Birthplaces divide black population

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, from 26-million to 34-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 at 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."

For example, Brown and other participants said many American blacks do not realize those born overseas must overcome the same disparities in housing, education and health care that they do in America.

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.

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, New York and Atlanta metropolitan areas have the largest concentrations of African-born residents.

Socioeconomic differences between black immigrants and native-born blacks has 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 trends 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 just 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 for those of African descent. Those differences exist because many immigrants from Africa are political refugees who tend to be more educated, Harrison said.

Language barriers also arise, said William Spriggs of the National Urban League's Institute for Opportunity and Equality.

There have been recent signs of unity. Civil rights groups descended on Florida in October after a boat carrying 216 Haitians ran aground in Key Biscayne, and after the 2000 election, when many black voters felt they were disenfranchised by ballot controversies.

Incidents such as those, as well as struggles to overcome socioeconomic disparities, are common for all blacks, Spriggs said.

Historically, because of the slave trade, most native-born blacks share the same backgrounds as recent immigrants, he added.

"If affirmative action applies to someone living in Mississippi, it has to apply to someone from Brazil or Haiti," Spriggs said. "We just got off at a different point on the boat."

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