The New African Americans: African and Caribbean Immigrants Are Changing Black Identity in the United States
By Carla Thompson, Special to AOL Black Voices,
Posted: 2005-12-07 16:52:29
For almost their entire history in this country, black Americans have been debating the primacy of race as a building block for community and social relationships, often taking a cautionary approach about its importance: "Not everyone who is your color is your kind," they would warn their children, or repeating the popular Zora Neale Hurston maxim, "All of your skinfolk are not your kinfolk," they would remind themselves.
The wave of Carribbean immigration early in the last century, established a set of tensions between West Indians and native born black that persist to this day. But whatever differences existed seemed relatively minor in the face of a common history of slavery, racial segregation, and economic struggle. Several Caribbean immigrants and Caribbean Americans -- Marcus Garvey, Claude McKay, Harry Belafonte, Sidney Portier, Paule Marshall, George Padmore, etc. -- rose to high profiles in black America and remain icons today. Being black was defined by not being white. But the question of what it meant to be black was always a complicated one, and the neither passage of time, the end of segregation, nor the emergence of a robust black American middle-class has done much to lessen the complexity.
And now a new wave of immigration is deepening the complexity of the issues. There has been a 67 percent increase in the number of US residents, who identify themselves as Caribbean-born and a 167 percent increase in those who are "African-born," according to the most recent Census Bureau data. And despite the fact that foreign-born blacks remain a small segment of America's overall black population -- two percent for Africans and four percent for those born in the Caribbean -- their pattern of concentration make for disproportionately large impacts in certain places. Increasingly, black people born in the US are forced to confront black cultures very different from their own.
Take Nigerian-born Lola Adigun, who lives in the Atlanta, regarded by many as the capital of black progress in the American South. Whatever else she is. Adigun does not define herself as an American. In her mind, an American is someone born and raised in the U.S., with parents who themselves were born and raised here; someone, she says, who "can't be deported." But she also uses the term to differentiate herself culturally from native-born blacks: "We have holidays for the Yoruba God. We have naming ceremonies for children one week after they are born," says Adigun, a member of the Yoruba tribe and a 10-year Atlanta metro resident. "When people marry they have a 'bride prize,' like a dowry. We still celebrate these things in America."
Many of the new immigrants are settling in New York, Maryland and Florida but many are branching out to areas such as Minneapolis and Atlanta which, for example, has seen a 285 percent growth in its African-born population. African and Caribbean communities iving in America are more apt to use monikers to distinguish themselves from the larger black American community: One term in significant use by both groups is "American."
Adigun say she does her part to get the groups together by holding gatherings such as dinners, housewarming and game nights. She believes that as groups interact with one another they will begin to understand each other and have an appreciation for their differences as well as their similarities. "I like to learn about other cultures," says Adigun.
Adigun and two of her fellow Atlantans -- one black American and one of Jamaican heritage -- talked to Black Voices about some of the spoken and unspoken issues that color the relationship among people of these different bacgrounds.
I AM WHAT I CALL MYSELF
Self-idenfication is important to blacks brought to the United States by slavery. As the socio-political landscape has changed, so have the monikers from Negro, Colored, Black to African-American.
"African American" is the dressed up term for Black. I think it is a good attempt to attach our African heritage to our current state of living in America," says Odell Simmons, a 30-year-old black American artist. "But honestly, it does not mean that much to me. It is about the same term as black."
According to Michael Lloyd, 32, a mental health social worker, of Jamaican heritage "A lot of (Jamaicans) separate themselves from African-Americans when it is convenient, like when it comes to partying or socializing." Similarly, Simmons doesn't let cultural differences deter him from socializing with Caribbeans at events like parties and soccer games.
"I feel well-received at times. I think most of my friends assume that I am Caribbean because I hang out a lot with them," says Simmons. "I don’t really have a Northern or Southern accent and I talk real fast at time. Not to mention that I stay up on current reggae music and trends, plus I don’t fake a front. I tell them that I was a military brat born in Alaska and raised in Oklahoma and Alabama."
