The Making of African America

Home > Other > The Making of African America > Page 33
The Making of African America Page 33

by Ira Berlin


  10 Dotson and Diouf, In Motion, 200. Similar undercounts of black immigrants from the Caribbean, especially Haitians: see Flore Zéphir, Haitian Immigrants in Black America: A Sociological and Sociolinguistic Portrait (Westport CT, 1996), 8, and Zéphir, Haitian Americans, chap. 4; Anthony V. Catanese, Haitian: Migration and Diaspora (Boulder CO, 1999), 87; John Logan, “Who Are the Other African-Americans? Contemporary African and Caribbean Immigrants in the United States” in Yoku Shaw-Taylor and Steven Tuch, eds., The Other African Americans: Contemporary African and Caribbean Immigrants in the United States (Lanham MD, 2007), 49—53.

  11 Kofi K. Apraku, African Émigrés in the United States: A Missing Link in Africa’s Social and Economic Development (New York, 1991), chaps. 1, 4—5. That sojourners composed a large portion of the fourth passage does not distinguish them from previous generations of European immigrants, some 30 percent of whom also returned home. See Frank Thistlewaite, “Migration from Europe Overseas in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries” in Rudolph J. Vecoli and Suzanne M. Sinke, A Century of European Migrations, 1830—1930 (Urbana IL, 1991) and Mark Wyman, Round Trip America: The Immigrants Return to Europe, 1880—1930 (Ithaca NY, 1993).

  12 Paul Stoller, Money Has No Smell: The Africanization of New York (Chicago, 2002); Arthur, African Diaspora, especially chaps. 3, 9; Reimers, Other Immigrants, 234—35: quoted in Francois Pierre-Louis, Jr., Haitians in New York City: Transnationalism and Hometown Associations (Gainesville FL, 2006), 1; also Michael J. Piore, Birds of Passage: Migrant Labor in Industrial Societies (Cambridge UK, 1979), 65.

  13 U.S. Census Bureau, Profile of the Foreign-Born Population in the United States: 2000 (Washington DC, 2001), 27; Dixon, “Characteristics of the African Born in the United States.”

  14 Reimers, Other Immigrants, chap. 9; Arthur, African Diaspora, 75-76; Halter, “Africa: West” and Kusow, “Africa: East” in Waters and Ueda, eds., The New Americans, 284—86 and 296; Agyemang Attah-Poku, The Socio-Cultural Adjustment: The Role of Ghanaian Immigrant Associations in America (Brookview VT, 1996) chap. 3.

  15 U.S. Census Bureau, Profile of the Foreign-Born Population in the United States: 2000 (Washington DC, 2001), 37, 41; Reimers, Other Immigrants, 235—36, 246—47; F. Nii-Amoo Dodoo, “Assimilation Differences among Africans in America,” Social Forces 76 (1997), 527—46; Dixon, “Characteristics of the African Born in the United States”; Kusow, “Africa: East” and Holder, “West Indies” in Waters and Ueda, eds., The New Americans, 296—302 and 676,682—85; Apraku, African Émigrés, chap. 1.

  16 Reimers, Other Immigrants, 237—38; Kusow, “Africa: East” and Lisa Konczal and Alex Stepick, “Haiti” in Waters and Ueda, eds., The New Americans, 301—2 and 445—57.

  17 U.S. Census Bureau, Profile of the Foreign-Born Population in the United States: 2000 (Washington DC, 2001), 47; Vickerman, Crosscurrents, chap. 2, esp. 67—75; Kristin F. Butcher, “Black Immigrants in the United States: A Comparison with Native Blacks and Other Immigrants,” Industrial Relations Review 47 (1994), 265—84; F. Nii-Amoo Dodoo and Baffour K. Takyi, “Africans in the Diaspora: Black-White Earnings Differences among America’s Africans,” Ethnic and Racial Studies, 25 (2002); Dixon, “Characteristics of the African Born in the United States”; Halter, “Africa: West” and Kusow, “Africa: East” in Waters and Ueda, eds., The New Americans, 291—93 and 299—300. For an excellent discussion of immigrant entrepreneurial activities in one city, see Marilyn Halter, ed., New Migrants in the Marketplace: Boston’s Ethnic Entrepreneurs (Amherst MA, 1995), esp. chaps. 4, 8. Mary C. Waters traces the long debate over the comparative success of Afro-West Indian immigrants and African American natives from the work of Ira de A. Reid (The Negro Immigrant: His Background Characteristics and Social Adjustment, 1899—1937 [New York, 1939]) early in the twentieth century through Thomas Sowell (“Three Black Histories” in Sowell, Essays and Data on American Ethnic Groups [Washington DC, 1978]), Dennis Forsythe (“Black Immigrants and the American Ethos: Theories and Observations” in Roy S. Bryce-Laporte and Delores M. Mortimer, eds., Caribbean Immigrants in the United States [Washington DC, 1976], 55—62), Stephen Steinberg (The Ethnic Myth: Race, Ethnicity, and Class in America [Boston, 1989]), Suzanne Model (“Caribbean Immigrants: A Black Successful Story,” International Migration Review 25 [1991], 248—76), and Jennifer L. Hochschild (Facing Up to the American Dream: Race, Class, and the Soul of the Nation [Princeton NJ, 1995]), and adds her own analysis in Waters, Black Identities: West Indian Immigrants Dreams and American Realities (Cambridge MA, 1999), chap. 4. Also see Vickerman, Crosscurrents, 74—75.

