Genaro C. Armas
Associated Press
May. 11, 2003 12:00 AM
WASHINGTON - A cultural division is emerging between American-born Blacks and
a fast-growing population of Black immigrants, civil rights advocates said Thursday.
The Black population grew 31 percent between 1980 and 2000, to 34 million from 26 million. But the population of Blacks from Africa and the Caribbean grew roughly seven times as fast, according to an analysis of Census Bureau data by the Lewis Mumford Center at the State University of New York-Albany.
The National Coalition on Black Civic Participation held a conference to discuss ways to bridge the gaps between the groups.
"There is a cultural ignorance we have about each other," said Clayola Brown, civil rights director for the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees. "The only way we can overcome that is to educate both immigrants and the native-born."
The number of Blacks who arrived from or claimed ancestry to the Caribbean or West Indies, such as Jamaica or Haiti, more than tripled between 1980 and 2000, to 1.5 million, the study found.
More than one-third of the Afro-Caribbean population lives in the New York City area, with most of the rest in big cities along the East Coast.
The 537,000 Blacks who came from or had ties to sub-Saharan African countries such as Nigeria or Ghana is six times the number from two decades earlier. The Washington, D.C., New York and Atlanta metropolitan areas have the largest concentrations of African-born residents.
Socioeconomic differences between Black immigrants and native-born Blacks have created friction in some communities, said Roderick Harrison, a demographer with the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington. He studies income, education and other issues that affect the socioeconomic and political status of minorities.
More than 84 percent of Blacks of recent African descent were born overseas, compared with 70 percent of Afro-Caribbeans, and 2 percent of African-Americans.
The median household income for Blacks from the Caribbean or Africa is about $40,000, nearly $7,000 more than for African-Americans. Those with African descent tend to have more education, an average of more than 14 years in school compared with less than 13 for Afro-Caribbeans and African-Americans.
The unemployment rate of 10 percent for African-Americans in 2000 was about 3 percentage points higher than for Afro-Caribbeans and 5 percentage points higher than for those of African descent.
Those differences exist mainly because immigration policies, especially for
those arriving from Africa, are more selective, Harrison said. Many of those
who come from Africa are political refugees who tend to be more educated.
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