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The Black Encounter

Zain Abdullah

in Black Mecca: The African Muslims of Harlem

This chapter covers relations between longtime Black residents and newly arrived West African Muslims. During their settlement, African immigrants try to reconcile their Black identity with their ... More

This chapter covers relations between longtime Black residents and newly arrived West African Muslims. During their settlement, African immigrants try to reconcile their Black identity with their Muslim identity, but relations between them and their Black counterparts are often strained. Blacks view them as scornful invaders, and Africans see American-born Blacks as incorrigible slackers. Although Harlem residents have held a positive view of Muslims over the years, the Islamic identity of Africans is disregarded in their ongoing conflict. Some Africans are embraced as role models or cultural brokers, while other Blacks see their African clothing and religious practices as an opportunity to reclaim their African heritage.Less

The Problems and Paradoxes of Race

Richard Alba and Nancy Foner

in Strangers No More: Immigration and the Challenges of Integration in North America and Western Europe

This chapter focuses on race, with a stress on the special position of the United States. While color-coded race is a source of stigma in Canada and Western Europe, it is a more severe barrier in the ... More

This chapter focuses on race, with a stress on the special position of the United States. While color-coded race is a source of stigma in Canada and Western Europe, it is a more severe barrier in the United States, especially for immigrants of African ancestry and their children, owing to the legacy of slavery, legal segregation, and ghettoization. Yet, the paradox of racial dynamics in the United States is that they have also had some positive consequences for immigrants there, who are overwhelmingly people of color from Latin America, Asia, and the Caribbean. Ultimately, the heritage of the U.S. civil rights movement and legislation of the 1960s as well as the sheer presence and size of the native black population have provided immigrants in the United States with certain advantages that they lack in Europe and Canada.Less

Introduction: The Newest African Americans?

Marilyn Halter and Violet Showers Johnson

in African & American: West Africans in Post-Civil Rights America

This book chronicles the experiences of first and second generation West African immigrants and refugees in the United States during the last four decades. Drawing on field work and oral histories of ... More

This book chronicles the experiences of first and second generation West African immigrants and refugees in the United States during the last four decades. Drawing on field work and oral histories of West African immigrants aggregated in various locations from West Africa to the West Indies to destinations like metropolitan Atlanta, the book examines how significant segments of black America are forging new meanings and interpretive frameworks for understanding the paradigm of the Atlantic World. More specifically, it explores the transfiguration in the diversity and complexity of the role of the new West African diaspora in the recent history of the black Atlantic. It considers the intricate patterns of adaptation and incorporation among the immigrants and their children, along with the impact of the recent postcolonial and voluntary immigration of West Africans on the changing meanings of “African Americanness.” It also tackles issues of cultural identity formation and socioeconomic incorporation among immigrants and refugees from West Africa, and whether these migrants will become the newest African Americans.Less

Young, Gifted, and West African: Transnational Migrants Growing Up in America

Marilyn Halter and Violet Showers Johnson

in African & American: West Africans in Post-Civil Rights America

This chapter examines the success of young West African immigrants and refugees as well as the 1.5 and second generations in the United States. It begins with an overview of the “student-immigrant” ... More

This chapter examines the success of young West African immigrants and refugees as well as the 1.5 and second generations in the United States. It begins with an overview of the “student-immigrant” tradition as a key element in the West African narrative of success and goes on to discuss the role of education in the upward mobility and achievement of the adult immigrant generation from West Africa. It then considers the so-called “second generation advantage,” based in part on the newcomers' ability to capitalize on the dexterity of their “in-between” status. It also describes the creative ways that young West Africans blend the different cultural components of their fluid ethnic affiliations especially with regards to music, food, fashion, and festive culture. Finally, it explores how the young newcomers develop social relationships not only with other West Africans but also with members of other minority populations such as those from the Caribbean and Latin America.Less

More Than Black: Resistance and Rapprochement

Marilyn Halter and Violet Showers Johnson

in African & American: West Africans in Post-Civil Rights America

This chapter examines the contentious relationship between West African immigrants and African Americans. West Africans, like other black immigrants, have adapted and assimilated in three main ... More

