Relations Between Africans, African Americans and Afro-Caribbeans: Tensions, Indifference and Harmony
Author: Godfrey Mwakikagile
Paperback: 148 pages
Publisher: New Africa Press (5 January 2007)
ISBN-10: 098025874X
ISBN-13: 9780980258745
Chapter Two:
Africans, African Americans and Afro-Caribbeans
AFRICANS, African Americans and Afro-Caribbeans are united by their common ancestry. They are also united by their history of oppression and suffering under their European conquerors.
Yet they constitute distinct groups whose identities have been shaped by different historical experiences in different environments.
But they are all an African people, a sentiment that has been forcefully articulated by many people including prominent leaders such as Marcus Garvey, Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, Sekou Toure, CLR James, Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael renamed Kwame Ture and many others. As Nelson Mandela said in a speech before an African American audience in Harlem, New York, not long after he was released from prison: “We are all children of Africa.”
Yet, in spite of such common identity and a common history of oppression and suffering, relations between Africans and African Americans, and between Afro-Caribbeans and African Americans as well as between Africans and Afro-Caribbeans have not always been good.
Many of them don't always see themselves as one people in spite of their common African heritage. They constitute distinct ethnic groups in countries such as the United States, Canada, Britain and the island nations in the Caribbean.
They have shared and conflicting perceptions about each other. Those perceptions have also been shaped not only by their different historical experiences but also by their conquerors who have played a major role using various means – including miseducation and the media – to keep them divided.
The perceptions have also been shaped by other factors in contemporary times. For example, hostility towards Africans in Britain by a significant number of Afro-Caribbeans – even if muted in many cases – can be attributed to the upward mobility of a disproportionately large number of African immigrants.
Studies show that African immigrants are probably the most highly educated group in the United Kingdom surpassing the Chinese and other Asians especially from India and Pakistan who were ahead for many years and still remain some of the most highly educated people in Britain.
In addition to being the most highly educated people in Britain, surpassing not only other immigrants but also whites native to the UK, Africans are also going to be the largest ethnic group in the United Kingdom by 2010.
Already about half a million, the population of Africans in the UK has, in only a few years, surpassed that of West Indians including those of Asian origin – for example Indians from Trinidad and Jamaica – and not just Afro-Caribbeans.
According to data obtained from the 2001 census, there were 566,000 black Caribbeans by that year, and 485,000 black Africans.
Many of those Africans also have higher incomes than Afro-Caribbeans mainly because of their high education. Yet on average, even those with high education earn less than West Indians do because they are less “British” than Afro-Caribbeans in the UK and are therefore not fully accepted in British society. The result is discrimination across the spectrum.
Even new immigrants straight from the Caribbean islands which were once British colonies are considered to have been anglicized and are therefore more British than African immigrants who have lived in Britain even longer than the new arrivals from the West Indies. The new West Indian immigrants also consider themselves to be anglicized, hence more “British” than African immigrants regardless of how long these Africans have lived in Britain.
The isolation of Africans is accentuated by cultural differences and is made even worse because African immigrants retain their cultures and traditions and even pass them on to their children born and brought up in the United Kingdom. And their strong family values have helped them to maintain cohesive units and succeed in life at a rate higher than that of other black immigrants from the West Indies.
It is a disparity that not only generates, and fuels, tensions between the two groups despite their common identity as blacks and as minorities in a predominantly white society; it reinforces stereotypes about each other; it prevents them from forging alliances in pursuit of common goals and objectives; and it even affects relations between the people of both groups who don't even live in the UK.
Studies also show that African immigrants surpass other groups as well in many areas. According to a BBC report, “African Success in the UK Highlighted,” 7 September 2005:
"African-born immigrants in Britain are doing better economically than many other migrants, a major new survey shows. The report (was written) by the Institute for Public Policy Research....
“The Born Abroad” report showed that over half of Britain's population growth in recent years could be attributed to immigration. South Africans and Kenyans top the list of African countries included.
The study, based on the national census for the 10 years up to 2001, showed that the biggest increase in migrants from Africa during the period came from Somalia and Zimbabwe."
Zimbabwe has some of the most highly educated people in Africa and in the world and many of them have settled in Britain, especially since the late nineties.
The status of African immigrants in Britain as the most highly educated group is virtually identical to their brethren in the United States where tensions also exist between Africans and African Americans for a number of other reasons as well, not just disparity in income and education between the two groups. According to the 2000 census in the United States, African immigrants had the highest income among all immigrant groups, attributed to their high education. They were also identified as the most highly educated group in the country.
Years of intermingling and even “intermarriage” between members of these groups of African people have not broken down let alone eliminated all the barriers which divide them. They maintain their separate identities even when they live in the same communities, as many of them are forced to, because of racism. Many of them are also suspicious of each other. And their separate identities are fortified by stereotypes and misconceptions about each other and by their different historical experiences: African, American, and Afro-Caribbean.
Although many of them get along very well, there are many cases in which relations between and among the members of these groups are also characterized by tensions generated not only by misconceptions about each other but also by rivalries and cultural differences.
Even the Afro-Caribbean community is not a monolithic whole. Although many of them probably identify themselves as a collective entity with a common history and common culture – as West Indians – they still don't constitute an organic whole that is indivisible.
They also have their own differences in terms of how they see and perceive each other. For example, many Jamaicans, being from the biggest island in the Caribbean which they also arrogantly think is the best in every conceivable way, call other West Indians “small islanders”; not a term of endearment.
It is a derogatory term, although probably not as offensive as what some West Indians call Africans - “bush people,' “tree-climbing”creatures and other insults.
And it is virtually impossible to understand intergroup dynamics in these ethnic communities without first understanding that a very large number of people – if not the majority – in all these groups see themselves as having their own unique and separate identities different from those of other groups even if they are all linked by their common African heritage. After all, even in Africa itself, the Yoruba are not the same as the Zulu, or the Kikuyu the same as the Ewe in many fundamental respects. The list goes on and on.
Some of these observations - on relations between the members of these groups - are derived from my personal experience when I lived in Michigan in the United States and had the opportunity to interact with many African Americans and Afro-Caribbeans on regular basis in the seventies and eighties; an opportunity I also had when I first arrived in the United States in 1972 and interacted with many African Americans in New York City and with a few Afro-Caribbeans in Washington, D.C. Some of these Afro-Caribbeans, from Trinidad, stayed with me when they visited Tanzania before I went to the United States. We were already in touch before they came to Tanzania.
I have also incorporated into my analysis the experiences of others in the United States and in the United Kingdom.
Although I have written about relations between Africans and African Americans in this book, the study of relations between continental Africans and the people of African descent in the diaspora cannot be complete and is not comprehensive enough without including Afro-Caribbeans and other Africans in the diaspora.
They are united yet divided, sometimes in a strange way, thus fuelling tensions among these groups. For example, a significant number of Africans and Afro-Caribbeans – not all but a significant number of them – are united in their stereotypical view of black Americans as a people who are not highly motivated and who don't take advantage of the abundant opportunities which exist for them to succeed in the land of opportunity, of milk and honey, this promised land of the United States.
And the fact that the members of these two groups on average have higher incomes than those of African Americans only reinforces the notion that black Americans are “lazy” or don't take life seriously and would rather spend their money on instant gratification than save for the future.
Coincidentally, it is a notion that was forcefully articulated by Professor Edward Banfield in his most influential and highly controversial book The Unheavenly City: The Nature and Future f Our Urban Crisis and other works and by other conservatives to justify government neglect of the poor, especially blacks and other minorities, in the United States.
He had profound impact on policy formulation when he acted as an adviser to Republican presidents and conservative law makers in Congress.
Banfield went on to argue that poverty, not racism, was the major problem black people face; ignoring the fact that racism itself is also responsible for much of the poverty black people face.
Many African and Afro-Caribbean immigrants subscribe to this highly offensive notion – that black Americans don't save their money but spend it right away for instant gratification - even if they are not necessarily ideological conservatives like Banfield and other rightwing scholars and ideologues.
But even higher levels of incomes especially among African immigrants should be looked at in their proper context. Intolerable conditions in Africa have forced many highly educated Africans to flee to the West. It is these conditions which explain why, for example, there are more than 30,000 Nigerian doctors in the United States; more than 600 Ghanaian doctors in New York City alone; and why in Chicago there are more doctors from Sierra Leone than there are in Sierra Leone.
Those are grim statistics. And they tell a sad story abut the conditions in our countries which force tens of thousands of highly educated people including professionals such as doctors, engineers, scientists and many others in different critical fields, to flee the continent every year in search of greener pastures in Western countries and elsewhere especially in the industrialized world.
But that is only the tip of the iceberg. Africa has suffered a massive brain drain through the years since independence in the sixties and continues to do so. And it is these immigrants who are at the centre of controversy between Africans and Afro-Caribbeans in Britain; and sometimes even between Africans and African Americans in the United States, although tensions between the two groups are not as highly pronounced or visibly expressed in many different ways including violent attacks as they are in the UK between African immigrants and black West Indians and their children.
Such high levels of achievement are, of course, a source of pride for many African immigrants and are even cited as a distinctive feature of their “unique” identity contrasted with that of Afro-Caribbeans and African Americans. And it feeds on itself, fuelling stereotypes about Afro-Caribbeans - especially in Britain - and about African Americans as non-achievers, unlike black African immigrants, thus exacerbating tensions which already exist between these groups.
Yet, when viewed from another perspective, the presence of a very large number of highly educated Africans in Britain and in the United States should be an embarrassment to Africans, and not something they should be proud of.
They are in America and in Britain and in other countries because their countries – in Africa – are messed up! Are they proud of the mess? They should be home helping their people and building their countries. Imagine if the 30,000 Nigerian doctors who live and work in the United States returned to Nigeria; and the doctors from Sierra Leone who live and work in Chicago alone returned to Sierra Leone. It would make a big difference in their countries.
