Navigating the World with a Hyphen
The Identity
Crisis of
2nd-Generation
Caribbean
Immigrants
By Ray S. Wilson
“I’m everything and I’m nothing, I’m from everywhere and nowhere, I’m a purebred mutt.”
Words I’ve spoken whenever I was asked what I am or where I’m from. Words that I thought only applied to me as I tried to compensate for the feeling of not belonging. However, I soon learned that many felt the same way. No man is an island, yet for many 2nd-generation Caribbean immigrants, living in America can feel as isolating as the islands they come from.
The 2nd-generation often struggle with figuring out where they belong in society, because the values professed by American culture are often antithetical to the values and experiences of their parents who were born and raised in another country, and the waters can get even more muddled when their parents are of two different nationalities.
Samantha Monroy and Bianca Salcedo share
their experiences growing up as a
2nd-generation immigrant while they prepare for the Belleza Universal beauty pageant.
Where Do I Fit In?
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Samantha Monroy is a Puerto Rican Colombian-American student at Stony Brook University studying Spanish Literature. She is representing Puerto Rico in a beauty pageant held by the Latin American Student Organization (LASO) in April 2022.
“This is really important to me,” said Monroy. “I am graduating this May and this opportunity really presents itself to be a time where I can showcase both my cultures and really be with a bunch of people who also have the same identity of being Latinidad and being of Caribbean and being Hispanic and Latino.”
The development of children's identities
usually begins at home, but as they grow,
they will begin to compare themselves to
their peers and the society around them.
Eventually, they will notice that they may
not share the same characteristics as their
parents in looks and/or in voice. For some
their preference for cultural foods would
differ as well. This especially happens when
they live in neighborhoods where their
ethnicity is not the dominant demographic.
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Food & Culture
No one would argue that food is one of the biggest staples of every culture. What is eaten and how it’s prepared are equally as diverse as the cultures around the world. While this can be a great way for people to engage with their heritage, it can also be the cause of anxiety within one's ingroup. Failure to find the same pleasure or enjoyment from such cultural staples can cause the individual to feel ostracized or less than, which may result in them completely abandoning their ethnic identity.
“I grew up in a very very
white area,” said Monroy. “I've never felt completely Hispanic enough and never completely American enough.”
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Their ethnic side identity will often collide with their national identity and among their peers they will also notice major differences in the habits and values shared between them.
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“In my town, the demographic was 100% white. I was the only 100% Hispanic kid in my school all the way to high school. I faced a lot of microaggressions and stuff that really went over my head as a young kid who grew up in a predominantly white American culture.”
Coming to America
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During the first wave of the Caribbean migration to America, from 1960 to 1986, the 1st-generation of immigrants were unable to relate to the struggle of African Americans during the civil rights movement. They believed that if they worked hard enough, pulled themselves up from their bootstraps, and practiced the politics of respectability, they too would be able to achieve the American dream. They were completely unaware that in the United States, the color of one’s skin has greater weight than the sum of his character, values, or education.
While colorism, or value based on the shade of one’s skin, did exist in the Caribbean, many immigrant parents were ill-equipped to navigate the type of racism that exists in America, much less teach it to their children.
“So the stuff they would say to me,
I thought was a joke, and you laugh it off. But being told to mow someone’s lawn or to stop playing
Taco Bell music is not exactly a joke or funny or any of the above.”
As a way to avoid possible bigotry and prejudice, many of these youths would attempt to hide their ethnicity as a
way to escape under the radar.
What is "Whiteness"
Whiteness is an imposed standard for everything. It dictates how one should carry oneself, how one should speak, how one should keep their hair, etc. It is the measure controlled by the dominant society that determines the norms by which we should live, also known as the politics of respectability.
“People of power have created infrastructures and systems that benefit whiteness,'' said Judi Brown Clarke. “And a lot of that whiteness came from colonialism. It was like, this is the proper education, the British system, this is the proper rule of law.”
While it is only a social construct and is in no way superior to other cultures and ways of life,
subscribing to the ideology of whiteness
nets positively for individuals and/or groups in the long run. However, groups that refuse to adhere to the white standard are seen as deviant and often find it difficult to find social, political, or economical success.
“I started whitewashing myself,” said Monroy.
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Georges Fouron, a professor of Africana studies and a Haitian immigrant has studied this topic intensely. “The expectations of the larger society [assume] that they would adapt to them.” However, that isn’t necessarily always the case. “These students are caught between the family situation that wants to pull them into the culture of their homeland.”
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“I would consider myself Americanized,” said Bianca Salcedo, a 2nd-generation Dominican and Puerto Rican immigrant and LASO board member. Growing up, her parents hardly ever spoke to her in Spanish and she went to a predominantly white school with a lot of white friends. She always felt afraid to speak Spanish because of a fear that her accent wouldn't be good enough.
“Family members had always kind of joked about my name. My name is Bianca. They would call me ‘Blanquita,’ you know, little white girl.”
Today, Salcedo forces her parents to speak the language to her and makes it a point to speak the language herself, embracing her mistakes and embracing her culture.
“I’ve always been attached to Spanish culture, but it wasn’t until I came to college where I really immersed myself in different cultural events and organizations like Miss Belleza, and events like Jubilee Latino, which is a dance team that I’m on.”
A Tale of Two Worlds
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There is a benefit to living in separate worlds
simultaneously. Judi Brown Clarke, the Vice
President of Equality and Equity and the Chief
Diversity Officer at Stony Brook, says that
code-switching is a necessary skill to acquire.