  18 Wilson, “African-born Residents of the United States,” Aug. 1, 2000, Migration Information Source (www.migrationinformantion.org); Baffour K. Takyi and Kwame Safo Boate, “Location and Settlement Patterns of African Immigrants in the U.S.: Demographic and Spatial Context” in Kwadwo Konadu-Agyemang, Baffour K. Takyi, and John Arthur, eds., The New African Diaspora in North America (Lanham MD, 2006), 50—68. Also William Finnegan, “New in Town: The Somalis of Lewiston,” The New Yorker, Dec. 11, 2006, 46—58.

  19 Waters, Black Identities, 22—23; Jon D. Holtzman, NuerJourneys,Nuer Lives: Sudanese Refugees in Minnesota, 2nd ed. (Boston, 2007), chap. 2.

  20 In 2000, 95 percent of Africans lived in metropolitan areas, with almost halfliving in ten cities, with the New York and Washington metropolitan areas having the largest agglomerations of Africans. U.S. Census Bureau, Profile of the Foreign-Born Population in the United States: 2000 (Washington DC, 2001), 16—18; Wilson, “African-born Residents of the United States,” Aug. 1, 2000, Migration Information Source (www.migrationinformantion.org); Halter, “Africa: West” in Waters and Ueda, eds., The New Americans, 291—93, 299—300; Logan and Deane, “Black Diversity in Metropolitan American,” 1. For the immigrant population, see Reuel Rogers, “‘Black Like Who?’: Afro-Caribbean Immigrants, African Americans, and the Politics of Group Identity” in Nancy Foner, ed., Islands in the City: West Indian Migration to New York (Berkeley CA, 2001), 163—64; Reimers, Other Immigrants, 246—48.

  21 Calvin B. Holder, “West Indies” in Waters and Eeda, eds., The New Americans, 291—93, 299—300, 675—86.

  22 Reimers, Other Immigrants, 243—44; Logan and Deane, “Black Diversity in Metropolitan America,” 4.

  23 Arthur, African Diaspora, 51—55; New York City Department of Planning, “Newest New Yorkers: Immigrant New York in the New Millennium” (2004), www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/census/nny.shtml; Marieme O. Daff, “Little Senegal: African in Harlem, Malcolm X Boulevard, America’s Dakar” (www.africultures.com/anglais/article_anglais/44senegal.htm); Jon D. Holtzman, NuerJourneys, Nuer Lives: Sudanese Refugees in Minnesota, 2nd ed. (Boston, 2008).

  24 Arthur, African Diaspora, chap. 6; Agyemang Attah-Poku, The Socio-Cultural Adjustment Question: The Role of Ghanaian Immigrant Associations in America (Brookview VT, 1996), chaps. 4—6. For a discussion of “hometown associations,” see Pierre-Louis, Haitians in New York City.

  25 Reimers, Other Immigrants, 245—46, 252—54.

  26 Mary Waters, Black Identities, quoted on 47—48 and 57. For a sociological explication of this same phenomena, see Vickerman, Crosscurrents, 9—12.

  27 James R. Grossman, Ann Durkin Keating, and Janice L. Reiff, eds., The Encyclopedia of Chicago (Chicago, 2004), 21, 281, 446, 476, 771, 775.

  28 Hoerder, Cultures in Contact, 551; Johnson, “‘What, Then, Is the African American?’ ” 84—87.

  29 Arthur, African Diaspora, chaps. 5—6. On Diallo, see various articles online in the New York Times (www.nytimes.com).

  30 Reimers, Other Immigrants, 253—54; Rogers, “‘Black Like Who?,’ ” 182—83; Vickerman, Crosscurrents, chap. 2.

  31 Milton Vickerman, “Tweaking a Monolith: The West Indian Immigrant Encounter with ‘Blackness,”’ in Foner, ed., Islands in the City, 237—56.

