While recent scholarship in American cultural studies has called for a rethinking of the black-white color line in U.S. race relations, the tensions expressed by the question of who is an “African” and who is an “African American” are symptomatic of the nation’s continued struggle over the significance of the African presence, past and present, real and symbolic. Of course, the contested meaning and legacy of the African presence is not peculiar to the United States, as many Latino immigrants to the United States bring with them histories and identities shaped by the vexed legacy of racial slavery in their countries of origin. The foundations of Latin American societies, with their diverse populations of Africans, indigenous peoples, Europeans, and Asians, suggests that the growth of the Hispanic population in the United States does not render the black-white color line obsolete, but rather makes it all the more salient as a benchmark for social affiliation.

This is an excerpt from Kevin Gaines’s entry in Keywords for American Cultural Studies (p. 16).