Gilroy notes that "the reflexive cultures and consciousnesses of the European settlers and those of the Africans they enslaved, the 'Indians' they slaughterd, and the Asians they indentured were not, even in situations of the most extreme brutality, sealed off hermetically from each other" (2)
Failing to realize this, "groups have fallen back on the idea of cultural nationalism, on the overintegrated conceptions of culture which present immutable, ethnic difference as an absolute break in the histories and experiences of 'black' and 'white' people"
"Against this choice stands another [:] the theorisation of creolisation, métissage, mestizaje, and hybridity"
"These terms are rather unsatisfactory ways of naming the processes of cultural mutation and restless (dis)continuity that exceed racial discourse and avoid capture by its agents"