The Construction and Representation of Race and Ethnicity in the Caribbean and the World

Abstract

Mervyn Alleyne’s work examines how the meanings and values of race and ethnicity have been constructed historically and how they are represented symbolically, with particular focus on the Caribbean. Alleyne examines the historical development of these categories in Europe, Asia and Africa and proceeds to an analysis of the Caribbean. Through this analysis, Alleyne draws on a wide array of evidence to ultimate oppose the widely held notion that racial antagonism against black people is the consequence of New World slavery in the period following the “discovery” of the Americas in the late fifteenth century.