The recent arrival of
significant numbers of people of African
descent in the United States from Central
and South America and the Caribbean as well
as the continent of Africa has posed major
questions about the definition of African
Americans and the relationships that these
recent arrivals are having with the
indigenous African-American community. How
do these recent arrivals fit within the
construct and definition of African
American? Do the differences in language,
culture, ethnicity and nationality that they
bring with them limit their ability to be
admitted to the African American group? Are
they even interested in being thought of or
related to as African- American? Are
members of the African-American group
willing to welcome them into the
African-American family? Or are they
distrustful because of their differences or
resentful of African and African descended
people from abroad who are seemingly taking
better advantage of the opportunities
created by African Americans in their
centuries-long struggles for freedom and
justice in this land?
These
are real questions that the recent
migrations of African descended people to
the United States have posed for the future
development of people of African descent in
this country. We should note, however, that
these are questions that are faced whenever
new immigrants enter a society of
established socioeconomic and political
formations. We are concerned about
redefining the term African American because
we are interested in maximizing the
potential that a unified African-based
population can have rather than having the
perceived differences used to divide and
exploit us. What’s at stake, then is, in
the final analysis the future of African
descended people in the United States,
economically, politically, socially and
culturally. Said another way, the challenge
before us is to turn our diversity into a
strength to advance our collective interests
rather than have it become a source of
division and weakness.
Three
years ago, the Schomburg Center completed
and made available to the public a major
project on African American migration
entitled
In
Motion: The African American Migration
Experience. Comprised of a major
on-line website, a companion book, a
teacher’s kit and an exhibition, the project
sought to document the major movements of
people of African descent to, within and at
times out of the United States. Initially
conceptualized as a project revolving around
four or five major migrations, it eventually
evolved into one that documented 13 distinct
major migrations of people of African
descent. Five of the 13 dealt with people
migrating to the United States, seven
documented movements within the United
States and one traced the history of African
Americans moving from the United States to
foreign lands. Significantly, of the 13
migrations, only two were forced — the
transatlantic slave trade and the domestic
slave trade. All of the other eleven were
voluntary.
The
centerpiece of the project was the In
Motion website. Comprised of over
25,000 pages including over 16,000 pages of
text and over 8,000 images, it is structured
around each of the 13 migrations. In each
instance a popular narrative essay based on
a scholarly paper by a leading authority in
the field traces the history of the
migration. An average of 100 captioned
photographs and other visual images are used
to illustrate the narrative. Primary
research documents, original maps, scholarly
articles and books on related themes, a
bibliography and lesson plans for teachers
round out the resources available for
documenting and interpreting each
migration. A general image archive
supplements those used to document each
migration.
A brief
review of the treatment of the transatlantic
slave trade is a useful context for framing
the discussion of the contemporary (post
1970’s) migrations of African peoples which
will be the focus of this presentation.
It is
generally acknowledged, based on current
scholarship that between 10 and 12 million
people of African descent survived the
Middle Passage and settled in the Americas.
Less well known is the fact that between
1492 and 1776 or roughly the first 300 years
of the so-called European colonization of
the Americas, 6.5 million people crossed the
Atlantic and settled in the so-called New
World — North, Central and South America and
the Caribbean. Of those 6.5 million pioneer
migrants, only 1 million were European. The
other 5.5 million were Africans of diverse
ethnic, religious and national backgrounds.
Of the
10-12 million transported to the Americas in
the transatlantic slave trade, only some
500,000 ended up in the United States.
They, too, were of diverse ethnic, religious
and national backgrounds — Yoruba, Etik, Fon,
Musfin, traditional African religions, etc.
By 1860, the original 500,000 enslaved
African immigrants had developed into a
population of some 4 million people.
Significantly, these people of African
descent had transformed themselves into a
new people, a new African American people.
Unable to live traditional African lives as
Fon, Etik or Yoruba, they entered into new
biological, social and cultural
relationships across ethnic or religious
lines. Added to their mix were
representatives of diverse Native American
groups as well as virtually all of the
European groups that were part of America’s
colonial enterprise. The African American
group created out of this amalgam of
African, Native American and European
peoples is likely the most American group in
American society. Because all of America’s
people are part of the African American
group.
While
the transatlantic slave trade was officially
abolished in 1808 in the United States, the
illegal slave trade continued to bring
enslaved Africans to the United States into
the 1860’s. After the war, relatively few
continentally born Africans migrated to the
United States. African-descended people
from the Caribbean region continued to find
ways of migrating here. Puerto Ricans and
Cubans of African descent such as Arturo
Alfonso Schomburg came in the late 19th
and early 20th centuries.
