The content of the readings for this week, along with our class discussion on Tuesday, have all caught my attention. It is awesome to see how Caribbean immigrants living in New York City (mainly in Harlem) and elsewhere within the United States played a huge role in the liberation of their home countries from foreign oppression. Today, when we think about the Caribbean we only think about the stereotypes associated with the area. All we can picture is sunny beaches and resorts full of tourists that go to these places to fool around. However, we can never seem to associate these places with suffering, poverty and other types of social struggles. Most, if not all islands of the Caribbean were European colonies at some point and natives had to fight for their freedom from foreign oppression just like the United States did with Great Britain. Immigrants residing in Harlem provided the islanders with financial, diplomatic and moral support so that they could ultimately be successful at liberating their countries from foreign rule. In “Capital of the Caribbean,” by Jason Parker, we learn that Harlem was the epicenter of the global black movement for freedom. During the early half of the twentieth century, Harlem faced many social changes due to the immigration of people from the Caribbean and African Americans from the South. This changed people’s view of the black community within the nation. There were no longer small, weak communities of black people that were usually taken advantage of. Now, there was a strong community that advanced the general cause for black freedom. West Indian immigrants often advocated for black unity and freedom. Immigrants like Marcus Garvey, promulgated black consciousness and helped set the political agenda for black America.
African Americans throughout the Western Hemisphere sustained a newly impassioned interest in the global dimensions of racial and colonial oppression. The Caribbean presence in New York was very important because they led political currents on the revolutionary socialist left, supporting movements within their home countries. The global black movement for freedom became even stronger and effervescent with the Italian-Ethiopian conflict. Ethiopia was and still is a symbol of black unity, power and freedom. Throughout the history of the world it has been the only country in Africa without being successfully colonized by a European power. The temporary Italian occupation of Ethiopia united black people in advocating for freedom and liberation. Right after the invasion, the United States established a deal with England that gave the U.S. control over several naval bases located on islands within the Caribbean. This deal was necessary so that the United States could continue to appear as neutral in the war. In order to prevent problems with the people residing in the islands where the naval bases were located, President Roosevelt sent Charles Taussig, with the support of White, the leader of the NAACP, to get a general feel of the area. In his trip, Taussig conversed with many important Caribbean people who advised him about the different issues and situations in the area. When he returned to the United States, Taussig urged President Roosevelt to take action that would improve the relationship between Americans and people from the Caribbean. Taussig literally told Roosevelt that the U.S. had to acknowledge its racial faults, redress them in its island presence and establish a good relationship with the people in the area. Thus in 1941, Roosevelt proposed the creation of an Anglo-American Caribbean Commission. The commission convened in 1942 to study problems like food shortages and poverty. Although this commission’s efforts at facilitating large scale reform failed, the commission at least succeeded in bettering public relations between blacks and whites to a certain extent.
A phrase from this article that caught my attention was when Parker says that Black New York acted as both a cashbox and a soapbox for those fighting for the independence of the West Indies. The cooperation between figures such as Walter White, W.A. Domingo and Norman Manley was crucial to larger efforts at political reform. In other words, without people like the latter mentioned, the fight for freedom would have taken longer. This global black movement of freedom has been successful to a certain extent in areas all around the globe. People like Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, and Desmond Tutu have used the ideals associated with the movement to fight for freedom and liberation. However, something that I want to know more about with regards to this issue is the role of the black church in fighting for freedom. What role did it have? I would like to know specific religious leaders that played fundamental roles in this struggle.
The first two books of Brown Girl, Brownstones, written by Paule Marshall, were very interesting. By having read only 53 pages of Marshall’s piece, I was able to notice the suffering that many immigrant families go through. In these two books, Marshall introduces a couple of characters some from Barbados and others from the United States living in Brownstone houses located in a Bajan community within Brooklyn. The book centers around a young girl named Selina Boyce. She has an older sister named Ina, a dad, Deighton, and a mother, Silla. The first few pages of the book describe the house in which the Boyce family resides. What makes Selina’s description interesting is that we get a “first hand experience” of how a Brooklyn neighborhood looked like to a young child coming from an immigrant family. Right from the beginning, the reader gets the sense that the Boyce family, like any other family has many issues and problems that do not only have to do with being immigrants residing in a country but also issues related to growing up and identity, as well as race and social status. Silla does not seem to appreciate her daughters. Life has not treated her well. As a little kid she had to work in plantations and was mistreated by whites. Consequently she has huge resentments with society as a whole. The only one she seems to love is her son, who died at a very young age from heart problems (she blames her husband for the son’s death). Selina suffers because of racial tensions and also because she has not gotten her first period or developed a woman’s body yet while her best friend, Beryl and Ina have. Deighton does not know how be a good head of family. Instead of losing his pride and getting a job that may not be what he wants but would bring food to the table, he spends his time chasing dreams that he believes will take his family out of their economic situation but in the end always abandons them or is unsuccessful. He received land from his sister, but is very stubborn and does not want to sell it to get money to pay the bills. His wife is the one that has to take care of everything. To make things worse, he has a mistress whom he openly fools around with. It is as if he was a rebellious teenager more so than the head of a household. The wife, despite her many resentments, seems to be the only one in the family to keep reality in check.
In the first two books, Marshall also introduces two women, a sick elderly woman by the name Mary and her daughter, Maritze. The relationship between both of them is not good because Ms. Mary wishes to remain in the growing Bajan community in Brooklyn where she has lived her whole life, while her daughter wants to move out. The mother always judges her daughter because the daughter is unmarried and is not what Ms. Mary expects a daughter should be. Marshall also introduces Suggie, an immigrant woman who has it hard and resorts to sleeping with men on the weekends to supposedly take her mind away from all the tensions associated with her sufferings.
Through her book Marshall depicts the issues immigrants have when moving to the United States. Many times these individuals do not only have sufferings associated with living in an unknown place where they do not have support from anyone but also face issues due to their own mistakes. Moving to the U.S. and chasing after the American dream is the stereotype portrayed by many authors and movie directors in their works. However, in this book, Marshall is trying to show how many times the struggles associated with the American Dream become mixed with personal problems people have that make moving up the social ladder very hard. Thus far we see that the characters introduced here turn to drinking, denial of reality, sex, and cheating on the spouse to temporarily relieve themselves from tensions. However, these acts and states of mind are serving more as strains in their path to success. Silla and Deighton’s relationship is falling apart because of Deighton’s lack of cooperation in the household as the father and husband and Silla’s inability to work with people.
After reading Book 2, I get the sense that Selina has trouble finding her identity because of all the pressure she experiences from different people in her environment. Her mother never appreciates her, often making it explicitly clear that she prefers the deceased brother to her. Her sister and best friend serve as reminders that she has not entered puberty yet and despite the fact that she admires her father, she probably does not accept the fact that he does not do anything to improve the family’s circumstances. Society as a whole does not have her in a high standard because of her skin color and origins. Thus she must feel left out and secluded from different social circles.
