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Contents
JERT Mission Statement ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2
JERT Editorial Policies and Contributions --------------------------------------------------------- 3
JERT Editorial Council --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4
JERT Advisory Board ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4
Preamble ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 5
Introduction --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 9
Integration of Information Technology in Education,
Instruction and Learning in a Connected Society.
Joseph O. Esin -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 15
The Lost Generation and/ or Perils of Belonging:
A Study of Africans in Exile
Emmanuel N. Ngwang ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 33
Relative age and Paleoenvironmental of Sandstone – Conglomerate
Deposits in the Northeastern Niger Delta, Nigeria.
David O. Inyang, L. C. Amajor and M. U. Udoh ---------------------------------------- 75
Pebble Morphometric Analysis of Awi Formation in Calabar
Flank,Nigeria
Asukwo E. Itam, David O. Inyang, Etie B. Akpan, and Dieugo O. Ikoro ------------ 93
2
JERT- Mission Statement
The Journal of Educational Research and Technology (JERT) is a peer- reviewed
journal engaged in the publication of professional educational research with emphasis on
educational technology, management information technology, professional development,
educational enrichment research, academic and administrative information systems, information
sciences, management information consulting, advertisements, academic collegiate conferences,
and community education development summits to show the advantages and the broad range of
possibilities that education, research and technology can offer in the educational and the world
community. The journal is equally engaged in organizing and advising on conferences, workshops
and seminars on invitation for publishing and presentation of research papers and original
manuscripts that promote further research and knowledge in the humanities and the sciences in the
USA, Africa and the world at large. The JERT is scheduled to be published three times yearly:
January, May and September.
JERT Editorial Policies and Contributions
1. The JERT editors will consider manuscripts that are organized in accordance with the
Mission, Journal Publication, Educational Technology, Management Information
Technology, Professional Development, Educational Enrichment Research, Academic and
Administrative Information Systems, Information Sciences, Management Information
Consulting, Advertisements, Academic Collegiate Conferences, and Community
Education Development Summits. Please feel free to contact us at (469) 534- 2720 or E-
mail: [email protected].
2. Personal and professional opinions, ideas, recommendations articulated in the (JERT) do
not necessary reflect the views of the Editors.
3. All manuscripts must be accompanied by well-synthesized Preamble or abstract of
approximately 100-200 Words.
4. Manuscripts must not be less than ten (10) pages and not exceed twenty (20) pages in
length, and must have outstanding and innovative educational, research, and technology
features.
5. Manuscripts must be typed double-spaced in Microsoft Word version 2003 or 2007 and
printed on 20 pound papers (8.5” x 11”).
6. JERT will not consider politically goaded manuscripts for publication.
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7. The author of the research manuscript must submit two original copies. Each copy should
contain a cover page with the name of author, topic/title. The essay proper should not have
any author’s name or indication of origin, except for the topic/subject at the top of the
paper. This is for blind reviewing.
8. All research manuscripts must be submitted with 15-20 cited-references, and 5-10 non-
cited references, double-spaced, and arranged in alphabetical order.
9. Footnotes are strongly discourages but when used should be typed double-spaced, and on
a separate page.
10. The basic style of writing is the American Psychological Association (APA), though room
will be given for the Modern Languages Association MLA where literature and languages
are involved.
11. Papers received shall be acknowledged and those accepted for publication will be notified
and instructions given as to the status of the paper (accepted for publication, accepted
contingent on specific revisions, and the time line for all revisions.
12. Copyright must be authorized and surrendered to JERT, and expressed usage can only be
authorized by the Board of Trustees and JERT Editorial Council.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATRONAGE
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JERT-Editorial Council
Chief Publishing Editor
Dr. Joseph O. Esin Professor & Author
Jarvis Christian College
Hawkins, Texas USA
Chief Editor
Dr. Emmanuel N. Ngwang Professor & Author
Jarvis Christian College
Hawkins, Texas USA
Principal Editors
Dr. Anne-Christine Hoff Professor
Jarvis Christian College
Hawkins, Texas USA
Dr. Anthony A. Ikaiddi Professor
Georgia Perimeter College
Decatur Campus, Georgia USA
JERT-Advisory Board
Dr. Sunday I. Efanga Associate Professor University of Uyo, Nigeria
Mr. Sylvester O. Asuqwo JERT Corporate Account JERT-Office, Calabar
Mr. Xavier E. Ekuwem
Representative
JERT Representative
Lagos, Nigeria
Mr. Matthias O. Nkuda JERT Representative University of Uyo, Nigeria
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Preamble
The Editorial Council is very delighted to publish Volume IV of the Journal of Educational
Research and Technology (JERT). The production of Volume IV could have not possible without
the persistent tireless efforts of the JERT Editorial Council and the priceless support of Professor
of Emmanuel N. Ngwang, JERT Chief Editor and Professor Anne-Christine Hoff, Principal Editor
and all well-wishers.
Professor Joseph O. Esin, the Chief Publishing Editor of The Journal of Educational
Research and Technology (JERT), holds a Bachelor of Science in Biology from Saint Louis
University, Saint Louis, Missouri; a Master of Arts in Religious Studies with emphasis on Moral
Theology from the Society of Jesus College of Divinity, Saint Louis, Missouri; and a Doctorate in
Computer Education from the United States International University, San Diego, California. The
State of California awarded him a Life-time Collegiate Instructor’s Credential in 1989, and in
1996, the United States Department of Justice approved and conferred on him the honor of
“Outstanding Professor of Research” in recognition of his contributions to academic excellence.
He met the selection criteria for inclusion in the 1992-93, 1994-95, and 1996-97 editions
of Who’s Who in American Education for his outstanding academic leadership in management
information technology. Furthermore, he met the selection criteria for inclusion in the 1993-94
edition of the Directory of International Biography, Cambridge, England, for his distinguished
professional service in academic computing technology. A Professor of Computer Information
Technology from 1988-2000, a Director of Higher Education Accreditation operations in
accordance with the guidelines set forth by the COMMISSION ON COLLEGES from 1991- 2000.
