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ABSTRACT
This long-term ethnographic study about the Liberian refugee community in Staten Island, NY shows that their integration and identity formation are not only influenced by race, but also by the context of reception [Portes, Alejandro, and Rubén G. Rumbaut. 1996. Immigrant America: A Portrait. 2nd ed. Berkeley: University of California Press]. Second generation Liberian Americans have to deal with a number of sources of stigma, leading them to distance themselves from their African heritage. As the children of refugees, they endure taunts associated with this label. The term ‘refugee’ for Blacks in the U.S. has often been equated with being an economic burden. In addition, images of the civil war that raged in Liberia still predominate in the media. Due to the war, many Liberian parents never completed their formal education and thus are illiterate, forcing them to work as home health aides, another cause of shame for the second generation. Finally, the geographical context also matters for Liberian American youth. Seeking to escape discrimination from African Americans in their neighborhoods, they often embrace a ‘Black’ identity, de-emphasizing their African heritage. However, this is to limited effect. Outside of their neighborhood, in greater Staten Island, being ‘Black’ is yet another stigma.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the Liberian community members in Staten Island for sharing their experiences with me and for welcoming me in their homes and lives. I am grateful to Kaleefa Munroe-Peters, Koby Oppenheim, Stephen Ruszczyk, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions and comments. Finally, I would like to thank Kassahun Kebede for his guidance and for the opportunity to publish in this volume.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Not only were all refugees affected, but two of the seven countries on the ban are in Africa. Earlier versions of the travel ban included additional countries in Africa, which since then have been removed.
2 In this article, ‘African immigrants’ refers exclusively to those who are racialized as Black in the U.S.
3 Imoagene (Citation2015, 182) states that experiences of African refugees, especially those who are Muslim, are different.
4 In 2012, approximately 178,000 Ethiopians lived in the U.S.; 60 percent of these immigrants arrived during or after 2000. More than a quarter of Ethiopians in the U.S. came as refugees; the rest is largely made up of family reunification (52 percent) – which includes many family members of refugees, diversity visa recipients and, one percent of other visa categories (Migration Policy Institute Citation2014). (The Diversity Immigrant Visa Program has made 55,000 permanent resident visas available annually by lottery to people from countries with low immigration rates to the U.S. since 1995.)
5 In this paper I use African American and Black American interchangeably to refer to multigenerational Blacks in the U.S., most of who are the descendants of enslaved Africans.
6 This occurs despite the presence of multiple racial groups in the different Caribbean nations.
7 I refrain from using national identity, due to its complex relationship with citizenship. All second generation immigrants in the U.S. are U.S. citizens, as are most 1.5 generation in this study.
8 Although it should be noted that a small percentage of African Americans are Muslim.
9 This warrants further examination since a lot of the (upper) middle class African immigrants grew up in more racially diverse suburbs and many Somali and Somali Bantu refugees settled in areas with no significant African American population (Besteman Citation2016), or in less ethnoracially diverse places in the Midwest (Abdi Citation2011; Darboe Citation2003).
10 For example, TPS/DED has been in effect for eligible Liberians from March 31, 1991 until March 31, 2019. Individuals with TPS/DED neither have a path to become permanent legal residents nor are allowed to travel to the country where they hold citizenship (Heeren Citation2015; Reilly Citation2016).
11 In 1993, in the 120th police precinct there were 21 murders and 1,705 burglaries, compared to 8 and 149, respectively, in 2018.
12 Two are currently enrolled in a four-year college, two have a two-year college degree, five a high school diploma, one an 8th grade education, and the remaining two are still attending high school.
13 Until 1980 Liberia was ruled by an Americo Liberian political and economic elite that makes up five percent of the population. These Americo Liberians are the descendants of Black American settlers who establsihed Liberia with the American Colonisation Society (ACS) in 1822 (Levitt Citation2005; Ludwig Citation2016d).
14 The survey included neither a question about place of birth nor year of arrival in the U.S.
15 All names used are pseudonyms that were chosen by the research participants themselves.
16 The show was released in 1987, the same year Juah Nimley migrated to the U.S.
17 She had her first child as a very young teenager in Liberia. This son was killed as an infant during the Liberian civil war.
18 While I did not interview African Americans for this study, I have frequently interacted with them during my ethnographic work in the neighborhood.
19 Many indigenous Liberians acquired Anglo last names from Americo Liberians, who themselves had gotten the names from their (ancestors’) slave masters, through the ‘ward system’ (Liebenow Citation1969; Ludwig Citation2016d).
20 This is not a pseudonym, as Gerald Barclay, a well-known Liberian American filmmaker, is a public figure.
21 This is the term used by first and second generation Liberian Americans.
22 I am an original board member of Napela.