midst of a global financial crisis, Latin American and Caribbean economies find themselves in better condition than in years past. Latin America must seize this opportunity to design and implement good public policies. The greatest of the long-term objectives of Latin American states remains development: economic growth and structural change that is rapid, sustainable and inclusive. In particular, governments must reduce inequalities in income, public-service delivery and opportunities, as well as promote the diversification of economies, often concentrated on a few primary-product exports. Improved efficiency of public administration is crucial to address both the short-term and long-term dimensions of these challenges. The real change, however, will come if Latin American and Caribbean states carry out meaningful fiscal reforms, making them not only more efficient but also more effective.
This article examines how Miami's significant presence of Anglo Caribbean blacks and Spanish-speaking tourists critically influenced the evolution of race relations before and after the watershed 1959 Cuban Revolution. The convergence of people from the American South and North, the Caribbean, and Latin America created a border culture in a city where the influx of Bahamian blacks and Spanish-speakers, especially tourists, had begun to alter the racial landscape. To be sure, Miami had many parallels with other parts of the South in regard to how blackness was understood and enforced by whites during the first half of the twentieth century. However, I argue that the city's post-WWII meteoric tourist growth, along with its emergence as a burgeoning Pan-American metropolis, complicated the traditional southern black-white dichotomy. The purchasing power of Spanish-speaking visitors during the postwar era transformed a tourist economy that had traditionally catered to primarily wealthy white transplanted Northerners. This significant change to the city's tourist industry significantly influenced white civic leaders' decision to occasionally modify Jim Crow practices for Latin American vacationers. In effect, Miami's early Latinization had a profound impact on the established racial order as speaking Spanish became a form of currency that benefited Spanish-speaking tourists even those of African descent. Paradoxically, this ostensibly peculiar racial climate aided the local struggle by highlighting the idiosyncrasies of Jim Crow while perpetuating the second-class status of native-born blacks.
Among the 3.2 million unsafe abortions in young women 15–19 years old, almost 50% are in the Africa region. 22% of all unsafe abortions in Africa compared to 11% of those in Asia (excluding Eastern Asia) and 16% of those in Latin America and the Caribbean are among adolescents aged 15–19 years.
Reviews the book "Women's Activism in Latin America and the Caribbean: Engendering Social Justice, Democratizing Citizenship," edited by Elizabeth Maier and Nathalie Lebon.
A longstanding assumption posits that white ranchers from the French Caribbean colony of Saint-Domingue, now Haiti, provided the knowledge to establish the first cattle ranches in Louisiana in the mid-eighteenth century, that blacks merely provided the labor, and that the herding ecology involved was the same as that of the Acadian ranchers who followed. Reconstruction of the locations of the first major ranches and the backgrounds of their owners and slaves, however, reveals that none of them came to Louisiana from Saint-Domingue and that the ranches occupied the western margin of the Atchafalaya basin, an environment quite different than the prairies of southwestern Louisiana later inhabited by Acadian ranchers. While the sources cannot yield a complete account of the process through which cattle ranching became established, they do suggest that none of the white ranchers brought relevant experience from the Caribbean or France, that some of the blacks might have brought such experience from Africa, and that people of African, European, native, and mixed origins all contributed knowledge and creativity, as well as labor, in founding a distinctive herding ecology that differed substantially from that of the subsequent Acadian ranches.
On 11 August 1831, St Vincent was struck by the Great Caribbean Hurricane. Ninety-two out of 96 sugar estates on the island experienced damage to buildings and crops. Destruction varied, however, according to location and the type of structure at risk. Worst affected were the northerly regions of St David and Charlotte's parishes, while slave villages suffered more than mill works or great houses. As a result of the storm the colony's exports fell by nearly 50 per cent, reflecting disruption to the infrastructure supporting overseas trade as well as a sugar crop shortfall of more than 25 per cent. In contrast to the hazard's large impact on plantation agriculture, relatively few casualties occurred. St Vincent also suffered less acutely than Barbados, a similar sized island, equally dependent on sugar and slavery. A plausible explanation for the hurricane's differential impact between the two colonies lies in localised vulnerability of place. While the enslaved population did not take advantage of the disaster to mount a challenge to white authority, shortages of provisions and timber strained relations on some estates. St Vincent's plantation economy, however, recovered relatively quickly, demonstrating considerable disaster resilience. Although slaves and the free black and mixed-race population received little direct government support, grant-in-aid was allocated to agents primarily responsible for coordinating supplies of food, clothing and shelter. The speed of recovery questions whether natural disasters weakened planter resistance to emancipation across the British West Indies. Conceptualisation of the Great Caribbean Hurricane as an existential threat to British colonies also obscures the extent to which responses to climatic hazard were shaped by the imperial relationship and the interests of largely absentee owners.
