Selective acculturation among low-income second-generation West Africans

ABSTRACT

Prior research on the acculturation processes of the children of Black immigrants has focused on adult children from middle-class backgrounds. This raises questions about the experiences of adolescent children of immigrants from low-income backgrounds. To address this gap, this article draws on interviews with 71 West African high school students from working-class backgrounds in New York City. I find that African immigrant youth selectively acculturate into their American communities and highlight three mechanisms driving this process; adoption of American cultural features, distinction from their non-African counterparts and addition to the American cultural pool. I offer three cultural features that elucidate each mechanism respectively; cuisine, language, and fashion. I also show that racism structures acculturation and limits cultural agency. These findings highlight that selective acculturation is not exclusive to the children of middle-class Black immigrants, but also occurs for their working-class counterparts. Moreover, I underscore the cultural contributions immigrants and their children make to their host society and the mutual cultural reconstitution that occurs such that both immigrants’ ethnic culture and the cultural landscape of their host communities are fundamentally transformed.

KEYWORDS:

• Assimilation
• Black immigrants
• African immigrants
• second generation
• selective acculturation
• racial and ethnic relations

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Anthropologists Signithia Fordham and John Ogbu coined the term oppositional culture and argued that people of color in the U.S have developed a cultural response to racism whereby they have formed a cultural identity and practices that are in direct opposition to mainstream white culture (1986).

2 Mittelberg and Waters (1992) define proximal hosts as ‘the category or group in which the immigrant group would be likely to be classified or absorbed’ (413).

3 These mechanisms are not acculturation typologies; they are specific elements that collectively shape the broader selective acculturation process.

4 Caribbean refers to Puerto Rican, Dominican, and other CARICOM Afro-Caribbean people such as Jamaicans, Trinidadians, Guyanese, Haitians, etc.

5 Traditional meaning not charter nor selective schools.

6 There is variation between these West African nations around features such educational and occupational selectivity, language, and religion so I was careful to pay attention to the ways they might shape differential within-group integration experiences.

7 All schools and student names are aliases to protect confidentiality.

8 Chopped cheese is a local delicacy found in NYC delis. It consists of grilled ground beef, onions, melted cheese, lettuce, tomatoes and condiments served on a hero or roll with lettuce.

9 The Fulani people are a large ethnic group who live in various West African countries including Guinea, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Senegal, and Mali.

10 Some African cultural forms such as fashions are culturally appropriated, meaning they are irresponsibly adopted by non-Black people with little interest in their original meanings and cultural significance.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Science Foundation [grant number DGE – 1644869].