AFRO-CARIBBEAN RELATIONS IN ATLANTA

Afro-Caribbeans are a distinct social group in the United States because they are black and they are immigrants–-“which influences their adaptation [and incorporation] into the social and economic fabric of their new country" (Mederios Kent 2007: 3). For Afro-Caribbeans in Atlanta, their blackness played a major role in their decision to migrate to the city. As discussed in the preceding chapters, many of the Afro-Caribbean migrants that I interviewed for this study were attracted to Atlanta because it was a black city. What does that mean for Afro-Caribbeans’ relationship with African Americans in Atlanta?

Before I arrived in Atlanta, I wondered what kind of relationship Afro-Caribbeans had with African Americans there. Having lived in Boston and New York, two places with large black Caribbean populations, I had experienced first-hand tensions between the Caribbean and African American community. I heard African Americans accuse Afro-Caribbeans of coming to the US and stealing their jobs. I also heard Afro-Caribbeans (including members of my own Caribbean immigrant family) describe African Americans as lazy and believe them to squander the many opportunities available to them in the US.

I found that in Atlanta socioeconomic class has shaped Afro-Caribbeans’ relations with African Americans. The special attraction that Atlanta holds for Afro-Caribbean migrants is the existence of a large black middle and professional class population that provides opportunities for networking and upward mobility. Percy Hintzen (2001) found that Afro-Caribbeans in northern California formed relationships with African Americans based along class lines and preferred to associate mostly with professional and middle class African Americans. Associations with middle class African Americans were seen as way to gain access to political, professional, and social networks of professional and middle class African Americans, particularly in an area where African Americans have political power. In Atlanta, there are many African Americans in positions to make decisions that impact the city and its local neighborhoods. The city’s “black community has played a role in making it one of the most popular destinations for elite blacks in search of a city where they are in control” (Graham 1999: 321). As discussed in Chapter Two, Afro-Caribbean migrants in Atlanta are largely middle class, college-educated, and step or “twice” migrants, who had previously lived in other US cities for several years before moving to Atlanta. Because they lived in other US cities before coming to Atlanta, these Afro-Caribbean migrants see the importance of living in a city where African Americans are doing well. They are aware of the advantages of working and forming strong connections with African Americans in Atlanta in order to achieve their own socioeconomic mobility. For example, several of the Afro-Caribbean migrants interviewed for this study reported being members of black Greek-lettered sororities and fraternities and using these networks of fraternity brothers and sorority sisters, in their former communities and in their new home, to help them get jobs, find places to live, and find friends after they moved to Atlanta.

Afro-Caribbean migrants are building relationships with African American professionals in Atlanta and are working with them to create a space within the city that highlights their culture and history and most importantly their presence in the southern city. Though they have been creating their own cultural organizations and events, they need the support of African American community, particularly the African American politicians that represent Stone Mountain and other areas with a high concentration of Afro-Caribbean residents, to get their community’s objectives accomplished in Atlanta.

A few of the Afro-Caribbean leaders in Atlanta that I spoke to mentioned working extensively with the African American politician State Representative Billy Mitchell, who represents Stone Mountain, the center of the Caribbean community in Atlanta, helping them in organize certain large Caribbean community events. Valrie Sanders, the founding president of the Georgia Caribbean American Heritage Coalition, which organizes the CAHM events, explained to me how Caribbean organizations in Atlanta have to work with the local African American politicians due the size of the community and its lack of political clout in the southern metropolis: “We really have to depend on other people like State Representative Billy Mitchell and Hank Johnson (Congressman representing the 4th Congressional District of Georgia-DeKalb County with parts of Rockdale and Gwinnett) and people with large Caribbean constituencies. If we want to get anything done, we have to work with them or through them because they are the African American elected officials that represent our areas.” One of the major collaborations between the community and Representative Mitchell is the initiative for the recognition of June as Caribbean American Heritage Month in Georgia. They helped write the legislation and worked with him to get the resolution adopted by the Georgia General Assembly. With Rep. Billy Mitchell’s help, Georgia was the third state to write the legislation to get June recognized as Caribbean American Heritage Month. Thus, Afro-Caribbean migrants’ relationship with African American political leaders, like Rep. Billy Mitchell, has been a major factor in the Afro-Caribbean community development in Atlanta, since they have had to work with them to get organize major Caribbean events such as Caribbean American Heritage Month, and to address their community interests.

However, being “black” in a black mecca, does not mean that all African Americans in Atlanta have accepted Afro-Caribbeans. In Chapter Three, I talked about tensions between the two groups caused by some African Americans in Atlanta feeling threatened by the new immigrants. When Ashley, a transplant of Jamaican descent, first arrived in Atlanta in 2007 from Boston, she thought that with the large number of African Americans in positions of power in the city, local companies would be more open than companies in other cities to giving black applicants a chance. But, she found that opportunities did not come as easily as she expected, and thought African Americans in power saw black migrant newcomers as competition for positions. Though a few Caribbean migrants reported experiencing tensions with African Americans in Atlanta, in truth, the tensions between the two communities have been subtle and minor, not involving violence or major hostility.