He was appointed Associate Dean of Academic Affairs and a Deputy Provost at Paul Quinn
College, Dallas, Texas, from 1997-2000. He is currently a professor of computer information
systems at Jarvis Christian College, Hawkins, Texas, USA, a visiting Professor of Research at the
University at Calabar, Nigeria and a Research Associate at the Botanical Research Institute of
Texas (BRIT) USA. Professor Esin has published several professional journal articles including
“High Level of Teachers’ Apprehension (HLTA): About the use of Computers in the Educational
Process.” Journal of Educational Media & Library Science (JEMLS-1991); “Computer Literacy
for Teachers: The Role of Computer Technology in the Educational Process.” (1992-JEMLS);
“Faculty Development: Effective use of Applications Software in the Classroom for instruction.”
(1993-JEMLS); “Strategies for Developing and
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Implementing Academic Computing in Colleges and Universities.” (1994-JEMLS); “Strategic
Planning for Computer Integration in Higher Education through the Year 2000.” (1994-JEMLS);
“The Challenge of Networking Technologies.” (1995-JEMLS); “The Design and Use of
Instructional Technology in Schools, Colleges and Universities.” (1997-JEMLS); “Decay of the
Nigerian Education System.” Journal of Educational Research and Technology (JERT-2013);
“The Emerging Impact of Information Technology on Education and the Community.” (2013-
JERT); “Balanced Salary Structure for Academic Professors and Allied Educators as a Pathway to
Quality Education.” (2014-JERT) and “The Discovery of Computer Information Technology is an
avenue for Educational Transformation in a Changing Society of Today and Tomorrow.”
International Organization of Scientific Research Journal of Engineering. (2014-IOSR-JEN).
He served as a member of Doctoral Dissertation Committee at Southern Methodist
University, Dallas, Texas (1998-2000), and Jackson State University, Jackson, Mississippi (2010-
2011). He is the author of The Power of Endurance (2008); The Evolution of Instructional
Technology (2011); The Messianic View of the Kingdom of God (2011) and Global Education
Reform (2013). Professor Esin’s current research emphasis is on The Fundamentals of Computer
Information Technology in a connected society.
Word of Caution
In order to achieve what is possible, you must attempt the impossible.
Professor Joseph O. Esin,
JERT-Chief Publishing Editor
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Professor Emmanuel N. Ngwang, the Chief Editor of The Journal of Educational Research
and Technology (JERT), is a 1986 graduate of Oklahoma State University with a Ph.D. in American
Literature and presently a Professor of English and Foreign Languages at Jarvis Christian College.
Before joining the faculty of Jarvis Christian College, he taught in several universities since 1982:
a Graduate Associate at Oklahoma State University (1982-1987); University of Yaoundé,
Cameroon (1987-1997); Kentucky State University (1997-2003); Mississippi Valley State
University from (2003-2010); and at Claflin University (2010-2012). He has edited two books on
criminal justice by Peter Nwankwo: Criminological and Criminal Justice Systems of the World: A
Comparative Perspective (2011) and Criminal Justice in the Pre-Colonial, Colonial, and Post-
Colonial Eras: Am Application of the Colonial Model to changes in the severity of punishment in
the Nigerian Law (2010).
In addition, Professor Ngwang has published and presented research papers on
postcolonial, African, and modern dramatic literature and Feminism. Some of his recent
publications include “Education as Female (Dis) Empowerment in Anne Tanyi-Tangs Arrah” in The
Atlantic Review of Feminist Studies Quarterly (2012). “Arrah’s Existential Dilemma: A Study of
Anne Tanyi-Tang’s Arrah in Cameroon Literature in English: Critical Essays (2010), “Spaces,
Gender, and Healing in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple and Mariama Ba’s So Long a Letter” in
New Urges in Postcolonial Literature: Widening Horizons (2009), “Re-Configuration of Colonialism
or the Negation of the Self in Postcolonial Cameroon in Bole Butake’s Plays in Reconceiving Post
colonialism: Visions and Revisions (2009), Buchi Emecheta’s Destination Biafra: A Feminist (Re-
)Writing of the Nigerian Civil War in Journal of African Literature: International Research on
African literature and Culture (JAL:IRCALC) (2008), “In Search of Cultural Identity or a Futile Search
for Anchor: Africa in Selected African American Literary Works” Identities and Voices. ALIZES
(TRADE WINDS 2007) “Literature as Politics: Revisiting Bole Butake’s Lake God and Other Plays”
in The Literary Griot: International Journal of African-World Expressive Culture (2002), and
“Female Empowerment and Political Change: A Study of Bole Butake’s Lake God, The Survivors,
and And Palm Wine Will Flow” in ALIZE (TRADE WINDS): A Journal of English Studies (2004)
(University of La Reunion, France).
Professor Ngwang has also been a recipient of prestigious awards in recognition of his
academic and research endeavors: 2013-2014 Faculty Scholar Award in Recognition of His
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Outstanding Research and Publication Work conferred by the Faculty Governance Senate of
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Jarvis Christian College, Hawkins, Texas; the 2004 Humanities Teacher of the Year Award from
the Mississippi Humanities Council, Jackson Mississippi; 2002-2003 Excellence in Scholarship and
Creative Activities, College of Arts and Sciences, Kentucky State University; and two-time
nomination to the Who’s Who Among America’s Teacher (2001 and 2002 respectively),
Educational Communications, Inc.; Lake Forest, Illinois.
A word to think about:
We are remembered by what we leave behind
For what we leave behind tells the true story of who we
were And how and for what we lived.
