The editors argue that if we are to understand the meanings of blackness in the African diaspora, and elsewhere, we must critically examine paradigms that have emerged over the past five centuries out of Euroamerican racism and black liberation. In their introduction to this volume the editors present two challenges. The first is to understand the range and varieties of black communal experiences across vast distances, and to incorporate historical information on blackness. The second challenge is to provide a prolegomena to a theory capable of including the diversity of subjects pertinent to African diaspora research. The general introduction to this volume and the volume on Eastern South America and the Caribbean discusses historical forces, and provides a critical, interpretive theory of structures of domination and processes of liberation in the Black Americas.By dealing with racialist concepts from the dual standpoints of nation-state and ethnic-bloc, the introduction clarifies many issues of cultural representation and social identity in Latin America and the Caribbean. These works take a major step toward understanding the complexity of black experiences in Central America, South America, and the Caribbean and establishes new research directions for the late twentieth century, and beyond. In addition to drawing on their own insights based on years of field research, the editors summarize the contribution of each chapter and provide working bibliography of more than 200 entries drawn from well-known and obscure sources that range through anthropology, history, art history, geography, literature, lore, religion and music.