African Americans in the South : Issues of Race, Class, and Gender

This volume reflects a new commitment by American anthropologists to engage in what has been called the anthropology of racism: the analysis of systems of inequality based on biological differences. Comprising nine papers and related commentary, African Americans in the South examines racism, class stratification, and sexism as they bear on the African American struggle for social justice, equality, and cultural identity in the South.

The essays fall into three broad categories: economic survival strategies, health and reproductive problems, and religious responses to the larger society. Essays in the first category discuss African-American teen pregnancy and mutual aid societies. The second group focuses on health practices and knowledge among blacks in a Georgia town, African-American midwifery in North Carolina, an AIDS education program in a Tennessee city, and eating habits in rural North Carolina. The essays in the last category emphasize the diversity of the African-American religious experience by focusing on black Pentecostals, Jews, and Mormons in the South.

Together these writings constitute an important, concerted first engagement of issues crucial to an understanding of the history and social life of the South.