Simmons says that their celebrations aren't any different that those of Southern blacks. "Somebody's going to play the host. Someone is going to stay by the food. Somebody is going to drink up all the drinks. Just recently, I attended a house party with mostly West Indian people and they had a spades table set and I was on the domino table. Music was playing. It felt like I was at a house party in Montgomery."
Partying with other black ethnic groups may be acceptable on some level but many say marriage is another story entirely.
"Most parents don't want their child to marry Americans. So dating is very limited, says Adigun. "A lot of my peers only date Nigerians."
"When you settle down, you may want to have a Caribbean chick," says Lloyd. "When it comes down to the end, you don't want to settle down with a Yankee because too much teaching is involved. If you are Caribbean, you don't have to explain culture. (So) you can move beyond that part and deal with other real issues.
"I can remember growing up was that my mother telling my sister to never marry a Caribbean boy only because they were very passionate people, plus I think we had a cousin that married someone from the islands and they broke up. It wasn’t pretty," Simmons remembers.
Yet numerous African Americans have married blacks from the Caribbean and Africa. And there are increasing numbers of black Americans of mixed parentage. Philippe Wamba, a half-Congolese, half African-American writer who died in a car crash in Kenya in 2002, wrote extensively about his experiences as a bi-cultural African American in his memoir 'Kinship.' And J. Lorand Matory, a black American Anthropologist at Harvard who is married to a Nigerian woman, studies the points of synergy and disconnect extensively in his research. He says many times blacks from different backgrounds collaborate and identify with each other when it is advantageous to them, especially economically. But still, he argues, each group views the others with a fair amount of suspicion usually based on entrenched stereotypes and limited exposure. Immigrants, he says, depending on their outlook and experiences, chose to resist or embrace assimilation into the broader African-American category.
A subject rarely spoken about in mixed company is the stereotypes that each group holds of the other.
Say Simmons, for both groups, Caribbean and African, is that "they work all of the time," a stereotype popularized in the popular 'In Living Color' comedy skit 'Hey Mon.'
"With Africans, a stereotype is that they are all about the money. They all deal with bootleg movies and music," says Simmons.
The wave of Carribbean immigration early in the last century, established a set of tensions between West Indians and native born black that persist to this day. But whatever differences existed seemed relatively minor in the face of a common history of slavery, racial segregation, and economic struggle. Several Caribbean immigrants and Caribbean Americans -- Marcus Garvey, Claude McKay, Harry Belafonte, Sidney Portier, Paule Marshall, George Padmore, etc. -- rose to high profiles in black America and remain icons today. Being black was defined by not being white. But the question of what it meant to be black was always a complicated one, and the neither passage of time, the end of segregation, nor the emergence of a robust black American middle-class has done much to lessen the complexity.
And now a new wave of immigration is deepening the complexity of the issues. There has been a 67 percent increase in the number of US residents, who identify themselves as Caribbean-born and a 167 percent increase in those who are "African-born," according to the most recent Census Bureau data. And despite the fact that foreign-born blacks remain a small segment of America's overall black population -- two percent for Africans and four percent for those born in the Caribbean -- their pattern of concentration make for disproportionately large impacts in certain places. Increasingly, black people born in the US are forced to confront black cultures very different from their own.
Take Nigerian-born Lola Adigun, who lives in the Atlanta, regarded by many as the capital of black progress in the American South. Whatever else she is. Adigun does not define herself as an American. In her mind, an American is someone born and raised in the U.S., with parents who themselves were born and raised here; someone, she says, who "can't be deported." But she also uses the term to differentiate herself culturally from native-born blacks: "We have holidays for the Yoruba God. We have naming ceremonies for children one week after they are born," says Adigun, a member of the Yoruba tribe and a 10-year Atlanta metro resident. "When people marry they have a 'bride prize,' like a dowry. We still celebrate these things in America."
