The word race when applied to one’s personal or historical being (tribe, clan, linage) is barely 500 years old. The word in its prior existence of defining or grouping a humans was strictly a related to a contest. As people began migrating north and west, it was a race amongst early explore to claim colonize the westernize world. Ism when applied to race can only exist when one group identified by race, holds an unequal amount of wealth, land or power than another group, which generate substantial resources and produce that marginalize, and exclude the disadvantage group from achieving or competing with the dominate group. The term ethnicity means the national or cultural group in which one belongs to or claims.
If we take a historical look at Belize, we’ll find that since colonialism , the creole or dark skinned population has had a constant presence in regards to population, but economically have continued to suffer and fall behind many of the countries newly immigrants.
Belize is known for its multi-racial and multi- cultural society, but race and ethnicity are a huge factor of persistent racism and inequality in this country (Leslie, 1997). The driving force behind this is the strong belief that although Belize is well known for being very generous and accepting of others, we most certainly have a blooming bed of disagreement under the superficial look of everyone living together in harmony. In Central America, Belize is known as an ethnic anomaly (Mortimer, 1992), with a society focusing more on the English-speaking Caribbean countries, and North America, than to neighboring Spanish-speaking republics. Like many nations that have recently emerged from colonialism, Belize has a population that is split into many racial ...
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...ericans to Belize further challenged Belizean society, which was already deeply divided by differences of ethnicity, race, and class.
One way the settler minority maintained its control was by dividing the slaves from the growing population of free Creole people who were given limited privileges. Though some Creoles were legally free, they could neither hold commissions in the military nor act as jurors or magistrates, and their economic activities were restricted. They could vote in elections only if they had owned more property and lived in the area longer than whites. Privileges, however, led many free blacks to stress their loyalty and acculturation to British ways (Mortimer, 1992).
Works Cited
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Mortimer, L. R. (1992, January). Detail Information on Belize. Retrieved March 21, 2014, from http://ambergriscaye.com/pages/town/factsmass.html
Dominicans and African-Americans are similar in their African origin, but they are different “in their newfound slavery-induced cultures.” Dominicans were Africans mixed with Spanish culture. Through slave settlements, Dominicans were settled in Hispanola. In Hispanola, Dominicans were influenced between two ethnic groups. As a new ethnic group formed, their African traits were mixed with Spanish traits (Saillant-Torres 131).
Antigua was a small place. A beautiful island that gets a lot of tourist’s attention. These tourists effects Antiguans in so many ways. In small place, Jamaica Kincaid explained the effects of tourism and colonialism of English people on Antigua and how they affect the culture and education of Antiguans. This book “it is often seen as a highly personal history of her home on the island of Antigua” (Berman).
"Dominican Migration to the U.S. and the Dominican Family Structure." www.Maccaulay .cuny.edu. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Mar 2014.
... middle of paper ... ... Race remains, but racism and racialism has reduced remarkably with respect to Afro-Cuban’s prestige, success, and living conditions. REFERENCES De La Fuente, A. & Co. a.
These words immediately make the following paragraphs and pieces of insight feel more real to the reader. It is often easy for individuals to dissociate themselves from factual representations of history since they seem as if they are simply stories of a time long since passed. Yet, modern issues no matter how far their roots reach into the past enlist a different response. Hearing the stories of people who currently are or recently were victims of continuing racism is strikingly raw and provoking. Raquel Aristilde de Valdez, a half Dominican half Haitian woman, shows how racism is not simply a social issue. The people have made her feel as if she does not belong, and the government has wrongfully taken away her legal representation of belonging. The legal issue of her validity as a Dominican was resolved, yet it can be inferred that the issues that come with loosing that belonging cannot be fixed as easily. In a similar situation, Cherlina Castillo Pierre found her heritage to mean more than her personal worth. Despite Pierre’s athletic talents in soccer she’s restricted from her rightful chance to play for her birth-countries team simply because of a prejudice. An individual is more than a birth certificate yet, in a country that sees the word Haitian analogous to insignificance, thats all Cherlina Castillo Pierre became. Despite the discouraging stories of natural born
Barret, Alice. "Garífuna Voices of Guatemala: Central America’s Overlooked Segment of the African Diaspora."Council on Hemispheric Affairs. N.p., 14 July 2010. Web. 20 Nov. 2013.