This chapter examines the contentious relationship between West African immigrants and African Americans. West Africans, like other black immigrants, have adapted and assimilated in three main domains: within the reconfigured African ethnicities, within the milieu of African Americans, and within mainstream America. The newcomers have benefited from the dividends of the civil rights movement since the post-1965 wave came to America. The complicated face of race in the United States nonetheless has been lost on many of the West African diaspora, who instead see only a postracial America. This chapter first considers the divide between West African and African American Islam and goes on to discuss the killing of Amadou Diallo as the turning point in the public's awareness of a growing West African presence in America. It then explores racial politics and alliances between black immigrants and African Americans and concludes with an assessment of how West African immigrants' increasing interactions with the native-born continuously redefine the meanings of African American race and culture.Less

Occupational Detour: New Paths to Making a Living

Marilyn Halter and Violet Showers Johnson

in African & American: West Africans in Post-Civil Rights America

This chapter examines the different approaches and outcomes that shape the West African immigrant employment experience in America. In particular, it analyzes the kinds of occupations performed by ... More

This chapter examines the different approaches and outcomes that shape the West African immigrant employment experience in America. In particular, it analyzes the kinds of occupations performed by West African immigrants in the United States, as well as the detours that underlie these patterns of work and socioeconomic mobility among the newcomers. More often than not, the positions the immigrants were trained for and held at home are not available options for them in the United States. The jobs that West Africans find themselves doing in their new settings represent what is termed an “occupational detour.” This chapter considers the aspirations, qualifications, and accomplishments of West Africans and their children for the American labor market. It also discusses the employment detours of West African immigrants as they make their way into a variety of sectors of the U.S. labor force, with particular emphasis on the experiences of nurses and taxi drivers.Less

Transnational Ties/Translocal Connections: Traversing Nations, Cities, and Cultures

Marilyn Halter and Violet Showers Johnson

in African & American: West Africans in Post-Civil Rights America

This chapter examines how transnationalism emerged as a vital component of West African immigrants' everyday life in the United States. More specifically, it considers how West Africans ... More

This chapter examines how transnationalism emerged as a vital component of West African immigrants' everyday life in the United States. More specifically, it considers how West Africans systematically maintained homeland ties and transoceanic connections. It first discusses the different patterns of West African transnationalism, such as sustaining solid bonds between America and their African homelands through visits for vacations, weddings, burials, and the temporary relocation of American-born children. It then explores how the immigrants strive for “comfortable homes” in the United States while sustaining and enhancing ties across nationalities, ethnicities, continents, and American states and cities. It also describes the virtual and actual boundary crossings that reflect connections beyond a singular link between homeland and host societies. Finally, it explains how transnational networks enabled the newcomers, through their homes of origin and other locations of the West African diaspora, to shape their American experiences.Less

Agency, Reciprocal Engagement, and Applied Folklore Practice: Beyond the Smithsonian Folklife Festival

Diana Baird N’Diaye

in Curatorial Conversations: Cultural Representation and the Smithsonian Folklife Festival

This chapter focuses on the participatory research projects African Immigrant Folklife and Will to Adorn: African American Style, Community, Identity, which provided fieldwork training that has ... More

This chapter focuses on the participatory research projects African Immigrant Folklife and Will to Adorn: African American Style, Community, Identity, which provided fieldwork training that has yielded documentation for the planning of Smithsonian Folklife Festivals and other projects. The author reflects on the applied aspects of public folklore, describing a curatorial approach that prioritizes commitment to community self-determination and building reciprocal research-learning relationships between Smithsonian staff and community-based cultural researchers.Less

Africa, the Cold War, and the Diaspora at Home

INGRID MONSON

in Freedom Sounds: Civil Rights Call Out to Jazz and Africa

This chapter explores that ways in which the lives of jazz musicians intersected with global political currents: (1) the career of Paul Robeson; (2) the State Department jazz tours, which began in ... More

