Notwithstanding its roots in African dance, in actuality, it was a fighting style designed by African slaves as a means of protecting themselves from government agents searching for them after their escape from enslavement. Likewise, Levine focuses heavily on the connection between the slave culture that was evident in the American South, while much of it may actually have been shaped by the need to conceal it from white

This story clearly outlines the level of difference and separation that is experienced by many members of the African-American community in a variety of ways, and most clearly deals with the economic impact and institutional nature of the racism this community has experienced. Another very interesting perspective is provided in McPherson's memoir regarding his own experiences, Crabcakes (1999). Many different episodes reflecting sometimes subtle and sometimes quite obvious differences in

" The Aftermath Uncle Tom characters were common in both white and black productions of the time, yet no director before Micheaux had so much as dared to shine a light on the psychology that ravages such characters. By essentially bowing to the two white men, Micheaux implied that Old Ned was less than a man; an individual whittled down to nothing more than yes-man and wholly deprived of self-worth. At this

He thus rejects Afrocentrism as a fundamental political act of self-definition by American Blacks along with the term as an African Diaspora to describe slavery, given that the slave trade dispersed members of Black tribes in Africa and in other areas of the Western world. Black Americans, once again, have produced a unique cultural legacy and suffered unique historical injustices, as distinct from the injustices of colonialism. Also, even

.. The history of miscegenation in this country...demonstrate[s] how society has used skin color to demarcate lines between racial groups and to determine the relative position and treatment of individuals within racial categories. (Jones, 2000, p. 1487) Prior to the civil war lighter skinned blacks were more likely to gain their freedom, and own property, through favor or inheritance. This is probably in part to the public, sometimes even official, recognition

Black Picket Fences Sharlene looked at me with her big, watery brown eyes. "No," she said emphatically, with a definite doleful tone in her voice. "I have never felt like I fit in here." Sharlene, who is 31 years old and has two children, is a black woman that falls into what Mary Patillo-McCoy calls the "black middle class." However, unlike the men, women, and children that Patillo-McCoy interviews for her