Scholars have shown Afro-Caribbeans' relationship with African Americans to be complex and contradictory—an amalgam of conflict and cooperation, distancing and identification, tension and accommodation (Foner 2005; Hintzen 2001; Green and Wilson 1992; Kasinitz 1992; Waters 1999; Vickerman 1999). In the early 1900s, when they first began to settle in the New York, Afro-Caribbean immigrants tended to distance themselves from African Americans by forming their own clubs, living together in Caribbean ethnic enclaves within larger black neighborhoods, such as Harlem, and focused on cultural markers such as listening to Caribbean music, dressing in tropical clothing, playing cricket, and celebrating British holidays to distinguish themselves from African Americans (Watkins-Owens 1996). Afro-Caribbeans attempt to distance themselves from African Americans to avoid stereotypes and discrimination and experienced benefits from identifying ethnically and distinguishing themselves from African Americans in forms of job opportunities and positive receptions from white employers (Waters 1999). However, the longer immigrants stay in America, the more likely they are to experience discrimination and to identify with African Americans (Vickerman 1999).

The lack of major hostility between the two groups is likely due to that the fact that the Caribbean community is significantly smaller than the African American community in Atlanta and do not pose a significant threat politically or numerically to the African American community—which fought long and hard to gain political power and control of the local government. Though Atlanta has become more ethnically diverse with the influx of Asian and Latino immigrants to the area, the political landscape is still divided along the black-white binary, particularly in the city government. When I moved to Atlanta in 2009, the big talk around town was over the mayoral election between black candidate Kasim Reed and white candidate Mary Norwood and the possibility of a white candidate winning the election and breaking the succession of black mayors since the election of the first black mayor of Atlanta, Maynard Jackson, in 1974. So, being black facilitates Afro-Caribbeans’ relationship with African Americans, since they add to the numbers of black voters in Atlanta, giving African American politicians more potential voters and political power.

Green and Wilson (1992) argue that inter-group relations between African Americans and Afro-Caribbean immigrants are inextricably linked to larger issues of black politics and empowerment. In the next two decades, tensions in Atlanta’s increasingly ethnically diverse black community are likely to surface as the Afro-Caribbean population grows larger and larger, reaches a critical mass, and becomes a significant part of the electorate in the Atlanta area. Afro-Caribbeans are likely to mobilize as an ethnic group to gain their own share of political influence to speak for own (Caribbean immigrant) interests, as their counterparts in New York have done (Kasinitz 1992; Rogers 2006). Thus far, a few Afro-Caribbeans have been elected to political offices in the Atlanta area, but it has been in the outer suburbs and not in the city of Atlanta. In Clayton County, Jewel C. Scott, a Jamaican immigrant, served as the first female and Caribbean American district attorney of Clayton County from 2005 to 2008. Also in Clayton County, Wole Ralph, who is of Guyanese heritage, was, at the time I was in Atlanta in 2010, the Vice Chairman of Clayton County Board of Commissioners. Cyril Mungal, who is Trinidadian, sits on the City Council of Stone Mountain (his term as councilmember expires in 2015). According to one of my respondents, these candidates downplayed their ethnicity and did not use the “ethnic card” to gain votes from the growing Caribbean community. In the case of the black-controlled city government, where they will face the most political competition with African Americans (in comparison to the whiter outer suburbs, with the exception of Stone Mountain), this may eventually lead to conflict between Afro-Caribbeans and African Americans in Atlanta over representation and political ground, especially if an Afro-Caribbean migrants defeats an African American incumbent. In his study of the political incorporation of Afro-Caribbeans in New York, Reuel Rogers (2006: 248) observes that “when Afro-Caribbeans pursue their own ethnic political representation in New York, for example, African Americans sometimes complain the immigrants are pursuing divisive strategies and undermining the larger struggle for black empowerment”.

Another potential source of tension in the new Atlanta black community is the growing African population. Black African migrants pose a threat politically and economically to the African American in Atlanta. Like the Afro-Caribbean population, Atlanta’s African migrant population quadrupled (from 8,919 to 34,302) between 1990 and 2000, and constituted 2.9 percent of the black population in metro Atlanta in 2000 (Logan 2007). They are mostly middle class and with high education rates. While I was in Atlanta, I did not speak to any African migrants and so I do not know their stance on black solidarity and empowerment among the black ethnic groups in Atlanta. But from what I heard from some of my Afro-Caribbean respondents, there was little interaction or collaboration between the African migrants and the rest of the black Atlanta community. Afro-Caribbean migrants tended to keep within their ethnic social circles, that is their Caribbean network of friends and family. The presence of Africans in the area, however, offers Afro-Caribbeans an opportunity to mobilize under a black immigrant identity and to compete with the African American community for political power over the city. The area in Atlanta that this black immigrant political collaboration is likely to happen is in the Stone Mountain area, since they is a significant concentration of both groups there. A black immigrant coalition among Afro-Caribbeans and Africans could have a major impact not only on the political landscape but also on the cultural landscape of the Atlanta area. The increasing diversification of the city’s black community may lead to the dominant black culture morphing from African American culture to a foreign (or Caribbean/African fusion) one. This potential change is very likely to cause tension and hostility to rise between African Americans and the black immigrant groups in Atlanta.