Arizona’s faces more division: African Americans and Africans
By DaVaun Sanders New America Media/ Phx Soul, News Report
Jul 19, 2010
Third of 3 Parts
Abdulmajeed Dere expressed frustration with trying to interact with
African Americans since he arrived in the metropolitan Phoenix area from
his native Somalia in 1996.
“When I came to the country, I saw African Americans as my brothers,”
said Dere, a small-business owner. “I was laughing with joy to see them.
But every time I talk to them, rejection, rejection—every time. After
awhile I felt like, why should I even talk to them?”
Dere is resigned to the cultural split, but is also frustrated by it.
As a middle-aged member of the sandwich generation, attending both to
children in high school and college and to his elderly mother, he feels
he has much to share with his American brothers. A former community case
worker, he is deeply familiar with the strain black families face,
especially in this recession, squeezed by household demands from both
ends of the age scale.
He believes, though, that his accent and a sense of superiority among
some African Americans erect barriers to communication and undermine the
potential for mutual support. Research published by Arizona State
University (ASU) reinforces and echoes Dere's experience.
Two Different Paths
Africans make up a small but growing part of the black population in
metro-Phoenix, which limits opportunities for interaction. According to
the 2008 American Community Survey, "foreign-born Africans" number
around 18,500 in Maricopa County, or 10.8 percent of the area’s black
population. The refugee population in Arizona is much smaller, although
that figure more than doubled from 2006 to 2009, to 4,327, according to
the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement.
In a 2008 supplemental report entitled “The State of Black Arizona,
Volume I,” ASU associate professor Lisa Aubrey and colleagues found that
many African Americans hold new arrivals “responsible” for their
ancestral enslavement and “correlate Africa . . . with poverty and feel
ashamed.” Aubrey and her coauthors call today’s African Americans “old
diasporans,” descendants of slaves and other earlier African arrivals.
The scholars refer to modern continental Africans, including refugees
who fled strife in their countries, as “new diasporans.”
Extremely different paths to settlement in Arizona, combined with
dissonance within each group, pose challenges for African Americans
seeking to build bridges between old diasporan and new diasporan
communities. New diasporans in metro Phoenix hail from many parts of
Africa, including Liberia, Somalia, Rwanda and Sudan.
Elders from both old and new diasporan communities confront complex
issues that will impact their quality of life and that of their
descendants for generations to come. While African Americans face myriad
health challenges, African immigrants also run into barriers of
transportation and isolation, which impede their social and emotional
health.
“People are too busy with life, no one is interested in reaching out
to African communities,” said Abraham Reech, a senior case manager at
Lutheran Social Ministries, a Phoenix area refugee resettlement agency.
“There is no reason, no incentive.”
“There is a lack of communication,” said Tap Dak, outreach
coordinator for the AZ Lost Boys Center, which serves the Sudanese
community of metro Phoenix. He said differences in religion, ideology
and politics among African immigrants and refugees often lead to
misconceptions between different ethnicities, despite their similar
experience and mutual concerns.
Dak added, “The (African) community doesn't have dialogue within
itself.”
Recent African arrivals in Arizona’s Valley of the Sun often possess
starkly different experiences, expectations and outlooks on America—and
on each other, ASU’s Aubrey noted, Along with refugees seeking political
asylum, the immigrants include “some of the most highly educated,
professionally skilled and accomplished Africans from the continent,”
she said.
Preconceived ideas about other ethnic groups often lead to rifts.
Reech, who is Sudanese, recalled an instance when African
neighbor—like Reech, a recent immigrant—forbade his son to associate
with Reech's son. Reech believes that the father didn't want his son to
associate with black people, whether African or African American -- even
though he was also black. He said this is a common reaction among
immigrants, who wish to avoid negative associations with African
Americans.
“My son was on the principal’s list,” Reech said, shaking his head in
exasperation. “What would make the father think that way?”
Little Interaction Among Immigrants
Charles Shipman, Arizona’s refugee coordinator, acknowledged that
there is little interaction among the newer African immigrant groups. He
attributes the problem less to outright antagonism than to a sense of
competition.
During his eight years of working with refugees, Shipman said, he has
seen collaborative efforts between African immigrant groups quickly
collapse when discussions turn to pursuing funds.
But the situation is improving, Shipman added. “Organizations are
starting to understand that mutual assistance is about mutual
assistance. They are starting to come together,” he said.
African Americans around Phoenix also constitute a diverse
population, including Valley natives and recent arrivals from other
states. In many instances, a shared ancestry with African immigrants is
not enough to promote intercultural connections.
Outreach Efforts
“Refugee assistance is all about outreach, and there is not a lot of
outreach from the African American community,” noted Eman Yarrow, a
community and economic development manager for the Arizona Refugee
Resettlement Program.
Yarrow cited First Institutional Baptist Church and the Light of Hope
Institute as faith-based organizations particularly committed to aiding
refugee families. “Resettlement agencies need to do a better job—talk to
larger churches about supporting smaller immigrant churches.”
For example, First Institutional invited Kigabo Mbazumutima, a doctor
from Benin, to speak at its 2010 Community Health Forum and share his
experiences growing up in the Congo.
Mbazumutima is working with ASU faculty to improve health care access
to the Great Lakes region of Africa, and the mostly African American
attendees at the forum showed interest in volunteering and making
donations. He and event organizers hope that by providing access to
resources, such as the church facility, established groups in the
African American community in Phoenix will foster cultural understanding
and the greater acceptance that new diasporan communities need to
flourish in this desert region.
This article is third in a three-part series for PhxSoul.com created
for New America Media’s Ethnic Elders News Fellowship with support from
The Atlantic Philanthropies.
http://newamericamedia.org/
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