Unfortunately, conditions in Africa don't allow or encourage these immigrants to go back home. They therefore remain in the West where they earn some of the highest incomes among all racial and ethnic groups because of their educational achievements across the spectrum. In fact, there are more Africans with Ph.D. degrees living and working in Western countries than they are in Africa.
Therefore their high incomes in the United States, Britain and elsewhere in the West - even of those with other degrees and not just doctorates - is directly proportional to their high levels of education, pushing the average income of African immigrants as a whole, or as groups, to a higher level than would have been the case had this push-pull factor not existed.
The majority of them would be in Africa if conditions back home were conducive to employment and the incomes of African immigrants who would have chosen to live and work in the West would have been lower than it is now.
The aggregate income of Africans in the West has been high for quite some now not only because of their high levels of education but also because of their professional experience; for example nurses who gained a lot of experience working in Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, and Zimbabwe are now working in Britain.
This - high level of income among African immigrants as a group - was especially the case before the civil wars which forced many Africans including those with low education to seek refuge in the West. Many of the new immigrants fleeing from wars don't have much education like their brethren who willingly go to Western counties in pursuit of higher education or better job opportunities.
Yet there is no question that a very large number of Africans in Britain and in the United States, including students who are not immigrants, see themselves as high achievers. And this has inflated egos among many of them, making them think they are better than other people, especially African Americans – in the case of the United States – whom they don't see as achievers or hard workers; a stereotype which has also been used by white racists probably more than anybody else to belittle and dehumanize blacks since slavery.
It is a tragedy that a number of African and Afro-Caribbean immigrants harbour the same kind of stereotypes about black Americans; stereotypes which only serve a negative purpose of driving these groups farther and farther apart as if they have nothing in common.
So, in spite of the common history of suffering, and a common African heritage, tensions still exist between Africans and African Americans probably to an extent many people are not even aware of. As Michelle Boorstein, an Associated Press writer in New York, stated in her article on the subject, also posted on a Gambian discussion group on June 19, 2002:
"The poster on the wall at Louise's diner says, "Black is Black," but the people and the food here tell a more complicated story.
Louise's sits in the heart of a neighborhood called Little Senegal, in central Harlem. Most of the faces you see along Little Senegal's wide boulevards and on the stoops of its brownstone homes are black - Africans and Americans both.
As in any heavily immigrant neighborhood, culture here is a fusion: African-run restaurants offer dishes spiced gently for black Americans; groceries sell yam flakes and hamburgers; videos are available in English, French and the Senegalese language of Wolof.
But members of the two communities say they live largely disconnected lives, praying, shopping and socializing among their own, sometimes harboring harsh stereotypes of one another.
The separation is painful to many black Americans, who long for their lost historical roots. They rallied here in 1999 to protest the police killing of a West African immigrant, and they increasingly push for slavery reparations. They adopt Africa's hairstyles and adapt its music and wear T-shirts like one that calls the faraway continent: "Home of the Original Black People."
"We're not as bonded as we should be," says Butch Williams, a 51-year-old steelworker, over a plate of eggs and grits at Louise's. The connection to Africa is "one of THE ongoing questions for black Americans," he says. "You look around and you say, 'What tribe am I from?' You can't help but wonder."
The disconnect has no such meaning to many African immigrants, who often come to this country to make money and then return home. They don't necessarily see life in America as black vs. white. "You go on with your life and them with theirs," says Adam Fofana, who came here from the Ivory Coast eight years ago and runs a restaurant called Fatou - down the street from Louise's.
Still, Fatou offers food that Fofana hopes will bring all blacks in Little Senegal together: West African and Caribbean fare and an all-American beer, Budweiser. So far, the clientele is strictly West African.
Talk about the intergroup dynamics has grown in the past decade with the dramatic swell of African immigrants to New York City neighborhoods, including Harlem. (The number of immigrants to New York from Ghana alone increased 220 percent from the mid to late 1990s; from Nigeria, 380 percent. Figures for all nationalities are not available.)
A new French film called "Little Senegal" is about a Senegalese man who comes to Harlem and the profound rift he finds there.
And in the next few months, museums in New York and Philadelphia will hold programs exploring the topic. "Africans want to make money (in the United States) and go home. African-Americans want them to play their citizenship role and have solidarity as black people. They have two different agendas," said Manthia Diawara, a Malian filmmaker who heads the Africana Studies Department at New York University and has written extensively about black culture.
The divide was highlighted for the world two years ago when four white New York City police officers shot Amadou Diallo, an unarmed immigrant from Guinea, 41 times.
Black Americans took to the streets to protest what they saw as a racist attack and were shocked to find their fervor largely unmatched by their African neighbors.
Yet Africans who immigrate here say they don't necessarily feel closer to black Americans than to anyone else. In fact, they often have their own set of negative stereotypes. "My father told me not to be friends with black people in America," said Cheick Sissoko, a 27-year-old dancer and drummer who came from Ivory Coast five years ago and now lives in lower Manhattan. "What we see on TV is so bad - guns and everything. Then I come and I realize it's true."
Fofana, the restaurant owner, says black Americans think they're above the sort of gritty work immigrants must do to establish themselves in a new country. For black Americans who ache from that lost connection, such sentiments can sting.
At Djoniba, the downtown Manhattan dance center where Sissoko works, dancers of all colors and backgrounds take classes ranging from the style of the Mandingo tribe in West Africa to Congolese, Haitian and hip-hop. The only actual Africans there are the teachers, but students wearing traditional African fabrics and others in Lycra bicycle unitards mingle alongside posters advertising vacations in Africa. "Come home!" one says.
Some of the black American dancers say they resent that the African teachers don't feel a special connection to them, don't recognize that there is a reason they are doing African dance rather than kickboxing or Roller-blading.
"There's not a sense of cultural solidarity between African-Americans and Africans, and we are always looking for that connection," said Tracy Austin, a 45-year-old black corporate lawyer who lives in Harlem and has been involved with the Senegalese community here for many years. "I think a lot of African-Americans are responding to that lack of solidarity, that sense that there is a lack of race-consciousness among Africans, which we have very deeply."
According to John Arthur, a University of Minnesota sociologist and anthropologist and Ghana native who has researched African migration to the United States, part of the reason for the gap is that a key stretch of the bridge is missing. The slave trade is not a regular part of the curriculum in many schools in Africa, and Arthur believes that this is because Africans would prefer not to face their role in the industry. As a result, he says, "they don't understand that they do have a connection."
While it is common for immigrants in general to insist that they will return to their native country, it is more so among Africans, says Arthur, author of a book on the subject called Invisible Sojourners.
Mabel Haddock, head of a Harlem-based group that promotes films about blacks, says black Americans' longing for Africa is like other romanticized feelings people have for places. Many African films, she says, explore the longing of people for their hometowns after they migrate to large cities. "I think some people have this rather exotic vision of what Africa is," said Haddock, head of the National Black Programming Consortium, "that if you go there you'll find something better than here that's better for your spiritual self."
Waly Ndiaye, a 49-year-old translator from Senegal who lives in Little Senegal, says he thinks black Americans who focus on their history in Africa and on slavery should think about the future. "I think people need to forget and move on. No matter how hard it was, there are a lot of opportunities," he said.
But in a reminder of the depth of the connection, Ndiaye adds that he and his African friends can tell what part of the continent black Americans were originally from by their look - and their smell.
Ndiaye said he was brought to tears by "Little Senegal." The film tells the story of Alloune, a widower who runs tours at Goree Island, once a slave export center off the coast of West Africa. Upon retirement, he travels to the United States in search of his ancestors who were brought here as slaves.
Among its characters: a fat, money-obsessed black American who refers to an African mechanic as "a big ape"; an African immigrant who whips his girlfriend, a pregnant African-American teenager, and an African who says "we're too black" for black Americans.
Depending on one's viewpoint, "Little Senegal" is jammed with simplistic caricatures - or truths. To some, the film's African characters are idealized - wise, educated, family-oriented and proud, while its black Americans are rootless, materialistic, crude about topics like sex and love and cold about topics like parenting and community.
Others say it was evenhanded and note that an African character loathed American blacks even while admitting he had taken no interest in getting to know them - an insular attitude black Americans in Little Senegal say is dead-on.
What exactly prompted Ndiaye's tears shows how complex the issue is. He was moved both by the notion of an African coming to America to find his roots - that the two communities DO share roots - and by the fact that Alloune did not try to bring the Americans he met back to Africa, home to Africa.
For now, the relationship remains part history and part myth, distant and close.
While Fofana hangs drawings of slain American black nationalist leader Malcolm X on the walls of Fatou, a map of Africa is up at Louise's.
"Simply because our skins are black doesn't mean we have anything in common," said Williams, the steelworker eating breakfast. 'But we do.'"
The disdain and contempt for black Americans among some Africans and black West Indians, as well as the indifference towards them, assumes another dimension when they unfairly compare their fate – as a people from independent countries - with that of African Americans who have been perpetually condemned to a minority status in a predominantly white society which has never accepted them as equal human beings.
Some of them think they are better than black Americans because they come from black independent countries such as Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana and Tanzania, while American blacks don't have a country of their own, ignoring the fact that it's not their fault.
James Baldwin articulated a collective sentiment in his book The Fire Next Time in which he recalled a conversation he had with Elijah Muhammad and other members of the black Nation of Islam in Chicago in the early sixties. And it captured the essence of the suffering, humiliation and frustration black Americans have to endure all their lives as a powerless minority in a white racist society.
Such powerlessness is also a brutal reminder that their ancestors were sold into slavery by the ancestors of some of the very same people who despise them so much; and who are even related to them since they are all children of Africa, only separated by slavery.
However, it should also be emphasized that it is probably only a minority – at least those openly hostile - who harbour such notions of superiority over black Americans. It is highly unlikely that the majority of Africans and Afro-Caribbeans look down upon black Americans simply because they don't have a country of their own or because of some other reason or reasons.
