Chelsea Nsonwu
AFRI-L232
Response paper 2
African Diaspora in North America
The purpose of the article is to revisit organizational themes and concepts used in previous chapters as a way to understand the multiple perspectives on experiences of the African Diaspora in America and Canada. There are two main themes in this article. The first theme is that the people in the African Diaspora are not homogenous and are extremely diverse in many ways. The second theme and main argument of the article is that the racial inequality imbedded in the history of Canada and America, effects and influences the well-being of black immigrants and native born black people in Canada and America.
Black immigrants first meet this inequality by trying to enter
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This separation also applies to Black immigrants in the area. However in the Black residential areas, West Indians (Caribbeans excluding Hattians) live in the more wealthy areas while African Americans and Hattians live in the poorer areas. Because West Indians have greater emphasis and education, achievement and upward mobility, they are able to afford rent and buy home in nicer areas in the black residential area. West Indian’s perceived ‘blackness’ make it hard for them to exist in White communities, but in Black communities their ‘blackness’ does restrict mobility in the community. So more often than not, West Indian tend to live in Black communities because there is mobility, the can open up shops, and their merit is recognized. African Immigrants are recent population in America and make up a tiny part of the population, but have higher levels of completed education compared to Afro-Caribbeans, African Americans, Whites, and Asians. However the average income of Africans is less than the average income of Afro-Caribbeans. Even though a higher percentage of Africans live below the poverty line, compared to Afro-Caribbeans, they have a lower unemployment rate. Like West Indians, Africans are able to have mobility in Black communities, but are unable have the same in white …show more content…
Western conceptions of people are so powerful that they have also entered non-Western countries. Because of this, there is this single story, of a diverse group of people, being told, spread around, and believed to be true. From reading this article I have come to understand that between different Black immigrants groups are treated differently. In America, African immigrants have more socioeconomic mobility, than the African immigrants in Canada. As the daughter of African immigrants in America, I have seen and experienced the plight of Africans. Many African immigrants do not always start off with high paying jobs, but they are hardworking and not satisfied with staying with staying in the same place. Africans are always trying to better themselves; with this mentality I believe Africans will not be content with inequality and will strive to change America and
In Chapter 1 and 2 of “Creating Black Americans,” author Nell Irvin Painter addresses an imperative issue in which African history and the lives of Africans are often dismissed (2) and continue to be perceived in a negative light (1). This book gives the author the chance to revive the history of Africa, being this a sacred place to provide readers with a “history of their own.” (Painter 4) The issue that Africans were depicted in a negative light impacted various artworks and educational settings in the 19th and early 20th century. For instance, in educational settings, many students were exposed to the Eurocentric Western learning which its depiction of Africa were not only biased, but racist as well.
More job opportunities began to open up therefore, there was an increased need for skilled workers. Companies thought it was a great idea to hire African Americans who would be more than willing to work, grant them a smaller pay and have their business continue to thrive in the prosperous decade. The white leaders of the industry often took advantage of policies to ensure that African Americans would be confined to the least desirable jobs with the lowest wages (Phillips 33). Within the jobs, workers would also be faced with discrimination. The African Americans would receive death threats in their place of work almost daily and were made to feel as if they were only there to benefit the economy (Phillips 39) For many years in American History, African Americans only received training to be skilled workers, as it didn 't seem necessary for them to receive any further education (Blanton 1).
Throughout Stephen Steinberg’s book the Ethnic Myth, multiple examples of how different ethnicities achieved economic ability and how others did not is discussed. He analysis a variety of different immigrant groups and how more than their cultural values played into whether or not they were successful in America. The following information in this paper will provide an example using black Americans as part of the “culture-of-poverty”. “The wronged are always wrong…” (New Republic, June 24, 1916) is the opening statement to chapter four and is associated with why the Negro is blamed for their own misfortune.
Africville is a prominent black community on the southern shore of Bedford Basin, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. It had four hundred residents, most escaped from slavery in America and saw Halifax as a better place to live than in slavery. The African Canadians knew that the white people had a better life than them since white people could have any job they want, they earned good pay, they were hired for jobs easily, lived with better health care, and their kids would have the best education, they received good households, all white people were treated equally, and white people`s life expectancy was longer than black peoples. In this situation, Africville was a place where all black people could be together but be excluded from the other
How come people are treating African Americans differently than how they treat white people? People believe that we treat African Americans differently is because of their skin color and because they think that they are bad. American people are just as bad, people think just because their skin color that they are “up to no good.” In the modern world people don't separate them as much as they did back then. In this book there is something bad that happens.