This study examines African Americans', Black Caribbeans', and non-Hispanic Whites' perceptions of closeness to other racial and ethnic groups. The study uses data from a national probability sample, the National Survey of American Life (N = 6,082), and provides the first investigation of this topic among Black Caribbeans. Study findings reveal both similarities and significant differences between African Americans and Black Caribbeans in their levels of closeness to other groups. African Americans and Black Caribbeans were similar in their levels of closeness to Whites, American Indians, and Asian Americans. African Americans felt significantly closer to Black people in the United States than did Black Caribbeans. Conversely, Black Caribbeans felt significantly closer than African Americans to Black people from the Caribbean, Spanish-speaking people, and Black people in Africa. Non-Hispanic Whites felt significantly closer to Asian Americans than did either African Americans or Black Caribbeans. These and other findings are discussed in detail and reaffirm the continued importance of race in American life and intergroup relations.
Dwayne is a Grade 6 student who came to Canada from Jamaica at the age of seven. Upon arrival in a new school Dwayne had to adapt to a new culture. In addition, Dwayne was identified as having severe behavioral problems and learning difficulties, and it was recommended within the first month of school that the boy be medicated in order for him to cope. His mother refused. Through interviewing Dwayne's mother and his teacher, a case study details Dwayne's experiences of schooling. The story of Dwayne illustrates how experiences of disablement are interrelated with experiences of migration and racialization.
United Nations Human Settlements Programme (Author)
Format:
Pamphlet
Publication Date:
2012
Published:
United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat)
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
32 p., The Jamaica Urban Profiling consists of an accelerated, action-oriented assessment of urban conditions, focusing on priority needs, capacity gaps, and existing institutional responses at local and national levels. The purpose of the study is to develop urban poverty reduction policies at local, national, and regional levels, through an assessment of needs and response mechanisms, and as a contribution to the wider-ranging implementation of the Millennium Development Goals. The study is based on analysis of existing data and a series of interviews with all relevant urban stakeholders, including local communities and institutions, civil society, the private sector, development partners, academics, and others.
Williams,David R. (Author), Haile,Rahwa (Author), Mohammed,Selina A. (Author), Herman,Allen (Author), Sonnega,John (Author), Jackson,James S. (Author), and Stein,Dan J. (Author)
Format:
Journal Article
Publication Date:
2012
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Objective. To explore levels of perceived racial and non-racial discrimination and their associations with self-esteem and mastery in the USA and South Africa. Design. We used ordinary least square regressions to test the cross-sectional associations between discrimination and psychological resources using two national probability samples of adults: the National Survey of American Life and the South African Stress and Health Study. Results. Levels of perceived racial discrimination were higher in the USA than in South Africa. In the USA, both African-Americans and Caribbean Blacks have comparable or higher levels of self-esteem and mastery than Whites. In contrast, South African Whites have higher levels of both self-esteem and mastery than Africans, Coloureds, and Indians. Perceived discrimination, especially chronic everyday discrimination, is inversely related to self-esteem and mastery in both societies. In South Africa, stress and socioeconomic status (SES) but not discrimination are important determinants of racial differences in self-esteem and mastery. Conclusions. In two racialized societies, perceived discrimination acts independent of demographic factors, general stressors, social desirability bias, racial identity, and SES, to negatively affect the psychological resources of self-esteem and mastery.
Based on research conducted on Jamaica's hotel industry, this study sought to determine if there are any advantages to both employers and employees in use of short-term incentives in that industry. Using theories of motivation and the concepts governing incentive compensation to construct a theoretical framework, the article sought to make the link between short-term incentives, motivation and employee productivity.
Focuses on the role of young women in the development of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). Mentions the pregnancy in LAC is caused by the low socioeconomic situation of young women. States that the lack of information on sexuality education and an inclusive system for health and social protection will increase the chance of poverty.