Yet the “homelessness” of African Americans has also been seized upon by many black nationalists, including militants, in the United States as a rallying cry to mobilize blacks in their quest for an independent homeland for the descendants of African slaves “trapped” in the land of their birth.
Prominent among them are the Black Muslims and members of the Republic of New Afrika all of whom have demanded five to six southern states to establish an independent black nation; a far cry from reality, yet understandable, borne out of desperation.
In his conversation with Elijah Muhammad and a number of other Black Muslims, James Baldwin said he was struck by Elijah Muhammad's comment that no people in history had ever been respected who had not owned their own land; to which others at the table responded, “Yes, that's right.” And as Baldwin stated in The Fire Next Time:
"I could not deny the truth of this statement. For everyone else has, is, a nation, with a specific location, and a flag – even, these days, the Jew. It is only 'the so-called American Negro' who remains trapped, disinherited, and despised, in a nation that has kept him in bondage for nearly four hundred years and is still unable to recognize him as a human being.' - ( James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time, New York, 1964, pp. 100 – 101).
Yet in spite of the shared disdain and contempt for black Americans common among some Africans and Afro-Caribbeans, this strange bond of unity between them is not strong enough to keep them united against black Americans.
All three groups are some times united as one. They are also united with one or the other against one of them. And they are all against each other for different reasons under different circumstances.
Thus, you have many black Americans and black West Indians who are united in their contempt for Africans and in their belief that Africa is a primitive, backward continent full of savages and ignorant people dying of hunger and disease, incapable of learning and helping themselves, and dependent on international relief for survival; with educated Africans themselves in the United States and elsewhere – even in Africa itself – hardly removed from such primitive conditions and even bringing all kinds of diseases and habits of poor hygiene with them to the United States and other parts of the civilized world especially the West.
Then you have a number of Africans and African Americans sharing a common belief that people from the islands, especially Jamaicans, are notorious for using and selling drugs. We hear about Jamaican criminal gangs and the Jamaican Mafia wreaking havoc in different communities in the United States. But there is an African counterpart: Nigerian criminal gangs and the Nigerian Mafia, as well as the 419 Nigerian scam we hear so much about. Yet, in both cases, the criminal elements don't constitute the largest number of people in those groups.
And there is another complaint against Afro-Caribbeans, many of whom call themselves and would rather be called West Indians and not Afro-Caribbeans.
Some Africans and African Americans complain that black people from the Caribbean think that they are better than Africans and black Americans and don't even want to be called or call themselves black – lest they be lumped together with black Americans in the ghetto and elsewhere, and with primitive Africans, as the the same people.
I personally have heard some prejudiced and ignorant Jamaicans say they have nothing to do with Africa and did not come from Africa; a sentiment shared by some prejudiced and ignorant black Americans as well. Yet, it is a minority view in both cases.
I also remember one Zimbabwean in Britain saying he knew some Jamaicans who said they “hate Africans” and “can't stand Africans”; again a minority view among the vast majority of Afro-Caribbeans in the UK.
However, it has ripple effect and shows that there are tensions in relations between Africans and black West Indians, also between Africans and African Americans, and between West Indians and African Americans.
I have also heard some Jamaicans and Trinidadians using derogatory remarks to describe black Americans not only as “lazy” but also as “morally depraved,” “promiscuous” and having babies out of wedlock while living on welfare at the expense of hardworking people such as themselves – black West Indians or Afro-Caribbeans – who take care of them with their taxes; deliberately ignoring the fact that most black Americans work and don't live on welfare.
Many Africans also have the same low opinion of African Americans. They also say many black Americans don't go school or simply drop out of school even when they have scholarships; and that they come from broken homes, can't be trusted, and steal a lot, breaking and entering, robbing people, petrol (gas) stations, banks and other businesses. The list goes on and on.
Black West Indians, of course, also have the same stereotypes about American blacks, in spite of empirical evidence showing that only a very small number of black Americans commit crime.
Yet, whether or not such sentiments are a product of ignorance or are deliberately intended to be insults, there is no question that none of this has helped to facilitate constructive dialogue between Africans and Afro-Caribbeans or between African Americans and Afro-Caribbeans; nor has it helped improve relations between Africans and African Americans which have been described by some observers as “strained” and even “bad.”
In the United Kingdom, there have been reports about rising tensions between Africans and Afro-Caribbeans. For example in May 2006, the BBC's “Politics Show” focused on tensions between black West Indians and Africans in London. And as one Afro-Caribbean, Joseph Collins from Guyana, stated on BBC Africa, 15 August 2003:
"I have found that Africans who come from countries with deep ethnic cleavages are less tolerant of other blacks. For example look at the Nigerian-Jamaican tensions in London.
The fact that Jamaicans and other West Indians have black skins doesn`t mean a thing to the average Nigerian.
Pan-Africanism is dead. More than ever before. Continental Africans are tuned in to bio-cultural signifiers such as accent and skin-colour."
All these tensions are in addition to what is already happening among different racial groups which clash now and then in different parts of Britain.
In 2004, The London Guardian had an article on this very same subject in which the writer, Darcus Howe, who was also a broadcaster, stated that after 50 years of racist attacks on immigrants, conflict between West Indians, Asians and Africans was increasing. His documentary “Who You Callin' a Nigger” was also broadcast on television in the UK. As he stated in his article, “Turning on Each Other,” in The Guardian, August 7, 2004:
"Anti-immigrant racism has, for close to 50 years, offered perks to those at the top of the racial hierarchy here in Britain. Jobs, promotion once at work, access to careers which are almost exclusively open to those with white skins are but some of them.
It is inevitable that among immigrants and their offspring, copycat divisions would appear. We have supped from the cup. And just as that wider conflict expresses itself in violent racial attacks, so will the phenomenon repeat itself among Asians and West Indians.
This antisocial activity has raised its ugly head in jets of violence, if hardly on the scale of white racism. It is certainly not as deep-rooted; nevertheless, it exists, and if allowed to continue can transform areas of the inner city into very nasty places.
I celebrate my 21st anniversary in broadcasting with a documentary titled, “Who You Callin' a Nigger.” It reports on violent confrontations between West Indians and Somalis in South London and between West Indian and Pakistani youths in the Midlands.
There are comments from Asian men and women which are wholly disparaging of their fellow migrants from the Caribbean, and equally vitriolic language from West Indians about Somalis.
It was very difficult listening to all this throughout the filming and in the editing studio. There have been frail deposits of this phenomenon as far back as I can remember, but it never went beyond banter between West Indians and Africans, totally devoid of any rationale that attempted to justify it.
It was merely a dissonance that occurs when strangers meet without prior introduction. It is only in recent times that these deposits have matured into full blown violence, as has happened between West Indian and Somali youths in Plumstead and Woolwich.
My activism in the black community over the last 40 years included fierce and unrelenting campaigns on issues of the final liberation of Africans from colonialism. Mrs Howe actually held the platform with Amilcar Cabral at a hot meeting organised in support of Africans against Portuguese colonialism. Then there was the anti-apartheid movement and the birth of Zimbabwe.
Then, an entire generation of West Indians in the UK could be relied on to stand tall.
Not, it seems, now. I journeyed through Woolwich and Plumstead, where thousands of Somali refugees are settling. The Caribbean community is mostly unwelcoming. Some visit on Somalis the same kind of racial abuse we suffered in the period of early migration. Dissenters to this reactionary view are few and far between. "They are taking our houses. They are getting social benefits which are denied to us. Their children are overcrowding our schools." And more.
One middle-aged West Indian woman capped her experiences at the hand of a group of young Somalis with uninhibited outburst: "I hate Somalis. They should go back to where they came from." She did not bat an eyelid.
Parts of Woolwich and Plumstead can only be described as the pits. The surrounding docklands offer no economic activity. Some housing stock depresses even optimists among social activists. Both communities of dark skin forage for a handful of employment opportunities. White Greenwich, a spit away, thrives, while citizens of Plumstead and parts of Woolwich can only feel teased and taunted by their neighbours' success.
The Somalis are a captive community in the grip of self-appointed community leaders. One of them slapped around the documentary director because we did not ask his permission to film his subjects.
And off to Walsall, just outside Birmingham. I had not visited there for close to 25 years when waves of West Indians and Asians (in particular Pakistanis) converged at first shift to set in motion the engineering factories which served the motor industry. The wages from this mass industrial activity supported whole communities.
It's all gone now, leaving a wasteland, and new generations of Pakistanis and West Indian youths at each other throats with little social activity to mediate the conflict.
The virus which produces this conflict has also infected small Asian businessmen and the clerical lower middle classes who inhabit nearby Handsworth. The small Asian entrepreneur is slowly losing its captive clientele to large supermarkets and department stores. And there is a mad scramble for clerical jobs in the civil service, local councils and banks.
I spent some time with a Punjabi small businessman. He sells Indian sweets and a young generation of Punjabis ignores his wares for Mars bars, jelly babies, Bounty bars and the rest. He sees enemies everywhere. His primary target is the West Indian community, then the Russians and east Europeans. He belches forth the most lurid abuse he can muster.
My difficulties did not end with the filming and editing. I anticipate a return of hurdles I have long transcended in my earlier work at Channel 4. The first is positive images. My detractors will charge that such a documentary will strengthen the cause of the BNP. As I see it, our Asian businessman is already classic BNP material and I reply to those who make the charge only that the programme represents the truth.
Dirty linen needs airing. We have to be mercilessly realistic to make any assessment of who and where we are.
It is impossible for a section of the immigrant community to avoid gravitating to racial categorisation when the practice is so rewarding for the indigenous population. This challenges us all: we face it, we die or we run away."
The phenomenon is not unique to London. In other parts of the Britain, many members of different immigrants groups are hostile or indifferent towards each other. And they sometimes clash even if physical confrontations are not the main feature of their tempestuous relationships as neighbours or simply as fellow countrymen. It equally applies to black immigrant groups in spite of their common African heritage.