The African – American 's Assimilation into White America America is often considered the land of opportunities, a place where people can have a fresh start, a clean slate. America is a land that is made up of immigrants. Over the centuries America has been a place where people dream to live in, however the American dream wasn 't as perfect as believed; there were issues of race inferiority, slavery and social inequality amongst other problems. When a person arrives into a new society he has a difficult task ahead of him- to assimilate into that new society- which includes the economical, cultural, political and social aspects. In the following paper I will discuss how the African American, who came as slaves to America, has fought over the centuries to achieve equality in a white society that discriminated them.
In Basil Davidson’s video, “Different but Equal”, Davidson examines ancient Africa, and how Africans were perceived in ancient and modern times. Davidson discusses pre-colonized Africa and its history, and how racism prevailed in the past and in modern day. By discussing early civilizations, as well as modern day perspectives, Davidson allows the viewer to have expansive information on how individuals view Africans and their culture. In Davidson’s video, he discusses how people in the past have viewed Africa and African culture, and how that relates to our perception of Africa in modern times.
Unfortunately, this does not account for institutionalized racism, unequal access to education and services, and a system that perpetuates a growing divide between the rich and the poor. In McKinnon’s article he argues that our location of birth has an affect of how we are born: poor, rich, or middle class, “The reality is that where you’re born matters tremendously. where you start in life, unfortunately, has a huge impact on where you’ll end up. Think about it. A zip code is not just a number, it represents everything inside of that area – including the hospital in which you are born, the schools where you attend, the streets on which you will play, the stores and restaurants that will feed you, and the jobs to which your parents and eventually you might have access.”
Being black in America for most people means you have to face discrimination, and live the hard life at slums. However, as time goes on, there are more and more successful African
Ethnic Notions: Divided From The Start The film 'Ethnic Notions ' illustrates various ways in which African Americans were impersonated during the 19th and 20th centuries. It follows and shows the development of the rooted stereotypes which have generated bias towards African Americans. If a film of this kind had such an affectionate influence on me, it is no surprise people adopted these ideas back then. The use of new and popular media practices in those days was more than adequate in selling the black inferiority to the general public.
Cultural Relativism and Women of the African Diaspora Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Maryse Condé present various female roles in order to encapsulate the challenges faced by women of the African diaspora. In Purple Hibiscus, female characters like protagonist Kambili, Beatrice, and Ifeoma display very different personalities that help one another better understand themselves and their roles as women in their time, and more importantly, the changing world around them. In I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem, readers follow the life story of Tituba, a woman who from birth faced obstacles because of the color of her skin and what that meant to the world surrounding her. Though Tituba and Beatrice are very different characters with experiences not
The modernity of African society is a product of past urbanization, westernization and industrialization, developments which were particularly substantial during the periods of colonization of African land, when change and evolution was forced upon the native people (Seekings, 2018). Various forms of exclusion and oppression are evident in modern African society, crumbs left behind from a past of the likes of white supremacy; slavery; and the results of sudden drastic economic inclines and declines. Colonization was the process that acted as the initiation of the formation of several social divisions, these divisions still presenting themselves within African society. Some of the most notable of these groupings, which shall be further discussed, include the race divide, the class divide and the culture divide. It is very often the case that these divisions are coalesced, connected in some way or another.
The second type of segregation has fascinated researchers the most, and they have distinguished, again, several different cultural reasons as to why immigrants chose to do so: religious, linguistic, economic, and family-related reasons. As discussed by Simmel in his article “Segregation”, this type of segregation may have initially positively influenced the newcomers, but has large negative effects on the future of the immigrants in the
Diasporic literature proposes an individual’s relationship to the former home and the present one, to a culture left behind and to a culture now assimilated. They are living in the third space (Bhabha n.p.) Lot of questions comes to one’s mind when it comes to Diaspora. How do migrated people assimilate? How do they tackle with alienation?
independence in early 1960s with the exception of South West Africa (Namibia) and South Africa which regained majority rule in 1990 and 1994 respectively after being protracted by the Nationalist Afrikaners’ Apartheid regime. The role of Pan African leaders and the transfer of the movement from the Diaspora to Africa: Pan Africanism has been discussed in details in chapter two of this book, the ‘Origin of Black People in the New World and Diaspora’. The movement as agreed by various scholars originated in the America and the Carribean Islands where African slaves were forced into white economic farms with much exploitation, humiliation, oppression, discrimination, harassment and generally had been denied socio-economic and political rights. The origin of Pan African movement can be traced back from the Triangular Slave trade, the slavery