Issue1. Vol.1 (April, 2013) - IIT Mandi

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ESSENT Society for Collaborative Research and Innovation, IIT Mandigrandmothers in Trinidad every few months,17% sending them to people “minding”children” (Ho, 1993: 35). In fact, child mindingplays a cohesive role even in social networks ofTrinidadians within the United States. ChristineHo, for instance, found that Afro-Trinidadianwomen in Los Angeles did not send theirchildren to day care centers when they were atwork, but to grandmothers or in-laws who lived“a couple of blocks away” (Ho, 1991: 95).Women also maintain a greater degree ofregular contact than men do with familymembers through telephone conversations (Ho,1993: 35). Women, therefore, play crucial rolesin maintaining kinship ties and social networkgroups both within the U.S. and transnationally.Transnational TiesWhile women facilitate connections in uniqueways through customs such as “child minding”,Afro-Trinidadians—male and female—alsoemploy other devices to maintain and strengthenties with their homeland. Traveling periodicallyto Trinidad constitutes a particularly effectiveway of preserving relations with familymembers at home. Christine Ho notes that, “inspite of the high cost of round-trip airfare fromLos Angeles to Trinidad and Tobago, 100percent of the Afro-Trinidadian sampleperiodically visit their homeland on vacation”(Ho, 1991: 122). Maintaining transnationalcontact is important in practical terms, in case,an individual should decide to take the “exitoption” and return to Trinidad. Preserving aCaribbean identity also benefits immigrantspsychologically since it reaffirms for them theirstatus as foreigners and helps them find an““out” to experiencing racism” (Waters, 93).Participation in the annual Carnival provides animportant expression of the immigrants’transnational identity whether it is at the yearlyfestival in Brooklyn or traveling back home toTrinidad to participate in the real thing. ThusAfro-Trinidadians consciously maintain bothpsychological and actual contact with theirsocial networks in their homeland. At the sametime, however, the Afro-Trinidadianimmigrants’ desire to build and preserve socialconnections exclusively with fellow Afro-Trinidadians, and to achieve social mobility,isolates them from both the African Americansubculture and the wider American society.Rejection of African American SubcultureOne of the strategies Afro-Trinidadians adopt inorder to fulfill their ambitions as immigrants inthe United States is to distance themselves fromthe African American subculture. The obviousreason for the lack of attraction that AfricanAmerican subculture holds for Afro-Trinidadians consists of the fact that blackAmericans comprise one of the mostdisadvantaged groups in American society.Afro-Trinidadians’ fear of jeopardizing theirsocial positions leads them to maintain theircultural identities as distinct from those ofAfrican Americans. This is reflected in thepatterns of residential segregation practiced byWest Indians in America. Pointing to theimportance of both race and ethnicity indetermining the “residential patterns” of WestIndians, Kyle Crowder writes that, “presumablyon the basis of race, West Indians are deniedaccess to Anglo-residential areas…. On theother hand, the fact that West Indians are notfully integrated into African Americanresidential communities seems to indicate thatWest Indian ethnicity plays a role as well”(Crowder, 95). The self-segregation that WestIndians practice provides them with twinbenefits—not only does it help to distinguishthem from African Americans, but it also helpsthem avoid relegation to areas of “concentratedpoverty, physical decay, and social degradation”(Crowder, 86). Indeed, studies indicate thatWest Indians seem particularly preoccupiedwith avoiding the social ills that they perceive tobe largely prevalent in black neighborhoods.Mary Waters, for instance, quotes one of herinterviewees, who, comments that AfricanAmericans are “in too much drugs, on thestreets, doing wrong things. Getting intotrouble…. We [West Indians] try hard to work.But I feel the majority of them they depend onsomeone to give them a hand out all the time”54 ESSENT|Issue1|Vol1
ESSENT Society for Collaborative Research and Innovation, IIT Mandi(Waters, 65-6). Indeed, the notion that AfricanAmericans are lazy seems to be a widely heldbelief among West Indian immigrants in NorthAmerica. Milton Vickerman’s study ofJamaican immigrants suggests similar findings.For instance, he reports that one of hisinterviewees remarked that, “I would say…thatthey [African Americans] are lazy and we fromthe West Indies work very hard” (Vickerman,143). In some cases such negative perceptionsof African Americans leads certain West Indianimmigrants to view themselves as beingsuperior to American born blacks (Foner 1987:208). Deprecatory attitudes such as thosedelineated above, inevitably lead to greatertensions between African Americans and WestIndian immigrants and further widen the gapbetween the two groups.Afro-Trinidadians also employ devices such aslanguage skills and a British accent todeliberately differentiate themselves fromAfrican Americans and to increase their chancesfor social mobility. White Americans, becausethey place a higher value on a British accent,also view Afro-Trinidadians in a favorable light.Mary Waters records that one of her whiterespondents in a study observed that, “they[West Indians] are educated. They have highvalues for education. A lot of times their accentis more British than American. It’s sort ofsomehow people with a British accent; youalways think that they are really intelligent nomatter what they say” (Foner 2001: 214). Anaccent distinct from that of an African Americanalso provides an advantage to West Indians inthe job market. Vilna Bashi Bobb and AverilClarke suggest that, there is also the role of whatwe call “the foreign marker”, that is, an accentthat may lead whites—especially thoseemployers and providers of goods with whomthe network has negotiated special status for itsmembers—to treat West Indians better thanAmerican blacks (Foner 2001: 231). Similarly,Kasinitz points out that West Indians’ ability toenter the low wage sector in New York isimproved by “a mastery of the Englishlanguage…that is superior to many native55 ESSENT|Issue1|Vol1graduates of the New York public schoolsystem” (qt. In Palmer, 32). Language andaccent, thus, provide added ways for Afro-Trinidadians to distance themselves fromAmerican blacks. In this case, the favorablewhite response to West Indian accent alsolegitimizes and rewards the gulf betweenAfrican immigrants and native blacks.Conclusion: Social Mobility vs. AssimilationAs immigrants into the United States, Afro-Trinidadians possess an achievement-orientedmindset. For both male and female Afro-Trinidadians, social mobility in the UnitedStates remains an overwhelmingly importantgoal (Ho, 1991: 59). Indeed, like otherimmigrant groups in U.S. history, West Indiansof African descent consciously attempt torealize the “American dream” of personalachievement and material success through avariety of individual and collective strategies.Because of their pre-migratory experience ofliving in a multicultural society, Afro-Trinidadian immigrants comprehend theexistence of racial stratification and tensions.But, due to the particular nature of Trinidadiansociety, these immigrants do not enter theUnited States with a developed sense of racismas it is practiced in the US 3 . However as VilnaBashi pointed out to in a telephonic interview,“once the initial shock of encountering racism isover, the Caribbean immigrants understand thewhole racial structure. They realize that thewhites are at the top of the social hierarchyfollowed by Asians and Hispanics. Theyunderstand that blacks are at the bottom of thestructure” (Personal Interview, 2002).3 It is interesting to note that as Afro-Trinidadians achieve socialmobility and become middle class they become more perceptive ofracism in the United States. This arises from their realization thatunlike in the West Indies, status and wealth do not affect theirracial standing in the United States. For instance, Nancy Foner, inher study of Jamaican immigrants comes to the conclusion that,“at home [in Jamaica]…Mr. E. had a good job as a policeman andhe was a respected man in his community. In New York, as ablack man, he is a member of a definite minority. Education,income and culture, do not, as in Jamaica, partially “erase” one’sblackness” (Foner, 1987: 203).
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