Race Strangled

(My Perspective: Malik, a Black college student from Brooklyn, New York who is majoring in Political Science in the mid-1990s)

Dear Max,

I just wanted to share an article I came across while I was at work. It touches on a few of the points about the “melting pot” conversation we were discussing in class a few days ago and what the implications of this concept meant (and still means) for African Americans. I think Toni Morrison hits it right on the head and I want you to read it in its entirety, but I’ll give you my commentary.

Morrison lists the finished products that come out of the Americanization of white immigrants and brilliantly juxtaposes an equal shot at pursuing the American dream with the “scorned black” who was alienated in the process … barred from gaining entry into the melting pot that attempts to wash away traces of ethnic, national and cultural diversity that people bring with them. Let me know what you think, but it seems like Morrison positions the concept of race as it has been constructed in the American imagination as a ploy to preserve and sustain whiteness. This is supported by her Gatsby reference in which Nick remarks “If we don’t look out the white race will be utterly submerged.”

This preservation of whiteness with the rite-of-passage white immigrants go through upon their arrival in the United States automatically rallies these new Americans to demonize and alienate African Americans whom were the ones to help build this nation to what it has become. The audacity of them! But can I blame them? It seems to me that there has always been a striving to assimilate and become “whiter” to reap the privileges that come with full American citizenship and the promise of true equality, even within the Black community. Especially put in the context of immigration and blackness, I would’ve loved for Toni Morrison to address how Afro-Caribbean immigrants are conditioned to perceive and treat African Americans.

Back home in Brooklyn, where there is a large Afro-Caribbean immigrant population, I see and feel the tension that exists. Though we may all be Black, we are certainly not unified due to discrepancies in how we think about race, considering our different histories and cultures. But there also seems to be a lot of animosity, privileging, stereotyping and othering amongst African Americans and Afro-Caribbean immigrants. I had a Nigerian friend who once told me that he was taught to look at African Americans as animals and that he was instructed to keep his distance out of fear of being associated with us or worse, becoming one of us. While this hurt me, I was reminded of when my father lost his job and pointed to more qualified and gifted black immigrants as the culprit of taking away African American opportunities. The tension definitely cuts across both ways. American borders appear to act as filters for constructing whiteness and blackness. When speaking about black immigrants, I posit that they, too, are Americanized but in a very different way from white immigrants. While Afro-Caribbean immigrants enjoy privileges that grant them mobility and access that African Americans are often excluded, they do not escape the entire idea of what it means to be black in America. They, too, learn that regardless of their path to “citizenship,” they are “race strangled."

Let me know your thoughts on all of this. See you in class!

Best,

Malik