Contemporary Racio-Ethnic Relations in the African Diaspora Pt 3

Social Context The data reveals that how native blacks view Africa and how African immigrants view Baltimore is very important to their understandings of themselves, each other, and racial, ethnic, and racio-ethnic boundaries drawn. Native-born blacks share that they have often heard stories about Africa involving hunting, killing, and eating wild animals, and then draining the blood for tribal rituals, living in straw huts without plumbing, AIDS, starvation, or that it must be like the Tarzan movie. One respondent sums it up: “Africa is a jungle, and people are runnin' around with no clothes on, and there are wild animals everywhere.” Such understandings of Africa color the views native blacks have about African immigrants. As one middle-aged black American male explains, I think because of the whole stereotypical edge we’re not culturally astute as far as Africans and where they are, where they’ve come from. A lot of us don’t watch PBS. We don’t really grasp what it’s like. And then a lot of us don’t have the money that a lot of these people have that have been over to Africa. We don’t have the money or the resources. We have some resources, now with the Internet we have more resources because now we can read the paper over there in Africa and see what’s going on in Africa. But that’s just a part of that whole separatism. Once we learn how to unite and not separate then we’re fine. But we tend to separate ourselves from one another. “Okay, we are African Americans, but we ain’t African.” That whole thing. In essence, the combination of vast stereotypes made about Africa and limited resources to see first-hand what Africa is causes native blacks to draw a line themselves from African immigrants. This metaphorical line is most clearly seen as a division between racial, ethnic, and racio-ethnic identity, as the respondent states, “Okay, we are African Americans, but we ain’t African.” African immigrants, on the other hand, associate poverty, crime, drugs and violence with living in Baltimore. The extension of these social problems to the people who reside in Baltimore is prevalent. African immigrants describes American blacks as “cultureless,” as “having a very different culture,” as “lacking motivation,” as “getting side-tracked.” Many of these pejorative statements derive from a social environment African immigrants perceive as promoting decline for black Americans. One college-educated immigrant originally from Nigeria explained the lack of assimilation between the two communities, “All the drugs and alcohol here—African Immigrants, immigrants from other countries just stay to themselves. Their children—keep them away from it. There’s not going to be that assimilation.” This same respondent, when asked to characterize the African American in Baltimore, seemed to almost personify the city itself when she responds, “In Baltimore? When I see this city—it’s very depressing. The poverty.” As a result, a tendency develops for African immigrants to personally define themselves as different from native blacks, often through construction of varied racio-ethnic affiliations. The setting of this study in Baltimore city is clearly significant as immigrant images of native blacks are clearly shaped not only by their immediate contact with African Americans, but by overall perceptions of the city itself. Further research in this area could delve into the particular racial and ethnic constructions the social environment creates for black Americans and African immigrants. That our knowledge of the social environment so deeply influences our understanding of people living in that environment is an important emerging theme to incorporate into future research. Additional Research Topics Three additional, primary research questions emerged over the course of our data analysis that were unanticipated at the start, that we now believe may prove to be of equal or greater sociological import, and that the Project intends to pursue as it progresses. 1) Why have scholars had greater concern for the views that African Americans and African Immigrants have towards each other that for other intra-racial groups? 2) What influence does a city like Baltimore have on the intra-black American dynamic we observe? 3) Finally, how might this dynamic play out differently or similarly for other immigrant groups in their interaction with their co-ethnics (e.g. Mexican immigrants and established Mexican Americans)? In response to the first of these additional questions, we know that despite the fact that African Americans as a whole have few direct or recent ties with the African continent, there persists an assumption that native blacks and Africans nonetheless share similarities and political/affective bonds based in a commonly shared pre-slavery history (Arthur 2000, Pierre [which year]; Dodoo [which year]. We are particularly drawn to the ideas posed by W.E.B. Du Bois, such as about which he wrote in 1940: But one thing is sure and that is the fact that since the fifteenth century these ancestors of mine and their other descendants have had a common history; have suffered a common disaster and have one long memory. The actual ties of heritage between the