Professor Emmanuel N. Ngwang
JERT-Chief Editor
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Introduction
The JERT Editorial Board is again delighted to present to you Volume 4 of the Journal of
Educational Research and Technology (JERT), which takes a swift turn in the area of technological
research. The inclination towards expulsion of African, earth sciences and integration of
information technology in the articles presented shows the determination of the Editorial Board to
include and embrace all areas of research, especially the research the shares knowledge of our
homeland and mother Earth.
This Volume is dignified by the continuous efforts of Professor Joseph O. Esin to bring the
integration of technology into the educational process, instruction, every learning and business
environment especially in today’s world of globalization and cyber gyration. In Article 1,
Integration of Information Technology in Education, Instruction and Learning in a Connected
Society, Professor Esin takes the reader back to the domain of the classroom instruction, learning
endeavors, the invasion and role of information technology in education and computer literacy.
Professor Esin continues to insist on the reality of the overpowering nature of instructional
technology, which is here to stay and eventually make instruction and learning less stressful. His
research has revealed that today’s “professors, allied educators, students and consumers are using
technology to prepare, educate, manage and deliver instruction, publish and disseminate
information that was previously too expensive and almost impossible to produce and distribute to
the general public.” He goes further to declare emphatically that, “the era of integrated technology
is sponsoring the democratization of the production and flow of information to the educational
community and the masses.” This research reveals the incontestable value of educational
technology and the need for all— both in the educational world and the public spheres—to
welcome and embrace this initiative wholeheartedly to “unlock students’ academic potential” and
global communications.
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This article particularly resonates with the “Y” and Millennium generations who are much
more attached and atoned to technology in all aspects of their lives, including academic
advancement. This article tends to argue for them and support their determination to be computer
savvy, because that is the way of today’s word and nobody wants to be left behind. This approach
will definitely revolutionize education and move it from the constraints and limitations of the
classroom to the outside world academic projects and class assignments can be done from the ease
of a sitting room, in the pew of a church or the arm chair of the airplane. Professor Esin also
addresses the Best Practices of tailoring educational delivery to the learning styles of the students
so as to get the best, “to trigger students’ critical thinking ability, productive outcomes and lasting
solution to learning processes.” He particularly draws his conclusions from a set of questionnaire
he administered to college students who indeed are the core and cardinal partners of his research
initiative.
Article 2 opens up with the current, disturbing, yet aggressive research on immigration and
identity. Appropriately entitled The Lost Generation or the Peril of Belonging: A Study of Africans
in Exile, Professor Emmanuel N. Ngwang’s article takes a bold review of the dilemma and
frustrations incumbent on African immigration into the USA. This article takes a position different
from those that have often glorified immigration and the attendant benefits thereof. From Professor
Ngwang’s research, personal experience and interviews, the article depicts the trauma of exile as
those on voluntary or forced immigration face the almost insurmountable journey of searching for
peace and a successful life in a society that seems, on the outside, very welcoming, but in the inside
very unreceptive to the “African” foreigners. Professor Ngwang documents instances of broken
families, murders and tempted murders, accusations and victimization which these Africans have
receive from vast segments of American communities inclusive of African Americans and white
Americans who had migrated before them and the
12
Americans who consider the immigrants a continuous threat to their economy and freedom.
Professor Ngwang’s research gives an interesting perspective on immigration and tempts to
advance a solution to the continuous conflict that tends to define and fuel the relation between
African-born of African Americans and the traditional African-born Americans. The article also
diagnoses the problems and issues that aggravate and intensify these feelings of loneliness,
disconnectedness, and “loss,” which surface in many encounters between the “the New Generation
African American” and the African Americans where complexes have determined the fate of each
group. The answer seems to be in the continuous lack of trust created by the receiving nation and
the betrayals emerging from marital relationships and the continuous struggle among natives and
colleagues to betray each other in order to move forward to the attainment of the American Dream.
Professor Ngwang’s article also attempts to find solutions and propose suggestions to the
solutions of those factors that are catalytic to the situation. The onus of redress lies on the incoming
immigrants (strangers), who arrive with pumped up and faulty, fantastical misconceptions about
the ease attendant in obtaining the American Dream in the United States, a promised land flowing
of milk and honey. They envision the United States as a land of challenges where anything is
possible and everything is impossible. Such a realistic approach will take away the veneer of
sobriety and luxury that has tended to embroider the USA Hollywood pictures so that the real
pictures of the hard knocks will become available. Secondly, there is an attempt to ask for a more
humanistic and welcoming attitude on the part of the Native African Americans who tend to
receive and operate with the immigrant Africans purely on artificial and suspicious terms.
Globalization is a give and take and this calls for a certain measure of acceptance, understanding,
tolerance, faith and collaboration from both parties.
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In Article 3: Relative Age and Paleo Environment of Sandstone – conglomerate Deposits
in the Northeastern Niger Delta, Nigeria, Dr. David Inyang and Professor L. C. Amajor of the
Department of Geology in the University of Calabar and Port Harcourt respectively, and Dr. M.
U. Udoh, a South-Sea Petroleum Consultant affiliated with both universities lead the reader into a
bold attempt to determine the relative age and paleo environment of Sandstone-Conglomerate
deposits in the Northeastern Niger Delta of Nigeria. This collaborative study, sponsored by the
University of Calabar, Nigeria in collaboration with the South-Sea Petroleum Consultants, uses
sophisticated cutting-edge technology to analyze and deduce the age of the sand-conglomerate
deposits outcropping in the northeastern region of the Niger Delta. This scientific and intellectual
exercise reveals and thereby confirms previous suspicions studies of the area that though the
contiguous sedimentary units of the area studies were deposited in neritic environments. Based on
the result of this study, it is worth noting that the sandstone- conglomerate bodies are of
fluvial/continental plain origin. Furthermore, their research also found that the palynomorphs
found in the sandstone-conglomerate units were mostly forest, savanna, and montane species
asserting that these deposits are continental/fluvial plain in origin. Of great significance to the lay
person is the vegetation or horticultural significance of the studies which revealed the level of salt
and acidity and how these could affect vegetation and farming.
