Globalization and Survival in the Black Diaspora

Charles Green is Professor of Sociology at Hunter College. He is coauthor of The Struggle for Black Empowerment in New York City: Beyond the Politics of Pigmentation.

"The construction of theory about the black experience in the 21st century cannot be grounded solely in the concept of the nation-state. With the transformation of productive forces, vast migrations of populations from rural to urban areas and the creation of new technologies, the social foundations for the reality of race are being radically transformed. Our ideas about the black diaspora are rapidly changing through the processes of globalization and urbanization. Charles Green's informative and provocative anthology outlines these vast social, economic, and cultural changes on a global scale. The traditional forms of racism and class domination are giving way to new forms of global exploitation. Globalization and Survival in the Black Diaspora points toward an urgently needed new perspective both in our scholarship and political world view." — Manning Marable, Director, Institute for Research in African-American Studies, Columbia University"This book's major contribution is to locate the problem of the black American underclass in a broad comparative perspective. It focuses on the problem of race and poverty in cities of North America, Western Europe, the Caribbean, Latin America, and sub-Saharan Africa. In doing so, it shows that the problems associated with the so-called underclass—long-term unemployment, crime, family instability, and alienated youth—are global phenomena. This is an important corrective to the parochial Americanist approach which tends to explain the phenomenon in terms of factors specific to the United States, such as deindustrialization and institutional racism."— Robert C. Smith, author of We Have No Leaders: African Americans in the Post-Civil Rights Era"This is a critically important topic; comparative analysis of black living conditions in the U.S. and abroad is lacking. The book is timely and it presents a broad treatment of the subject matter. It responds to a vacuum of information and it places U.S. attitudes within an international context." — James Jennings, Trotter Institute, University of Massachusetts, Boston

• PrefaceAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Globalization, Challenge, and the Black DiasporaCharles GreenPart One: Africa 1. Reaction and Resistance: Confronting Economic Crisis, Structural Adjustment, and Devaluation in Dakar, SenegalCarolyn Somerville2.Meeting the Challenge in an African City: Nairobi's Informal Economy in the 1980s and 1990sKinuthia Macharia3. Where Do the Majority Live in Urban Tanzania: Why and How?Joe L. P. LugallaPart Two: Latin America 4. Post-Invasion Panama: Urban Crisis and Social ProtestsGeorge Priestley5. Rap in Puerto Rico: Reflections from the MarginsRaquel Z. Rivera6. Neoliberalism in Venezuela: From Urban Riots to Presidential ImpeachmentEsther I. Madriz7. An Unsavory Union: Poverty, Racism, and the Murders of Street Youth in BrazilVânia Penha-LopesPart Three: The Caribbean 8. Urbanism, Transnationalism, and the Caribbean: The Case of Trinidad and TobagoCharles Green9. Power and Identity among the Urban Poor of JamaicaObika Gray10. Women, Urbanization, and Structural Adjustment in St. VincentJoyce ToneyPart Four: North America 11. The Political Economy of the Black Urban Future: A HistoryGerald Horne12. By All Means Necessary: Rapping and Resisting in Urban Black AmericaKevin Arlyck13. Crisis and Lifestyles of Inner-City Bloods: Youth Culture as a Response to the Urban EnvironmentKwando M. Kinshasa14. The Distorted Images of African Canadians: Impact, Implications, and ResponsesCarl E. JamesPart Five: Europe 15. Urban Outcasts: Stigma and Division in the Black American Ghetto and the French Urban PeripheryLoÏc J. D. Wacquant16. Racism, Black People, and the City in BritainStephen SmallConclusion: Beyond the 21st CenturyCharles GreenAbout the ContributorsIndex