Race and Identity

I'm reading an interesting book called Culture Moves about black identity and culture and how competing visions of it are expressed. It's very interesting, because the US is unique in that it has 'built-in' racial tensions like very few other places. In most other places, race lines conincide with nationality lines, which radically alters the discourse. It's an insight into a part of one of my countries that I cannot direcly experience, but that is such a big part of it that it's not really fair for me to say that I know this country without at least knowing the elements of that.