In her analysis of black Liverpudlians' cultural politics across generations, Jacqueline Nassy Brown borrows the concept of 'diasporic resources' from Paul Gilroy (1987) to give a sense of the kinds of cultural and political practices that are available to them at different moments. Predominant among these practices have been African American musical forms and political struggles, leading Brown to conclude that 'black Liverpudlians actively appropriate particular aspects of "black America" for particular reasons, to meet particular needs - but do so within limits, within and against power asymmetries, and with political  
consequences' (Brown, 1998, p. 298). In this essay, I want to reflect upon these issues in relation to the implications of the current global hegemony of the United States for processes of racialization among Jamaicans. I am interested here in how the concept of 'resources' is constituted over time, when and where these resources circulate, and toward what ends they are used. Ultimately, I argue, the manipulation of diasporic resources services a project of racial vindication that, though it addresses different specific needs and operates differently in the United States and Jamaica, nevertheless is a project generated and implemented transnationally. As a way to map the kinds of circulations that are critical to this project, I draw examples not only from my own ethnographic research in a hillside community outside Kingston, Jamaica, but also from renderings of the relationships between blackness in Jamaica and the United States offered by popular media.