THE NEW GREAT MIGRATION TO THE NEW ATLANTA

The influx of Afro-Caribbean immigrants, and a large, diverse group of other non-white newcomers from across the United States and abroad, to Atlanta has triggered an unprecedented series of changes in the social, cultural, economic, political, and racial landscapes of the southern metro, ushering in a new era in its history---the era of the New Atlanta. The composition and diversity of this great migration to Atlanta, along with its existing large African American population, have transformed Atlanta from a biracial (mainly black and white) society into an international, multi-ethnic metropolis, unlike other major metropolises in the US, such as New York City, Miami, Boston, and Los Angeles. It is a unique metropolis because of the great influence, large size, and relatively high socioeconomic status of its African American population and their role in shaping the city.

Its distinct southern culture has become increasingly popular in the media. A great example is the rise of reality television shows focused on different aspects of life in Atlanta in the past decade, including Real Housewives of Atlanta, Big Rich Atlanta, Love and Hip Hop: Atlanta, R&B Divas, and Married to Medicine. The success of these shows has pushed Atlanta and its culture, realities, and distinct sound into the public eye and helped to spread the South’s distinct culture and image worldwide. This has helped Atlanta develop in recent years an image as an attractive place to live in the US, especially for black people.

For Afro-Caribbean immigrants, they are several benefits to moving to and settling in Atlanta. Unlike Asian and Latino immigrant newcomers, Afro-Caribbeans’ incorporation into Atlanta has been shaped by the their relationship with the African Americans. Though southern attitudes and policies towards immigrants have become more and more hostile in recent years, especially towards Mexican immigrants (and those who “look” Mexican), Afro-Caribbean immigrants have been for the most part insulated from the hostile anti-immigrant attitudes and policies brewing in the region because they are black and can “blend” into the large African American community in Atlanta. This is important to note since research on the recent wave of immigration to the South do not touch on the benefits of having or forming a relationship, whether real or superficial, with the large African American in the region. The literature tends to focus on the tensions brewing between immigrant newcomers, particularly Latinos, and the existing African American community or the immigrant newcomers’ efforts to distance themselves from African Americans. But I found for Afro-Caribbean immigrants, being racially black, can reap several benefits, regarding their reception and incorporation into the Atlanta area, which other non-white immigrants cannot or may not be able to access. The pushes for making English the official state language, development of policies to restrict undocumented students’ access to public universities, and the passing of laws to deny undocumented people public services were all created with a Latino (specifically Mexican) immigrant’s face in mind and not a black Caribbean immigrant’s face. In the southern debates about immigration, Afro-Caribbeans (and other black immigrants) are invisible, just another black face in an ocean of black faces in Atlanta. Thus, there are benefits to being a black immigrant in a black city.

The recent trend of immigrant settlement in the region are challenging and changing long-held southern attitudes and conceptions of race and immigration. The increasing diversification of the city’s black community is transforming black culture and spaces in Atlanta from predominantly African American to a more diverse one. The new great migration of Afro-Caribbeans and other black migrants offer future research opportunities to analyze black culture in a uniquely innovative and fertile context. What is developing there reflects and enhances the diversity of both Atlanta and the South at large.

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.

