Anti-Black Racism in Latin America

This article address the racialization phenomenon of the African population and their descendants, born in America from a socio-historical perspective; including: their kidnapping, transfer and slavery in the American continent during the colonial period. Also the article address the construction of imaginaries and narratives that allowed their exploitation, favored rejection and resistance to the abolition of slavery, and excluded the black population from the process of construction of the emerging Latin American Nation-States. The research investigates the role of Latin American blacks in the independence processes and problematizes the phenomenon of structural racism from a critical sociological perspective, as a factor for the physical and symbolic annihilation of the black and Afro-descendant population in the past and in Latin America today.

Land in Liberia: The Initial Source of Antagonism Between Freed American Blacks and Indigenous Tribal People Remains the Cause of Intense Disputes

This study examines factors of land grabbing in Liberia, especially from tribal communities, due originally to different social expectations regarding land and contracts between indigenous people and settlers from America. In addition, land appropriation throughout the history of the Liberian nation is due largely to the Americo-Liberian oligarchy and public corruption. The study analyzes survey, empirical, and concession contracts data gathered by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Sustainable Development Institute, Government of Liberia, Center for Transparency and Accountability in Liberia, and United Nations Mission in Liberia. It then correlates associations between a number of concession companies, their land acreage under operation, county acreage, and incidence of land grabbing to demonstrate an increase in disputes during the early 2000s due to practices of corrupt public officials. This has resulted from the consistent implementation of inequitable land laws, which have perpetuated land transfer from tribal communities to mostly Americo-Liberian descendants and foreign concessionaires. This land appropriation has fostered public corruption, increased land related disputes, and raised the level of conflict in Liberian society.

Problems of Assimilation and Difficulties of Becoming a Man in LeRoi Jones’s Dutchman

This article attempts to explore the obstacles of an African American in becoming a Man in the white community in LeRoi Jones’s play Dutchman. In doing so, it analyzes the text from African American perspective, which is a black cosmological lens applied to critically examine African American history, culture and the literature, primarily with its focus on cultural assimilation and its aftermath. LeRoi Jones, also known with his new name Amiri Baraka, in this play exposes how the black Americans fall victim of racial hatred in the process of assimilating themselves with the mainstream white ways of life. The major argument of this article is an African American’s process of assimilation with the white culture is not only a detachment from his/her origin but also his/her failure to be accepted by the new culture. It argues that in adopting a new culture, a colored American is twice the victim of his/her past and the present. To justify this stark predicament of colored American population, the article briefly looks back at the situation of the American blacks in the 1960s. It ponders on the entire behavior of Clay, a twenty years old black boy in the play, his fondness in choosing to imitate the white world as a model. His craze for white way of life is reflected in the dress up he is putting on, his mastery over the use of cosmetic language of the whites, his eating of apple given by Lula, a thirty years old white lady who morbidly tempts him for sexual intercourse, his attempt to forget his own ancestral history to make him look more like an American than a descendent of slave. The article also analyses Lula’s stereotyping of Clay and the way she dictates white values and norms.

Transformation of Urban Black America into a Free Enterprise System

This article presents personal reflections on a vision to move the Blacks in America from a state of despair to one of prosperity. It is a bold attempt to present the experience of 50 years of activism, teaching, and writing on the subject. I have a clear vision of how the community, local government, and the university can join forces in a social and economic development project that would help poor Blacks form and own “tenant Organizations” and make them “Stockholders,” through carefully planned and executed cooperation. It is a real game changer in the lives of the American Blacks since the days of Black Wall Street.

They Can’t Speak the Language: On Black and Latinx Disproportionate Coronavirus Death and Few Said, Doctors

The disastrous effects of COVID-19 provided a dire illumination of the disproportional mortality rate among American Blacks and Latinxs and the absence of same said groups as physicians, scientists, or advanced medical media spokespersons. These pathologies are both mutual and exclusive in that the reasons for each reside in a common absence of a successful pursuit of education, primarily those within the STEM disciplines. This research-based commentary is the outcome of an investigation to determine the Who, What, Where, When, and How of the consequences of the virus. It also attempts to address the aforementioned inequities to finally and permanently change the group's intractable failure by the established school system. The prospect of identifying, cultivating, and increasing the country’s knowledge base is paramount, and this work provides a framework to capitalize on this occasion. America’s future role in a technological world will depend largely on the caliber and number of STEM citizens.

American Black-White Differences in Primary Tooth Crown Shape: The Crown Index

The purpose of this tooth-size study was to compare the crown index—the ratio of buccolingal to mesiodistal crown size—in the primary teeth of contemporary American blacks and whites. Maximum MD and BL drown dimensions were obtained with sliding calipers from dental casts of children attending the graduate pedodontic and orthodontic clinics at the University of Tennessee, Memphis (n = 226). The crown index (BL/MD times 100) was calculated for all 10 tooth types (left and right sides were averaged prior to calculation). Only the maxillary first molar exhibited a significant sex difference (girls have a higher crown index). In contrast, 9 of the 10 tooth types have signficantly higher crown indices in blacks than whites. Analysis of the MD and BL crown diameters reveals that the race differencs are due exclusively to differences in mesiodistal crown lengths; the buccolingual crown breadths do not differ between these two races. Consequently, the crown indices are higher in blacks because of their larger MD dimensions. Differences in the indices conform to prior findings that American blacks have larger tooth crowns than whites in both the primary and permanent dentitions, and this study shows that the differences are due to the MD not the BL crown axis. Study of the crown components will shed light on how the crown shapes differ between these two races.

Patterns of Hypodontia among Third Molars in Contemporary American Adolescents

Third molars (M3s) are congenitally absent (hypodontic) more frequently than any other tooth type. Causes of this enhanced variability are poorly understood, but the potential range of absence—from none through four M3s per person—provides the opportunity to examine the permutations of missing M3s within and among ethnic groups. Teenage samples of two overlapping populations (1,100 American whites; 600 American blacks) were studied here, with radiographic confirmation of each tooth’s presence in the jaws. Roughly 15% of these people are missing at least one M3, but only about 2% of this sample is hypodontic for all four molars. The frequency and severity of missing M3s are significantly higher in whites than blacks. Within individuals, correspondence of occurrence is much higher within than between the jaws, but all combinations of M3 hypodontia are positive and significant statistically—implying common underlying developmental influences. While various sorts of data support a genetic influence on the risk of M3 hypodontia, patterns of inheritance suggest a multifactorial rather than a single-gene mode of inheritance. Several researchers have promoted a polygenic threshold model, and the history and application of this model are discussed.