Never Meant to Survive

Joao H. Costa Vargas is associate professor of African and African American Studies and Anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin. He is author of Catching Hell in the City of Angels: Life and Meanings of Blackness in South Central Los Angeles.

Never Meant to Survive is one of the most provocative and compelling pieces of analysis and criticism that I've ever read in anthropology. The book rises to the intellectual and political challenge being articulated in transnational arenas such as the 2001 World Conference against Racism, which represented only a brief moment in the ongoing struggles of oppressed peoples-with African descendants conspicuous among them-to mobilize against crimes against their humanity. The common yet, at the same time, differentiated ground that African Americans and Afro-Brazilians occupy is not an abstraction or cerebral game in this work. Vargas shows how transnational approaches to research and social analysis as well as to community organizing are imperative for both deeper understanding and more effective forms of anti-racist agency.

• Chapter 1 PrefaceChapter 2 IntroductionChapter 3 Genocide in the African Diaspora: Brazil, United States, and the Imperatives of Holistic Analysis and Political MethodChapter 4 The Inner City and the Favel: Transnational Black PoliticsChapter 5 Hypersegregation and Revolt: The Los Angeles Black Ghetto in Historical PerspectiveChapter 6 The Los Angeles Times' Coverage of the 1992 Rebellion: Still Burning Matters of Race and JusticeChapter 7 Hyperconsciousness of Race and its Negation: The Dialectic of White Supremacy in BrazilChapter 8 When Jacarezhino Dared to Become a Condominium: The Politics of Race and Urban Space in Rio de JaneiroChapter 9 Black Radical Becoming: The Revolution of Imperative GenocideChapter 10 Bibliography