Cultures and Contexts: Caribbean, fall 2015

Response Essay #3, due Monday, December 7th

Guidelines
Your essay should be 4 double-spaced pages. Please number and staple your pages, with
your name and your TAs name on the first page.
Be sure to cite properlyno one wants to accidently plagiarize. It is best to keep
quotations/ paraphrasing brief, capturing the authors basic idea, in order to save room for your
own ideas, which are most important in your essay. The proper way to cite is: (author: page). The
point is to clearly identify where you got the point or statement that you are using in your essay.
(No need to go off syllabus; please do not include authors, readings, etc. not assigned for our
class.)
Question
In her book, Black Behind the Ears, Ginetta E.B. Candelario discusses Dominican culture by
analyzing what she calls identity displays in selected contexts across transnational spaces. In
doing so, she portrays the complexity of identity in relation to race, color, and symbolic capital.
Candelario is pushing readers to consider to what extent race is something we choose and to
what extent it is imposed on us by factors such as tradition, power, and geographical context.
For this response essay, imagine that you are given two areas in two different museums to
display either (1) Dominican identity, (2) the identity of another Caribbean group or population
that we have considered in this course, or (3) your own identity. One museum is located in the
United States and the other is in a Caribbean country (it is fine to use the Dominican Republic if
you like). In your essay, explain to what extent your identity displays will be based on your
own choices and decisions, and to what extent your choices are constrained by U.S. and
Caribbean racial and color categories (that is, epistemologies). What kinds of features or
other things would you display in the exhibits, and why? Would they differ depending on
the geographical location of the exhibits? Whether yes or no, why?
Your essay must include the following:
(1) Use three specific examples, one each from three different chapters in Black Behind
the Ears (with page numbers) to support your description and discussion of your museum
identity displays, which are based both on your own choices and decisions and on U.S.
and Caribbean race and color categories (epistemologies).
(2) Brief discussion of the one-drop rule and the vertical color continuum (lecture and
recitation)as they apply to the question. As always, be careful to keep checking back to
the question as you write.
(3) Brief discussion of the concept of symbolic capital and its connection to race and color
(lecture and recitation), including how it relates to Black behind the Ears. As always, be
careful to keep checking back to the question as you write.
(4) Conclude your essay with a brief summary of your argument.