Southern Responses to Immigration

Southern attitudes and policies toward immigration have become increasingly hostile in recent years, heightened by national pre-occupation with “illegal” immigration (Odem and Lacy 2009). Heated debates over undocumented immigrants and immigration reform have polarized southerners’ attitudes toward immigrants, especially Latino immigrants, in the South. For example, all southeastern states have made English their “official language.” “The surge of Latino immigrants to the region also has become fodder for a growing number of hate groups in the South, including a revitalized Ku Klux Klan” (Odem and Lacy 2009: 144). A number of states, most notably Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina, have passed sweeping legislation targeting undocumented immigrants. In 2006, Georgia passed the Georgia Security and Immigration Compliance Act that requires two things: first, contractors that do business with the state use the federal E-Verify program must verify the legal status of all workers and second, police must check the documentation of all those arrested for a DUI or a felony and report them to federal authorities (Odem and Lacy 2009). In 2011, lawmakers passed the Georgia bill that authorized local and state police to ask for proof of residency and detain those who they suspected were in the country illegally. The law also makes it illegal to intentionally house or transport undocumented persons. The law has been the subject of several protests in the state and federal courts blocked most of the controversial parts of the law. Similarly, educational officials in Georgia enacted a policy to ban undocumented immigrants from attending five of the state’s public colleges, including the highly selective University of Georgia and Georgia Institute of Technology. The new immigration policies represent the hardening attitudes and southerners have regarding the recent influx of immigrants to the region.

How do these anti-immigrant laws and sentiments in Atlanta affect Afro-Caribbean immigrants? When I asked the Afro-Caribbeans in this study about how they as immigrants were treated in Atlanta, all told me that they had not experienced anti-immigrant prejudice or discrimination in the southern metropolis. They felt this was so because the focus in the city was mainly on the Latino immigrants, since they are more visible as immigrants and/or newcomers than black immigrants. The overwhelming dominance of Mexican immigrants in metro Atlanta–who make up about 27 percent of the foreign-born population in metro Atlanta in 2009—has created a profile of “immigrants” in the region, characterized as a low skill and undocumented population who are likely to put extra pressure on social services and local resources. The result has been the development of anti-immigrant behaviors and policies, such as the Georgia Bill, the ban against undocumented immigrants at five of Georgia’s public colleges, and the prayer for help with the “immigration problem” that I witnessed in the Buckhead Catholic church.

The Georgia anti-immigrant laws have not affected Afro-Caribbeans, since the majority of those who migrate to Atlanta have proper documentation—that is, US citizenship, work or student visas, and resident alien status (according to the 2006-2010 American Community Survey, 60.6 percent of Afro-Caribbeans in metro Atlanta were naturalized US citizens). It is important to note that undocumented Afro-Caribbeans, unlike Latino immigrants, tend to have entered the country legally on travel or student visas and became undocumented from overstaying their visas, opposed to entering the country unauthorized (Foner 2005). According to Nancy Foner (2005: 197),"opposition to immigrants and high levels of immigration is generally greater when newcomers are seen as being largely undocumented." This may explain why Afro-Caribbeans have not experienced anti-immigrant prejudice or discrimination in Atlanta.

But, just because they have not been experienced anti-immigrant discrimination now does not mean that Afro-Caribbean immigrants may not be affected later. If the state continues to pass restrictive laws aimed at immigrants, the impact of the laws on the Caribbean immigrant community would likely be the migration of a higher number of middle class Afro-Caribbeans, who are more likely to be naturalized citizens or resident aliens, and a lower number of working class or poor Afro-Caribbeans, who are more likely to be undocumented.

Because they are black, Afro-Caribbeans are, in many ways, an invisible immigrant minority (Bryce-Laporte 1972). Several of the Afro-Caribbean immigrants that I interviewed for this study echoed this sentiment of feeling invisible. They felt that they were often seen as part of the larger African American population and that Afro-Caribbeans were not recognized as a distinct ethnic group in Atlanta, despite their efforts to create a distinct Caribbean identity and cultural presence in the city (e.g., the annual Atlanta Caribbean Carnival in the downtown area and other Caribbean events across the Atlanta area). For many Afro-Caribbean migrants coming from New York and other cities with large Caribbean immigrant communities, they experienced a bit of culture shock when they encountered people in Atlanta who were not familiar with Afro-Caribbean peoples and culture1C. Karen, a New York-born migrant of Kittian descent who moved to Atlanta from Los Angeles in 2002, explained how the “invisibility” of the Caribbean community in Atlanta impacted Afro-Caribbeans’ experiences of incorporation. She stated:

