Black Mosaic

The Politics of Black Pan-Ethnic Diversity

Candis Watts Smith

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781479863105
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Politik

Historically, Black Americans have easily found common ground on political, social, and economic goals. Yet, there are signs of increasing variety of opinion among Blacks in the United States, due in large part to the influx of Afro-Latino, Afro-Caribbean, and African immigrants to the United States. In fact, the very definition of “African American” as well as who can self-identity as Black is becoming more ambiguous. Should we expect African Americans’ shared sense of group identity and high sense of group consciousness to endure as ethnic diversity among the population increases? In Black Mosaic, Candis Watts Smith addresses the effects of this dynamic demographic change on Black identity and Black politics.

Smith explores the numerous ways in which the expanding and rapidly changing demographics of Black communities in the United States call into question the very foundations of political identity that has united African Americans for generations. African Americans’ political attitudes and behaviors have evolved due to their historical experiences with American Politics and American racism. Will Black newcomers recognize the inconsistencies between the American creed and American reality in the same way as those who have been in the U.S. for several generations? If so, how might this recognition influence Black immigrants’ political attitudes and behaviors? Will race be a site of coalition between Black immigrants and African Americans? In addition to face-to-face interviews with African Americans and Black immigrants, Smith employs nationally representative survey data to examine these shifts in the attitudes of Black Americans. Filling a significant gap in the political science literature to date, Black Mosaic is a groundbreaking study about the state of race, identity, and politics in an ever-changing America.

1

Black on Black History

In 1939, Ira De Augustine Reid took note of the fact that “between 1899 and 1937 approximately 150,000 Negro aliens were legally admitted to the United States” and in turn asked, “How does a group theoretically regarded as biologically unassimilable in the United States’ melting pot accommodate?”¹ Historically, Black immigrants melted into a larger Black racial category.² Contemporarily, some scholars argue that the significance of race is declining in today’s society, thereby allowing Black immigrants to make claim to distinct ethnic identities rather than being required to adopt an undifferentiated Black racial identity.³ The fact of the matter is, however, race still influences individuals’ life chances and the well-being of racial groups as a whole, and furthermore, “choices” of identity remain constrained, especially as we move down the racial hierarchy. Reid’s question, then, is still quite pertinent.

This chapter lays the groundwork for a theory of diasporic consciousness. First, this chapter includes brief descriptions of the racial landscapes of the regions from which many Black immigrants come. Black immigrants do not come to the U.S. as blank slates, but rather they have been socialized in a racial context quite different from that of the United States.⁴ Racial socialization — or the process by which people learn the meaning of their race and racial status in a particular society — shapes the way we understand our identity as well as how race might affect social status, culture, and group history.⁵ In this chapter, I compare and contrast how race is constructed in the U.S., Latin America and the Caribbean, and Africa in an effort to better predict how diasporic consciousness is shaped among Blacks. Identities are heavily influenced by the construction of race in people’s country of origin; hence, when Blacks of different ethnic origins interact within the boundaries of the United States, it will be helpful to understand how race is conceptualized in different societies.

But again, centering on Reid’s question, what happens when Blacks from across the globe collide and interact within American society? Scholars have primarily focused on the aspect of African American and Black immigrant relations that may be characterized as hostile, antagonistic, and competitive, but history shows that the relationships between native- and foreign-born Blacks are very complex and contextual, as they are dependent on a number of factors — domestic and international. There are times when African Americans and Black immigrants are in accord and focus on the problems that they face because of their shared racial identity. And there are times when native and immigrant Blacks are at odds with each other. This chapter takes a brief look at the historical interactions of African Americans and Black immigrants. These relationships are not new, so homing in on what happened in the past will surely help to provide a foundation on which to more accurately predict when African Americans and Black immigrants will be racially united or ethnically divided.

Race and Place

Definitions of race as a concept as well as the boundaries of racial categories change over time and from place to place.⁶ “Racial identity, as an organizing mechanism, is situationally emergent. It is shaped by cumulative social experience and is enacted in reaction to context-specific social interaction.”⁷ Thus, race is a social construct. The best way to understand what “socially constructed” means is to look comparatively at how race is structured and understood in different societies. Similarly, the most optimal way to understand what immigrants bring to the United States is to have a grasp of how race is shaped in their countries and regions of origin.