The overall significance in this study is the determination of the underlying bedrocks of
the areas and their ultimate ramification of an implication for mineral resources, horticulture,
settlement, natural disasters and mitigation as all these factors intertwine and depend very much
on the solidity and chemical composition of the soil and rocks that underlie the area of study.
Article 4: Pebble Morphometric Analysis of Awi Formation in Calabar Flank, Nigeria”
presents the studies and findings of Drs. Asukwo E. Itam, David O. Inyang, Etie B. Akpan and
AFRICANS
IN
AMERICA
33
THE LOST GENERATION and/or PERILS OF BELONGING: A
STUDY OF AFRICANS IN EXILE
Dr. Emmanuel N. Ngwang
Lead Professor of English and Literatures
Jarvis Christian College Hawkins,
Texas 75765
When the Nigerian Sunday Atam asserted in The African Herald (Vol.23 No. 11 & 12) of
Nov-Dec. 2012 that “I thought life would be better in the United States,” he became the
prophetic voice and herald of many of the African voices that have cried in silence. His cry
heralded the twin theme, diagonally opposed, subsumed in the wishful thinking that yes,
life could be better here in the USA and life could be worse here in the USA. While other
research and writings tend to dwell on the former, this paper takes the opposite direction,
to analyze how the Diasporic experience has produced shocking results on some children
and families. The losses tend to balance against and negate the gains, and leave indelible
scars on families and individuals- wayward children, divorce and broken families,
murdered wives and imprisoned fathers and children. The American Dream, or better still,
the hope for a better future in the USA, has turned to the American nightmare and the
search for connectedness with the African-American brothers has often rebounded in
frustration, disillusionment, and ultimately to apathy leaving the African stranded between
truly belonging and not belonging –lost.
Recent research on African immigration to the USA tends to capture in glaring terms
the success the immigrants have attained. Yes, there are occasional references to the challenges of
adapting to the new culture and new environments and people. Ngwang (2013) and Takoungang
(2001 and 2013) both capture the relative gains the Cameroonian immigrant has gained, especially
the gains acquired by the children of these immigrants. Both scholars cite the provision for children
and the exposure of these children to the American Dream subsumed in a well-organized system
of education, cultural enlightenment and personal freedom as one of the inciting and driving forces
behind their immigration. These authors allude to the catalogue of academic gains and progression
in social hierarchy as concrete evidence of the success stories of immigration. Additionally,
Nchinda’s most recent publication entitled “Recent African Immigrants’ Fatherhood Experiences
in America: The changing role of Fathers” (2014) paints a
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rosy picture of a few African immigrant parents he interviewed about the role they play in their
35
children’s upbringing in the USA. Chinda’s interviews and success stories are equally buttressed
by Richard O. Nwachukwu’s celebration of academic achievements in The African Herald (2013)1
entitled “Nigerian Children: Making their parents happy” in which he venerated the number of
Nigerian children who recently graduated from professional schools (MDs, pharmacists, lawyers,
engineers). Chua and Rubenfeld’s The Triple Package (2014) further demonstrates how African
immigrants into the USA, especially Nigerians, have excel in the attainment of the American
Dream through the use of the unlikely though inalienable traits of superiority complex, insecurity
and impulse control. According to these two researchers, “By comparison with other blacks in the
United States, according to a PhD dissertation on high- achieving second-generation Nigerian
Americans, Nigerians dominate investment banking” and are “over-represented at America’s top
law firms by a factor of at least seven, as compared to their percentage of the US black population
as a whole” (pp. 42-43). These stories (or most of them) are recollections of success, a Hollywood-
like perception of the glamorous pictures of the USA. True and appealing as these stories may
appear to be, these achievements are attained through the sacrifices of certain fundamental rights
and feelings of alienation. According to recent research and surveys published by the Pine Forge
Press site for students and instructors on diversity and society (2015), “native-born Americans
(even those with immigrants parents or grandparents) have never been particularly open to
newcomers” (392), which created a scenario for eventual conflicts in relationships. Therefore, the
opportunity cost or the real cost involved in these successes are the apathy and the indelible scars
of loss left on many African2 lives and families.
This project takes a slightly opposite direction: that balancing the gains with the losses
will reveal that the typical African immigrant in the USA suffers severe and lasting losses in terms
of the fundamental foundation on which his or her identity is constructed and from
36
which he or she is torn away. The one word I have borrowed from the African poet anthologized
in Nnoromele and Day-Lindsey’s (2009) maiden text is “lost.” In his succinctly titled poem “A
lost Generation” Sheikh Umarr Kamarah captures in vivid terms the dilemma and regret of an
adult African immigrant in the USA:
Here I am
Lost in thought … ruminating?
My country lingers … a forceful feeling
A feeling of nostalgia
Imprisoned in a deep sea of thoughts
A feeling of impotence invades my whole self
Here I am
Once a native
A native of my birth place … now
An alien in the U.S.
A documented alien –sounds respectable?
“Do you like it here?”
“No,” I replied
“Why are you here?”
“Well, my country can’t take me; well …
No, no, ah, ah, I can’t take my country.”
“Which is which?”
“I am confused.” (Nnoromele & Day-Lindsey, pp.60-61)
The poem quoted in its entirety above reveals two images of the African immigrant to the
USA – one of loss and the other of homelessness, which tend to reflect the twin concerns of
postcolonial studies and also lays a solid foundation for the binary paradigm injected into Peter
Geschiere’s well-researched text on the concept of autochthony and alienation aptly titled The
Perils of Belonging: Autochthony, Citizenship, and Exclusion in Africa & Europe (2009). Again,
it raises the paucity that informs the newfound catchy expressions of globalization and diversity.
