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From: S. E. Houchins <shouchin@bates.edu>
List Editor: Abdul Alkalimat <mcworter@ILLINOIS.EDU>
Editor's Subject: What do we call ourselves? Negro, Black , African American. . . .
Author's Subject: What do we call ourselves? Negro, Black , African American. . . .
Date Written: Thu, 25 Feb 2010 10:06:00 -0600
Date Posted: Fri, 25 Feb 2010 11:06:00 -0500

Today Afro-Caribbean Costa Rican poet Quince Duncan visited my class at
Bates College.  Over the next few days he will be discussing the
movement among people of African descent in Latin America from /Negro/
to "African Descended."  He argues quite persuasively that we should, of
course, shed an identity based on color, and he reasons that African
Descended works as an "umbrella" name for all ethnicities who share some
aspects of culture and history in and from Africa.  Further, he told us
how populations that had previously bought into the strategies and
ideologies of whitening in Latin America (people in Chile, Argentina and
Peru) are now identifying themselves as African Descended.

Not much of his work is available in English, but his recent book /A
Message From Rosa/, a wonderful novel about our diasporic connections,
is in a bilingual edition.

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