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C Ch ha ap pt te er r 1 1 An Introduction to the African Diaspora in the United States and Canada at the Dawn of the 21st Century NORAH F. HENRY, JOE T. DARDEN, AND JOHN W. FRAZIER Approximately four centuries ago the first African set foot in North America, yet it is impossible for any text to capture the complete Black experience on the continent. As the 21st century begins, the persistent legacy of Black inequality and the winds of dramatic change are inseparable parts of the current African Diaspora in the United States and Canada. It is an onerous task to embrace both dimensions in a single text, especially given the two distinct cultural histories and separate policies of two very different places. Despite the challenges these differences pose, it is worthwhile to explore the common experiences and problems shared by these two neighbors. In addition to providing a better understanding of Black experiences for other scholars, we hope that our collective effort will contribute to a dialogue among scholars and contribute to the informed and difficult decisions of policymakers of both countries. We emphasize geographic concepts in this text. For students who only memorized the mundane facts of grade-school geography, this work will come as somewhat of a surprising and new educational journey. College geography is more theoretical and conceptual. It suggests that the facts are less important than the context in which they occur. For example, the total tons of fish caught by Norway are important only within the context of fishing as an economic activity, and as a part of the human-environmental interface. Conceptual thinking examines subjects within broader thematic structures, including the physical environment, spatial location, humanenvironmental relationships, regional studies, place, and movement. In fact, these are the broad themes of the discipline of Geography. Each theme has numerous concepts that foster understanding of particular relationships. For example, within human-environmental relations, cultural landscapes occur when an ethnic group modifies an area’s appearance and structure to reflect its presence there. Similarly, movements occur in various ways and for a variety of purposes. Thus, immigration and migrations that reshape countries, regions, and places are of importance to geographic inquiry. This volume continues that thematic tradition as we consider the African Diaspora in the United States and Canada. The themes and concepts of this chapter will be apparent throughout this text. The African Diaspora in the United States and Canada, increasingly complex in recent decades, illustrates the persistence of inequalities and spatial isolation for many of African descent, despite the growth of the Black middle and professional classes. These, in part, explain the Return Migration to the Southern U.S., and new suburban and other settlements by the African Diaspora in various North American regions. Another part of the explanation is increased African and Afro-Caribbean immigration and refugee populations that contain diverse socioeconomic characteristics. These, too, add to the complexity (both social and spatial) of the intricacies of the African Diaspora in the United States and Canada. The persistent racial legacies expressed through institutional and individual White-majority behaviors mark both Canadian and American landscapes and continue to restrict equal access of people of African descent to basic resources. At the same time, liberalized immigration policies and labor needs rooted in globalization 2 Norah F. Henry, Joe T. Darden, and John W. Frazier have attracted an increasing number of ethnically and socio-economically diverse African and Afro-Caribbean ethnic groups to both nations. This volume represents the work of social scientists from geographic, historical, sociological, and political science perspectives, from Canada and the United States, including African-Americans and Canadian Blacks, African immigrants, Afro-Caribbean immigrants, and Whites. In addition to the general themes indicated earlier, these essays reflect a special emphasis on place. This concept is as old as Geography itself, but has experienced a bit of a renascence in recent years. It also has been the subject of increased attention in other disciplines (Hayden 1999; Frazier, Margai, and Tettey-Fio 2003; Wiese 2004; Frazier and Tettey-Fio 2006). The place perspective, while recognizing the influence of global processes and the importance of theory, argues that place itself influences experience and the formation of particular landscapes and other geographic patterns. The attributes of a place, in conjunction with global and regional forces, create the final and unique experience and expression of culture and ethnicity. This volume also examines the roles of institutional forces that work at various geographic scales to...

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