Zimmermann,Robert (Author), Lawes,Carol (Author), and Svenson,Nanette (Author)
Format:
Book, Whole
Publication Date:
Feb 2012
Published:
United Nations Development Programme
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
246 p., Crime has become one of the main challenges threatening economies and livelihoods in Caribbean countries, but the right mix of policies and programmes can halt the problem, according to this report. It reviews the current state of crime as well as national and regional policies and programmes to address the problem in seven English and Dutch-speaking Caribbean countries: Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica, Saint Lucia, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Journal Title Details:
2012(March 12)
Notes:
A Memory of the World project. A searchable register of the archives containing historical information and digital documents. Accessible in English or Spanish.
The intimate relationships between white men and women of color in antebellum New Orleans, commonly known by the term plaçage, are a large part of the romanticized lore of the city and its history. This article exposes the common understanding of plaçage as myth. First, it reveals the source of the myth in a collection of accounts by travelers to the city in the decades leading up to the Civil War. Next, it uses a database of information on hundreds of white male-colored female relationships during the period to provide a more accurate account of the people in and nature of these relationships. Finally, it explains the purpose served by the myth by identifying three traditions that shaped its development.
Argues that neoliberalism carries out its agenda of privatization through public spaces that are never fully dismantled. Draws on empirical research into spaces that exemplify the usefulness of our reading of neoliberal privatization, including aspects of post-Katrina New Orleans and a more thorough case study of a pre- and post-earthquake Haiti and its highly privatized education system.
Explores the link between long-lasting relations within the family and intra-familial violence perpetrated against women in Latino households in South Florida. The results indicate that among abused women, the effects of long-lasting relations within the family differ depending on the type of relationship between the abuser and the victim and the degree of closeness the victim feels towards other family members.
An analysis of interviews with representatives of global governance institutions and international nongovernmental organizations conducted between 2007 and 2010 in the Latin American and Caribbean region and at the headquarters of relevant international organizations in Geneva. Argues that because the discourse on migrant women's rights and their labor exploitation is framed predominantly in the context of trafficking, little headway is made in advancing migrant women's labor and social rights.
Reviewing the 22 years that have elapsed since Gifford's 1989 report labelled Liverpool as racist, the authors focus on the fact that in a city which has had a British African Caribbean community for over 400 years, there is minimum representation of that community in the city's workforce.
Focuses on the slow progress of Haiti after two years of earthquake in Canada. Offers information on the reconstruction failure of the organization Canadian Red Cross and other communities even after providing the financial help and donations. Also discusses the reasons where the Canadian Red Cross is lacking to improve the condition of Haiti.
Explores contestations over the reality and complexity of educational underachievement and whether this relates to broader political–economic marginalization (or privileging) of boys. Argues that boys’ underachievement should neither be ignored nor be the exclusive focus of attention and that a move from ‘boys’ underachievement’ to a broader analysis of ‘gender and education’ is needed, to place the debate in a gender relational context.
Investigates the interface between gender, color/race and public health in Brazil, focusing on the importance of reproductive health for the formation of a black feminism in the country, between the years 1975 to 1993.
Drawing on field experiences with the organisation GOAL from the Haitian post-earthquake and cholera epidemic emergencies, provides a brief analysis of what systems worked well to support international non-government organisations and where and how greater support could be provided in a future emergency.
An essay on the gendered aspects of war and revolution in Cuba and Nicaragua. According to the author, militarized violence in these states was hierarchical and ultimately created alternative privileged masculinities despite revolutionary movements' ideological commitments to equality. Details related to racial and gender binaries are also presented.
Read in the context of the Americas and the plantation system, Jean Rhys's fiction is a global vision of modernity. The vision appears through colonialist stereotypes of idle and lazy West Indians displayed in dynamic interaction with scenes of actual toil and servitude that appear everywhere in Rhys's fiction. Focuses on Voyage in the Dark (1934), the short story ‘Temps Perdi’ and Rhys's last novel Wide Sargasso Sea (1966).
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
6 p., Over the last several years, Congress has attempted to promote Haiti's economic development through the use of trade preferences for Haitian products; and one trade preference provision originally created under HOPE II was the "3-for-1" Earned Import Allowance Program (EIAP). This report responds to a mandate in the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008, which requires GAO to review EIAP annually and conduct an evaluation of the program. This review explores the extent to which the EIAP is currently being utilized, as well as trends and developments over the past year.
