Immigration is a major contributor to the United States of America. In recent history, the Hart-Cellar Immigration Reform Act of 1965 and the Immigration Act of 1990 both increased the number of immigrants permitted a year. Due to the two legislations, nearly 22 million immigrants entered the U.S. before 2000. The percentage of immigrants grew from 3.3% Black before 2000 to 9.2% in 2010 or later.
The sharp increase in immigration rates in the U.S. adds to the already diverse landscape of Black America. For example, the Gullah-Geechee people are descendants of enslaved Africans based in coastal Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Florida. Black people established their place in the Seminole tribe by allying with or marrying Muscogee and Creek people in Florida. Additionally, some Louisiana Creoles have a significant amount of African ancestry and identify as Black.
However, immigrants do not receive a warm welcome all the time. No matter the race of the people coming in, native-born Americans can harbor negative feelings about the foreign-born population. The Black community is no exception as tension has been occurring between African Americans, who are the descendants of enslaved Africans in the U.S., and Black immigrant communities for the past few decades.
Ethnic tensions between Black immigrants and African Americans are mostly caused by outside influences, such as competition for resources and misrepresentation. Dr. Yndia Lorcik-Wilmot, a Caribbean American sociology professor at Northeastern University, points out that tension between Black people of different ethnicities did not always exist. Instead, capitalism’s roots in competition make Black people operate off a scarcity mindset, which fuels African Americans’ apprehension towards Black immigrants and vice versa.
“But if capitalism is set up in such a way where you have free market share, but it’s based on competition and it’s globalized,” Dr. Lorick-Wilmot says, “then, it doesn't really matter which set of immigrants enter the context. It’s all about, ‘Well, you’re competing with me because you have the potential to displace me.’”
The competition over scarce resources manifests itself in statistics comparing Black foreign-born people with African Americans over the years. For example, African Americans in Boston have slightly higher poverty rates than Black immigrants. Also, Sub-Saharan African immigrants in the U.S. have higher levels of education compared to native-born and other foreign-born Americans.
One form of misrepresenting Black people is the misnomer “African American.” Dr. Lorick-Wilmot says, “It’s used as a shorthand or a cultural model to encapsulate large groups of people, and it's unfair because it doesn't really speak to the ethnic, the linguistic, the religious diversity that exists already amongst African-descended people.”
The generalization of all Black people as “African American,” a phrase mostly used for the American descendants of enslaved Africans, may discourage Black immigrants from associating with African Americans. In “Caribbean New York: Black Immigrants and the Politics of Race,” Philip Kasinitz mentions that non-Hispanic Afro-Caribbeans simultaneously become part of America and Black America.
“They entered a society far more prosperous than the ones they left, but in so doing they also joined the ranks of America’s most consistently oppressed minority group,” Kastinitz says.
To avoid misconceptions, emphasizing ethnic identity is important for Caribbeans and other Black immigrant communities. However, some have done this to experience some aspect of privilege because they do not want to be in what American society deems the lower rank.
Adaobi C. Iheduru wrote about “the social distance” between Africans and African Americans. She argued that Africans’ media exposure to the stereotypically rude and violent African American “contributed to negative interactions.”
On the other hand, mainstream American media has fed African Americans a distorted view of Africans. In “Representations: A Cancerous Image,” Daniele Mezzana wrote that Western news outlets commonly report on Africa’s “wars, revolts, famines, (and) epidemics” in a sensationalized manner. Iheduru mentions that white society teaches African Americans are, thus, the better group because they have lived in the U.S. for decades.
Several representations of Black people do not come from a Black lens constantly and spotlight the negative experiences. Dr. Lorick-Wilmot says that Black immigrant communities are not necessarily left out of representation, but they are left out of positive media portrayals.
Despite American media’s failure to properly represent Black people, access to technology can fill in the gaps. “We are empowered to use the technologies that we have to be able to frame the stories in ways that we don’t necessarily have to only rely on U.S. mass media to tell our stories for us,” Dr. Lorick-Wilmot says.
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