Overview

As new immigrant communities continue to flourish in U.S. cities, their members continually face challenges of assimilatation in the organization of their ethnic identities. West Indians provide a vibrant example. In West Indian in the West, Percy Hintzen draws on extensive ethnographic work with the West Indian community in the San Francisco Bay area to illuminate the ways in which social context affects ethnic identity formation. The memories, symbols, and images with which West Indians identify in order to differentiate themselves from the culture which surrounds them are distinct depending on what part of the U.S. they live in. West Indian identity comes to take on different meanings within different locations in the United States. In the San Francisco Bay area, West Indians negotiate their identity within a system of race relations that is shaped by the social and political power of African Americans. By asserting their racial identity as black, West Indians make legal and official claims to resources reserved exclusively for African Americans. At the same time, the West Indian community insulates itself from the problems of the black/white dichotomy in the U.S. by setting itself apart. Hintzen examines how West Indians publicly assert their identity by making use of the stereotypic understandings of West Indians which exist in the larger culture. He shows how ethnic communities negotiate spaces for themselves within the broader contexts in which they live.

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9780814736005

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Reviews

<p> An extremely interesting work, addressing an important area--the constructed nature of ethnicity. Ethnicity is, in part, a performance--something one does as well as something one is. The West Indians' unique and complex relationship with other African Americans . . . and the question of how and under what circumstances ethnic distinctiveness is emphasized and under what circumstances it is minimized is fascinating. The Bay area context, in which West Indians are vastly outnumbered by African Americans, makes for a new and different take on these issues. -Philip Kasinitz, author of Caribbean New York: Black Immigrants and the Politics of Race

(<p> Hintzen's detailed anaylsis of West Indians in the western United States opens the door to new understandings of race class boundaries and their role in maintaining social hierarchies and imbalanced social relationships among racial and ethnic groups. This richly textured ethnography will be required reading for scholars on race and immigration for years to come. )-(Pedro Noguera), (Harvard University Graduate School of Education)

<p> An important contribution to discussions of identity construction in a globalized world and will be enjoyed and debated by students of ethnic studies.

An important contribution to discussions of identity construction in a globalized world and will be enjoyed and debated by students of ethnic studies. --Library Journal I believe Hintzen's work reflects valuable insights. --International Migration Review

Author Information

Percy C. Hintzen is Associate Professor and Chair of African American Studies and former Director of Peace and Conflict Studies, University of California at Berkeley He is the author of The Costs of Regime Survival: Racial Mobilization, Elite Domination, and Control of the State in Guyana and Trinidad.

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