African-descended immigrants from British
and French Caribbean islands, though
restricted as immigrants of African descent,
found loopholes in colonial laws to gain
admission as part of British or French
immigration quotas. Upwards of 100,000
Caribbean immigrants entered the United
States between 1899 and 1932 when move
restrictive laws virtually closed the door
to Caribbean immigrants. Jamaicans,
Barbadians, and Trinidadians, as well as
Haitians settled in the States and tried to
create new lives for themselves. Puerto
Ricans, Dominicans, Cubans and Panamanians
also headed to the United States during the
first three decades of the 20th
century.
Nowhere
was the new diversity of the African
presence in the United States more
pronounced than in New York City, especially
during the Harlem Renaissance. New York
City, which only had a population of 60,000
people of African descent in 1900, could
count some more than 350,000
African-descended people by 1930, the
largest in the nation. A significant
percentage of them had immigrated from
Africa and the Caribbean and come to New
York during this period including African
dancer, Asadata Dafora, Jamaicans Marcus
Garvey and Claude McKay, Trinidadian pilot
Hubert Julian, and Virgin Islander J.
Raymond Jones. Each of them aligned
themselves with African descended peoples
from the United States and other parts of
the African diaspora for social, political,
cultural and at times familial purposes.
Significantly, try as they may to retain
their unique ethnic identities, most of
these African-descended immigrants also
began to become integrated into new African
American movements and identities. The
Garvey Movement, for instance, was comprised
of black folk from throughout the Americas
as well as throughout the United States.
Other “African American” groups and
organizations such as the Brotherhood of
Sleeping Car Porters, the Prince Hall Masons
and the African Blood Brotherhood included
Afro Caribbeans as well as native-born
African Americans. The point is that after
slavery, like during the era of slavery,
immigrating African-descended populations
became part of the African-American
community even as they struggled to retain
ties with their societies of origin. By the
second or third generation, however, most
had become fully integrated into the
African-American community.
Congressman Charles Rangel, for instance, is
of Puerto Rican ancestry. Herman “Denny”
Farrell is of Panamanian descent as was Dr.
Kenneth Clark. Basil and David Paterson
trace their roots to Barbados, and Carlos
Ledesma, founder of the West Indian Day
Carnival, was from Venezuela. All are or
have been an acknowledged part of the
African-American community in New York and
the United States.
Three
of the components of the In Motion
website deal with the contemporary
migrations of people of African descent to
the United States since the 1970’s: The
Contemporary Haitian Migration, The
Caribbean Migration and the Contemporary
African Migration. These three sites
provide considerable information on the
socio, economic and cultural backgrounds to
the migrations. They tell you where people
are migrating from and why. They tell you
where they are migrating too. And they tell
you some of the impacts of their presence,
their laboring activities and their cultural
and social practices on their new
communities of residence. I will focus the
remainder of my remarks on the contemporary
African immigrant population in hopes of
raising questions that are relevant to the
discussion of issues facing all of the new
African-descended populations in the United
States.
Beginning in the 1970’s, significant numbers
of continentally born Africans started to
migrate to the United States. As former
colonial powers — England, France and
Portugal — closed their doors to African
immigrants, many turned to the United
States. Since 1970, more than 1.7 million
people claimed sub-Saharan African
ancestry. Refugees are counted among this
new African immigration influx — over 40,000
Somalis, close to 21,000 Ethiopians and an
estimated 18,500 Sudanese among others.
From 1990 to 2001, 100,000 African refugees
(10% of all refugees) were admitted to the
United States. The overwhelming majority of
these immigrants are not refugees, however.
In contrast to their slave trade forbears,
the new immigrant populations come from
throughout sub-Saharan Africa. They are
from Southern and East Africa as well as
West and Central Africa. Nigerians are the
number one sub-Saharan African community
followed by Ethiopians and Ghanaians. A
highly urban population, more than 95%, live
in metropolitan areas usually in close
proximity to traditional African American
and Caribbean immigrant communities. The
Senegalese are concentrated in New York; the
Nigerians in Texas, the Somalis in
Minneapolis/St. Paul. The new African
immigrants are also a highly educated
African population. Indeed, they are the
most highly educated population in the
United States. Almost half of the new
African immigrant population holds bachelors
degrees or higher whereas only 26% of
native-born Americans do. The most
substantial part of African immigration is
linked to the “brain drain” not poverty.