Race in the United States

The introduction of race to the U.S. began with slavery as well as the expropriation of Indian lands by white colonists.⁸ Blacks and American Indians were racialized in order to legitimize the enslavement of Africans and the expulsion and genocide of American Indians at a time when whites needed to justify America’s looming contradiction and dilemma. The American creed is predicated on egalitarianism, but discrimination and inequality is deeply embedded in the foundation of America’s political, economic, and social spheres.⁹

Black and white racial identities have been developed in tandem in the U.S and in other parts of the world, too; historically, whiteness was identified by the absence of Blackness in the United States. Those who had at least one ancestor of African descent were identified as Black. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century scientists “determined” that Blacks were inherently and genetically (although that language did not exist at the time) inferior to whites, and they suggested that any mixing between “pure” white blood and “tainted” Black blood would contaminant and dilute the purity of whiteness; consequently, the boundaries of white identity became very exclusive.

This idea of hypodescent, or the “one-drop” rule, developed by “scientific” communities was incorporated into the workings of American political institutions, including the courts, state legislatures, U.S. Congress, and other bureaucratic institutions. These institutions created and maintained laws based on racial pseudoscience for most of America’s history. Even through the twentieth century, the notions around the contamination of “black blood” and “miscegenation” contributed to shaping the boundaries of white and Black racial groups, despite the fact that race as a biological reality was denounced at least three-quarters of a century ago.

In the United States, “Blackness” and being racialized as Black is a ubiquitous phenomenon. While some Americans and new immigrants to the United States have challenged the notion of the “one drop,” or the idea that one Black ancestor requires one to identify as Black, this notion of hypodescent still affects those with identifiable African attributes.¹⁰ Black racial identity in the United States has historically been “a particularly and peculiarly totalizing identity that has been applied to anyone of African descent, even when it fails to capture the social heritage of individuals whose cultures and identities were not formed in the particularly American context of slavery, discrimination, and segregation.”¹¹

Race in Latin America and the Caribbean

Many people argue that because race in Latin America and the Caribbean is not constructed as it is in the United States, race does not really exist, or if it does, it is not an important determinant of an individual’s life chances.¹² Scholars, in particular, who subscribe to such a notion argue that a strict “Black-white” dichotomy as well as practices such as Jim Crow laws and antimiscegenation laws have made the United States a particularly vicious place for nonwhite people; they would suggest that since none of these laws existed in Latin American and in many Caribbean societies, racism does not exist. In Latin American countries, more specifically, some suggest that Spanish and Portuguese colonialists were much more apt to mix racially, so slavery in Latin America was not nearly as brutal as it was in the United States. Researchers and lay people in this camp tend to go on to assert that while there might be some discrimination in Latin American societies today, it is “benign” and largely based on color and/or class.¹³ In the Caribbean and in Latin America, people are categorized by their skin color, thereby creating a spectrum from light to dark, denoting various degrees of racial mixture.¹⁴ Race in these regions is not simply a matter of physical features, but ancestry, social class, education, wealth, and occupation also serve to determine one’s racial identity.¹⁵ While race relations in Latin America and the Caribbean, for the most part, have never been based on strict racial categories, racial discrimination and hierarchy did and do exist.¹⁶

Nancy Foner explains that in the West Indies, income, occupation, living standards, and personal associates are important in determining a person’s life chances, in addition to skin color. Most people in the Caribbean are Black, and Blacks tend to fill the most prestigious, lucrative, and professional positions in Caribbean societies; but whiteness is still associated with wealth, privilege, and power.¹⁷ Foner asserts that while people are aware of shade differences, “blackness is not in itself … a barrier to upward social mobility or to social acceptance at the top.”¹⁸ Milton Vickerman explains that in addition to the fact that Blacks are the supermajority of the population in the Caribbean, Caribbean political leaders and representatives tend to propagate the notion that their societies are diverse places where members of various races peacefully coexist.¹⁹

In many Latin American countries, a similar ideology is also promulgated through notions of mestizaje and racial democracy. Mestizaje is the idea that a prevalence of mixed ancestry in a society means that its citizens are racially homogeneous; the logic of mestizaje leads to the erroneous conclusion that racial differences cannot be made because everyone is racially mixed. Historically, many Latin American countries had large Black populations as well as high rates of miscegenation. In turn, many of the elites were negatively implicated by dominant American and European science at the time. Elites, who identified as white, too could have Black relatives and children or even be Black themselves if they had adopted the U.S.’s “one-drop” rule. Instead, elites reshaped their history and interpreted science to their benefit. They argued that racial mixing would improve the racial stock of their countries through “whitening.” Racially mixed people would be whiter than their Black parent.²⁰ Over time, this legacy has evolved into mestizaje and racial democracy ideologies.