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But finding the balance between the two can be
difficult. “It was kind of a gray area, which always
had me confused about who I was, [and] where
I’m always trying to navigate,” said Salcedo.
“How I talk at home and how I talk
in the office are very different,” said Clarke. “And that’s not fakeness. It’s just that there’s an expectation within the academy that there is a certain demeanor, there's a certain way that I talk or act and so on.
Although, while assimilation has its obvious benefits, it can also come with some pitfalls. “The family wants them to maintain the mainstays of the homeland culture and peers are pulling them into the African American or Latino culture of the inner cities,” said Fouron. “These kids are pulled in too many directions.”
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This isn’t to say that inner city culture is inferior, but rather, it is antithetical to white culture that dominates the larger society.
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“In my high school years I started putting two and two together,” said Monroy, “I had a lack of confidence in myself because I never felt really Hispanic enough. I didn’t have that community outside my family, but never American enough.”
Harvard professor Mary Waters wrote in her book, Black Identities, that the 2nd-generation Caribbean immigrants are forced to choose between three identity paths; the American, the ethnic, and the immigrant.
Four 2nd-generation Caribbean immigrants share their views on their own ability to connect with their cultural heritage through language and food.
Four 2nd-generation Caribbean immigrants share how they label their own identity and how they want to be perceived by others.
The ethnic and the immigrant identity paths are very similar, just that the ethnic identity has a hyphenated nationality. For example, someone would say that they are
Jamaican-American. Those that choose to identify as an immigrant do not. They would refer to themselves as simply Jamaican or from whatever island they hail from. The reasons for which path is selected differs due to many variables and as time progresses are subject to change and merge.
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"It was really my Spanish class and getting into college where I really started to open up and get deeper into my Hispanic side,” said Monroy. "My culture was always prevalent growing up, but to really make it a form of my identity without shame or embarrassment was really a key point for me.”
The Politics of Race
For the 2nd-generation, a huge part of
determining one’s identity is based on
navigating race relations in America.
During the first wave, many Caribbean
immigrants migrating to the U.S., carried
with them a belief in the racial propaganda
that was spread throughout the Caribbean
about African Americans.
“To many of the people of the Caribbean,
African Americans were seen as lazy,
criminal, violent, and lacking family values,”
said Fouron.
These views on black Americans were
passed on to the next generation, but unlike the first, the second grew up among black Americans, which not only had a significant effect on their view of the black American community but on their view of themselves as well.
“I do think that in Jamaica there is a stigma against black Americans,” said Amaya McDonald, a Jamaican-American journalism student. “I think that is maybe because we don’t have that long of a history with slavery or segregation.”
Many Caribbean parents would not allow their children to hold relationships with African Americans, from friendships to marriage, in an attempt to prevent them from adopting the qualities they saw as undesirable.
Yet Matthew Jean, a Haitian-American student says that he sometimes felt stigmatized by Haitians that were born in Haiti because he was born in America. “They call us ‘moun blan,’ meaning white people.”
Still, most black and Latino youth would choose to follow the American identity path because the countercultures of the inner cities would often bring them acceptance with their peers.
“I kind of identify with both cultures,” said Jean. “But I’m leaning towards American culture because I never actually lived in the country, and I know very few Haitians that were actually born in the country besides my family.”
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The immigrants of the first wave, along with many other ethnic communities practiced the politics of respectability in order to find success in the U.S. By doing so, they sought to achieve “whiteness” as a way to gain social mobility. They believed that if they worked hard enough they would find acceptance in white society.
Four 2nd-generation Caribbean immigrants share their views race and ethnicity relations in America.
Four 2nd-generation Caribbean immigrants share their views of what motivates them to find success in America.
“I was told that I was one of the good ones,” said Fouron when he first migrated to America. “I was told ‘You are different… you’re educated, and you work. Just stay away from the others [African Americans] and you’ll do fine.’”
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But the dynamics separating Caribbean immigrants from African Americans would eventually change when many of those born from the immigrants of the first wave as well as the incoming second wave adopted the cultures of the inner city.
“Those who maintain the national or ethnic identity tend to do much better,” said Foroun. “If they can code-switch, then they may do well, they may succeed.”
Georges Fouron and Judi Brown Clarke speak on the realities of the children of immigrants in America.
Pre-Conceived Notions
Not all Caribbean immigrants were able to show such pride. The island from which one hails can also affect the likeliness of whether one chooses the ethnic or national identity over the American identity.
“Jamaican culture is well known and well appreciated in America. So many of these kids don’t have a problem saying they are Jamaicans,” said Fouron.
Jamaican-Americans are more likely to choose the ethnic or national identity because Jamaican culture is more acceptable within American society, due to greater exposure of their music, movies, tourism, and other forms of entertainment.
“There's this idea that Jamaica is
the whole Caribbean,” said Mcdonald. “ So seeing other cultures put Jamaicans up on that pedestal has made me or other Jamaicans kind of indulge in that.”
However, many of those who have a Haitian background will often choose the American identity and seek to hide the fact that they are Haitian.
“It’s a positive thing to be Jamaican, whereas for Haitian, it’s not a positive thing because the media in America always presents images of Haiti that are not flattering,” said Fouron. “They were often associated with voodoo, AIDS, or thought to be prone to violent behavior.”
These sentiments also permeated throughout each of the islands, adding to a sense of hierarchy between the island nations.
“I don’t think Jamaicans feel an air of superiority,” said Najee Reno, “but in my family there is that Jamaican pride, so sometimes it might come off that way.”