Discusses the impact of the global financial crisis in late 2008 on social welfare, specifically to mother's ability to provide for their households' needs. Mentions the continuous unemployment, rise in food prices, and decline in Overseas Development Assistance and Foreign Direct Investment.
Author discusses the complexities of identity representation in terms of her Afro Caribbean/"third" world background and her historically African-American university (HBCU) affiliation. Notes how her academic identity marked by her first and third world educational experiences as a Caribbean person of color in the U.S. positions her between the borders of insider/outsider.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
52 p., Policy makers, practitioners, and experts alike have increasingly identified the protection of civilians as a priority for United Nations peacekeeping operations and as key to mission success. This report explores the analysis, decisions, and actions of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) to protect civilians during 2006-2007. It examines why MINUSTAH was relatively successful in protecting civilians; describes its shortcomings; and draws lessons for other contexts.
Argues that patterns of gender exclusion occur on multiple levels from the transnational to the local, and identifies gender-specific obstacles in the recovery and reconstruction period. In Haiti, these include meeting family survival needs, violence and exploitation, and class and racially based stigmatization.
Uses data from the National Survey of American Life to investigate explore ethnic heterogeneity among black Americans, with a sample of 2,953 African Americans and 1,140 Caribbean Blacks. For African Americans black group evaluation, self-esteem, and mastery reduce depressive symptomatology. For Caribbean Blacks racial identity and psychosocial resources were all directly and inversely related to depressive symptoms.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
32 p., Suggests that the UN Stabilisation Mission in Haiti needs a gradual reconfiguration of its operations prior to a withdrawal, to avoid a security vacuum and give Haiti the chance for sustainable development. The real debate is not whether MINUSTAH should leave but when, and what to change in Haiti and in the mission's mandate, structure and behavior to ensure that a phased withdrawal is linked to stronger institutions and progress toward lasting stability and development. Figures, Appendixes, References.
Argues that Haiti must begin immediately to lay the foundations for a society that will improve significantly on that of the last two hundred years, that two of the critical groups in that process will be women and young professionals, and therefore that high quality human rights education is needed to assure their political, economic and professional empowerment.
Conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs have spread throughout Latin America and beyond based on the claim that they are an effective social policy tool to combat poverty. Gender relations are shaped by these policies. Recognizes the potential for CCTs to transform gender relations should mechanisms allowing childcare facilities and encouraging male participation in domestic labor become an integral part of these programs.
Analyzes both independent films that challenge the status quo by portraying openly lesbian characters and mainstream films that insist on denying autonomy to same-sex love. Argues that gender-queering functions as a symbolically transitional stage toward lesbian visibility and inclusion.
Investigates Haitian women''s most pressing health needs, barriers to meeting those needs and proposed solutions. The impetus for the study was to get community input into the development of a Family Health Centre in Leogane, Haiti.
Focuses on the retrospective accounts of Caribbean-born adults who as children were serial migrants, joining their parents in the UK following a period of separation. Considers aspects of their relationships with their siblings and with their mothers and fathers.
Authors conducted a thematic analysis of 650 photographs of Haitian women in the Associated Press Photo Archive in the years 1994–2009. Emphasizes the impact of these images on the identity of Haitian women and Women of Color, as well as on the attitudes and behaviors of media consumers toward these groups.
The story of Carmen (Mérimée 1845, Bizet 1875), the (in)famous Gypsy from Spain, is the second most adapted narrative in the history of world cinema with more than eighty global versions officially recognized to date; however, one significant and critical version has been overlooked, the controversial 1991 film María Antonia (Cuba), by Afro-Cuban filmmaker Sergio Giral.
The 2010 earthquake in Haiti and its aftermath have highlighted inherent but understudied transnational governance and socio-legal complexities of disaster recovery and displacement. This paper examines the key transnational governance and socio-legal issues that have arisen in the South Florida region for four distinct groups: (i) displacees and their related legal, social, cultural, and economic issues; (ii) host communities and governance, legal, and monetary complexities associated with compensation payments (e.g., to hospitals for their services to earthquake survivors); (iii) immigrants within the United States and related legalization and citizenship issues; and (iv) diaspora communities and socio-legal issues related to dual citizenship and their ongoing struggles to have a louder voice in the future of Haiti.
