Convergent identifications, divergent meanings: the racial and ethnic identities of second-generation West African youth

ABSTRACT

Prior research on Black immigrants in the US has almost exclusively focused on those from the Caribbean. Yet African immigrants are poised to become the largest Black immigrant group in the US. This article addresses this issue by exploring the ethnoracial identity-work central to the processes by which the children of African immigrants integrate into American. I draw upon interviews of 36 West African and Black American high school students in the Bronx, New York. The findings reveal an identificational convergence where African and Black American youth identify similarly (i.e. as ‘Black’ and ‘African-American’) yet make different meanings of behind these terms. I examined three prominent domains (e.g. physical appearances, parenting and cultural stereotypes) that shape these varied articulations and intraracial boundaries.

KEYWORDS:

• Immigration
• West Africans
• Black immigrants
• intraracial relations
• racial and ethnic relations

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 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).

2 As Imoagene (2015, 2017) explains, African booty scratcher is a slur used against African immigrants and their children based on negative media portrayals about Africa being a jungle full of uncivilized and wild savages. It is used to maintain ethnic boundaries and connote inferiority relative to Black American and West Indian proximal hosts. Akata is word with roots in the Yoruba language that has become a pejorative used against Black Americans. It generally refers to an inability to point to ancestral roots, a deficit culture that does not prioritize education and someone with poor home training.

3 To preserve the confidentiality of these students, their names and their high school have been given pseudonyms.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Science Foundation [1644869].