The basic tenets of these “colorblind” racial ideologies are (1) race does not exist, only color; (2) physical appearance and not origin (or race) determines a person’s color; (3) there is no discrimination because there have not been laws that allow portions of the population to be second-class citizens; (4) educated mixed-race people and lighter-skinned blacks will be economically, culturally, socially, and politically assimilated into the white establishment — this is called the “mulatto escape hatch,” and (5) the continued existence of the social hierarchy by color is simply a leftover from slavery rather than current-day discriminatory behaviors and ideology.²¹

People in Latin America and the Caribbean may suggest that they have a “shade” problem rather than a race problem, but the distinction between race and color cannot be so easily made.²² The primary reason is because race and racism undergird notions of color and prejudice. The denial of Black ancestry is one of the most blatant manifestations of Latin American racism.²³ Further, it should be noted, “skin color stratification requires both racism and colorism.”²⁴ The notions of “whitening” and mestizaje were and are predicated on the perceived necessity to eliminate any signs of African “origin.” That is to say, the real target of color discrimination is, in fact, race.²⁵

This “shade” problem also has material consequences. Those who are at the lighter end of the spectrum are provided more benefits; meanwhile, those who are on the darker end are provided more disadvantages from society. There are many nonwhites who occupy higher economic and social strata in Latin America and the Caribbean, but for the most part, an overwhelming proportion of poor and politically powerless people are darker skinned and/or nonwhite.²⁶ Such a system can be characterized as a pigmentocracy — or a social hierarchy based on skin color.²⁷ It looks very similar to America’s racialized social system.²⁸ Whether one views race in Latin America and the Caribbean through the lens of mestizaje or through the lens of pigmentocracy, it is important to keep these ideas in mind when we consider how Black immigrants from these regions understand and develop their own racial identity while in the United States.

Race in Africa

Research concerning identity, difference, and hierarchy in Africa predominantly centers around notions of ethnicity, and ethno-political, tribal, or national identities,²⁹ but there is a small body of literature that discusses race as an important identity in African societies. Scholars who explore racial issues in Africa primarily focus on the development of racial identities due to the white colonization of several African countries.³⁰ A major theme in this body of literature centers on the notion that European colonists fused notions of race and nation. More specifically, when white colonists in countries such as South Africa, Zimbabwe, Sudan, and Tanzania seized African territories to create “formal” states, they also dictated who would be citizens within that space.³¹ Just as we saw in the United States, the boundaries of citizenship in many African countries were exclusive, allowing only those who were ascribed a white identity entry into the polity and the privileges of citizenship. As such, a race-conscious colonial hierarchy served as a major force in racializing Africans as well as Indians and other Asians in various African countries.

James R. Brennan paints a more complex picture of racialization processes prior to European colonization; he asserts that while European concepts of race and civilization were brought over and broadly disseminated through schools, the press, and colonial propaganda, “it would be a mistake to overlook earlier discourses that elaborate ideas of race.”³² Brennan, whose work focuses on East African countries, shows that there existed racial hierarchies in these countries, whereby an Arab identity was viewed as dominant and mainstream, and it was this identity that was most associated with high status.³³ Brennan explains that the Kiswahili term ustaarabu means “to become Arab,” and in order to assimilate into precolonial Swahili society, one had to distance oneself from slave origins, to claim deep roots in Islam, and to become “culturally” Arab.³⁴

While race, as we understand it in the U.S. context, is not easily translated into the contexts of various African countries, one can see important similarities. First, we see that even in countries where ethnic or tribal identities are emphasized, there still is possibility for hierarchy among ethnic groups. Rwanda provides an excellent example. Philip Gourevitch shows that even though there were few differences in phenotype and other physical features between most Hutu and Tutsi Rwandans, issues of power and hierarchy were at the foundation of the 1994 conflict in Rwanda.³⁵ What is more, while there may not have been physical differences, both of these tribes had stereotypes associated wi...