individuals of this group, vary with the ancestors that they have in common and many others: Europeans and Semites, perhaps Mongolians, certainly American Indians. But the physical bond is least and the badge of color relatively unimportant save as a badge; the real essence of this kinship is its social heritage of slavery; the discrimination and insult; and this heritage binds together not simply the children of Africa, but extends through yellow Asia and into the South Seas. It is this unity that draws me to Africa. The connection between African Americans and the African continent—referred to as Pan-Africanism—and its people had, of course, been a long-stating debate, particularly articulated by Marcus Garvey and Du Bois in the early 1900s. Marcus Garvey, the Jamaican born social activist and founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, called his followers together in an effort to re-colonize the African continent with American Negroes. His goal was to displace white European colonizers and to thereby establish a true homeland for blacks worldwide. Towards this goal, he raised funds for the Black Star Line, a fleet of steam ships that would take African Americans from the United States to Africa. While the project eventually failed due to a poor business sense and bad luck, Garvey’s message continued to garner support. While careful not to alienate whites, he preached the superiority of one race over the other, and believed that for blacks to truly overcome the oppression of living in the deeply segregated United States, they would have to establish themselves independently of the dominant race. He said in 1921, “All true Negroes are against social equality, believing that all races should develop along their own lines. Only a few selfish members of the Negro race believe in the social amalgamation of black and white.” For Garvey, Pan-Africanism was the movement of people of African descent back to Africa in order to establish self-leadership. In Garvey’s eyes, one of those “selfish members” was W.E.B. Du Bois, an African American of mixed descent, an intellectual, and the longtime editor of the NAACP journal The Crisis. Du Bois and Garvey failed to see eye to eye on virtually any method of uplifting the African American, and their disagreements raged publicly throughout various newspaper articles and pamphlets. Du Bois famously wrote, “Marcus Garvey is, without doubt, the most dangerous enemy of the Negro race in American and in the world. He is either a lunatic or a traitor.” Du Bois was primarily concerned with Garvey’s insistence that “forcible separation of the races and the banishment of Negroes to Africa is the only solution of the Negro problem” and that none of his methods were encouraging change in the United States that might lead to racial equality. Du Bois saw Pan-Africanism in a very different light; he organized four Pan-African conferences between 1919 and 1925, bringing together African leadership from across the globe in an effort to solve some of the problems of their race. His ideal was that the bringing together of an international group to compliment the “Talented Tenth” of U.S. blacks would help bring about the equality of African Americans. In addition to his conception of Pan-Africanism, DuBois, in Souls of black Folk, articulates a concept of “double-consciousness.” He writes: After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world, --a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness,--an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. (p8) In this haunting passage, DuBois explains how society mars the vision that black Americans have of themselves through the practice of relentless racial inequality, leading to a debilitating sense of “double-consciousness” or viewing oneself through the “other’s” eyes. For both Garvey and Du Bois, the idea that African Americans are tied in some intrinsic way to Africa was a given even though each articulated their own ideal what this meant. It seems that we might be able to continue on in this debate, and use Du Bois idea of “double-consciousness,” to further understand the trends we are seeing in the relationships between African Americans and African immigrants today. Returning now the second of our “new” research questions, what, if any, impact might the urban setting of Baltimore have on the relationship between these two groups? Much of the literature suggest that there is a higher level of achievement among African immigrants, especially economically and educationally, than among African Americans, though both groups show lower social status than whites in the U.S. We hypothesize that the cities like Baltimore, which is 65% African American and has a national reputation as a “dangerous” city with high crime rates and poor educational outcomes may explain significantly the trend of African immigrants trying to separate themselves from being lumped into a category with “failing” blacks in the city. We anticipate that different cities may experience different levels of this. Finally, our last”new” question asks whether the relationships we see between our two target groups are different in any ways from the relationships between other newly arriving immigrant groups and their more