  32 James T. Campbell, Middle Passages:African American Journeysto Africa, 1787—2005 (New York, 2006); Penny Von Eschen, Satchmo Blows Up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Pl
ay the Cold War (Cambridge MA, 2004); Robin D. G. Kelley, “‘But a Local Phase of a World Problem’: Black History’s Global Vision, 1883—1950,” Journal of American History 86 (1999), 1045—77; Zachary Williams et al., “A History of Black Immigration in the United States” in Rachael Ida Buff, ed., Immigrant Rights in the Shadow of Citizenship (New York, 2008), 171; quoted in Tampa Tribune, 15 May 1998.

  33 Arthur, African Diaspora, chap. 5; Holtzman, NuerJourneys, 117—19.

  34 Rogers, “‘Black Like Who?’ ”; Louis, Haitians in New York City, 21—23, 117—34; quoted in Zéphir, Haitian Immigrants in Black America, 53; Rogers, “‘Black Like Who?,”’ 165—67, 174—76.

  35 Expressing a sense of privilege that residence in the United States provided, a Ghanaian immigrant observed, “I could not afford a car, television, or even a one-bedroom to lay my head at night when I was in Ghana. I drive a good used car, able to educate my children, and I have some money left to remit home. I do made much but even in this status, I earn more than what over 70 per cent of Ghanaians at home earn,” Arthur, African Diaspora, 78; quoted in Zéphir, Haitian Immigrants, 70, and Haitian Immigrants in Black America, 127.

  36 Mary C. Waters, “Ethnic and Racial Groups in the USA: Conflict and Cooperation” in Kumar Rupesinghe and Valley Tishkov, eds., Ethnicity and Power in the Contemporary World (London, 1996); Vickerman, Crosscurrents, chap. 4.

  37 Rogers, “‘Black Like Who?,”’ 178, 186—87.

  38 Milton Vickerman, “Tweaking a Monolith: The West Indian Immigrant Encounter with ‘Blackness,”’ in Foner, ed., Islands in the City, 237—56; “Jamaicans: Balancing Race and Ethnicity” in Foner, ed., The New Immigrants in New York; Zéphir, Haitian Immigrants, 86—94; quoted in Arthur, African Diaspora, 72—73, and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, July 20, 2006.

  39 Quoted in Rogers, “‘Black Like Who?,”’ 178, 163. Rogers was referring to Afro-Caribbeans in New York City but his remarks can easily be extended to the United States at large. Also see Zéphir, Haitian Immigrants, chap. 4; Johnson, “‘What, Then, Is the African American?,”’ 77—103.

  40 Tracie Reddick, “Africans vs. African-Americans: A Shared Complexion Does Not Guarantee Racial Solidarity,” www.library.yale.edu/~fboateng/akata.htm; Johnson, “‘What, Then, Is the African American?,’ 94—95; Harvard Crimson, Mar. 9, 2007; Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, www.jbhe.com/news_views/56_race_sensitive_not_helping.html; for other conflicts over resources, see Rogers, ”‘Black Like Who?’ ” Although subject to considerable debate, economists have generally agreed that, at least in the short term, immigration, although not specifically black immigration, “has harm[ed] the earnings and employment of African Americans”: Steven Shulman, ed., The Impact of Immigration on African Americans (New Brunswick NJ, 2004), quoted on xii.

  41 Ibid.; and quoted in New York Amsterdam News, Feb. 3—9, 2005; Tracie Reddick, “Africans vs. African-Americans: A Shared Complexion Does Not Guarantee Racial Solidarity,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, July 20, 2006.

  42 Logan and Deane, “Black Diversity in Metropolitan America,” 4—13; Rogers, “‘Black Like Who?’”; Kusow, “Africa: East” in Waters and Ueda, eds., The New Americans, 291—93, 299—300; Zéphir, The Haitian Americans, 129—30; Arthur, African Diaspora, 79; Lynette Clemetson, “For Schooling, A Reverse Emigration to Africa,” New York Times, Sept. 4, 2003; Zephir, Haitian Immigrants, 74—76, quoted in 71.

  43 Trica Rose, Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (Hanover NH, 1994), chap. 1—2; Dawn M. Norfleet, “Hip-Hop and Rap” in Mellonee V. Burnim and Portia K. Maultsby, eds., African American Music: An Introduction (New York, 2006), 353—57; Nelson George, Hip-Hop America (New York, 1998); Jeff Chang, Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation (New York, 2005) Kelley, “Into the Fire,” 583—90; Fernando Orejueda, “Hip Hop” in William Ferris and Glenn Hinson, eds., Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, forthcoming. I would like to thank Bill Ferris for sharing this reference.

  44 Rose, Black Noise; Norfleet, “Hip-Hop and Rap” in Burnim and Maultsby, eds., African American Music, 57—68; Nelson George, Hip-Hop America (New York, 1998); Chang, Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation; Kelley, “Into the Fire,” 583—90.

