African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
280 p., Compares the experiences of persons of African origin and descent in the towns of Baltimore and Sabara, Black Townsmen reconsiders their relationship to eighteenth-century urban environments in the Americas. Following Africans and their descendants through their struggle with slavery, manumission, and life in freedom, Dantas explains how these men and women's efforts and choices helped to define the trajectory of these two towns.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
415 p, Drawing on extensive anthropological fieldwork, Peter Wade shows how the concept of "blackness" and discrimination are deeply embedded in different social levels and contexts-from region to neighborhood, and from politics and economics to housing, marriage, music, and personal identity.
Whitten,Norman E., Jr. (Editor) and Torres,Arlene (Editor)
Format:
Book, Edited
Publication Date:
unknown
Published:
Bloomington.: Indiana University Press
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
2 vols., If we are to understand the meanings of "blackness" in the African diaspora and elsewhere, we must critically examine the paradigms that have emerged over the past five centuries out of Euro-American racism and black liberation. So argue the editors of these seminal volumes that add immeasurably to our understanding of black experiences in Central America, South America, and the Caribbean while establishing new research directions.
Whitten,Norman E. (Editor) and Torres,Arlene (Editor)
Format:
Book, Edited
Publication Date:
1998
Published:
Bloomington: Indiana University Press
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
520 p., Argues that if we are to understand the meanings of blackness in the African diaspora, and elsewhere, we must critically examine paradigms that have emerged over the past five centuries out of Euroamerican racism and black liberation. This work clarifies many issues of cultural representation and social identity in Latin America and the Caribbean.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
241 p, In Blackness in the White Nation, George Reid Andrews offers a comprehensive history of Afro-Uruguayans from the colonial period to the present. Showing how social and political mobilization is intertwined with candombe, he traces the development of Afro-Uruguayan racial discourse and argues that candombe's evolution as a central part of the nation's culture has not fundamentally helped the cause of racial equality. Incorporating lively descriptions of his own experiences as a member of a candombe drumming and performance group, Andrews consistently connects the struggles of Afro-Uruguayans to the broader issues of race, culture, gender, and politics throughout Latin America and the African diaspora generally.
Portuguese and Spanish slavers supplied the Americas with "los Negros," the Blacks. Only those young and strong, impervious to European disease and able to withstand months of torturous living packed in the cruel quarters of slave shipholds survived the middle passage. Those who arrived, stunned and malnourished, lost in a foreign land, were easy prey to the slavers. Removed from a world that had nourished them, left to the mercy of those whose own lack of humanity prevented the recognition of theirs, they were utterly dependent and at the mercy of their captors. Vestiges of racism threaten to dismantle further progress in South America, as they do here. The prophecies of Willie Lynch, a slave owner who created a divisive plan to keep Blacks separate by fostering dissent among them, are coming true. Lynch outlined the differences in physical characteristics among the slaves-skin shade, hair texture, height, etc. By playing up these differences, Lynch promised, "The Black slave, after receiving this indoctrination, shall carry on and will become self-refueling and self-generating for hundreds of years, maybe thousands." Throughout North and South America, Lynch's plan lives on. Color lines rule, with the predominantly European strains remaining in power, and those of darker skin and crisper hair texture continue to be oppressed. It is a chilling reality that echoes down from the brutal suppression of the native peoples of Chiapas to the continued repression of Mexicans here and in their own country, to the harsh discrimination shown the Blacks of Brazil and America.
Arbitrary detention of Haitian refugees should not be part of U.S. foreign policy. Minors should not be held captive, nor should any of the refugees be denied due process or the right to legal representation. In the past, all Haitian refugees were considered economic refugees. Today, even the president of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, is claiming that he is being persecuted. While the U.S. Special Forces and the State Department are busy chasing Al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan, on the island nation of Haiti, a powerful and deadly drama is unfolding. Mob killings of reporters and shootouts in broad daylight between mayors and congressmen have become common occurrence.