established co-ethnics. How do Asian or Latin/Central American immigrants interact with their hyphenated-American counterparts? Little has been done on a large scale in this arena, but research seems to suggest that there is a tendency for these other groups to experience inter-group tensions as well. But more often than not we hear of intra- ethnic cooperation. Irene Bloemraad, for example, concludes that immigrants in the United States and Canada become incorporated into ethnic enclaves by their more established coethnics, who help with the assimilation process (2006). Scholars like Bloemraad tend to look only at one or two small case studies of immigrant incorporation and interaction with the host society, however the conclusions that may be drawn from this study could be expanded into a more comprehensive, comparative study of intra-racial dynamics. Clearly, resolving the latter two of our new questions will require a great deal more theoretical grounding, as will our first. In fact this entire topic of native black and African immigrant relations lacks a cogent theoretical frame. Pursuing such a frame is the next phase of this topic with the Project. Appendix A Code Descriptions AA identity/culture: This category contains respondents’ understanding of African-American identity and culture. AA researcher: This category reflects an interesting pattern of responses obtained by African American students in the class when interacting with African Immigrants. A-A understanding of Africa: This category encapsulates data that reveals how native-born blacks understand Africa and African immigrants Adaptation: This category contains information about the process of adaptation African immigrants experienced. African culture/society: This category contains African immigrants’ description of the culture and society in their country of origin. African expectation of A-A: This category is about African immigrants’ expectations of native blacks. Often times, the narratives are about values and beliefs African immigrants associate with black Americans. African fashion/art: This category gives insight into trends of fashion and art; as consumed by both immigrants and native blacks, often in conjunction with African-owned businesses. African naming: This category describes the African naming process. Business: This category is about African-owned businesses Conflict: This category contains incidences where African immigrants and native blacks have experienced conflict with each other. Contact: This category highlights differences in contact African immigrants and native blacks have with one another depending on whether they are middle-aged (first generation immigrant) or school-aged (second generation immigrant). Commonality: This category highlights the use of kin language and a sense of collective identity. Competition: This category articulates times African immigrants and native blacks felt they were in competition with one another. Education: There are two categories (one for AA views and one for Immigrant views) regarding thoughts on education. Framing: This category refers to times when African immigrants and native blacks discuss what they consider as comparable issues (e.g. racism versus tribalism) yet “frame” the topic in very different ways. ID immigrant: This category captures markers respondents used to identify an individual as an immigrant rather than as native-born. Immigrant challenges: Separate from the ‘adaptation’ category, this represents very distinct challenges of the immigration process articulated by respondents. Immigrant services: This category encompasses many of the immigrant services available in the Baltimore area. Immigrant stereotype: This category describes instances when African immigrants felt they were stereotyped, sometimes by native blacks, and other times by Americans more generally. Music: This category encapsulates references made to hip-hop music. Neighborhood: This category describes the neighborhoods in which the respondents live. Origin: This category is includes narratives about one’s national and ethnic origins and the relative importance of one’s origins to identity. Perceptions of Baltimore: More specifically than the ‘neighborhood’ category, this category reflects respondents opinions of the city of Baltimore. Race-Class: This category contains statements that suggest that there are distinct identities within the black community by class groups. Race-Ethnicity: This category references times when respondents discussed and contested terms such as “African-American” when both race and ethnicity were included in an identity label. Race stereotype: This category references stereotypes made about blacks. Reasons for Immigration: This category references conjectured and real reasons for African’s immigration to the US. Religion: This category captures information about the roll of religion in the lives of native blacks and Immigrants. Remittance: This category captures information about remittances made by respondents back to their families and communities in Africa. “Sojourner”: This category reflects Arther’s concept of the perception that many African Immigrants view themselves as temporary sojourners to the US. The concept of ‘home’ remains rooted in Africa.