Afro-Caribbeans and Africans have had a stormy relationship sometimes erupting in violence even if it has been downplayed by some leaders and community activists on both sides, especially those of the Pan-Africanist kind who would rather “ignore” such clashes and tensions for the sake of racial solidarity.
The tensions are ignited and fuelled by a combination of factors including competition for jobs, housing and social services. Many Afro-Caribbeans in Britain also feel that, because they have been in the UK longer than a disproportionately large of African immigrants especially newer arrivals, they are entitled to a privileged status and should be the first in line to get jobs, housing and social services.
The tensions between the two groups are also exacerbated by stereotypes about each other, even by stereotypes which correspond to reality; for example the high incidence of crime among Afro-Caribbean youths many of whom also use and sell drugs and are also involved in gang warfare with Asian gangs – Indian and Pakistani – a phenomenon not so common in the African immigrant community in the UK.
Violent crime is also on the rise among Afro-Caribbean youths using guns, although the use of such weapons is not exclusive to the Afro-Caribbean community.
And many victims of this wave of crime by West Indians are Africans some of whom have even been killed, further alienating the African community in the UK. As Dr. Perry Stanislas, an Afro-Caribbean and senior lecturer at Leiceister de Montfort University in Britain, stated in an interview with Black Britain in November 2006, in terms of violent crime especially robbery, drug-related crime and gun crime, “We are talking essentially about African Caribbeans,” an assessment based on empirical evidence.
He went on to say that the offending rate of continental Africans is not as significant as that of African Caribbeans, but there is a pattern of Africans being involved in particular types of crimes, fraud being the most obvious. As he put it: “Fraud has a long history with West Africans going back to the 1950s.”
Established West African communities, especially of Nigerians and Ghanaians, have a long history in Britain. The communities were largely formed by Ghanaians and Nigerians who arrived in the UK after World War II.
And in terms of historical experience, they are different from newer immigrant groups of Africans. Yet they face discrimination in a way West Indians don't, in spite of their high levels of education.
Dr. Stanislas went on to say in the same interview with Black Britain that a sad reality for the West African community in Britain is “the massive disparity between educational qualifications and the type of jobs that they do.”
He explained that this is because the pattern of discrimination against West Africans is far more intense than that experienced by African Caribbeans.
The reason for the increased discrimination against Africans generally is because they are still perceived as outsiders because they have retained more of their culture than Afro-Caribbeans have, particularly in terms of language and cultural values and African names, which is perceived as a threat to those who would prefer immigrants to be more integrated and assimilated and look, sound and dress like “British people”; in many cases a euphemism for white Britons except in the case of looks since black West Indians will never look white even if some of them delude themselves into believing that they are indeed “white”!
Dr. Stanislas further stated: “There is greater suspicion towards them.” This is despite the fact that significant numbers of West Africans were actually born in Britain. “It does not help where you have a perception of dishonesty in terms of fraud and identification fraud against particular communities.”
Over the last ten years, roughly since the mid-nineties, there has been unprecedented media coverage of fraud involving West Africans, whilst white-collar crime committed by middle-class whites and others is not investigated or reported except for major cases like that of Enron and which are still the exception rather than the rule in terms of investigation and exposure.
Such bias was demonstrated when the BBC ran a headline on 20 November 2006 saying “Nigeria scams ‘cost UK billions” in a story which reported that financial crime in the UK originating from Nigeria costs the UK economy £150m a year, according to a study by Chatham House.
Dr Stanislas told Black Britain that whilst it may be a minority involved in such scams, the whole West African community is perceived in negative terms and labelled as being dishonest.
He also uncovered during his research a court case around 10 years ago in which a black West Indian judge, Leonard Woodley, said increasingly large numbers of West Africans, Nigerians in particular, seem to be coming to the UK for only one reason, which is fraud.
It was a biased statement coming from the bench, reinforcing stereotypes about Africans and did not help foster good relations between Africans and members of the black West Indian community who already have their own negative stereotypes about Africans and the African continent itself.
The perception of Africans as being dishonest and that there is massive involvement among West African communities in fraudulent crime does in itself lead to greater discrimination when it comes to employment, provision of services and in other areas including housing.
Both whites and West Indians – as well as other people – engage in such discrimination against West Africans and other African immigrants, although in varying degrees.
But it is focused and sometimes intense. And as Dr. Stanislas noted further: “What we are (also) sure of is that the West African community suffer more intensely from discrimination and that they earn less than African Caribbeans”; which may be a contributory factor to some of their involvement in crime.
He said that there may be some people in the West African community - as well as in other African immigrant groups - who are well-established in Britain who may become frustrated by the lack of opportunities.
Recent arrivals such as Somalis have similar experiences with frustration and may gravitate towards crime as a means of livelihood.
Yet, in spite of all these problems, Africans commit less crime than West Indians do; and save money more than Afro-Caribbeans do, although they earn less and not commensurate with their educational qualifications and experience.
Dr Stanislas said that older sections of the West African community are under far more pressure from discrimination than their brethren are. He also said compared with Africans, there are fewer Afro-Caribbeans who maintain two jobs. And although both Africans and Afro-Caribbeans send money home, this is more prevalent among Africans.
According to the Department for International Development’s BME Remittance Survey in July 2006, 34 per cent of Africans send money home, compared with 12 per cent of African Caribbeans. The same survey revealed that Ghana derives 10 -15 per cent of its national income from such remittances, compared to just 3 per cent from foreign investment.
The strong work ethic among Africans in Britain, as elsewhere where they have established immigrant communities, is clearly evident even to a casual observer in spite of stereotypes of “lazy” Africans.
There is evidence showing that Africans are more likely to have families to support on the continent and many maintain two to three jobs to make ends meet in a society which discriminates against them in the job market resulting in a lower income than that of other immigrants who are less qualified. As Dr. Stanislas stated: “There is a lot of pressure [and] under these circumstances it is not unreasonable to assume that a small number will look for unorthodox means in order to increase their income.”
Africans are also victimized in other ways black West Indians are not, setting the groups further apart, in spite of the fact that immigrants in the African community are no worse than Afro-Caribbeans or other Britons in terms of morality and personal values. They are just human beings. Yet, they are not always treated as equals by many black West Indians and by the majority of whites and people of other races.
One of the areas in which they are victimized in highly disproportionate numbers is crime. As Dr. Stanislas put it: “Africans are more likely to be exposed to crime by the mere fact that they are more concentrated in the most run-down crime-ridden estates.”
He went on to say one of the reasons “Africans are more likely to be victims of crime” is that there is less private ownership amongst them compared with Afro-Caribbeans.
And regardless of qualifications Africans, earn less than Afro-Caribbeans do for no other reason than that they are seen as outsiders, besides racism which also affects black West Indians; and more of them live on run-down council estates which are a breeding ground for crime “and high levels of victimisation,” as Dr Stanislas put it.
He cited the case of 40 year-old Steven NyemboYa Muteb, a university student and father of two from Congo, who was stabbed to death by black West Indians in 2006 after complaining of anti-social behaviour by them on the Hackney council estate where he lived.
Ten-year-old Nigerian-born Damilola Taylor was another victim, also murdered by black West Indian youths on a Peckham housing estate in November 2000.
According to Dr. Stanislas: “What I am suggesting is that it could well be that Africans are more likely to be exposed to crime by the mere fact that they are more concentrated in the most run-down crime-ridden estates,” and also which have large numbers of Afro-Caribbean immigrants; a significant number of whom don't identify themselves with African immigrants just as many continental Africans don't identify with them.
And as reported by The Guardian, London, 3 October 2006, the residents where the Congolese lived had also - like the Congolese who was murdered - complained about antisocial behaviour at the estate. According to the report, “Father Killed After Tackling Gang of Youths”:
"A churchgoing father of two was stabbed to death in the stairwell of his block of flats after confronting a gang of youths and asking them to be quiet because he was trying to sleep.
Steven Nyembo-Ya-Muteb, 40, tackled the group of up to 12 youngsters late on Sunday evening after they broke into the communal entrance of the flats on a council estate in Hackney, east London. Police said he managed to force most of the youths to leave but two returned, pulling a knife on the mature student.
It is understood that a neighbour found Mr Nyembo-Ya-Muteb bleeding to death on the stairwell. He was pronounced dead at nearby Homerton hospital.
Simon Pountain, police borough commander for Hackney, said the dead man acted reasonably. "He did what any normal citizen should do. It just happens that one or more of the youths were such that they decided to go back and attack him."
He warned members of the public against putting themselves in danger when confronting gangs but said Mr Nyembo-Ya-Muteb had done nothing wrong. "We should all be able to challenge young people. But those who do that must take account of the risks involved."
Jennette Arnold, London assembly member for the area, said: "At a time when people prefer to say nothing Mr Nyembo-Ya-Muteb spoke out. We owe him a debt. He was a decent citizen."
Mr Pountain said the father of two girls, five and six, was alone in the flat when he challenged the gang. "They came into the communal area and were creating the disturbance. After Steven successfully ushered them out, that was when one or more came back into the foyer, the communal area, and attacked him."
Four youths have been arrested, including a 15-year-old and a 17-year-old.
Mr Nyembo-Ya-Muteb, from Congo, was in his third year of studying maths at university and regularly attended Edmonton Methodist church.
Neighbours said the youths were smoking cannabis and probably gained access to the building by climbing through an unlocked first floor window.
Forensics officers spent the morning dusting and collecting fingerprints. The window is below a CCTV camera and it is understood that the forced entry may have been recorded.
One woman who lives in the building said that it was plagued with problems and that less than three months ago the entrance had to be fitted with a metal door in an attempt to stop drug users and prostitutes coming into the stairwell.
Another neighbour, Steven Morris, said: "It's just a constant trouble. Every night we have it. There's prostitutes, smackheads, people having sex on the stairs."