Many immigrating Africans coming from
independent African nations are attempting
to retain their ethnic identities within
their national groups. Many are retaining
strong links with their home communities on
the continent and building economic and
other bridges between themselves and home.
However much they resist transforming
themselves and being transformed by their
new American environment, however they are
being transformed. Ethnic and class
barriers that existed among groups within
their countries on the continent are being
lowered and eradicated in the U.S. Within
their national groups they are transforming
themselves and being transformed by their
new environment as they create new families,
new community groups, new religious
practices, etc. These transformations are
being made more complex by the simultaneous
arrivals (since the 1970s) of African
peoples from Haiti, the Caribbean and
Central and South America. All of these new
African immigrant populations like those
from the continent are negotiating their
relationships with each other and white
America as well as the African-American
descendants of the pioneer 500,000 enslaved
Africans who make up 90% of the more than 35
million people of African descent living in
the United States.
How are the new African and
African-descended populations getting along
with their new neighbors? How are new
immigrant African-descended populations
relating to one another as well as to
African American, white Americans and other
new immigrant African groups? We could
dwell in the negative reports of frictions,
jealousies, resentments and at times
outright conflicts that have surfaced
between the various groups. We could talk
about the
-
We could talk about the perceived
problem of African and other immigrant
populations exploiting job & educational
opportunities created for African Americans.
-
We could talk about the struggle for
jobs & job displacement.
-
We could talk about African-American
resentment of African entrepreneurial
success.
-
We could talk about problems of
communication that have emerged between
these diverse peoples.
-
We could talk about territorial/turf
residency struggles.
-
We could talk about the perceived
disrespect that immigrants have for African
American traditions of struggle.
All of these issues have arisen from time to
time whenever immigrants, regardless of
race, interact with older residents. And
they are issues that arise whenever
immigrant populations arrive in places where
established African-American communities
exist. Media coverage of these encounters
tend to focus on the conflicts frequently at
the expense of the new transformation and
integration experiences that are taking
place between old and new African
communities and across ethnic and national
boundaries, and cultural and class lines
that are part of these new political,
economic, cultural and social group
formations.
Migrants’ intentions of returning to their
homelands notwithstanding, the social
situations in which they find themselves
dictate that they will, willingly or not,
enter into new relationships and new
processes of social and cultural
transformation not unlike what occurred with
their forbears during slavery. Nowhere is
this more evident in the United States today
than in New York City. And in New York
City, the most complex laboratory of African
and African Diasporan social and cultural
transformation is in the Borough of
Brooklyn. New York has the largest African
immigrant population in the United States.
In addition, large new Caribbean and Haitian
immigrant populations have moved there
adding to the mix of new immigrants of
African descent who have taken up residence
in close proximity to each other and to
older African-American communities in New
York City. Ethnic and national enclaves of
immigrant populations have frequently formed
in these communities, but equally
significant, immigrants have crossed ethnic
and national boundaries to create new family
lives, business relationships, etc.
Nigerians are marrying Jamaicans, African
Americans are marrying Trinidadians, etc.
and creating New World African families.
Immigrant musicians from Africa, the
Caribbean and/or Haiti are hooking up with
African-American musicians and creating new
African diasporan musics. Immigrants are
forming ethnic or nationally based
organizations among themselves but they are
also actively participating in established
and newly formed organizations and
institutions that address their needs and
support their objectives.
It is in times of racial crisis in the city,
however, that the blurring of lines between
the African-American community and the new
immigrant populations is most prevalent.
When Senegalese immigrant, Amadou Diallo,
was killed in a hail of police fire, people
of African descent, irrespective of their
status, ethnic or national backgrounds,
joined in the protests against this latest
instance of police brutality. When Haitian
communities demonstrated in protest against
the ouster of their Pres. Jean Baptist
Aristide, Caribbean immigrants and African
Americans joined in. When hurricanes
devastated communities in the Caribbean,
African American and Africans have joined in
the relief effort. These types of
mobilizations across ethnic and national
boundaries signal the forging of new
pan-African or African diasporan bonds among
these diverse African people. These
emerging alliances bode well for the future
of African and African Diasporan
transformations in the United States in the
future. African peoples of the slavery era
transformed themselves into one people —
African American people — during slavery.
The stage has been set for still another
transformation in the twenty-first century.
* This article was originally delivered
as a keynote at a conference at Hunter
College, CUNY on March 2, 2007, which was
organized by the
Global Afro Latino and Caribbean Initiative
(GALCI).