Washington, DC — The books talks of the social conflicts between African and African American students at an American high school. The authors of the book conducted studies and workshops with these African and African American students, examining the tensions between them, the stereotypes they faced, their media images of each other, and the role of public schools in educating each group about the other.
The book is very critical of the U.S. public school system and what the authors' see as its failure to educate African and African American children and in the role it plays in keeping the two groups apart. The authors also point a finger at African schools saying that while education is important in Africa that “Africans haven't had a culturally appropriate modern education”, that they have been fed European history and values (45).
In meeting with the students at the high school the authors were able to access some of the major issues the African students faced when coming to America. One issue was that of an accent. Those who arrived in America recently and had retained their African accents were more likely ridiculed by their classmates. The authors said that African students were also often intimidated out of participating in class, no doubt accent plays a part. Accent also played an important role for African students wishing to distinguish themselves from African Americans. According to the authors many of the African students were told to avoid the African American students. This is difficult to do and often fights between students of both groups would occur. The African students at this high school, according to the authors, are at the bottom of the social ladder, the authors say that they “are at best ignored and, at worst, attacked by their peers (63)”. The author says this leads many of them to either retreat or become aggressive. It should also be noted that many of the more aggressive African students the authors interviewed were from countries like Sierra Leone and Liberia where they had likely experienced violence. In fact one of the students at the high school was said to be a former child soldier.
The authors also looked at media images in America. The authors questioned the African American students about images of Africans in the media and the students said they only see images of savages, slavery, commercials for starving children, and nature programs. Furthermore, the authors said African Americans were not able to relate to Africa as their homeland because of the “distorted view of Africa in their schools, their homes, and in the media (17)”.
For African students, the author says that many of them try to fit in and often mimic some of the less positive aspects of African American culture just to seem cool. The growing number of African students in American schools, however, has also meant that African students in many cities now have an African social network in their schools. In the high school studied in the book the authors speak of how the African students were drawn together, and because of the high number of Africa students, they were often drawn together based on the geographic closeness of their home country or a shared language.
The fact African immigration has increased so dramatically to the U.S. has been felt in numerous ways. The divisions the author talks about are just a few. Among countrymen there have also been divisions along ethnic and economic lines. The Nigerian and Ethiopian communities are examples of African communities in the U.S. where ethnic identities are important.
Because school is the primary place of socialization for many African students, their parents have a difficult time in understanding the environment that their children are faced with. The authors say that parents of 2nd generation African immigrants did not grow up in the U.S. and have a hard time helping their children who face a different daily reality.
The authors point out that African and African American students, rather than unite around a shared heritage, tended to only identify with that which separated or distinguished them.
The authors, following the framework laid by Maulana Karenga, promote the use of the principles of Afrocentricity in resolving tensions between the two groups. “This book explores the implications of using Afrocentric principles to inform group activities designed to bridge the emotional and historical gaps that often provoke discord between African and Afro-American students (XXVI)”.
While not especially a proponent of Afrocentricity, I applaud the authors for identifying a framework for dealing with the increasingly serious issues facing African immigrants and African Americans. The 1980s saw a steady increase of Africans coming to America. We are not only continuing to see Africans immigrate to the U.S., the children of African immigrants are attending U.S. schools and colleges and facing new challenges, challenges that their parents never faced. Another interesting phenomenon is the increase in the number of bi-cultural children, products of African and African American relationships. This group was not discussed in the book, perhaps none of the students at the school fit into this category, but they form an important component of this issue.
One comment that authors Rosemanry Traore and Robert Lukens made was that Africans did not know of race prior to coming to America. This is a statement echoed by several scholars. This perhaps comes from the fact that most Africans don't have a need to proclaim their Africaness or their Blackness while in Africa, where ethnic and regional, even national identities dominate. But most Africans are very aware of race, and have words in their local languages to refer to Europeans, Asians, and Arabs, each of whom can be found in Africa. So it is true that Africans tends to become Africans only after they leave the continent, they are nonetheless aware of their racial identities.
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The book is an important study of what goes on in urban high schools in this country. It is also a testament to the experiences of African students in American high schools. It's the first to focus entirely on this topic. While some many quarrel with the use of Afrocentricity as a model in dealing with tensions between African and African American students, unless something is done to address the problem African and African American students will carry those tensions with them into their adult lives, contributing to, not helping to dissolve the tensions that already exist between Africans and African Americans in America.
This Isn't the America I Thought I'd Find: African Students in the Urban U.S. High School
By Rosemary Traoré and Robert J. Lukens
University Press of America
Discounted Price: $28.00/List price: $35.00
Paperback: 0-7618-3455-9/May 2006/258 pages