Jeanette Hockley, 72, who lives in the building, said Mr Nyembo-Ya-Muteb moved in four years ago with his wife and daughters. "He was a very nice man, very sociable and friendly."
A noticeboard opposite the block of flats where Mr Nyembo-Ya-Muteb lived reflects the extent to which the area was troubled by antisocial behaviour. A police message says: "After successful operations in this area a large number of arrests have been made for drug dealing. The residents are actively working with us to identify those responsible. It will not be long before your identities are known and action taken against you."
Eric Ollerenshaw, Hackney council's opposition leader, said residents had complained about antisocial behaviour. "The police promised to increase patrols and that did happen for a while but this will set everything back again. Community support officers work 9am until 5pm but the yobs are there around the clock."
The killing will heighten anxiety about the risks of confronting antisocial behaviour.
Peter Woodhams was shot in Custom House, east London, in August after he confronted a gang of youths causing trouble outside his home. Mr Woodhams's funeral took place yesterday."
Not all West Indians commit crime; in fact most of them don't. And most of them don't have a negative attitude towards Africans and vice versa. But a large number of them do, and in terms of crime, a much higher percentage of the crime perpetrated in the Black British community – which includes Afro-Caribbeans and Africans – is committed by West Indians, accentuating cleavages between the two groups.
Black-on-black crime is a major problem in the black community in the UK just as it is in the black community in the United States.
West Indians, especially Jamaicans, also have a reputation as drug couriers smuggling drugs into Britain and even into the United States and Canada.
Some Africans especially Nigerians and Ghanaians do, of course, have the same reputation as drug couriers although it is believed - and there is statistical evidence showing - that Jamaicans and other West Indians smuggle more drugs into the UK and at a much higher rate than Africans do. And as Professor Ben Bowling, Britain's leading black criminologist and director of criminological studies at King's College School of Law in London stated in an interview with Black Britain in October 2006:
"The organised crime groups are using typically poor, rural West Indians as drugs couriers.
The illegal drugs market creates huge opportunities for organised crime groups to pay modest amounts of money to move the drugs around."
African immigrants in Britain also cite other evidence which shows that they are different from and better off than black West Indians.
They have strong families – as much as they do a strong work ethic - at a much higher percentage than Afro-Caribbeans do, best exemplified by two-parent homes unlike many families in the West Indian community which are matrifocal and surviving on welfare more than the families of African immigrants are.
It is also one of the factors that also partly explains the higher incidence of crime in the West Indian community.
The absence of a father or a father figure at home contributes to deterioration of the home environment. Lack of discipline among many West Indian youths is one of the biggest causes of crime in the black community – and poor performance in school at a higher rate among West Indians - which also affects many African immigrants living in the same areas together with black West Indians. And it shapes attitudes of Africans towards West Indians.
And as high achievers in school, and in employment because of their high levels of education among other things, many African immigrants don't see themselves as being on the same level with the vast majority of Afro-Caribbeans whom they have surpassed in many areas of education.
Motivation is also one of the factors African immigrants cite to explain their success in life as immigrants in Britain; an attribute shared by their brethren in other West countries where they have settled in large numbers.
Therefore many of the stereotypes about black West Indians are also reinforced by empirical evidence, and studies, showing that many African immigrants in the United Kingdom – and even in the United States – have higher incomes and education than Afro-Caribbeans and African Americans, respectively; although in the United Kingdom, many Africans at all levels of education don't earn as much as black West Indians because of discrimination. As an anglicized community, black West Indians – stripped of their African culture and identity – are seen as more British and are more accepted by white Britons than Africans are.
Such disparity and discrimination also fuels tensions between Africans and West Indians in the UK.
And the motivation factor, inextricably linked with family background in most cases, is critical to success among all groups regardless of race or ethnicity. As Douglas Muganhiri, a black African in Zimbabwe, stated in his comment on 22 Mach 2002 on a special report on the BBC, “Are Black Pupils Getting A Raw Deal?” because of their under-performance in school in Britain:
"I feel the black children can still do better even if the system disadvantages them, that is if their black parents are willing.
I come from a Black country (Zimbabwe), where children do very well in school despite the lack of many basic school requirements.
The problem, I think, with black children overseas is that they lack proper orientation and encouragement particularly from their parents.
Kids need to be made aware of the advantages of excelling at school at a very early stage in life in order for them to appreciate why one must attend lessons at school, why one must be well behaved at school. Telling children that learning is a white domain doesn't help black kids at all.
We are a poor black country here, but we have one of the world's most highly educated populations, despite the economic problems, because our parents made us think that school is good.
So, overseas black kids, you are lucky you have everything at school plus free education. Here we go to school hungry, with not enough equipment and education is NOT free, but we still pass at school.
Intelligence knows no colour."
Another black African named Tiseke from Malawi, who was also studying in the UK during that time, had this to say on the same subject and on the differences between black Africans and Afro-Caribbeans in Britain in terms of achievement in school and, by implication, in life in general:
"Please stop lumping Afro-Caribbeans with Africans just because we are all black.
I was educated in Africa and one thing that I can tell you is that despite the terrible poverty and political upheaval on our continent Africans work very hard in school when they can afford to attend them and this is despite the many obstacles they face in their day to day lives.
I studied for my Masters degree in the Netherlands and those of us who were Africans did much better than the white Dutch and those from Suriname.
I am now doing my PhD in the UK and I see the same thing. The Africans work much harder at educating themselves.
Maybe the problem over here is that you (white and black African/Caribbean but born in Britain) know that you are still going to get benefit/welfare even if you don't succeed in school a luxury that those of us in Africa do not have!"
The vast majority of African immigrants, most of them from poverty-stricken countries, take those values and attitudes with them when they emigrate from Africa and settle in other countries including Britain. And that accounts for their success in many areas in life in their adopted countries.
Unfortunately, instead of being a source of inspiration, the success of a disproportionately large number of black African immigrants in the UK is one of the main factors fuelling tensions between the members of these two immigrant groups and their children born and brought up in Britain. For example, Nigerians in the black community in the UK have a reputation for studying hard and ding very well in school; so do other Africans, of course, but Nigerians stand out because of their relatively large number in the African immigrant community.
Yet it is also a fact that they have demonstrated success, as clearly shown by the large number of very highly educated Nigerians in many fields in the UK and elsewhere including the United States.
West Indian immigrants are more frustrated than inspired by the success of African immigrants. And they feel victimized when Africans get jobs they can't get, or housing they can't get, but to which they feel they are more entitled than African immigrants are because they were there first, as earlier immigrants.
There is another factor that should not be overlooked as a driving force towards success among many African immigrants both in the UK and in the United States – as well as in other countries, of course. Poverty has served as a very powerful motivating factor among many Africans, especially those who don't have much education.
A very large number of them come from very poor families. They had very little where they came from. So when they arrive in Britain or in the United States, they see opportunities everywhere even where such opportunities don't even exist! But because even delusions or myths – of abundant opportunities and wealth – can serve as an incentive. Many of these immigrants create opportunities for themselves, using whatever skills they have, and doing whatever they can, and taking whatever jobs they can get, however low-paying, to make it in life.
And some of them do succeed in life, climbing up the social and economic ladder. And when they succeed after working so hard, they automatically conclude that opportunities exist for anybody to succeed in life and people who don't succeed – many Afro-Caribbeans and African Americans in this case – simply don't want to work or take advantage of the opportunities that are available to them to make it in life just like everybody else does. They take jobs African Americans – or long-term immigrants such as West Indians or Afro-Caribbeans - don't want to take for different reasons including low wages; and they see opportunities where African Americans and Afro-Caribbeans don't see any.
One of the main reasons people like West Indians and African Americans born and brought up in Britain and in the United States don't see those opportunities is that they are used to a higher standard of living the new immigrants are not used to. And what is opportunity for the newly arrived immigrants is not opportunity for them – and they would rather go on welfare, at least some of them, than work for very low wages or take jobs they consider to be demeaning or beneath them.
All this fuels stereotypes on both sides. The native-born make fun of immigrants saying they take anything or accept anything! And the immigrants say these people are just lazy, don't want to work, and think they are better than others.
The result is strained relations between the immigrants and the native-born, sometimes leading to confrontations in varying degrees even if not necessarily in a violent way. But there have been some violent confrontations, especially between Africans and Afro-Caribbeans, although the vast majority on both sides neither condone nor support that.
However, even verbal exchanges can get downright nasty regardless of the economic and social status of those involved. Many middle-class Africans and West Indians involved in these exchanges are just as much capable of using coarse language. As British Professor Christie Davies stated in The Social Affairs Unit, 22 December 2006:
"When there is a dispute between British Nigerians and British Jamaicans and it gets to exchange of abuse time, middle-class Nigerians will reach for the word "slave!", as in "I don't take that kind of talk from a slave", because they know it will enrage the Jamaicans more than any other epithet."
There have also been clashes between Asians and Afro-Caribbeans as well as Africans in the UK. Asians see Africans and Afro-Caribbeans simply as one people because they are all black, even though many people in those groups don't necessarily feel that way. They see themselves as different ethnic groups, each with its own unique identity and history.
The worst tensions in Britain are between Asians and Afro-Caribbeans, besides white racist groups. Tensions between Afro-Caribbean residents and Asians in a number of regions in Britain have led to confrontations, including the violent disturbances in Birmingham in 2005 where groups from both communities fought and rioted over two nights.
There is also evidence not only of tensions, but of rising tensions, between the members of the Afro-Caribbean community and the growing number of African immigrants at a time when anti-foreign sentiments in Britain are also gaining ground, thus making things worse for both groups in a predominantly white society where many whites simply tolerate them.
What is so disturbing is that in spite of noble intentions by some individuals in both groups – African and Afro-Caribbean – to defuse tensions, a significant number of people on both sides still don't see themselves as one people and are determined to maintain their separate identities as “Africans” and as “West Indians” - the latter being a preferable term to some of those who don't want to be called “Afro-Caribbeans,” a distinctive appellation that automatically identifies them with “primitive” Africa and Africans.
