generation of middle-class professionals and the generation of working-class Jamaicans politicized by the various movements during the 1970s, might not have seen America as an evil empire encroaching from the north. Contrary to the dominant image of the culturally bombarded and besieged Jamaican, powerless either to resist or critique that which is imposed from 'elsewhere'- the image often proliferated by those who disparaged the growing influence of the United States - youth asserted that David not only could challenge Goliath, but could also influence what Goliath listened to, how he dressed, and what he liked. This insistence reflects an emergent sense of where Jamaican blackness stands in relation to Americanness, and particularly African Americanness, within popular cultural representations.