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C Ch ha ap pt te er r 2 20 0 The African Diaspora in the United States and Canada at the Dawn of the 21st Century: Themes and Concluding Perspectives JOE T. DARDEN, NORAH F. HENRY AND JOHN W. FRAZIER The purpose of this final chapter is to revisit some of the key organizational themes and concepts of the text to underscore their relevance and to provide some additional perspectives about the African Diaspora in the U.S. and Canada at the dawn of the twenty-first century. We began with the premise that the origin and recent expansion of this Diaspora have been influenced by global forces. Historically, the international slave trade shaped the forced movements from Africa to the Western Hemisphere. The slave-based U.S. cotton economy and related technology resulted in the rapidly increasing demand for slaves. The socio-political ideology of the U.S. regulated the movements of slaves and later of African Americans to particular places, creating a new racial geography. Part of the Canadian Black legacy is tied to Blacks’ efforts to escape American slavery. However , slavery also existed in Canada and developed its own associated legacy. Racism is embedded in Canadian ideology and has created racial inequalities. This is a history shared by these two nations, whose racial systems have persisted and influenced the well-being of Black immigrants and native-born Blacks in both countries. Recent Black immigration to the U.S. and Canada is explained as part of a new globalization that has restructured national economies that resulted in changing patterns of labor supply and demand patterns. African and Afro-Caribbean migration to the U.S. and Canada are responses to these patterns. Institutional changes also were necessary to permit larger numbers of immigrant Blacks to migrate to their respective new countries. Changes in immigration law are paramount to understanding the increases of the African Diaspora in the U.S. and Canada. The policies and practices of both host nations and their local jurisdictions, controlled by the White majority, influence the experiences, choices, and well-being of members of the African Diaspora. Although Black immigrants represent a small proportion of the total immigrants of both nations, they have profound impacts on their host nations. One impact is the provision of professional labor in a variety of economic sectors that are in demand in these two capitalist economies. Another is the reshaping of numerous specific places that attract them. In these cases, complex factors explain movements and settlement structures of Black Canadians and Americans. Both nations experienced restructuring of their economies in the latter part of the twentieth century. Thus, the role of economics in these capitalist frameworks is important to the movement and settlement of Blacks in both countries. However, other factors also emerge as explanations of destination and settlement patterns, including the role of culture and the desire of many Black immigrants to relocate to places that contain a large number of co-ethnics. Similarly, other characteristics at the potential destination, as well as distance from Black origins, influence the emerging patterns of the African Diaspora (chapter 12). In the end, place is important, not only because of the perceived opportunities it provides, but because it shapes the experiences of those who occupy it and becomes full of cultural meaning. Places not only express the presence of culture or ethnicity, they nurture occupants. This is why places and cultural landscapes provide attractive study areas. In this volume we have taken a place approach to studying the African Diaspora because, while valuing the role of theories, place enables a better understanding of how Black movements, experiences, and meanings are tied to and become somewhat unique in original and particular settings. For example, chapter 11 330 Joe T. Darden, Norah F. Henry and John W. Frazier offers one example of the importance of cultural roots in New Orleans and the psychological “place shock” that occurs with sudden uprooting. Chapter 14 reports the creation of a new cultural center in Broward County, Florida , that has become a special landscape and place for a growing West Indian, particularly Jamaican, population that created “Jam Hill.” We identify two overarching themes and numerous sub-themes in this collective work. The first theme is the persistence of racism and its legacies in the U.S. and Canada, which negatively influences native-born and foreign-born Blacks in both nations. The second is the multidimensional diversity of the Black Diaspora. We summarize some of the sub...

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