Yet, there are many black West Indians or Afro-Caribbeans who identify with Africa and are not ashamed of their heritage deeply rooted in this maligned continent, the “darkest” of all continents where even light cannot escape as if it were a black hole, as some pundits would have us believe!
And I'm not talking about just those who are politically conscious, for example people like Professor Horace Campbell from Jamaica and Dr. Walter Rodney from Guyana who taught at the University of Dar es Salaam in my home country, Tanzania. I'm talking about ordinary Afro-Caribbeans some of whom have been met with hostility from Africans even when they make genuine attempts to identify with Africa and Africans.
One particular incident comes to mind in this case.
When I was a student at Wayne State University in Detroit in the state of Michigan in the United States in the mid-seventies, there was a Jamaican medical student who wanted to interact with Africans a lot of times. And a lot of times there were some Africans, although only a few, who were openly hostile towards him and told him he was not an African and did not even want him to play soccer with them.
Yet, these were some of the “enlightened” Africans, college students, who had seen the light. Still, they could not see beyond the curtain of prejudice which blinded them to reality as much as it did those in the diaspora who hated Africa and Africans with equal passion and intensity in spite of their African heritage which would remain an integral part of their identity although they were not born and brought up in Africa but were descended from African slaves forcibly uprooted from their motherland and transported to the Americas in chains.
More than 30 years later, I can still hear the echo of his voice, from that Jamaican student, telling his tormentors, “I am an African like you.”
His harshest critic was a Nigerian engineering student who remained adamant in his position saying, “You are not an African. You are not one of us.” And I knew both well.
Fortunately, the Jamaican student was accepted by the majority of the African students he interacted with, and they refused to ostracize him.
Other Afro-Caribbeans who are known for their identification with Africa include the Rastafarians, although their identification with Ethiopia almost exclusively – where they did not originate – may be a reflection of an inferiority complex on their part, refusing to identify themselves with typical black - “Negro” - Africa which is really where their ancestors came from, especially West Africa.
Not all all Rastafarians do that. There are many who identify themselves with people in countries such as Ghana and Nigeria as well as those in other black African countries.
But the tendency of some of them to identify with Ethiopia as their ancestral home – and their worship of Emperor Haile Selassie as God incarnate - is a delusion and distortion of history and reality. When he died in 1975, many Rastafarians did not believe the news about his death. They said it was a hoax.
Their glorification of Haile Selassie also has to do with the fact that he was the emperor of the only country in sub-Saharan Africa that was never colonized. Many Rastafarians also learn Amharic, a Semitic language which is also the official language of Ethiopia. The majority of Ethiopians themselves are Semitic.
Still, no slaves were taken from Ethiopia and shipped to the Americas. And the racial identity of the vast majority of Ethiopians has nothing to do with the identity of Yorubas, Igbos, Ashantis, Ewes, the Ga, the Mandinka, the Wolof, the Mende, the Bakongo, the Ovimbundu and many other black African ethnic groups from which slaves were taken.
But that does not mean that Ethiopians are not Africans. They are Africans, although many of them may not want to identify with “Negro” Africans; a problem which has existed for quite some time and which even some people outside Africa have noticed.
They include African Americans, some of whom had a rude awakening when they identified with and supported Ethiopia when the country was invaded by Mussolini in October 1935 and occupied until the Italian invaders were driven out by the Allied forces in 1941. As Rupert Emerson and Martin Kilson, professors at Harvard University, stated in their essay “The American Dilemma in A Changing World: The Rise of Africa and The Negro American” in The Negro American:
"The Italian attack on Ethiopia in 1935, it has been said, had the effect of giving large numbers of Negroes a sense of involvement in world events for the first time, even though the Ethiopians were then by no means sure that they wanted to be counted among black Africans....(But) some Negroes no doubt still repudiate Africa." - ( Rupert Emerson and Martin Kilson, Negro American, Beacon Press, 1967, p. 642).
And even though it is only a minority of Afro-Caribbeans who identify with Ethiopia as their homeland – in spite of all the evidence to the contrary including their “Negro” physical features you don't find among most Ethiopians – the mere fact that some of them do raises serious questions about the racial pride of some people of “Negro” origin.
It is a sentiment reminiscent of what the Black Muslims and their leaders including Elijah Muhammad himself “believed” in terms of their origin.
Elijah Muhammad said black people in the United States, not just the members of the Nation of Islam, were “Asiatics” and originally came from Morocco in North Africa. It was a deliberate attempt to disassociate and distance themselves from black Africa which is where they actually originated. They were ashamed of their roots deeply rooted in black Africa south of the Sahara, not in North Africa.
Not all of them shared this “belief.” Malcolm X was one of them and was blunt about it especially after he left the Nation of Islam. As he said in one of his recorded speeches which was also published in Malcolm X Speaks:
"Having complete control over Africa, the colonial powers of Europe projected the image of Africa negatively. They always project Africa in a negative light: jungle. savages, cannibals, nothing civilized.
Why then naturally it was so negative that it was negative to you and me, and you and I began to hate it. We didn't want anybody calling us Africans. In hating Africa and in hating the Africans we ended up hating ourselves, without even realizing it. Because you can't hate the roots of a tree and not hate the tree. You can't hate your origin and not end up hating yourself. You can't hate Africa and not hate yourself.
You show me one of these people over here who has been thoroughly brainwashed and has a negative attitude toward Africa, and I'll show you one who has a negative attitude toward himself. You can't have a positive attitude toward yourself and a negative attitude toward Africa at the same time.
To the same degree that your understanding of and attitude toward Africa become positive, you'll find that your understanding of and your attitude toward yourself will also become positive. And this is what the white man knows.
So they very skillfully make you and me hate our African identity, our African characteristics."
Whether we like it or not, we have to admit and be brutally frank that there is a tendency among some blacks in the diaspora and even in Africa itself to admire certain features, what have been described as “fine” features of Caucasians and of people like Ethiopians, Somalis and Fulanis all of whom are also sometimes called “black Caucasians” – with aquiline noses, thin long faces, light complexion, long necks and “straight or wavy soft” hair - as opposed to typical “Negro” or “Negroid” features: thick lips, flat or “squashed” nose, wide face, dark complexion, short neck, and “kinky” hair.
There is even a saying in East Africa among some Kenyans that if you want a beautiful woman, go to Ethiopia; probably even Somalia although it is not common for Somali – and even Ethiopian - women to marry “Negroes.”
And among the Hutu in Rwanda and Burundi, you hear some people saying successful Hutu men prefers to marry Tutsi women. The Tutsi themselves originally came from northeast Africa, possibly from Ethiopia, although there is a dispute over that.
So, some people of African descent in the diaspora who may feel that way and admire “non-Negro”Africans like Ethiopians and Somalis are not the only ones with that kind of attitude. There are continental Africans who feel the same way. And even if some of them may not care about having pointed noses, they like that straight or wavy hair, and light complexion, the very antithesis of typical “Negro” identity.
But they are not the majority in either case. A higher percentage of continental Africans don't feel that way; nor do those in the diaspora. Probably the majority who had such an inferiority complex because of their “ugly” black African features have overcome that.
However, it would be unrealistic to say or believe that only a small number of black West Indians or black Americans are ashamed of their African heritage. Many of them are, just as many of them are not. And tensions do exist between Afro-Caribbeans and Africans just as they exist between Africans and African Americans and between African Americans and Afro-Caribbeans although in varying degrees.
In a study conducted by John R. Logan and Glenn Deane at the Lewis Mumford Center for Comparative Urban and Regional Research, State University of New York-Albany, some factors were identified which may provide an explanation for some of the friction which exists between these groups in the United States. As they stated in their report on metropolitan racial and ethnic change entitled “Black Diversity in Metropolitan America” published on August 15, 2003:
Early reports from Census 2000 about the growing diversity of the American population have emphasized the large increases in the Hispanic and Asian minorities in many regions of the country. There are also substantial differences within the black population that are worthy of attention.
The number of black Americans with recent roots in sub-Saharan Africa nearly tripled during the 1990’s.
The number with origins in the Caribbean increased by over 60 percent. Census 2000 shows that Afro-Caribbeans in the United States number over 1.5 million, larger than some more visible national-origin groups such as Cubans and Koreans. Africans number over 600 thousand.
In some major metropolitan regions, these “new” black groups amount to 20% or more of the black population. And nationally nearly 25% of the growth of the black population between 1990 and 2000 was due to people from Africa and the Caribbean.
This report summarizes what is known about the social backgrounds and residential locations of non-Hispanic blacks in metropolitan America.
Among blacks, both the Afro-Caribbean population (people from such places as Jamaica and Haiti) and people with recent sub-Saharan African ancestry (from places like Nigeria and Ghana) are distinguished from the longer established African Americans.
Highlights
Jamaicans and Haitians are the two major sources of Afro-Caribbeans in all ten areas in the table. A majority in Miami (61%), West Palm Beach (62%), and Boston (57%), and a near majority in Newark (49.8%) are of Haitian ancestry. Jamaicans are the larger group in Fort Lauderdale (46%), New York (40%), Nassau-Suffolk (39%), Washington (49%), and Atlanta (53%).
Washington, D.C. and New York have the largest African-born populations (80,281 and 73,851, respectively). The 1990-2000 growth rates exceed 100 percent in all the top metro areas for this population, save Los Angeles-Long Beach (at 53.5 percent).
Minneapolis-St. Paul saw a 628.4 percent increase in its African population, largely due to refugees from East Africa. In Minneapolis-St. Paul, Africans contribute over 15 percent of the non-Hispanic black population; in Boston, Africans account for nearly 10 percent of non-Hispanic blacks.
