In Christine G. T. Ho’s article, “Caribbean Transnationalism As a Gendered Process”, Ho explains the economical and financial stability that women had to create for themselves as they resided in the cities of New York. Commonly, elite immigrant families tended to move to another country as a whole unit. All the nuclear family members had the resources and money to move in such a large entity. However, many poor Caribbean families immigrated independently from each other. It would take them many trips over many years to successfully bring the whole family into the same city. With this thought in mind, many of the Caribbean women migrants participated in what is known as “circular migration”, a method in which they would pave the path for other people to follow behind them, such as family members or friends.

Ho clarifies that many Caribbean families tended to be matrifocal and placed great emphasis and respect to the mother-child bond. Contrary to the notion that women in matrifocal families would be dominant, husbands were still considered to have the dominant hand in the family.

There are many causes as to why Caribbean women played such essential roles in maintaining the family and serving as the connecting bridges between the native country and the immigrant nation. Caribbean transnationalism rests on the foundations of family and kinship ties, which women managed to preserve. Many Caribbean men tended to maintain illegal relationships with other women. This forced the Caribbean wives to work hard without receiving a lot of financial and emotional support from the husbands. Many of these women worked as farm vendors and other jobs in the informal sector of the economy. After post WWII, the shift in the jobs forced women from agricultural work into domestic labor. At that time period, 88% of Caribbean women had only a primary school education and this made them the perfect candidates to be marginalized as the reserve labor pool, mainly due to high unemployment and their lack of an education. With women barely making enough money to support their families, they had to rely on relationships with numerous men to support their family.

All of these scenarios helped pave the path for women to form many networks and to keep their connections with their native country. Women kept in touch with their families back home so that they could receive help when times were tough. These same women had many networks within the community so that they could make money to help support their families.

In Reuel Rogers’ article, “’Black Like Who?’ Afro-Caribbean Immigrants, African Americans, and the Politics of Group Identity”, Rogers clarifies the major differences that diversifies the Caribbean community from the African-American community. There are many reasons why these two major groups are separated. With the increase in the Caribbean population and the decline of the native African-American population, the many conflicts between the two groups continued to clash at an exponential level.

Native African-Americans and the Caribbean immigrants both have a strong sense of nationality and racial identity. These two groups have always viewed themselves as unique with their own culture and heritage, individual from other groups. With the arrival of the Caribbean immigrants into New York City, social structures grouped the native African-Americans and the Caribbean immigrants into one black social group. This brought up intragroup tensions because these groups were offended that they were viewed as basically similar to each other.

The Caribbean immigrants also tended to have a higher education than their native African-American counterparts and this also fueled the rising conflicts. The Caribbean immigrants viewed themselves as upper class people and wanted to be treated better than the native blacks. They also believed that their migration was voluntarily made to New York City whereas the native blacks were forced to migrate to the states. These differences made each group view themselves as different from the other group, thus creating stresses between each other.

Many political groups started to form as ways to identify and aid the people specifically part of the same group. The Caribbean political organizations would exclusively aid the Caribbean immigrants by providing them ways to attain jobs, buy houses, and receive an education. In the same manner, native African-Americans formed their own political organizations where they had the capability to attain social mobility in their own communities and to identify with their racial identity and heritage. This influenced how both groups viewed politics because it was in the terms of achieving political representation for the whole racial group. This strong group identification influenced their political views on laws and issues that would benefit all their members. It is interesting to note that the more current immigrants from the Caribbean tend not to join these political organizations. Native African-Americans were more likely to relate strongly to their racial identity and roots, unlike the newest wave of Caribbean immigrants.

In Mary C. Waters’ article, “Growing Up West Indian and African American”, Waters explains her study on the development of racial identity of second-generation Caribbean teenagers and African-American teenagers. According to Waters research, first-generation immigrants from the Caribbean tended to identify themselves as from the West Indies. The second-generation teenagers, however, grew up hearing about the negative things about white culture and the African Americans. These second-generation Caribbean teenagers were also treated differently than their parents. They didn’t have their parents’ unique West Indian accent that distinguished them from their African-American counterparts. This hindered them from attaining higher wage jobs since the majority of the society couldn’t distinguish if these Caribbean teenagers were of West Indian or African-American descent.

Waters’ explains that parents who were involved with ethnic groups and organizations were more likely to instill a sense of racial identity in their children. Differing views between the parents and the children also influenced how they grew up to view their society and ethnicity. The immigrant parents were more likely to view their low social class standing due to a lack of education. They convinced their children that with hard work, they could make it up the social mobility ladder. However, these teenagers faced racism and discrimination from the society, thus altering their views of America, which vastly varied from their parents. Notably, the ethnic-identified teenagers who had middle-class parents and were placed in magnet schools had more hopes for the future. They believed that they would receive equal opportunities with the acquiring of an education.