Motherland?

[msgadget]

I've been mulling over this article for a day or so. It's interesting the weight applied to number of African immigrants today as compared to slave times, for one thing. Another thing that strikes me is that these African immigrants have so little in common with us. Indeed, they don't seem to want to have anything to do with us! And, note how often they're referred to as 'different' because they're so industrious and come from married couples, etc. As I said, this article is...interesting.


More Africans Enter U.S. Than in Days of Slavery

For the first time, more blacks are coming to the United States from Africa than during the slave trade.

Since 1990, according to immigration figures, more have arrived voluntarily than the total who disembarked in chains before the United States outlawed international slave trafficking in 1807. More have been coming here annually - about 50,000 legal immigrants - than in any of the peak years of the middle passage across the Atlantic, and more have migrated here from Africa since 1990 than in nearly the entire preceding two centuries.

...

"African-born and Caribbean-born brothers and sisters have realized that the police don't discriminate on the basis of nationality - ask Amadou Diallo," said Professor Charles J. Ogletree Jr., who teaches at Harvard Law School and has warned colleges and universities that admitting mostly foreign-born blacks to meet the goals of affirmative action is insufficient.

"Whether you are from Brazil or from Cuba, you are still products of slavery," he continued. "But the threshold is that people of African descent who were born and raised and suffered in America have to be the first among equals."

French-speaking Haitians do not necessarily mix with English-speaking West Indians, much less with Africans, and competition for jobs has been another source of tension.

"The Africans tend to be quite industrious and entrepreneurial and often take advantage of opportunities that might have been here for others before," said Kim Nichols of the African Services Committee.

"We're talking about very profoundly different cultures," Kathleen Newland said.

...

Immigration may also shift some of the nation's focus from racial distinctions to ethnic ones. "Certainly, South Africa showed us that minority status does not necessarily correlate to one's position in society, but rather that power and its uses are the issues," said Samuel K. Roberts of Columbia, a history professor who is also on the faculty of the university's Institute for Research in African-American Studies. "That being said, increasingly distinguishing between black Americans and black Africans may produce conditions in which we will be less prone to think of a fictional construct of 'race' as the distinguishing factor among all of us in North America."

How long might those distinctions last? "I guess one of the questions will have to be what happens in the next generation or two," said Professor Foner of Columbia. "In America, marriage is the great solvent. Are they going to melt into the African-American population? Most likely yes."

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/tnt.html?tntget=2005%2f02%2f21%2fnyregion%2f21africa%2ehtml

Edit to fix link.

[kwassa]

1. Immigration is a self-filtering process

Those that immigrate voluntarily are often the most ambitious and self-motivated of their countrymen, so in a way it brings over an unusual class of people; those willing to take big risks, and those willing to work extremely hard to be successful.

Locally, there are many black immigrants from Africa, the Caribbean, and South America. In one of the local high schools, African-Americans are a minority of the black kids in the school! The rest are children of immigrants from Africa or other parts of the diaspora.

I think the kids socialize more and absorb more easily into each other's culture, Most of our local schools are a stew of a wide variety of cultures from around the world, of all races. There are also immigrant children who are not succeeding, but failing in a big way in their new homeland, so it is not a simple issue.

I really think that the greatest differences are between the adult populations, rather than the children.

[msgadget]

2. You're right about that,

Kwassa. I know from my own family that many immigrants choose to immigrate because they're ambitious and they hit
American soil at a trot.

Rather than compare them to American blacks who are still struggling, I'd like to see a comparison of Black immigrants to immigrants from Asia, Latin America, etc. Such a comparison would be positive, unlike this treatment which highlighted their denial of American blacks and possible competition for 'entitlements' like Affirmative Action.

[SemperEadem]

3. the big difference

between Africans immigrating now and Africans who were kidnapped and forced over here, crammed into the belly of a slave ship is that they are free to come over here and be ambitious--or remain in their homeland. They have both choices available to them. They weren't forced over here in shackles and irons--so the comparison is non sequitur--they should be comparing them to Asian, Eastern European, Austrailians who immigrate to the US to work.

Our African ancestors who were forced over here to build this country were hard working, tenacious folks, too--if they weren't, none of us, their progeny, would exist.