In the ten metros in this table, most Africans were born in West Africa (mainly Nigeria and Ghana) or East Africa (Ethiopia or in the “other East Africa” category that includes Somalis). East Africans are the larger source in Minneapolis (61%), and they approximately equal West Africans in Los Angeles-Long Beach (37%) and Dallas (40%).
Elsewhere West Africans predominate: Washington (53%), New York (69%), Atlanta (48%), Boston (60%), Houston (61%), Chicago (58%), and Philadelphia (53%).
It is well known that the socioeconomic profile of non-Hispanic blacks is unfavorable compared to whites, Asians, and Hispanics. Table 4 offers a comparison based on the 1990 and 2000 PUMS.
Less recognized is the striking diversity within the black population. African Americans have lower educational attainment and median income, and higher unemployment and impoverishment than Afro-Caribbeans and Africans. Afro-Caribbeans and Africans generally compare favorably to America’s Hispanic population, while African Americans fare worse:
Attempts to diffuse tensions between these groups of African people or peoples – Africans versus African Americans, Afro-Caribbeans versus African Americans, and Africans versus Afro-Caribbeans in the United States; and Africans versus Afro-Caribbeans in Britain - have not always been successful.
But that is not much different from the tensions and hostilities which exist among different ethnic groups in Africa itself.
Probably one major difference is that many people may take it for granted that black people in predominantly white countries or anywhere else in the world where they are a minority get along well regardless of where they came from simply because they are black or because they are a minority. That is not always the case. In fact, even some Africans from the same country – but from different ethnic groups – have clashed sometimes in the United States or they simply don't get along well.
As far back as the sixties, differences among these groups of immigrants were identified by a number of scholars, including Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Nathan Glazer in their highly influential book Beyond The Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians and Irish of New York City first published in 1963. For example, in this study, immigrants from Barbados talked about their strong family ties and how they worked hard and saved money in order to get ahead in life.
The implication in what they – as well as others - said was that black Americans don't save and work as hard as many of these black immigrants from the Caribbean do. And it is a stereotype that persists unto this day among many of these immigrants – the Bajans (Barbadians) and others.
But in spite of all these differences between Africans, African Americans and Afro-Caribbeans, many of them do get along well; also many others don't, frankly speaking.
Yet on the positive side, there are a number of examples of cooperation between them. For example, on several college campuses in the United States, Canada and Britain, African and Afro-Caribbean students have formed organizations and belong to the same student unions as an expression of racial solidarity and in pursuit of common goals including forging and strengthening ties with their brethren, African American students, and others. There are also many other cases of cooperation between these groups.
Marriage among them has also made families out of strangers, and may be even out of enemies, sometimes. And since they are all an African people, calling such unions “intermarriage” seems to be inappropriate, although some – and may be most – sociologists may have a different interpretation of this sociological phenomenon and call it intermarriage since Africans, African Americans and Afro-Caribbeans are identified and defined as distinct ethnic groups each with its own identity. Yet, the institution of marriage has blurred such distinctions in many cases.
Whatever the case, cooperation among them is cause for celebration even if it does not always lead to marriage, or “intermarriage,” among them to start new families. But there is no doubt that the institution of marriage can play, and has in fact played and will continue to play, a critical role in establishing and strengthening ties between many members of these groups not only in the United States, Canada and Britain but in other countries as well including those in Africa and the island nations in the Caribbean.
One example of cooperation and harmonious relationships between Africans and the people of African descent in the diaspora is cited below. As Carla Thompson stated in her report, “The New African Americans: African and Caribbean Immigrants Are Changing Black Identity in the United States,” in Black Voices, December 7, 2005:
"For almost their entire history in this country, black Americans have been debating the primacy of race as a building block for community and social relationships, often taking a cautionary approach about its importance: "Not everyone who is your color is your kind," they would warn their children, or repeating the popular Zora Neale Hurston maxim, "All of your skinfolk are not your kinfolk," they would remind themselves.
The wave of Caribbean immigration early in the last century, established a set of tensions between West Indians and native born black that persist to this day. But whatever differences existed seemed relatively minor in the face of a common history of slavery, racial segregation, and economic struggle.
Several Caribbean immigrants and Caribbean Americans -- Marcus Garvey, Claude McKay, Harry Belafonte, Sidney Portier, Paule Marshall, George Padmore, etc. -- rose to high profiles in black America and remain icons today. Being black was defined by not being white.
But the question of what it meant to be black was always a complicated one, and the neither passage of time, the end of segregation, nor the emergence of a robust black American middle-class has done much to lessen the complexity.
And now a new wave of immigration is deepening the complexity of the issues. There has been a 67 percent increase in the number of US residents, who identify themselves as Caribbean-born and a 167 percent increase in those who are "African-born," according to the most recent Census Bureau data. And despite the fact that foreign-born blacks remain a small segment of America's overall black population -- two percent for Africans and four percent for those born in the Caribbean -- their pattern of concentration make for disproportionately large impacts in certain places. Increasingly, black people born in the US are forced to confront black cultures very different from their own.
Take Nigerian-born Lola Adigun, who lives in the Atlanta, regarded by many as the capital of black progress in the American South. Whatever else she is. Adigun does not define herself as an American. In her mind, an American is someone born and raised in the U.S., with parents who themselves were born and raised here; someone, she says, who "can't be deported."
But she also uses the term to differentiate herself culturally from native-born blacks: "We have holidays for the Yoruba God. We have naming ceremonies for children one week after they are born," says Adigun, a member of the Yoruba tribe and a 10-year Atlanta metro resident. "When people marry they have a 'bride prize,' like a dowry. We still celebrate these things in America."
Many of the new immigrants are settling in New York, Maryland and Florida but many are branching out to areas such as Minneapolis and Atlanta which, for example, has seen a 285 percent growth in its African-born population.
African and Caribbean communities living in America are more apt to use monikers to distinguish themselves from the larger black American community: One term in significant use by both groups is "American."
Adigun say she does her part to get the groups together by holding gatherings such as dinners, housewarming and game nights. She believes that as groups interact with one another they will begin to understand each other and have an appreciation for their differences as well as their similarities. "I like to learn about other cultures," says Adigun.
Adigun and two of her fellow Atlantans -- one black American and one of Jamaican heritage -- talked to Black Voices about some of the spoken and unspoken issues that color the relationship among people of these different backgrounds.
I am What I Call Myself
Self-identification is important to blacks brought to the United States by slavery. As the socio-political landscape has changed, so have the monikers from Negro, Colored, Black to African-American.
"African American" is the dressed-up term for Black. I think it is a good attempt to attach our African heritage to our current state of living in America," says Odell Simmons, a 30-year-old black American artist. "But honestly, it does not mean that much to me. It is about the same term as black."
According to Michael Lloyd, 32, a mental health social worker, of Jamaican heritage "A lot of (Jamaicans) separate themselves from African-Americans when it is convenient, like when it comes to partying or socializing." Similarly, Simmons doesn't let cultural differences deter him from socializing with Caribbeans at events like parties and soccer games.
"I feel well-received at times. I think most of my friends assume that I am Caribbean because I hang out a lot with them," says Simmons. "I don’t really have a Northern or Southern accent and I talk real fast at times. Not to mention that I stay up on current reggae music and trends, plus I don’t fake a front. I tell them that I was a military brat born in Alaska and raised in Oklahoma and Alabama."
Simmons says that their celebrations aren't any different than those of Southern blacks. "Somebody's going to play the host. Someone is going to stay by the food. Somebody is going to drink up all the drinks. Just recently, I attended a house party with mostly West Indian people and they had a spades table set and I was on the domino table. Music was playing. It felt like I was at a house party in Montgomery."
Partying with other black ethnic groups may be acceptable on some level but many say marriage is another story entirely.
"Most parents don't want their child to marry Americans. So dating is very limited,” says Adigun. "A lot of my peers only date Nigerians."
"When you settle down, you may want to have a Caribbean chick," says Lloyd. "When it comes down to the end, you don't want to settle down with a Yankee because too much teaching is involved. If you are Caribbean, you don't have to explain culture. (So) you can move beyond that part and deal with other real issues.
"I can remember growing up was that my mother telling my sister to never marry a Caribbean boy only because they were very passionate people, plus I think we had a cousin that married someone from the islands and they broke up. It wasn’t pretty," Simmons remembers.
Yet numerous African Americans have married blacks from the Caribbean and Africa. And there are increasing numbers of black Americans of mixed parentage.
Philippe Wamba, a half-Congolese, half African-American writer who died in a car crash in Kenya in 2002, wrote extensively about his experiences as a bi-cultural African American in his memoir Kinship. And J. Lorand Matory, a black American Anthropologist at Harvard who is married to a Nigerian woman, studies the points of synergy and disconnect extensively in his research.
He says many times blacks from different backgrounds collaborate and identify with each other when it is advantageous to them, especially economically. But still, he argues, each group views the others with a fair amount of suspicion usually based on entrenched stereotypes and limited exposure. Immigrants, he says, depending on their outlook and experiences, chose to resist or embrace assimilation into the broader African-American category.
A subject rarely spoken about in mixed company is the stereotypes that each group holds of the other.
Says Simmons, for both groups, Caribbean and African, it is that "they work all of the time," a stereotype popularized in the popular 'In Living Color' comedy skit 'Hey Mon.'
"With Africans, a stereotype is that they are all about the money. They all deal with bootleg movies and music," says Simmons.
Then there are the persisting African-bad-hygiene stereotypes or African-American derisions for Africans like 'African booty scratcher' or 'Jungle Bunny' and 'Island Coconut Eater' for Caribbeans. The Yoruba 'Akata,' which loosely translates to 'cotton picker' (also brutal wild animal) is a common derogation some Africans in urban areas reserve for African Americans.
According to Adigun and Lloyd among both Caribbean immigrants and Africans, stereotypes of black Americans are the same: They are lazy, don't take advantage of opportunity, don't take care of family, don't complete their education and are untrustworthy.