In the past, rafts teeming with Cuban refugees have routinely floated to American shores in order to escape the brutal and oppressive Castro regime. Haitians arriving in the same manner were turned away because their plight did not involve politics but poverty. Semantics aside, it is hard not to wonder if skin color played a role in their expulsion. Furthermore, though Haiti’s government is not classified as communist, the policies and actions of of its officials can arguably be considered equally as
When examining the concept of race and ethnicity in Latin America, it can be said that it has quite a different meaning. Latin Americans perceive race as being open ended and explicit, yet racism is quite implicit in their society. They also attempt to adhere to the idea that they are living within a “racial democracy”. Racial democracies are a concept created to convince people that racism does not impact the structure of society and the opportunities that are available to people.
To begin with, “race is a social, political, and economic construct. It is not biological. There is no existence of race in the Western world outside of the practices of colonialism, conquest, and the transatlantic slave trade” (Lecture 1). While the origins of race are centered around distinctions of humans based on presumed physical, ancestral or cultural differences, race is merely a floating signifier and therefore only has meaning, but that we give it (Lecture 1 and 2). This floating signifier has taken on different meanings in the U.S. and Latin America. For example, in the U.S., the one-drop rule is enough to deem someone black. On the other hand, Latin America considers pigmentocracy and uses Mulatto categories based on appearance and color
People who have distinctive physical and cultural characteristics are a racial ethnic group. This refers to people who identify with a common national origin or cultural heritage. But remember that race refers to the physical characteristics with which we are born. Whereas ethnicity describes cultural characteristics that we learn.
In Cuba and the Dominican Republic, the number of surviving indigenous peoples was insignificant; in contrast, Puerto Rico retained a sizable Taino population. As such, the environment in which Africans were introduced to the islands was largely dominated by the culture and customs of the colonists, criollos, and mestizos. Customs therefore, were largely characterized by ‘...
Bethel through her engagement of tones that are satirical, sarcastic and pensive makes an effective argument as to the fluidity of the Bahamian national identity. Whenever Bethel describes people thinking that “one” thing describes the national identity she always uses a sarcastic tone referring to that viewpoint as “absurd”, “extol” or puts air quotes around worlds like “authentically Bahamian.” However, when she describes her viewpoint she has a pensive tone with use of inclusive language like ‘we’ or ‘our.” Two examples of this is when she says “we know not one identity but among them, landing now here, now there, as it suits us” and “we prefer to emphasis flux over fixity, change over stagnation.” Bethel is very sarcastic in her tone when describing Fox Hill she says that it is the “immutable symbol of Bahamianness,” and “the quintessence of our national spirit” and “like the statues in the square in the square or the straw market or the flag, a symbol whose meaning melts when you look at too long?” She is almost mocking Fox Hill because it is what many describe as the “ideal Bahamian identity.” Through the tone of satire she dispenses of this truth by continually showing that Fox Hill’s history is malleable and fluid always changing. Bethel builds the readers up to feel that we have found the marker of national identity but dispenses of this marker by showing that “travel is untethered, collective life is recognized to be made up of many different routes Identity can freely be regarded as a garden planted with trees, but as a sea spotted with islands, and one’s own reality as a series of migrations among them.”
Jean Rhys’ novel Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) depicts Antoinette Cosway, a white creole girl and descendent of the colonizers, torn between her white creole identity and her affiliation with and attachment to the colonized, colored people of postcolonial Jamaica. Antoinette is neither fully accepted by the blacks nor by the white European colonizers. She continuously struggles to negotiate between the completely opposing expectations and spaces of black Jamaican and white European culture. Consequently, Antoinette precipitates into a state of ‘in-betweenness’ as she loses her sense of belonging to either culture.
Ferguson, J. (2003). Migration in the Caribbean:. Minority Right Group International. Retrieved March 7, 2012
Junkanoo, the main defining symbol of the Bahamian identity, “along with Bahamian Creole[dialect] and Bahamian storytelling, which reflects the legacy of oral history and literature from West and Central Africa are examples of a culture that has African origins” (Johnson, 17). These crucial Bahamian signs that are labeled as ‘authentically Bahamian’ have roots in many different cultures. Yet many people when asked, feel strongly that The Bahamas is for the ‘true’ Bahamian people only, no other cultures and identities associated within the Bahamas are a part of the Bahamian Identity. We can see this most clearly when looking at how Bahamian people ostracize Haitian Bahamians; children who were born in The Bahamas to Haitian parents.