Black in America but not Black American

Abstract

Black Caribbean Immigrants (BCIs) migrating to the US face the particularly difficult challenge of managing their racial and ethnic identities in relation to the subordinate African American (AA) culture and racial group as well as the dominant White American (WA) culture and racial group. Formal theories of acculturation have not focused on the adaptation of Black immigrants to both a low-status racial group (e.g., Blacks) and ethnic culture (e.g., African American) in the US. The acculturation literature usually has evaded the topic of race and the racial literature has not addressed Black immigration or ethnicity. Furthermore, when investigations of acculturation of BCIs have occurred, consumer habits, behaviors, and cultural expressions have been used as proxies for racial and ethnic identity. Moreover, virtually no research has investigated the BCI-AA acculturation experience from the perspective of BCIs. Hypotheses derived from an integration of Berry’s (1997) theory of acculturation and Ferguson et al.’s (2012) tridimensional model of minority-status ethnicity were that BCIs’ acculturation involves the intersection of two dimensions: (a) joining or not joining AA culture versus maintaining one’s own ethnic culture and (b) Black racial integration versus separation. When responses to each dimension are assessed, four possible acculturation outcomes were proposed: (a) Separation, (b) Integration, (c) Assimilation, and (d) Marginalization. The sample for the present study was Black Caribbean immigrants from the English and French speaking West Indies. I used narrative theory and analysis of participants’ interviews to assess the fit of participants’ stories about their ethnic/racial identity and acculturation process to the model. Findings indicated that maintenance of their ethnic culture rather than joining AA culture was more important for most of the interviewees than their Black racial identity (i.e., Separation).