In other words, performances of African American blackness have been used as means to identify belonging and racial power in a range of sites throughout the black world (and beyond), yet the relations between African Americans and black people elsewhere are fraught with tension because of the globally hegemonic position of the United States and the dominance of American media. In Jamaica, on the one hand lower-class black Jamaicans have adopted and adapted some of the political and cultural trends that are portrayed in U.S. media featuring African American themes, while on the other hand, the difficulty of extracting personal and national development goals from the shadow of the United States has perpetuated an ongoing resentment. This resentment has occasionally also been extended to black Americans who, despite the stylistic appeal of African American popular culture, and despite the political appeal of  
transnational racial solidarity, are nonetheless suspect because they carry the banner of the United States.