Many of the new immigrants are settling in New York, Maryland and Florida but many are branching out to areas such as Minneapolis and Atlanta which, for example, has seen a 285 percent growth in its African-born population. African and Caribbean communities iving in America are more apt to use monikers to distinguish themselves from the larger black American community: One term in significant use by both groups is "American."
Adigun say she does her part to get the groups together by holding gatherings such as dinners, housewarming and game nights. She believes that as groups interact with one another they will begin to understand each other and have an appreciation for their differences as well as their similarities. "I like to learn about other cultures," says Adigun.
Adigun and two of her fellow Atlantans -- one black American and one of Jamaican heritage -- talked to Black Voices about some of the spoken and unspoken issues that color the relationship among people of these different bacgrounds.
I AM WHAT I CALL MYSELF
Self-idenfication is important to blacks brought to the United States by slavery. As the socio-political landscape has changed, so have the monikers from Negro, Colored, Black to African-American.
"African American" is the dressed up term for Black. I think it is a good attempt to attach our African heritage to our current state of living in America," says Odell Simmons, a 30-year-old black American artist. "But honestly, it does not mean that much to me. It is about the same term as black."
According to Michael Lloyd, 32, a mental health social worker, of Jamaican heritage "A lot of (Jamaicans) separate themselves from African-Americans when it is convenient, like when it comes to partying or socializing." Similarly, Simmons doesn't let cultural differences deter him from socializing with Caribbeans at events like parties and soccer games.
"I feel well-received at times. I think most of my friends assume that I am Caribbean because I hang out a lot with them," says Simmons. "I don’t really have a Northern or Southern accent and I talk real fast at time. Not to mention that I stay up on current reggae music and trends, plus I don’t fake a front. I tell them that I was a military brat born in Alaska and raised in Oklahoma and Alabama."
Simmons says that their celebrations aren't any different that those of Southern blacks. "Somebody's going to play the host. Someone is going to stay by the food. Somebody is going to drink up all the drinks. Just recently, I attended a house party with mostly West Indian people and they had a spades table set and I was on the domino table. Music was playing. It felt like I was at a house party in Montgomery."
Partying with other black ethnic groups may be acceptable on some level but many say marriage is another story entirely.
"Most parents don't want their child to marry Americans. So dating is very limited, says Adigun. "A lot of my peers only date Nigerians."
"When you settle down, you may want to have a Caribbean chick," says Lloyd. "When it comes down to the end, you don't want to settle down with a Yankee because too much teaching is involved. If you are Caribbean, you don't have to explain culture. (So) you can move beyond that part and deal with other real issues.
"I can remember growing up was that my mother telling my sister to never marry a Caribbean boy only because they were very passionate people, plus I think we had a cousin that married someone from the islands and they broke up. It wasn’t pretty," Simmons remembers.
Yet numerous African Americans have married blacks from the Caribbean and Africa. And there are increasing numbers of black Americans of mixed parentage. Philippe Wamba, a half-Congolese, half African-American writer who died in a car crash in Kenya in 2002, wrote extensively about his experiences as a bi-cultural African American in his memoir 'Kinship.' And J. Lorand Matory, a black American Anthropologist at Harvard who is married to a Nigerian woman, studies the points of synergy and disconnect extensively in his research. He says many times blacks from different backgrounds collaborate and identify with each other when it is advantageous to them, especially economically. But still, he argues, each group views the others with a fair amount of suspicion usually based on entrenched stereotypes and limited exposure. Immigrants, he says, depending on their outlook and experiences, chose to resist or embrace assimilation into the broader African-American category.
A subject rarely spoken about in mixed company is the stereotypes that each group holds of the other.
Say Simmons, for both groups, Caribbean and African, is that "they work all of the time," a stereotype popularized in the popular 'In Living Color' comedy skit 'Hey Mon.'
"With Africans, a stereotype is that they are all about the money. They all deal with bootleg movies and music," says Simmons.
