Caribbean Organizations in Atlanta, part 2

In addition to the reception, there are a number of staple CAHM events. There is a film festival at the Central Library, which each Wednesday for the month of June shows films from different Caribbean countries. The month also includes a Caribbean day at an Atlanta Braves baseball game and a Caribbean Variety Show. Very few of my Afro-Caribbeans respondents knew of GCAHC or the Caribbean American Heritage Month events. Those who did were involved in cultural organizations, such as the Atlanta Jamaican Association or the Dominica Atlanta Cultural Association. Even the Afro-Caribbeans that I interviewed did not know about the organization or its events, GCAHC is making great strides to celebrate Atlanta’s diverse Caribbean community and to educate the greater Atlanta community on the Caribbean culture, history, and identity.

In early 2010, the Georgia Caribbean American Heritage Coalition undertook a major advocacy project:the Georgia Caribbean American Complete Count initiative for the 2010 US Census. Following a directive from Dr. Nelson of the Institute of Caribbean Studies, GCAHC created a committee under the umbrella of Caribbean American Heritage Month and worked with local Caribbean organizations and churches with large Caribbean congregations to spread the word about the initiative to get Afro-Caribbeans to write in Caribbean or West Indian as their ethnicity on the US Census. The committee also worked closely with the Census Bureau and its local representatives to put on events in the Atlanta area. Using Census funds, the Georgia Caribbean American Complete Count Committee organized a large Caribbean Count event at the DeKalb Technical College Center in March 2010 in the heart of the Decatur/Stone Mountain area, where large number of Afro-Caribbeans in Atlanta lived. The committee made great efforts to cater to the community’s needs by providing different services, along with information about the Census. They invited the Caribbean consulate and local elected officials. They also got a representative of the US Census Southeast region to take part in a Q&A session. The event also featured a Caribbean real estate broker, two Caribbean lawyers who gave legal advice about getting US citizenship, some preventive medicine representatives, including Dr. Edward Layne who is the honorary consul of Barbados in Georgia, and a CPA, the treasury of the group, giving tax advice. I had not heard about the event, when it occurred. But, according to Valrie, the event was successful and attracted about 900 people.

The Caribbean Count event was featured in the city’s major newspaper Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) on the cover of the Metro section of the Sunday issue on March 14, 2010. There was a large picture of the Caribbean Count event on the front cover of the section and several other pictures from the event with short taglines about the Georgia Caribbean American Complete Count Committee. However, the accompanying article focused on the work of the Asian and Latino Census Complete Count groups and didn’t discuss the work of the Georgia Caribbean American Complete Count Committee. The Caribbean Count group was only featured in the article’s pictures. This unequal treatment raises questions on how Afro-Caribbean immigrants are viewed and treated by the larger Atlanta community in relation to more racially visible immigrant newcomers, such as Latinos and Asians. Even with their efforts to build a distinct community identity and counted as a distinct ethnic group in Atlanta, many Afro-Caribbeans feel their presence is not being recognized by the larger community. Few of my respondents knew about the Caribbean Census efforts in the Atlanta. None told me that they attended any of the events, with the exception of Margaret. But one of my respondents explained to me why the Caribbean Complete Count initiative was important for the Caribbean community in Atlanta. Andrew stated, “We are trying our best [to make the Caribbean presence known in Atlanta] through the Census to motivate people to make that identity as Caribbean so we can be one to be reckoned with, politically and economically.”

Their development of Caribbean organizations could create tension with the broader black community in Atlanta. These organizations are important sites for the formation of a Caribbean community because they are generally based on the existence of a Caribbean population and reinforce Caribbean identities—both their specific national/island-based identities and their pan-ethnic identities as Afro-Caribeans/West Indians/Caribbean people. Their cultural activities—dinners, dances, outings, pageants, sporting events--emphasize a distinct Caribbean culture and identity and differentiate Afro-Caribbeans from African Americans (Basch 1987). The existence of these cultural organizations can be misread by African Americans in Atlanta as a sign that Afro-Caribbean migrants do not want to be incorporated into the larger black community. However, I never got the sense from the Afro-Caribbeans that I interviewed for this study that they sought to be apart from African Americans or the African American community. Indeed, many of the migrants sought out Atlanta precisely to be a part of the larger black community, i.e., because Atlanta was a black mecca. Though they identified ethnically as Caribbean or West Indian, which Afro-Caribbeans have been shown to use as a form of distancing, they also identified as black people and saw themselves as part of the larger black community in Atlanta.