Since the human being is a social animal, a person, not a bird, there has always been that primordial
or pristine need for nativity (For instance, the decree from Caesar Augustus for all Roman citizens
to go home for census) and the constant and expensive struggles of Africans to transport corpses
of loved ones back to their native “birth place.” Ironically, the corpses of
37
naturalized African descendants and the children born to them in the USA are equally transported
to Africa because they have simply and most of the time, been treated as “documented aliens’
(Kamarah 2009: l.10) who have been rendered impotent and emasculated by the immigration
process. This feeling of personal betrayal, for surely it is as such that it is presented, tends to be
more subtle but yet more sustained among the children who are born, in the words of Alan Paton’s
Cry, The Beloved Country (1948) “to inherit our fears” and our pains. The pains and frustrations
faced by these immigrants parallel experiences by Japanese immigrants to the USA depicted by
Julie Otsuka in The Buddha in the Attic (2011) because each experience is predicated on the
Hollywood notion of the American Dream, which to the outsider becomes deceptive, illusive and
illusionary when the immigrant finally arrives the “promised Land.”
In an early piece which I included in The Journeys Home: An Anthology of African
Diasporic Experience (2009) and Reconsiderations of African Immigration to the USA (2008), my
approach to first and second generation American-born African children was one of admiration
and excitement. Takougang (2014) and Ngwang (2012) dwelt extensively on the educational
attainment and social mobility which these youngsters quickly attained. However, many of these
researchers have failed to match the gains, which are sometimes superficial and external, with the
more deeply rooted losses the children equally suffer. Such a study will reveal these children and
even their parents constituting a lost generation. They feel or are lost because of the temporariness
which they experience as Americans in the midst of all the rights and privileges attached to that
citizenship, half of which they cannot freely enjoy or claim. On the other hand, the fact that they
are not and cannot be completely accepted or were ever completely accepted as African Americans
has remained a daily reminder of their alien-ness – the “Otherness of self.” Traditionally, these
children are Americans because their passports and birth certificates or other forms of
identification claim them as such. Ethnically, the identification
38
caveats on all kinds of papers and applications group them and the African Americans into the
Black Race collectively as African Americans, which many of the immigrant Africans who have
naturalized or were born in the USA are proud to embrace at the supposed expense of the native
African Americans,3 many who feel the “new” African Americans benefit from quotas reserved
for the them, the Native African Americans.
Otsuka’s The Buddha in the Artic (2011), the Japanese experience, very much
approximates African immigration to the USA because both are prefixed on the Hollywood notion
and presentations of the luscious lie through the American Dream, which becomes ephemeral and
illusionary when the “foreigner arrives the promised land of money, luxurious cars and houses.
The paved Hollywood streets of New York, Chicago and Los Angeles sudden become graveyards
where the immigrants confess,
We gave birth under oak trees, in summer, in 113 degrees of heat. We gave birth behind
woodstoves in one-town shacks on the coldest nights of the year. We gave birth on the
windy islands in the Delta…. We gave birth but the baby had already died in the womb
and we buried her naked, in the fields, beside a stream, but have moved so many times
since we can no longer remember where she is (p.5).
This is a land of confusion and paranoia, a land of shock and humiliation encountered by most
immigrants who had never been given the true picture and challenges of America and what it takes
to attain that American Dream.
The African situation is very disturbing because it challenges the whole concept embraced
in the compound noun that bridges and informs two countries or ethnicities, Africa and America.
While the other nations and ethnicities (Mexican American, Jewish American, Irish American,
German-American, and more) have a clear demarcation of their ethnic or regional background and
their new found country which is incontestable, the African situation is marred
39
and distorted by the long history of slavery which left indelible scars on the relationship between
the African Americans and the White American community, on the one hand, and the native
African Americans and the African descendants on the other hand. Indeed, this friction between
two “supposed brothers and sisters” is deeply rooted in the anger generated by history,
stereotypicality, misinformation and or the need for protective territoriality.
One of our poets, Countee Cullen, makes a passing reference in his poem
“Heritage” (1925) about the unity of time, which depicts not what he intended, but the binary
relationship between the African and the American societies: the over 400 hundred years of
separation transformed the Africans in the USA into Americans. Except for skin pigmentation and,
sometimes and more recently, names, there is very little in the native African American which is
African. Indeed, when we read attempts of African Americans (among whom were LeRoi Jones
and Alex Huxley) to visit and re-settle in their identified African “Motherland,” most of those
stories reveal clearly how difficult it was and is still for each of them to truly believe and embrace
the fact that they had African roots. In fact, one could argue here that culture is deeper than race.
Aidoo’s play The Dilemma of a Ghost (1995) captures this frustration in dramatic terms.
Aidoo’s The Dilemma of a Ghost reveals how this supposed beautiful African American
student is taken to Ghana to meet her fiancé’s people. On arrival in Ghana, she is very excited to
learn and adapt to African culture. Initially, she is excited about the special royal treatment she
receives from her future in-laws and family members. However, things soon begin to fall apart as
the euphoria and high expectations of her arrival wane in the face of local expectations for her to
blend into and accept the African way of life. She cannot understand the fundamental concepts of
extended and open-ended family relationships and the communal life style of the people. Soon it
becomes clear to the local people that the African-American bride, who looks very much like
40
them in skin pigmentation, is more American than African. In other words, there is so much of
America in African-Americans than of Africa, making them equally a semi lost generation
struggling for their identity both in the USA and in the world at large.
This idea is reinforced by W.B. DuBois’ highly contrived but well-defined concept of
“double consciousness,” a concept that very much replicates double identities the African
American communities are forced to juggle with as they negotiate entrances into the main stream
White American communities that control most of the means of production and distribution of
resources and employment and the financial institutions. For the naturalized African, this situation
constitutes a triple consciousness where he or she has to adapt to the white consciousness, and later
or at the same time to the African American consciousness before returning home to settle scores
with an African consciousness. Unfortunately, none of the former two is truly accepting of his or
her endeavors.
