yes, your experience parallels mine with puerto ricans, dominicans, etc. in new york. i'd spend my summers there and it was so wonderful to see all the bodegas and restaurants, to see families working to better themselves. education was highly valued, as the younger were responsible for the elder. some victimhood mentality, but not much...really, it was about taking care of business and making it in this country.

i am the first generation to be born in this country and i get treated very differently from others in my family by the "outside world." i also get treated differently by others in my family who were not born here. i'm the "american" and there are different expectations placed on me.

yosenio

This may be a controversial statement for some, but my experience has been that some Africans may have contempt for African-Americans because we were enslaved, and also because we are Americans (go figure).

I experienced this conundrum firsthand while studying in Europe in the 80s: I met a group of Africans from Rwanda, and they were so unfriendly toward me that I just had to find out what they had against me. One of the young men told me that his people resent how Americans have forced the American culture onto the people of the world, and that since I was an American, I was part of the problem. And then he said that his people also have no respect for people who 'allow themselves to remain slaves' (or something to that effect). I asked him if he knew anything about the history of slavery in the United States; he did not. But he was absolutely not interested in learning, either.

When I was younger and in high school, I met African students who were studying at Berkeley, and they didn't seem to have these issues. But the world has changed a lot since then, the USofA has been involved in some pretty nasty business around the world as well, and we don't often hear about what other folks really think of us.

a lot of interesting things have been said.

I'm a descendant of African-American slaves. Also the first person in my family to graduate college. When I went away to elite schools a disproportionate number of the Blacks i met there were not descendants of US slaves, but were children of recent immigrants.

There is definitely a difference--broadly speaking--in the way Black immigrants relate to the US and the way native Blacks relate to the US.

John Ogbu, the late Berkely anthropologist (of Ghanaian descent i believe), researched and wrote extensively on the differences--in many countries around the world--between 'voluntary immigrants and 'involunatary immigrants'. His main point, as i recall, was that voluntary immigrants tend to see conforming to majority culture as a means to success whereas involuntary immigrants tend to see conformity as a kind of capitulation to colonization.

Another consideration has to do with class. I don't have exact numbers on this, but i'd wager the majority of immigrants from Asia and Africa, at least, come from relatively educated families that have middle/profesional class status in their home countries. So comparing their ability to achieve in the capitalist rat race with the ability of US Blacks--professional class or not--to achieve is like comparing apples and oranges.

Finally, I cannot let the convo continue about immigrants looking down on US Blacks without also pointing out the incredible amount of ignorance that a lot of US Blacks have when it comes to Africa. Part of what white supremacy has done has been to make many US Blacks think that Africa equates with 'savage' or 'backwards'.

Yes.

I live in near boston and do see quite a bit of this i'm not sure if its predjudice or just the odd differences that make the two groups so alien to each other.

I have lived in New York City for over 40 years now. I am an ex-patriate southerner from the state of Tennessee. I have experienced the conflict between the native born American Blacks and the foreign born Brothers and Sisters of the African Diaspora. I have also experienced the clash and conflict between African Americans born here but in different regions. It is from that conflict that I have gleaned the greatest understanding for the belief structure of the more recently arrived among our number.

We are all laboring under the weight of the mythology of the lazy shiftless nigger. In our identity groups we all reject that persona. As a Southerner who arrived here in the 1960s I was kept apart from the Blacks whom had been here for one or more generations. We were lead to believe that they had somehow lost the values of family and church that we as southerners preserved. It was from that population of earlier arrivals that we were lead to belive came all of the junkies, thieves, and whores. We saw ourselves as hard working good people just looking to achieve the fruit of our labors that we could not achieve at home.

The ugly truth is that the more recent arrivals see us in the same way. The reality is that some of us made it and some of us failed. This is true for the newer arrivals as well and will be true for whatever group of our people come to these shores subsequent to us. It is and has been and always will be that some of each of our identity groups live up to their potential and some wont. No matter your origin you come to America and have to sink or swim. As long as you can preserve your family and extended family groups you will likely achieve success. Those of you who become separated; especially those women who become single mothers will inaugurate a cycle of family poverty that is almost impossible to escape. I have seen this tragedy play itself out in all the groups that I have been aware of. Whether through widowhood or desertion by a spouse our Sisters forced to raise children on their own, for the most part, but not universally begin a slow spiral downward. This situation was exacerbated in many instances by the nature of the Welfare system; which for years would provide subsistence for single women but not for intact families. In the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s, the presence of a man in the home was a disqualification for any assistance. Just like "Workfare" became a requirement for assistance due to the perception of "unworthy poor people", the idea of a lazy man living off the dole was viewed in the same way. When the availability of Relief for any single woman with a child was set up in the 60s we experienced a plague of single parent households the children of which are now becoming grandparents to a generation of permanently poor.

These patterns are being seen in the immigrant communities of particularly West Indians whom arrived in the early 70s and whose economic failures have created the same welfare based single mother society in many of our cities.

So let us not view each other as different. Let us instead see each other as in different positions within a matrix. Let us recognize that we all came here with the same expectations of success. And no matter our place of origin our children are after the first generation born here all African Americans. You can never go home again. This becomes your home.

Acknowledging this reality let us now develop the wisdom to make common cause and evolve Pan African Institutions to our mutual benefit. Let us abandon the illusions of lazy American Blacks and recognize that once you come here your descendents will be American Blacks.

This is interesting to read because I live in a community in Houston were there is a large showing of Africans and many of those communities hosts businesses which are African owned and operated. I have indeed noticed contention between Black Americans and African nationals but I think maybe this has to do with our (black americans) inculcation of anti-African sentiments or (the shunning of anything non-mainstream or european). We have a legacy of self hate stemming from African oppression in our country to the degree that we ourselves share the spirit of oppression with our African brothers and sisters in some sense, instead of bridging the gap between the cultures(American and African).....This is of course an over simplification and perhaps slighty skewed and off topic but that is what I recognize in my neck of the woods, Of course I am from/in the Deep South and the rules here can be very different than in other places....

Excellent topic btw...