# Black Jamaica in (African) America  
Many of the young people with whom I spoke during the late 1990s believed that the circulation of ideas, practices, and styles between Jamaica and the United States was reciprocal. As one young man in his late teens put it, 'We're seeing more of the world through TV, and we're sharing ideas [...] Jamaicans want American style', he argued, 'but Americans want to talk Jamaican, to walk Jamaican'. For him, and for many of his cohort, as much as America had influenced Jamaican culture, Jamaicans also influenced culture in the United States:  
It's not like we're just taking information and they're just fooling us into thinking one way. They're changing because of us. It's a two-way thing. America right now is supreme, but not everybody is thinking like them. But we're learning from them. If America knows a better way of doing something, why are we going to say that we're not going to do it because is America? I understand that America has had aspects that Jamaicans have picked up, like them say is America cause this drug thing, that if it wasn't for Americans then Jamaicans wouldn't be selling all this coke and crack. But everything has its good and bad and it's for us to decide what we want out of it. Some people might say we're picking up their culture, wearing our clothes this way and doing this, but if you look on some of the Americans, what they're doing is what we've been doing from long time, especially in terms of the music and the dancing. And I'm sure it's Jamaicans going to America that made it a big thing.  
What is notable about this young man's statement is the extent to which he viewed cultural appropriation as a selective two-way process, albeit one that was uneven. This explains why many young people, in contrast to both an older