It is equally strange to see how African children moving down an American street with
their peers are considered as African-American children until they open their mouths. The observer
immediately turns round and remarks, “You have an accent. Where are you from?” From my over
twenty-four year stay in the USA, I have never heard a Chinese-American or Mexican-American
being told that he or she had an accent and to identify where they are from. This rude awakening,
which sometimes is mellowed by the interrogator adding, “I love your accent,” continues to
undergird and accentuate these differences which the African children face. On their job or school
application and other information forms, they check the column or space for African American but
out in public, they aren’t; they are Africans living in America. In “Inside Outside: The Politics of
Exile” (quoted in Nnoromele and Day-Lindsey, 2009), Tinashe Mushakuvanhu raises the same
tormenting question about immigration:
41
Every day I ask myself, what I–an African of my generations, a Zimbabwean child
– doing here in Wales, when I am reminded daily that I don’t belong? What am I doing
here, away from the sun-drenched plains of Africa in this dank and cold climate? What am
I doing among the sometimes indifferent Welsh people who understand nothing whatever
of ubuntu? Every day, I feel the pain of separation from my true home and from family
and friends left behind in poor, blighted Zimbabwe, a beautiful land vice-gripped by an
utterly selfish and totally corrupt dictator….
I hate it but we have been fleeing our country to live in other places, among
people who do not have full sympathy with us; people who accuse us of crimes we
should have committed and crimes we have no intention to commit (p.47)
Again, the above citation captures accurately this very challenging experience of exile and the
need to define and re-define one’s identity within autochthony. The overwhelming situation is one
of hopeless loss, a not-belonging-to-any-place-or-community syndrome, the lack of understanding
or empathy between the two groups and consequently the lack of much needed sympathy for the
alien, the “other Americans,” who, in all political aspects, are Americans but in all things social
are “foreigners.”
A recent survey distributed to African youth either born in the USA or brought to the USA
and naturalized revealed the same uneasiness that characterizes this relationship between the
African Americans and the African-born African Americans. Many of these children who had
African names but spoke with almost the same accent as the native African Americans, were
discriminated against on the basis of their names, which immediately singled them out as
“outsiders” although they were born the USA. However, experience has revealed that these
differences tend to be more pronounced regionally. The northern states with fewer blacks tend to
be more accommodative of African born Blacks than the South. I had the privilege of attending
42
the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the early 80s, where I witnessed more of an excitement
and curiosity towards the reception of Africans. As I moved later to Oklahoma to complete my
graduate studies, I began to sense a latent though subtle reaction to Africans, especially by African
Americans. Later on, I lived briefly in Bloomington (University of Indiana) in 1997 and later in
Kentucky, Mississippi, South Carolina and now in Texas. And it would seem that the further one
goes into the black states, the more noticeable the practice of this discriminatory attitude.
A similar experience was realized at an Historically Black College and University (HBCU)
when the Vice President for Academic Affairs expressed disappointment at the lukewarm attitude
of the native African American colleagues who could not eagerly respond to a call for committee
involvement. Out the seven who volunteered to create a committee to work with incoming
freshman students, three were “Africans” and four were White. There was no typical native African
American. In response, the VPAA asked where the African Americans were and jokingly, though
seriously, made the assertion to the African born African American that “Dr. Ngozi, you look like
us, but you are not one of us, just like the other folks are not us. It is very disconcerting when our
own people cannot take leading roles in issues that need a little more time, thinking and work.” He
went ahead to express his appreciation for African professors’ desire to work for the good of the
students and the university. This again revealed the latent and often ignored differences, and
sometimes contention between the naturalized African and the African American. Again, this goes
to support the contention between Africans and African Americans which Adegbile (2008)
discusses in his scholarly text with reference to the fight between Africanists F. Franklin Franzier
and Melville Herskovits “over the issue of African survivals among African American” ( 226)4 .
43
The African American experience continues to be a topic of controversy among leading
Africanist scholars and authorities and among professors in the South where Africa and Africans
remain more a literary curiosity and interest than a reality to be thoroughly investigated. Again,
these regional differences between African descendants and African Americans come out clearly
in HBCU where African Americans are solely in power. Recently, I attended the African Studies
Association (ASA) annual conference in Indianapolis, Indiana, where I was reminded of the
hospitality of the African American churches and organizations, who were delighted to receive
Africans and to make them feel at home. One could sense a genuine concern for connection and
collaboration and a yearning to re-connect with African roots. Many of those university
administrators were eager to recruit African Africanists to join them so that they could speak
with a stronger voice in those “white” universities where they were a minority. They took
pictures of everything and identified with and attended caucuses and associations of countries
where they visited. Every African felt truly welcomed and accepted. Then you move down
South where the reaction is like, “Where are you from, and what are you doing here, behaving as
if you know everything?” making the South an antithesis of the North, just as if Africa was the
antithesis of the USA in the heydays of the Back to Africa Movement (Ngwang 2007).
Recently, one pastor friend of mine confessed to me the latent, if subtle bone of contention
between the African Americans and the educated Africans who have naturalized. The typical
native African American, he said, considers Africa and African descendants as uncivilized,
backward wife-beaters who are condemned to a life of poverty, suffering, starvation, illnesses and
all types of diseases and misfortunes. These pictures are propagated and re-enforced by war victim
pictures flashed on CNN, FOX, and other international news channels. But when these African
Americans finally meet a flesh-and-blood African who tends to be more educated, well-dressed,
and somewhat well-to-do, especially those teaching them, they are taken aback.
44
Their first reaction is one of disbelieve, and if not for accents such a class of Africans is taken by
African Americans as befouling Africans. This disbelief soon mutates to contempt and then
resistance and hatred. This pastor friend of mine regretted the situation which has placed a wedge
between native African Americans and African born African Americans, who should be bonding
for strength and empowerment. So this undergirds the condescending attitude some African
Americans assume when they meet the Africans and the reciprocal resistance and hubris exhibited
by some of the African elites.