This chapter explores that ways in which the lives of jazz musicians intersected with global political currents: (1) the career of Paul Robeson; (2) the State Department jazz tours, which began in 1956; (3) musical projects that were inspired by events on the African continent, e.g. the independence of Ghana in 1957 and the admission of sixteen African nations to the United Nations in 1960; and (4) the influence of African and Afro-Caribbean immigrants on the musical landscape of New York and California.Less

West Africa and West Africans: Imagined Communities in Africa and the Diaspora

Marilyn Halter and Violet Showers Johnson

in African & American: West Africans in Post-Civil Rights America

This chapter examines the trajectory of West African immigrants' experience in the United States by focusing on the complexities of their premigration history. It begins by tracing the precolonial ... More

This chapter examines the trajectory of West African immigrants' experience in the United States by focusing on the complexities of their premigration history. It begins by tracing the precolonial origins of regionalism in West Africa, with particular emphasis on the peoples who lived in the West African region before the colonial era and how they interacted with each other and began to carve the characteristics of the region. It then discusses the most influential developments that shaped and illustrated the interconnectedness of the peoples of West Africa, including the Islamic Revolution or jihads of the nineteenth century. It also considers how the interplay between European imperial nationality and African ethnicity affected the history of West Africa and West Africans, as well as the ways in which the Africans moved toward developing a sense of nationhood and citizenship in relation to ethnicity and postcolonial regionalism. Finally, it explores the impact of intraregional migration on West Africa and West Africans and the migration of West Africans to the United States during the 1960s and 1970s.Less

Capturing a Niche: The West African Enclave Economy

Marilyn Halter and Violet Showers Johnson

in African & American: West Africans in Post-Civil Rights America

This chapter examines the rise of a West African enclave economy in America. In particular, it considers how entrepreneurship and self-employment became the most conspicuous marker of the West ... More

This chapter examines the rise of a West African enclave economy in America. In particular, it considers how entrepreneurship and self-employment became the most conspicuous marker of the West African diaspora in America. It explores how some of the new West African entrepreneurs moved from work in the wage economy to start and manage their own business ventures in order to capture opportunities that distinctly favored their West African backgrounds and American experiences. It also discusses the economic culture within which the West African immigrants function as entrepreneurs and its importance for the specific detour opportunity areas in which they have established their businesses, especially restaurants and clubs, hair braiding, health care staffing and pharmacy, grocery stores or African supermarkets, and fashion production and merchandising. Finally, the chapter explores some of the reasons for the weakening or demise of West African businesses in America.Less

Conclusion: Further into the Twenty-First Century

Marilyn Halter and Violet Showers Johnson

in African & American: West Africans in Post-Civil Rights America

This book has explored the question of whether post-civil rights era immigrants from continental Africa are becoming the newest African Americans in the United States. It has shown that the ... More

This book has explored the question of whether post-civil rights era immigrants from continental Africa are becoming the newest African Americans in the United States. It has shown that the immigrants that comprise the new West African diaspora in America are very much communities in the making. In contrast to Eugene Robinson's argument that contemporary black America, including its cohort of emergent African immigrants, is seeped in the process of disintegration, the book sees the current dynamics as one of reintegration. The book concludes by reflecting on how West African immigrants are remaking what it means to be both African and American in the twenty-first century.Less

Introduction

Moses O. Biney

in From Africa to America: Religion and Adaptation among Ghanaian Immigrants in New York

This introductory chapter sets out the book's purpose, which is to illustrate the growing presence of African immigrants in the United States, the significance of religious congregations in their ... More

This introductory chapter sets out the book's purpose, which is to illustrate the growing presence of African immigrants in the United States, the significance of religious congregations in their lives generally, and specifically the role of religion in their process of adaptation. It tries to show how these immigrants make meaning of their sojourn in the United States and also how they deal with the challenges that confront them in their new environment. The central argument of the book is that immigrant religious congregations are not merely “ethnic enclaves” that offer members safe havens where their “home” culture, norms, and values are preserved from the onslaught of American sociocultural values. Rather, they are spaces and communities where “home culture” and “host society culture” interrogate one another; where experimentation, innovation, conflict, and cohesion take place. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.Less