Adigun says that these beliefs are especially prevalent among the older generation of Africans. "But these ideas are waning, but slowly because it is passed down from generation to generation," says Adigun. "I don't like generalizations. You can't lump all Nigerians or Americans together."
Lloyd agrees. "Right now, you have a lot of West Indians that fit that stereotype," says Lloyd.
"I think it's unfortunate that most Caribbeans and Africans have a view that is shaped by the negative images put forth by U.S. media," says Simmons. "I feel there is no balance they only show negative and the negative images they show travels worldwide. So people in St. Thomas and Nigeria think we all behave like what they see on Rap City and MTV.” Similarly shows like 'Tarzan' and numerous others have shaped the image of primitive Africans in the American imagination.
For many like Simmons, the bottom line is that no matter how we may view ourselves -- with all of our ethnic and cultural nuances -- it is the larger American society that will have a major role in determining our identity and ultimately our destiny.
"I feel that when you walk into an establishment not owned by a West Indian or an African you are looked at as Black. The bank doesn't care that you are half-Indian and from Trinidad, you look black so you are black. Dark or light skin, full lips and hips and curly or wavy hair, you are looked at as black," says Simmons. '(We) are too concerned with distinctions -- Blacks have been like this for a while. We need to stop because there are so many other bigger issues that are facing us as black people.'"
Those distinctions and differences have always existed and will probably continue to exist between these groups. But many people in the same groups have also been able to forge alliances in pursuit of common goals.
The best example in recent times when they transcended those differences was during the campaign against apartheid, especially in the eighties when the campaign was most intense. Black people in the United States, Britain, Canada and the Caribbean worked together and with other progressive forces in their campaign against that diabolical institution.
And I use the term “progressive”deliberately to make one important distinction. Conservatives always associate the term with leftist causes. Yet the struggle against apartheid was not a leftist cause anymore than the struggle for racial equality in the United States was. White conservatives were some of the biggest opponents of both and the term “racial equality” is not in their lexicon.
Whatever the case, there is no question that the struggle for racial equality has been one of the most powerful binding forces that has enabled black people in Africa, in the United States, in the Caribbean, in Britain, in Canada and elsewhere to come together and realize that their destinies are inextricably linked as one people of the same African origin.
Although among the people of African descent in the diaspora it is African Americans who probably played the most prominent role in the struggle against apartheid spearheaded by Randall Robinson, head of TransAfrica in Washington, D.C., it is worth remembering that the people of African descent in the Caribbean have played an equally important role in the struggle for racial emancipation since slavery.
People from the Caribbean also played a critical role in advancing the cause of Pan-Africanism from the beginning. In fact, some of the most prominent leaders of the Pan-African movement came from the Caribbean. Some of them also went to live in Africa.
The most well-known in contemporary times were George Padmore, originally from Trinidad, and Dr. W.E.B. DuBois from the United States. Both went to live in Ghana. And both died as citizens of Ghana.
They worked closely with Kwame Nkrumah,Ghana's first president. Padmore was Nkrumah's adviser since the 1950s and went on to become head of the African Affairs Department under him. And as Padmore himself wrote about the origins of Pan-Africanism in his most well-known book, Pan-Africanism or Communism?: The Coming Struggle for Africa:
"Although Dr. DuBois was not the first Negro intellectual to have visions of a Pan-African movement, the credit must go to him for giving reality to the dream and conserving its ideals until such time as it found acceptance as the basic ideology of emergent African nationalism.
The idea of Pan-Africanism first arose as a manifestation of fraternal solidarity among Africans and people of African descent. It was originally conceived by a West Indian barrister, Mr. Henry Sylvester-Williams of Trinidad who practised at the English Bar at the end of the nineteenth century, and beginning of the present (20th).
It appears that during his undergraduate days and after, Mr. Sylvester-Williams established intimate relations with West Africans in Britain and later acted as legal adviser to several African chiefs and other native dignitaries who visited the United Kingdom on political missions to the Colonial Office.
Africa then, as now, was going through crises. The old Bantu nations in Southern Africa were faced with racial conflict. The ancestral lands of these Africans were being threatened by Boers and Britons. The South African Charter Company of Cecil Rhodes was extending its tentacles into Central Africa.
Even in West Africa, the Governor of the Gold Coast, Sir William Maxwell, was attempting to turn Fanti tribal lands into Crown property.
To combat the aggressive policies of British imperialists, Mr. Sylvester-Williams took the initiative in convening a Pan-African conference in London in 1900, as a forum of protest against the aggression of white colonizers and, at the same time, to make an appeal to the missionary and abolitionist traditions of the British people to protect the Africans from the depredations of the Empire builders.
'This meeting attracted attention, put the word “Pan-Africanism” in the dictionaries for the first time, and had some thirty delegates, mainly from England and the West Indies, with a few coloured North Americans. The conference was welcomed by the Lord Bishop of London and a promise was obtained from Queen Victoria, through Joseph Chamberlain, “not to overlook the interests and welfare of the native races.”'1
Unfortunately Mr. Sylvester-Williams returned to the West Indies a few years later and died.
The Pan-African concept remained dormant until it was revived by Dr. DuBois after the First World War.
Thanks to his devotion and sacrifice, he gave body and soul to Sylvester-Williams's original idea of Pan-Africanism and broadened its perspective."- (George Padmore, Pan-Africanism or Communism?: The Coming Struggle for Africa, London, 1956, pp. 117 – 118; W.E.B. DuBois, The World and Africa, p. 7).
During the same period when Sylvester-Williams was actively engaged in pursuing Pan-African goals, another Afro-Caribbean intellectual, Dr. Edward Blyden, was playing a prominent role in the quest for racial justice on the African continent.
Blyden was of Ewe origin, an ethnic group native to Ghana and Togo, and was a great champion of African emancipation. Born on the West Indian island of St. Thomas in 1832, he went to Liberia - via New York - in January 1850 and settled there. He was only a teenager when he went to Liberia and was educated there and became one of the most prominent Afro-Caribbeans involved in the struggle for African liberation during those days.
An Afro-Caribbean who played the most prominent role in raising political awareness about Africa among the people of African descent in the diaspora was Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican, who was also known as Black Moses, especially in the 1920s when the “Back to Africa” movement he led was most active, mainly in the United States. His organization, the Universal Negro Improvement Association, mobilized hundreds of thousands of adherents in pursuit of his goals. Besides the members, there were millions of sympathizers. It was estimated that he had a total of 6 million supporters.
And he had the biggest influence on an African leader who became the most prominent spokesman and advocate of Pan-Africanism that transcended continental boundaries to embrace people of African descent in America and the Caribbean. The leader was Kwame Nkrumah. He said the book which had the biggest influence on him was Marcus Garvey: Philosophy and Opinions, as he stated in his autobiography, Ghana: The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah.
When he became president, he also paid tribute to Marcus Garvey as a source of inspiration for him in the struggle for African independence and redemption of the entire black race. As he stated at a state dinner on Ghana's independence day on 6 March 1957:
"Here I wish I could quote Marcus Garvey. Once upon a time, he said, he looked through the whole world to see if he could find a government of a black people. He looked around, he did not find one, and he said he was going to create one.
Marcus Garvey did not succeed. But here today the work of Rousseau, the work of Marcus Garvey, the work of Aggrey, the work of Caseley Hayford, the work of these illustrious men who have gone before us, has come to reality at this present moment....
There exists a firm bond of sympathy between us and the Negro peoples of the Americas. The ancestors of so many of them come from this country. Even today in the West Indies, it is possible to hear words and phrases which come from various languages of the Gold Coast." - (Nkrumah, I Speak of Freedom: A Statement of African Ideology, New York, 1961, pp. 107, and 96; see also Nkrumah, Autobiography, p. 45).
Ties between Africa and the West Indies assumed another dimension when a significant number of Afro-Caribbeans migrated to West Africa and settled in Liberia and Sierra Leone through the years. Some also settled in Ghana and The Gambia; their settlement also facilitated by the fact that all these were English-speaking countries, and British colonies except Liberia which was founded by American abolitionists of the American Colonization Society.
And the Liberian governments, dominated by Americo-Liberians for 150 years since the founding of Liberia until 1980 when the last True Whig Party government was overthrown by soldiers who were members of the indigenous tribes, had a policy of encouraging Afro-Caribbeans to emigrate from the West Indies and settle in Liberia. It was vigorously pursued by President William Tubman in the 1950s.
Other people from the Caribbean have also established strong ties with Africa through the years. Some of them have also played a major role in the struggle for racial equality in the United States. They include Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture), originally from Trinidad, who first settled in the United States with his family and became a citizen. He later moved to Guinea where he lived for 30 years until his death in 1998.
Others include Louis Farrakhan, leader of the black Nation of Islam; Roy Innis who was director of Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in the United States; Harry Belafonte, Sydney Poitier and many others.
Farrakhan was active in the Nation of Islam since the 1950s, while Belafonte and Poitier were actively involved in the civil rights movement with Dr. Martin Luther King.
Even Malcolm X had ties to the Caribbean. His mother came from Grenada. His father came from Georgia, a southern state in the United States, which was also the home state of Dr. Martin Luther King.
So, there is a history of involvement by many people from the Caribbean in the struggle for African redemption and in the quest for racial equality in the United States; an involvement that has helped to establish strong ties between Afro-Caribbeans, Africans and African Americans in pursuit of common causes and racial solidarity in a number of areas.
But much more needs to be done individually and collectively to overcome differences and stereotypes which impede progress towards unity.
Tensions which exist between many members of these groups, and lack of cooperation in a number of areas critical to our collective well-being, is more than enough evidence showing that we still have a long, long way to go in our quest for unity and racial solidarity....
Relations Between Africans, African Americans and Afro-Caribbeans: Tensions, Indifference and Harmony
Author: Godfrey Mwakikagile
Paperback: 148 pages
Publisher: New Africa Press (5 January 2007)
ISBN-10: 098025874X
ISBN-13: 9780980258745