I don’t think the Caribbean presence is noticed here. In New York, Caribbean people and culture is just part of what makes New York so fun. It is such an experience to live in. It is just normal. Here it is like Caribbean people don’t exist and when they find out someone is from the Caribbean they don’t get what that means. And I guess that is why carnival or anything people try to do here doesn’t come off so well because people just don’t understand the difference. Get back to race, people who are not—even black people—some people just don’t see what the difference is. Aren’t all black people just black? What do you mean some are Caribbean and some are not? I think that some people just don’t get the difference. I think it is all-- black, white, and Asian. If you don’t have an accent, they just look at you like you are regular black person. They don’t understand anything about being a Caribbean person versus being a black American. To a lot of people it is just the same. I think that people of all races just look at people at face value and can care less on what makes you who you are. They don’t get the Caribbean culture or why they should you acknowledge it. They don’t get that there is a huge difference.

Afro-Caribbean immigrants’ shared racial phenotype with the city’s large native African American population, along with their ability to speak English, obscure their ethnic distinctiveness, allowing them to blend into Atlanta society with little issue or media attention. By contrast, the arrival of Latino and Asian immigrants received significant media and public attention. Art Hansen (2005) asserts that the visibility of the immigrant population varies in Atlanta, depending on language, population size, culture, socioeconomic status, and race. An example of this is the documentary film “Displaced in the New South,” directed by David Zeiger and Eric Mofford (1995), which explores the cultural collision between Asian and Latino immigrants and the suburban communities near Atlanta where they settled. The film makes no mention of black immigrants, neither Afro-Caribbean nor African immigrants, arriving to the area at the same time.

For Afro-Caribbeans, invisibility has benefits. Unlike visible immigrants in the area, especially Latinos immigrants in Atlanta, Afro-Caribbeans have not experienced anti-immigrant restrictions or discrimination. Because they easily blend in with the African American community, Afro-Caribbean immigrants are not identified by southern nativists as “threatening” immigrants or outsiders.

Southern Distinctiveness

Atlanta is unmistakably in the South. The South has long been a distinct region of the United States, with its own culture, history, politics, and religious traditions. Its distinctiveness, many believe, has been shaped by its history of slavery, secession, and defeat in the Civil War. “After the war the South continued to follow a separate historical path marked by uneven economic development, rural poverty, and an entrenched system of white supremacy and racial segregation” (Odem and Lacy 2009, ix-x). Though the region has experienced dramatic changes since the 1960s, with growing job markets and an improved racial climate, brought on by the passing of the civil rights bills and significant economic development and investment, the South remains distinct.

The South holds a definitive place in the history and collective memory of many African Americans, as a place where their roots run deep. Anthropologist Carol Stack (1996) argues that African Americans are drawn to the South by a “call to home.” African Americans have long dominated the South’s black population, and have affected the definition and perception of blackness in the region. In the southern United States, (with the exception of southern Florida), “black” means African American. African Americans have shaped the South’s development and made it distinct from other regions of the country. The South has a distinct black culture characterized by soul food, bass-driven music, and mega churches. The large part of American slavery occurred in the South, resulting in a large proportion of African Americans being located in the South during and after slavery. The region was the center of the Civil Rights Movement, with many of its leaders and activities being based in the region.

The region’s long history of violence and racial discrimination against all people of African descent, however, caused more than 6 million African Americans to move from the South to the North, Midwest, and the West, looking for better quality of living, job opportunities, and freedom. The passage of the Civil Rights bills in the 1960s triggered a new era in the region—a New South that is more tolerant towards African Americans and “outsiders.” The New South has been drawing African Americans, and other migrant newcomers, from all over the world to the region. The influx of non-white newcomers from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean into the South has triggered a number of changes to the social landscape of the region and has ushered in a new “New South” era in the 21^st century—that is culturally and racially diverse (Odem and Lacy 2009).