Creating Africa in America. Jacqueline Copeland-Carson
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noted by Lamphere (1992:7), there are some important differences between earlier phases of immigration to the United States (before 1924) and current immigration. A 1965 amendment to the Immigration and Nationality Act abolished country-by-country quotas that made it difficult for anyone but North Europeans to emigrate to the United States. Subsequent changes in immigration law, intensifying global economic restructuring, and political strife in their countries of origin have increased dramatically the numbers of immigrants and refugees from non-European countries, mostly Asian and Latin American, with smaller numbers of Black Caribbeans and Africans (Lamphere 1992:7). Furthermore, the class composition of immigrants has substantially changed. Earlier in the twentieth century, immigrants were mostly of peasant or working-class backgrounds. Since 1965, immigrants have included substantial numbers of middle- and even upper-class people with professional or entrepreneurial backgrounds, as well as those from rural and working classes (Portes and Rumbaut 1990). With these changes, anti-immigrant sentiments have also increased (Lamphere 1992:14).
For example, in 1986 the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) was passed to control and contain illegal immigration, primarily through employer sanctions against hiring undocumented workers (Bean et al. 1989:25). Another indication of anti-immigration and anti-immigrant attitudes includes the passage of “English-only” legislation in states with large Spanish-speaking populations, including Arizona, Florida, California, and Colorado (see Castro 1989). The post-September 11 restrictions on immigration and civil liberty while ostensibly designed to prevent terrorism, also seem to be having the effect of exacerbating this preexisting xenophobic trend. While these sentiments are certainly not new in American history, current trends provide an important part of the context for the present analysis of African/African American identity formation.
The diversity of America’s contemporary African diaspora even further complicates what it means to be both American and of African heritage, providing the context for intense debate and innovative production of new identities among newcomers and native-born groups in Minnesota. The state is now home to the highest concentration of Somalis in the United States and to sizeable and growing Ethiopian, Liberian, Nigerian, and Sudanese communities, as well as other African immigrant groups.1 The number of African immigrants living in the Twin Cities is expected to grow. According to the U.S. Committee for Refugees, because limits on the numbers of African immigrants allowed to enter the country have been raised, there will be dramatic increases in the number of African immigrants to the United States when already established newcomers attempt to reunite their families. An estimated 12,000 were projected to arrive in 1999 alone and more than 25,000 were expected in 2003. However, government restrictions on emigration to the United States in the post-September 11 period may curtail the number of African immigrants. In addition to its growing Somali population, Minnesota also has a sizable Ethiopian and growing Sudanese and Kenyan populations (see Holtzmann and Foner 1999 for an ethnography of Minnesota’s Sudanese immigrants). The numbers of West Africans living in Minnesota is smaller, but significant, with about 750 Liberian families as well as almost 1,000 Yorùbá, Igbo, and Hausa families, mostly from Nigeria. Also attracted by economic opportunities and the comparatively high quality of life in the Twin Cities, the number of African American and other native-born people of color, particularly those living in poverty and migrating from other Midwestern cities such as Chicago and Gary, Indiana, has also increased in the past two decades (Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights 1998). During the 1980s, the “minority” population rose to 21 percent children of color public school enrollment; and students spoke some seventy languages. These demographic changes were a sociocultural shock for an urban area that as recently as 1970 was 93 percent white.
The specific translocality which is the focus of this study is the culturally diverse, largely low-income Powderhorn community of Minneapolis. Powderhorn is a microcosm of the broader demographic patterns now found in Minnesota. The largest of Minneapolis’s eleven planning districts, Powderhorn has eight neighborhoods, six of which have significant poverty rates. Despite its high rate of poverty, Powderhorn retains some economic assets such as vibrant business and nonprofit sectors and relatively high numbers of owner-occupied single-family homes. Incorporated in 1887, Powderhorn has traditionally been a “launching pad” for new immigrant and native-born arrivals to the Twin Cities. As noted in a recent study of Powderhorn’s history and culture (Larson and Azzahir 1995:13), this very diverse community is perceived by many Twin Cities residents as having an activist culture and community institutions and a strong “feminist culture … with wide acceptance of non-western health practices, new age spiritualists, acupuncturists, and homeopaths.”
Defining its mission as “unleashing the power of citizens to heal themselves,” the CWC attempted to use what it called “cultural health practices” to deliberately build a shared sense of identity among the native-born and immigrant groups that comprise Powderhorn’s 51,000 residents, including Whites, Blacks, Native Americans, Asians, and Latinos of diverse backgrounds.
The CWC’s mission operated simultaneously at two levels.2 It attempted to build community among these groups, while providing programs to cultivate shared identity and networks within the various groups that made up its Powderhorn constituent base. The CWC had three core program divisions which provided support groups, health counseling, and classes to develop the body (often called “bodywork” classes) to accomplish its community-building goals: the Health Institute, the Invisible College, and Core Member Activities.3 The Health Institute provided services to help individual members better manage their relationship with mainstream medical practitioners and sponsored research and evaluation studies to document the CWC’s model. The Invisible College conducted educational and support group activities for a wide segment of the CWC’s constituency, including patients and medical doctors, to help them understand the interface between health and culture and regenerate these connections in their personal and community lives. Core Member Activities included basic member services considered fundamental to cultural wellness, including, for example, health self-assessments, introductory courses in cultural health issues, and nutritional and exercise classes.
Although the CWC’s underlying program philosophy will be discussed in much greater detail later in this study, it maintained that to build healthy pluralistic communities, people must be reconnected to their specific cultural traditions. Thus, reflecting its dual mission, the three CWC program divisions also operated at two levels. There were general classes which would be of interest to any constituent, for example, health self-assessments, relaxation techniques, and a farmer’s market. And there were constituent-specific classes, for example, parenting classes for African Americans, leadership classes for women, Hmong dance, English as a Second Language classes for Chicanos and Latinos, European traditional healing, or cultural health sessions for medical doctors.4
Two subtle philosophical distinctions also characterized the CWC mission. Its general mission and programs applied to all participants, regardless of ethnocultural, educational, or occupational background. At the same time, according to the CWC’s African leadership, its cultural wellness mission, although universal, had an essentially African base. Therefore, “African” at the CWC was construed as both an ethnocultural category referring to people of African descent, and a universal cultural wellness philosophy and way of life that could be adopted by anyone regardless of their background.5
A thorough study of the CWC’s mission, program tracks, and profound constituent diversity was not feasible in the context of this two-year study. This study focuses on the CWC’s role in the construction of African diasporan diversity in the Twin Cities. Given my training as an Africanist and my ethnographic research experiences in African communities in Nigeria and African diasporan ones in the United States, an African diasporan focus seems appropriate. This focus in no way implies that I consider the CWC’s African constituents more important than other participants. Nor does it imply, as indicated by the many general and culturally specific services available to its non-African participants (see Table A6 in Appendix A), that this nonprofit organization only has African programs. The African diasporan focus is driven by the need to delineate a manageable focus for a two-year ethnographic research project, my own training, and my related interest in African diasporan studies issues. Interrelations between CWC Africans and other participants are studied