A few weeks ago and in a very casual, free-discourse and conversation period in my class,
one student asked why African men were so controlling and aggressive in their attitude. She
followed this inquiry by asserting that her Auntie was married to a Nigerian but they are divorced
now. I was initially offended by this line of questioning because it reflected and still reflects the
adverse attitude of many native African American women regarding African men, which has often
led to misunderstood perceptions and attitudes. However, it created a unique opportunity for me
to discuss some of the underlying behavior types that typify most African men. It is a given that
most African societies bring up the young in line with roles and responsibilities designed for each
gender. While the women are brought up to prepare for and to become good and successful
housewives and parents, good caretakers of houses and gardening, the boys are nurtured to become
the heirs and guardians of families, the protectors of the family property and to be “in charge.”
Indeed, this puts on the men the need to be assertive, for they cannot be in charge as cowards or as
seemingly weak individuals. Consequently, the boys grow up to be very self-assertive, bold, and
seemingly aggressive men. This attitude is also evident in the men’s outward and outspoken
attitudes, which are sometimes interpreted as being too presumptive and aggressive and therefore
likely to abuse women (just like Okonkwo in Achebe’s
45
Things Fall Apart). This misinterpretation calls for a truce which was best initiated by Booker
T. Washington in his “The Atlanta Exposition Address”
When Washington called for Black and White collaboration in his “The Atlanta Exposition
Address” of September 18, 1895, which eventually became Chapter XIV of his famous
autobiographical novel and an American masterpiece of literature Up from Slavery, he set the tone
for an all-embracing call for tolerance and collaboration. He proposed to White Americans (the
“other Americans”) that, “In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers,
yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress” (596). Could the native African
American call for such a truce between himself and his native African brethren? Can native African
Americans collaborate with Africans with whom they have natural and ancestral ties even if to
agree to be disagreeable later? This notion of shared responsibility and a shared destiny captured
in the “Atlanta Exposition Address” cannot be less true today as we reconsider this inherent or
latent “conflictual” relationship between African descendants and African Americans. What is
problematic is that very few on either side want to even accept that a real problem exists, and even
when they do admit it, they maintain that it is artificial or superficial and that this conflict does not
measure to the White-Black binary within the USA.
In the early sixties, the presence of Africans in the USA was not so much a problem because
the few African immigrants who were in the USA came to study and return to their respective
home countries. But now that most of the African youth have naturalized or have come to stay, it
seems the problem has become more real than before. Indeed, when Martin Luther King expressed
his dream to the American people over fifty years ago in his famous March on Washington speech
on August 28, 1963, the undertone was not just the issue of African American and Caucasian
American bigotry and conflict; it was a clarion call for a collective and global fight against racism,
discrimination and injustice. This reminds me of the
46
biblical parable of the ungrateful debtor who demanded pardon from his master and denied the
same pardon to his own debtors (Matthew 18:23- 34). Though this may be an extreme and
exaggerated case of forgiveness that far outweighs the African and African American experience,
both situations/scenarios emanate from the same philosophical foundation of treating others the
way you were treated or the way you want to be treated. If Dr. King envisioned his little black
boys and black girls moving hand in hand with little white boys and white girls, he equally
envisioned the African boys and girls moving hand in hand with the African American boys and
girls with whom they share a greater affinity and destiny based on ancestry. But that has not been
so easy. As in Peter Geschiere’s text, this conflict may define and enhance the concept of
“belonging,” “autochthony,” and terrritoriality where one group lays a greater claim to belonging
and originality than the other.
According to Adegbile (2008), the retaining of African American ties with Africa seems
always to be perfunctory, although scholars like Dubois, Carter Woodson, Turner and Herskovits
have all written about the influence of Africa on African American culture. The cultural
deprivation syndrome has created a reluctance in many scholars to deal with Africa, leading to
many historians concentrating more on slavery in the USA and Africa rather than on in depth
understanding of both cultures. Some African Americans have resorted to searching for their roots
in Africa as a way of choosing between the two continents when things were rough or unpalatable
in America, rather than as a concerted attempt to come to terms with their identity. LeRoi Jones
felt completely disappointed in his search when he returned to the USA, feeling that Africa was a
lost cause because the Cultural Revolution he had envisioned in Africa was instead a cultural
betrayal. Black History Month every February has been hijacked into a parade of African dressing
in long gowns, boubous and some traditional and outlandish African attire. Or again, it is more
fashionable to give native African American children African names, whose
47
meaning is sometimes unknown to the child or even the parents. It suffices for the name to sound
African and good. Again, this is a cosmetic view of Africa, one that is readily used during the
times of crisis (Ngwang 2007). Indeed, this crisis resembles the one Langston Hughes diagnosed
as a determinant of the African American-White relationship in his poem “Theme for English B”
(1949). Referring to what separates the two races, Hughes, among other things, says:
You are white-
yet a part of me, as I am part of you.
That’s American.
Sometimes perhaps you don’t want to be a part of me.
Nor do I often want to be a part of you.
But we are, that’s true!
As I learn from you,
I guess you learn from me –
although you are older – and white—
and somewhat more free.
This is my page for English B (ll.31- 40)
This separateness which defines the African American and the White American seems to be
transferable to both the African-born African American and the native African American in most
parts of the United States. It is tends to be mutual or reciprocated as the White community initiates
an attitude which is reciprocated by the Black community, leading to the animosity that tends to
define boundaries between these races. This partitioning of the body politic into polarities seems
now to characterize the relationship between the African-born African American and the native
African American, where the former feels alienated, rejected, and lost in his attempt to connect
with his or her “race” in a white community.