Radio, race, and the Television Service

Darrell M. Newton

in Paving the Empire Road: BBC Television and West Indian Immigration

This chapter examines how BBC radio and its practices created possibilities for the recognition of African-Caribbean voices, as they discussed life in England years before the arrival of Windrush, ... More

This chapter examines how BBC radio and its practices created possibilities for the recognition of African-Caribbean voices, as they discussed life in England years before the arrival of Windrush, and just before television re-emerged as a cultural force. It also examines how programmes created for West Indian audiences changed foci, and began to offer varied, personal perspectives on life for African-Caribbean immigrants. It outlines the influence of radio upon the BBC Television Service, management directives and pre-war programming. Beginning in 1939, the programme Calling the West Indies featured West Indians troops on active service reading letters on air to their families back home in the Islands. The programme later became Caribbean Voices (1943–58) and highlighted West Indian writers who read and discussed literary works on the World Service. These programmes offered rare opportunities for West Indians to discuss their perspectives on life among white Britons and subsequent social issues.Less

Clandestino

Hans Lucht

in Darkness before Daybreak: African Migrants Living on the Margins in Southern Italy Today

This chapter explains the methodological, thematic, and theoretical aspects of the present study. It introduces the municipality of Castelvolturno, north of Naples, where the study was conducted, and ... More

This chapter explains the methodological, thematic, and theoretical aspects of the present study. It introduces the municipality of Castelvolturno, north of Naples, where the study was conducted, and describes the racism encountered by the West African immigrants who live there. The study focuses on a group of twenty to twenty-five young men from Senya Beraku, Ghana. Later, the group was expanded to include young Ghanaian men from the town of Winneba with whom the fishermen of Senya Beraku had close contact and often shared rooms or apartments. The chapter also discusses the entry of undocumented immigrants into Italy and immigrants' dependence on the underground economy.Less

Le petit prince de Belleville, Maman a un amant: Immigrants and Tourists

in Postcolonial Eyes: Intercontinental Travel in Francophone African Literature

This chapter examines Calixthe Beyala's Le petit prince de Belleville and Maman a un amant, which portrays a Malian immigrant family residing in the Parisian quartier of Belleville. It uses White's ... More

This chapter examines Calixthe Beyala's Le petit prince de Belleville and Maman a un amant, which portrays a Malian immigrant family residing in the Parisian quartier of Belleville. It uses White's notion of ‘altered representations’ in order to examine the particular portrayal and significance of travel and mobility in Le petit prince de Belleville and Maman a un amant. The chapter presents an analysis of the texts' travel practices that sees them as linked to an intricate network of power relations which attempt to contain and police access to mobility. For this reason, one of its crucial elements is the influence of gender, especially female identity, on attitudes to travel and ways of travelling. Another key point of critical discussion is the realignment of migrant identity as the Paris-based Malian family in the texts studied become Western-style tourists or holidaymakers in the south of France. Finally, discussions of the symbolism of dress in both texts are shown to illuminate the particular transformation of female identity provoked by immigrant travel.Less

The Parisian Home as a Europeanising Space

Hugh McDonnell

in Europeanising Spaces in Paris c. 1947-1962

This Chapter examines the connections between discourse about Europe and, in its broadest sense, the Parisian home. The reconfiguration of the urban space of the city in the wake of the experience of ... More

This Chapter examines the connections between discourse about Europe and, in its broadest sense, the Parisian home. The reconfiguration of the urban space of the city in the wake of the experience of the Second World War, and its impact on the habitability of the city, is examined as an exercise that was undertaken with Europe as a guiding standard. The dual affective and concrete senses of home were particularly relevant in regard to the influx into metropolitan France of both European Algerians and Algerian Muslims. Europe and Europeanness are identified as key terms in the attempt to rationalise their absorption into Paris and to manage their accommodation. Europeanness is further explored as a term of ethnicisation of more and less desirable inhabitants in the city, and which impacted especially on Algerian immigrants. Furthermore, discourses of Europeanness and non-Europeanness are analysed in terms of their application to devalue areas of the city populated particularly densely by these North Africans.Less