While reading through the first three chapters of Blood Relations I kept finding myself very surprised. During our first couple of class meetings, we placed a large focus on Assimilation. Without going into any specific definitions or examples, we focused mainly on the idea of immigrants “sacrificing” some of their cultural identity to adapt to the new, blooming culture of America. Many earlier immigrants were forced to throw away their home world traditions so they can be looked upon as actual citizens. Fast forwarding to Harlem in the early twentieth century, there seems to be a shift in this ideology. Many of the immigrants coming from the Caribbean Islands tried to do as much as they could to differentiate themselves from native black Americans. In fact, many even kept their native language or learned new ones just so they wouldn’t be piled into a broad category of second-class citizens. In Chapter 1, a small story was given on how a train conductor had asked a dark skinned Cuban immigrant to move to a Jim Crow train car. Once the conductor had heard the Cuban man speak Spanish though, he simply punched his ticket and “ ‘treated him just as he did the other passengers in the car.’ ” I thought this was pretty ironic; a racist system such as the one defined by the Jim Crow laws gave exceptions to dark-skinned peoples as long as they spoke a different language.

A lot of my confusion concerning the whole idea of Caribbean immigrants separating themselves from black Americans began to fade as I read through chapter 2. It became pretty clear, pretty fast, why Caribbean immigrants would do this. These new immigrants coming from a variety of different islands and countries were immediately perceived as superior to black Americans. Coming from colonies that were originally founded by European countries added credibility to this idea but most of the incoming immigrants came in with something to prove. Many Caribbean men, and surprising for the time, women, had some sort of formal education up to and sometimes exceeding the college level. This made them well more educated than the average black southerner who migrated from the North. Even those immigrants who weren’t as educated arrived with redeeming skills. Large portions of Caribbean immigrants were artisans. That is, they excelled in a certain skill that they used to provide for their family and themselves. Some of these skilled workers included cobblers, tailors and craftsmen. Even though the job market was very limited, Caribbean immigrants had a less difficult time finding suitable work. Women, who usually weren’t artisans, had a somewhat easy time finding work in other people’s homes.

Throughout my reading, one thing that I though about a lot was how was native black Americans in Harlem reacting to this whole situation. Were they resentful of Caribbean immigrants who turned their nose up at them? Or were they impressed and motivated to better themselves? I didn’t really come to an answer for this question, but I hope to find some sort of one in my further reading.