Johns Hopkins studies in Atlantic history and culture

The idea of "racial democracy" in Latin American populations has traditionally assumed that class is a more significant factor than race. But despite the emergence of a mestizo class - people who are culturally and racially mixed in the broadest sense - there remains a complex discrimination against blacks. To explain this phenomenon, Peter Wade focuses on the black population of the Choco province in Colombia - an area where the typical Latin American ambiguity surrounding racial identity is countered by the more definitive "black" identity of the local inhabitants. Drawing on extensive anthropological fieldwork, 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. By uncovering what "blackness" means to the Chocoanos and how "blackness" is reproduced and transformed in different contexts, Wade brings to the study of race a perspective sophisticated enough to account for the real complexities of "blackness," "mixedness," and "whiteness"; the conflicts among race, ethnicity, and national ideologies; the development and transformation of cultural identities; the persistence of racial inequality and racism; and the constitution of society through topography and regionality.

For review see: Christopher Abel, in Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 18, part 2 (November 1986); p. 498-499; Montalban, no. 19 (1987); p. 348.

Esme Rockett, also known as MC Ferocious, rocks her suburban Minnesota Christian high school with more than the hip-hop music she makes with best friends Marcy (DJ SheStorm) and Tess (The ConTessa) when she develops feelings for her co-MC, Rowie (MC Rohini).

"Main Currents in Caribbean Thought probes the multicultural origins of Caribbean society, defining and tracing the evolution of the distinctive ideology that has arisen from the region's unique historical mixture of peoples and beliefs. Among the topics that Gordon K. Lewis covers are the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century beginnings of Caribbean thought, pro- and antislavery ideologies, the growth of Antillean nationalist and anticolonialist thought during the nineteenth century, and the development of the region's characteristic secret religious cults from imported religions and European thought."--BOOK JACKET.