ETHNIC GROUPS AND DISCRIMINATION

African American Ethnicity

African American Ethnicity

Introduction

African immigration dates back to the 1860s. After the abolition of slave trade the first African immigrants came from Cape Verde off the coast of Senegal and made their way to Massachusetts. Between 1860 and 1940 about 20,000 immigrated to the United States.

According to U.S. Census figures, more Africans have arrived in the Untied States voluntarily than in the times of slave trade. According to Census records, immigration figures show that more than 350,000 Africans legally entered the U. S. in the 1990s. These "new" Black groups of immigrants come mainly from the Caribbean and Africa (African Studies Quarterly, 2000).

The largest concentrations of Africans are found in New York State. Nevertheless many immigrant groups settled in places such as Washington, Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Boston, and Houston. Currently the fastest growing immigrant groups are the Ghanaians and the Nigerians. Furthermore, the latest arrivals of immigrants have outnumbered the former immigrants that were mainly composed of refugees from Somalia or Ethiopia. This paper will discuss the social issues those new immigrants will have to face, and predict the issues immigrants will face in about the next 30 years. There is a great variety of African immigrants. This paper will discuss a Ghanaians and Nigerians, as well as generalize them in other groups.

Discussion

Why do some ethnic or racial groups control more valued goods than do others? It is because of the social inequalities through the practice of earlier colonialism. Involuntary minorities such as African Americans were forced into slavery, so that they formed their collective identity after coming to the New World and in the context of oppression by the dominant society. Hence, their collective identity is "oppositional" psychologically due the same history and experience. "a basic distinction between immigration and colonization as the two major processes through which new population groups are incorporated into a nation. Colonized groups become part of a new society through force or violence." (Swigart, 2005)

Involuntary minorities have lower perform at school because of the conflict between ethnic identity and mainstream educational practices. The perception of "acting white" includes behaviors related to academic success which are not desirable to involuntary minorities. Involuntary minority is the belief that even with the accepting of mainstream ideas; they will not be accepted by those within the majority. There is also the strong belief that in accepting mainstream ideas, they will be outcast within their own minority group. The end result being that they are no longer accepted by either those in the minority or the majority. As a result, they adopt an oppositional attitude in order to maintain distance between themselves and the educational system they distrust.

Generations of black Americans were regularly denied equal employment opportunity. Blacks with school comparable to those of their white peers were not hired for similar jobs, were not paid equal wages, and were not permitted to advance on the basis of education and ability. Therefore, it created a perception of lower return for higher educational ...