The author examines race, language, and identity in Derek Walcott's poetry, reading Walcott's poetry as an extended meditation on the question of whether it is possible to exist within the English language and an Afro-Caribbean tradition, drawing poetic nourishment from each, or whether the attempt is a betrayal of both. Of mixed racial ancestry, a native speaker of French Creole who was formally educated in British colonial schools, raised Methodist on the Catholic island of St. Lucia, Derek Walcott occupies a peripheral place with respect to both English and Caribbean culture, it is noted. Throughout the course of his poetic career he has been criticized from both perspectives, either for "appropriating the Other" and putting it to use in the service of the dominant culture or for not assimilating that dominant (English) culture fully enough.;
"This research paper investigates the effect political institutions have on black racial identity. In particular, I study individual inculcation in contexts where political institutions institutionalize either of two forms of racial social structures - a pigmentocracy (the Dominican Republic), or the rule of hypodescent (the US South), and the effect such inculcation has on black racial identity." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR];
