This week we read the article “Capital of the Caribbean”: The African American-West Indian “Harlem Nexus” and the Transnational Drive for Black Freedom, 1940-1948 by Jason Parker. In the article, Parker argues that Harlem acts as the “capital” of the Caribbean because so much relating to the Caribbean is centered there. In the 1940’s there was a large Afro-Caribbean population that was coming from many of the Caribbean Islands. The situations in their home countries were not great since they were ruled by colonial powers. Upon moving to Harlem, Caribbean people made it a base of operations for political movements. There were political parties from other countries that were started in Harlem. Many Caribbean elections were affected greatly by the Caribbean immigrants in Harlem. The Caribbean immigrants also forced the US to acknowledge the Caribbean countries in the geopolitical sphere and forced the Allies of WWII to take action in Ethiopia after the Italian occupation. The political and cultural power stored in such a small area is incredible. Especially, how the entire world was affected by the situation in Harlem. Its power was so great that it had a larger effect on the Caribbean than any place in the Caribbean itself, this making Harlem the capital of the Caribbean.

This week we also began reading Brown Girl, Brownstones by Paule Marshall. I think that it is good to read a novel like this when studying Harlem. Though our approach has been fairly balanced between a macro and micro view, we tend to focus more on the macro. But looking at the micro helps immensely to develop our understanding of Afro-Caribbean immigrants to New York. In essence we are studying the lives of people and thus at points, we must take a closer look and see how those lives really were. This novel gives us a pretty good representation of this through the multiple characters it focuses on.

It is interesting to see views on race from the micro perspective. Selina is a young girl in the novel whose parents came from Barbados. She and her family live in a Brooklyn Brownstone. People of Dutch-English and Scotch-Irish Ancestry originally owned these houses but then the area became mainly Barbadian and West Indian. Salina believes that “She did not belong there. She was something vulgar in a holy place” (Marshall 3). And when she imagines herself living with the white family that once owned the house, she imagines that “she was no longer a dark girl alone” (Marshall 3). This indicates that Selina what appears to be an inferiority complex relating to the color of her skin. I imagine this occurred often during this time period as black people were often treated badly very openly. An example of this in the novel is when the black women are walking on the street and “sometimes the white children on their way to school laughed at their blackness and shouted ‘nigger’” (8). Though race relations between black and whites can be studied in the academic macro context, this novel provides a much deeper emotional connection and understanding.

Another big idea is that of movement and economic stability. One of the main reasons that immigrants left the Caribbean and came to New York was the will to find favorable economic conditions and live a comfortable life. This set up a system of back and forth movement with transnational networks as its central nervous system. The Deighton Boyce, Selina’s father, wants to find work that will gain him a good amount of money. He wants to use the money to return to Barbados and live comfortably on plot of land that he has inherited from his family. He does not view the move a permanent but as a means to an end. His wife, Silla, on the other hand sees this differently. She wants to stay in Brooklyn and use the money from the plot of land to pay for the house in Brooklyn. This story has helped me understand that there weren’t uniform motives for moving to and working in New York City.