Then there are the persisting African-bad-hygiene stereotypes or African-American derisions for Africans like 'African booty scratcher' or 'Jungle Bunny' and 'Island Coconut Eater' for Caribbeans. The Yoruba 'Ikata,' which loosely translates to 'cotton picker' is a common derogation some Africans in urban areas reserve for African Americans.
According to Adigun and Lloyd among both Caribbean immigrants and Africans, stereotypes of black Americans are the same: They are lazy, don't take advantage of opportunity, don't take care of family, don't complete their education and are untrustworthy.
Adigun says that these beliefs are especially prevalent among the older generation of Africans. "But these ideas are waning, but slowly because it is passed down from generation to generation," says Adigun. "I don't like generalizations. You can't lump all Nigerians or Americans together."
Lloyd agrees. "Right now, you have a lot of West Indians that fit that stereotype," says Lloyd.
"I think it's unfortunate that most Caribbeans and Africans have a view that is shaped by the negative images put forth by U.S. media," says Simmons. "I feel there is no balance they only show negative and the negative images they show travels worldwide. So people in St. Thomas and Nigeria think we all behave like what they see on Rap City and MTV. Similarly shows like 'Tarzan' and numerous others have shaped the image of primitive Africans in the American imagination.
For many like Simmons, the bottom line is that no matter how we may view ourselves -- with all of our ethnic and cultural nuances -- it is the larger American society that will have a major role in determining our identity and ultimately our destiny.
"I feel that when you walk into an establishment not owned by a West Indian or African you are looked at as Black. The bank doesn't care that you are half-Indian and from Trinidad, you look black so you are black. Dark or light skin, full lips and hips and curly or wavy hair, you are looked at as black," says Simmons. "(We) are too concerned with distinctions -- Blacks have been like this for a while. We need to stop because there are so many other bigger issues that are facing us as black people."
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About the Author
Carla Thompson is a New York City based freelance writer and author of the memoir, ‘Bearing Witness: Not So Crazy in Alabama’ which chronicles her adventures while living in Montgomery, Ala. For more information about Carla and the book visit www.cwritesabook.com
According to Adigun and Lloyd among both Caribbean immigrants and Africans, stereotypes of black Americans are the same: They are lazy, don't take advantage of opportunity, don't take care of family, don't complete their education and are untrustworthy.
Adigun says that these beliefs are especially prevalent among the older generation of Africans. "But these ideas are waning, but slowly because it is passed down from generation to generation," says Adigun. "I don't like generalizations. You can't lump all Nigerians or Americans together."
Lloyd agrees. "Right now, you have a lot of West Indians that fit that stereotype," says Lloyd.
"I think it's unfortunate that most Caribbeans and Africans have a view that is shaped by the negative images put forth by U.S. media," says Simmons. "I feel there is no balance they only show negative and the negative images they show travels worldwide. So people in St. Thomas and Nigeria think we all behave like what they see on Rap City and MTV. Similarly shows like 'Tarzan' and numerous others have shaped the image of primitive Africans in the American imagination.
For many like Simmons, the bottom line is that no matter how we may view ourselves -- with all of our ethnic and cultural nuances -- it is the larger American society that will have a major role in determining our identity and ultimately our destiny.
"I feel that when you walk into an establishment not owned by a West Indian or African you are looked at as Black. The bank doesn't care that you are half-Indian and from Trinidad, you look black so you are black. Dark or light skin, full lips and hips and curly or wavy hair, you are looked at as black," says Simmons. "(We) are too concerned with distinctions -- Blacks have been like this for a while. We need to stop because there are so many other bigger issues that are facing us as black people."
Get Today's Top News Stories
About the Author
Carla Thompson is a New York City based freelance writer and author of the memoir, ‘Bearing Witness: Not So Crazy in Alabama’ which chronicles her adventures while living in Montgomery, Ala. For more information about Carla and the book visit www.cwritesabook.com
2005-12-05 12:04:10