  45 Rose, Black Noise; Norfleet, “Hip-Hop and Rap” in Burnim and Maultsby, eds., African American Music, 68—71; Nelson George, Hip-Hop America (New York, 1998); Chang, Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation; Kelley, “Into the Fire,” 583—90; Orejueda “Hip Hop” in Ferris and Hinson, eds., Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, forthcoming. The antisocial tradition runs deep in African American culture; see especially the story of Stagger Lee, which became a standard of nervous blues musicians. Cecil Brown, Stagolee Shot Billy (Cambridge MA, 2003).

  46 Rose, Black Noise, 10—11.

  47 Jennifer V. Jackson and Mary E. Cothran, “Black Versus Black: The Relationship Among African, African American and African Caribbean Persons,” Journal of Black Studies 33 (2003), 576—604.

  48 Rogers, ”‘Black Like Who?,“’ 171—79, quoted on 178; Arthur, African Diaspora, chap. 5, esp. 69—71; Philip Kasinitz, Caribbean New York: Black Immigrants and the Politics of Race (Ithaca NY, 1992); Zéphir, Haitian Immigrants, 78—82. Another student of West Indian immigrants in the United States notes that West Indians are “profoundly uncomfortable dealing with race, because, despite a history of colonialism, their societies socialize them to ignore it”; Vickerman, Crosscurrents, ix. 49 Rogers, “Black Like Who?” on people sharing multiple identities, 166—67.

  Epilogue

  1 Thomas B. Edsall and Mary D. Edsall, Chain Reaction: The Impact of Race, Rights, and Taxes on American Politics (New York, 1991); Dan T. Carter, The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics (New York, 1995); Mary C. Brennan, Turning Right in the Sixties: The Conservative Capture of the GOP (Chapel Hill NC, 1995).

  2 For newly arrived Africans’ support of Barack Obama, see the Washington Post, July 6, 2008.

  3 Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, 2nd ed. (New York, 2004), 27.

  4 New York Times, May 11, 2008; David Mendell, Obama: From Promise to Power (New York, 2007), chap. 9, quoted on 131; Ryan Lizza, “Making It: How Chicago Shaped Obama,” The New Yorker, July 21, 2008; quoted in David Remnick, “The Joshua Generation: Race and the Campaign of Barack Obama,” The New Yorker, Nov. 17, 2008.

  5 New York Times, Aug. 29, 2004.

  6 New York Times, Feb. 2 and 11, 2007; also see New York Times, Jan. 25, 2007; Newsweek, July 16, 2007; for Crouch’s statement, New York Daily News, Nov. 2, 2006.

  7 For the barbershop banter on Obama, see Darryl Pinckney, “Dreams from Obama,” New York Review of Books 55 (Mar. 6, 2008), 41-46.

  8 Louis Chude-Sokei, “Redefining ‘Black’: Obama’s Candidacy Spotlights the Divide between Native Black Culture and African Immigrants,” Los Angeles Times, Feb. 18, 2007.

  9 Debra J. Dickerson, “Colorblind: Barack Obama Would Be the Great Black Hope in the Next Presidential Race—If He Were Actually Black,” Jan. 22, 2007, Salon (www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/01/22/obama/); also Debra Dickerson interviewed by Stephen Colbert, The Colbert Report, Feb. 8, 2007. http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/81955/february-08-2007/debra-dickerson?videoId=81955.

  10 Dickerson, “Colorblind,” Salon, Jan. 22, 2007.

  11 Louis Chude-Sokei, “Redefining ‘Black,’” Los Angeles Times, Feb. 18, 2007.

  12 Charlie Rose, interview with Barack Obama, Oct. 19, 2006 (http://www.charlierose.com/shows/2006/10/19/1/an-hour-with-senator-barack-obama).

  13 Dickerson, “Colorblind,” Salon, Jan. 22, 2007.

  14 Quoted in Obama, Dreams from My Father, 76, 104.

  15 New York Times, March 18, 2008.

  16 Ibid.

  17 Ibid.

  Index

  Abbott, Robert

  Abuza, Sophie


  Africa

  African Americans’ ignorance of

  African Americans’ journeys to

  as cultural catchall

  fluidity of nationalities of

  free blacks’ migration to

  immigration from, late-twentieth-century. See fourth migration

  Loyal Blacks’ return to

  manumission in

  Middle Passage from. See Middle Passage

  political unrest in

  slavery in

  slave-trading states in

  African American, shunning of name

  African Americans

  American born. See American-born blacks

  as closed population

  culture, creation and recreation of

  as disproportionately at bottom of society

  divisions among

  elite. See elite blacks/Old Settlers

  foreign-born proportion

  free black. See free blacks

  history of. See history, African American

 

‹ Prev