Los Angeles, CA: Center for Afro-American Studies, University of California
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
Foreword by R.S. Bryce-Laporte., 197 p, Presents an anthropological analysis of the West Indians' adjustment in Costa Rica over a hundred-year period. The book also looks at the development of the inequality that occurred as Blacks, who initially saw themselves as superior to local Hispanics, later found themselves at the mercy of a Hispanic cultural hegemony. An important contribution to the anthropology of West Indians in the Caribbean's Hispanic borderlands, the book is rich in its observations on race, class, & mobility among West Indian immigrants & lays the foundation for comparison with other such immigrant communities in other areas of the Americas.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
627 p, This study explores issues of race, racism, and strategies to improve the status of people of African descent in Brazil, South Africa and the USA. The authors provide in-depth information about each country, together with analyses of cross-cutting themes;
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
225 p., Whitmarsh describes how he followed a team of genetic researchers to Barbados, where he did fieldwork among not only the researchers but also government officials, medical professionals, and the families being tested. Whitmarsh reveals how state officials and medical professionals make the international biomedical research part of state care, bundling together categories of disease populations, biological race, and asthma. He points to state and industry perceptions of mothers as medical caretakers in genetic research that proves to be inextricable from contested practices around nation, race, and family.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
196 p., Explores how Quilombo recognition has significantly affected the everyday lives of those who experience the often-complicated political process. Questions of identity, race, and entitlement play out against a community’s struggle to prove its historical authenticity—and to gain the land and rights they need to survive.
"You must understand that we are very different in Cuba," insisted Gabriel Molina Franchossi, director of Gramma newspaper, the official organ of the communist party in Cuba. "To Afro-Cubans, big lips and big backsides are objects of beauty. To us, such images represent the feminine ideal." Afro Cubans also seem naive. Cubans are fond of saying that Fidel Castro abolished racism when he came into power 40 years ago, as though this can be accomplished by a simple decree. What they really mean, of course, is that Castro outlawed discrimination And again, who am I to say he hasn't? In the United States, discrimination didn't become illegal until the mid-60s when Congress passed a series of civil rights laws effecting voting rights, equal employment, and fair housing. By 1968, Richard Nixon was ending a wave of white backlash into power and the process of undermining those gains began. Blacks appear to have had a different experience in Cuba, where better than 40 percent of the population is either Black or mestizo (mixed) and where a fair percentage of those who are considered "white" acknowledge some degree of African or mestizo blood in their heritage. "We in Cuba are not so easily categorized as in the United States," said Reynaldo Calviac Lafferte, director of the International Press Center. He pointed to a wall in his office. "In the same family, there are some who are as white as that wall." Then he slapped his patent leathers. "And there are some who are as black as my shoes. For us, race is not an issue like it is for you."
The findings of a questionnaire survey distributed to 153 female university students in Barbados and Jamaica in 2008 reveal the attitudes to diverse female sexualities in the Caribbean. The participants in the survey discussed changing beliefs about sexuality in Caribbean society. The findings show that slowly, as a consequence of globalization and the mass media, people are increasingly open-minded about sex. Women are confidently expressing and increasingly asserting themselves as equal partners. There is greater debate in Caribbean society about female same-sex relationships, and deeper awareness of sexual harassment is evident. Nevertheless, for some respondents, the same degrading notions of women as sex objects and promiscuous beings continue to exist.