Where African and native African American connections have failed, the African
descendants retreat to their family for solace and comfort. Unfortunately, that well-guarded source
of peace and happiness seems to be subverted and challenged by the corrosive nature of American
society. The fiber of cultural unity and integrity that held such unions like marriages together
becomes weakened, leading to disintegration of old this institution which finds itself
48
falling apart. And at each turn husbands tend to be the heavier losers because of the fundamental
challenges marital disintegration poses to their native traditional values and roles of manhood.
Wives and husbands- strangers in their homes
A very recent development in the experiences of immigrant Africans in the USA has been
the breakdown in familial life. As earlier discussed, many African families immigrate to the USA
in two or three waves. The first wave consists of the husband or father, who decides to abandon
the life of poverty and persecution in Africa to settle in the USA. This is normal for both the legal
and illegal male immigrants, who believe that they have to go ahead aggressively to prepare a
place for the family to join. They may not know where they are going or what lies in their way,
but their upbringing has prepared them to confront aggressively any obstacle in their path. In an
attempt to achieve this responsibility, this dream, the man borrows money and sells and mortgages
his property, house or anything of value. His primary intention here is to work hard and earn
enough money to transport his family (if any) or wife to join him in this fight for the American
Dream.
While in the United States, the attempt to settle exposes these African immigrants to two
very tempting methods — either to marry an American with the idea of gaining a Green Card and
later divorcing the lady, or paying the Native American for the services of the marriage and
divorce. Others have resorted to political asylum as the way out, and as soon as the paperwork
goes through, they divert attention to bringing in their wives and any children. As a consequence
and in dire need of money to bring their families, many of these men and parents accept the lowliest
of jobs as a sacrifice for accumulating money to bring the family. Many such male immigrants fall
within the African middle class, barely completing high school and marrying women who acquired
little formal education and who were stay-at-home wives in Africa. As soon as the husbands
succeed in bringing these wives to the USA, these women suddenly and
49
almost immediately become assimilated into the work of housekeeping, janitorial employment and
motels/hotel cleaning, jobs that do not require much education or fluency in English. After a few
months or years, many of these African housewives find their way into Community Colleges where
they study nursing and graduate with certificates as Certified Nursing Aids (CNA).
Nursing and homecare employment, sometimes overlooked by most Americans, has
become the most lucrative jobs for most of these women (and men, too), who are either looking
for quick money or jobs that are readily available to non-Americans. Indeed, many of them have
fared so well in these careers that they have gone on to open their own health care facilities and
health related conglomerates. They have become great employers, contributing tremendously to
tax revenues and employment, and rendering much desired services to aging Americans at
relatively affordable cost (Cole 2011). Many such cases and establishments can be found in Dallas,
Houston, Atlanta, Georgia, Cincinnati, and Frankfort, Kentucky, just to name a few of those cities
where I have lived and witnessed these remarkable services
Unfortunately, these career advances have spelled the demise of many families where the
wives have acquired the newfound freedom and independence through the power of the mighty
dollar to eschew and undo their marital relationships. The Dallas based Nigerian-run newspaper
The African Herald continues to chronicle the unfortunate turn of events for those families where
the CNA (Certified Nursing Aids) wives are discarding their hardworking husbands in favor of
younger lovers and more flashy African youth who tend to toy with these women and eventually
cannot accept the full responsibilities of taking care of these women. Some of these African- born
American men find themselves sidelined by wives who have come to understand that within the
American legal context, they are prioritized and favored over their husbands and protected by the
legal system and are often considered the victims of wife-beating Okonkwo-like, untamed African
males. The African husband suddenly finds himself a stranger in his own home, a home
50
he labored so hard to acquire for the family but which now has been seized from him and given to
his estranged wife, many of whom cannot pay the mortgage but just delight in owning property
which they never dreamed about.
In The African Herald Volume 23, No. 11 & 12 of Nov/Dec 2012 (pp.1, and 2), Seyi
Oduyela recounts the heart-wrenching story of a Nigerian man, Sunday Atam, who regrets the loss
of his wife and children to unscrupulous church members in the USA in a story appropriately titled
“I Thought Life would be Better in the United States.”5 He is hoodwinked by church members
who parade as good neighbors and caring Christians who alienate his wife from him. The
unfortunate thing is that the wife too becomes a willing victim and accomplice as she chooses the
churchmen over her poor husband, who struggled through impossible odds to bring her and the
children to the USA. She finally abandons this longsuffering man and moves in with one of those
churchmen. To them, they are saving this poor woman and her children from the insanity and
unsaved husband, who is perpetually confined to their hell-fires. The response from such destitute
husbands has been slow in coming, but when it does, it has always been devastating, ranging from
abandonment to divorce and, more recently, murder.
The Dallas based The African Herald, Vol. 25 No. 4. (April 2014. P.1 & 3)6 chronicles
eight women killed by their husband because of abandonment. There is also the recent case of the
Cameroonian father in Queens, New York, who strangled his son to death and attempted suicide
as a result of a recent divorce with his Cameroonian wife (New York Times June 30, 2014). Though
I would not support such extreme and outlandish barbaric behaviors as a repercussion for the evil
effected by the wives on the husbands, this is a reality that is confronting the new waves of African
immigrant families in the USA. These extreme cases are heavily buttressed by silent and private
cases of ordinary divorce provoked by the stress and strain that these couples and families endure
daily in their attempts to make a home away from
51
their African home. These frustrated husbands feel increasingly marginalized and many have
resorted to reverse immigration, returning to their former countries as “losers.”
These stories have a few things in common—
husbands who struggled hard to bring their wives to the USA in the hope that they would
work together to improve their lives and get a share of the African American Dream (a
better standard of living).
wives who were encouraged by their husbands into the nursing or medical profession
(CNA) to enable them earn more or ready income
wives who took advantage of the proactive vision of their husbands and their sponsorship
to become nurses or CNAs through the support of husbands who worked multiple jobs on
minimum pay to sustain their family and pay their wives’ tuition
wives who preferred younger males to the elder husbands and finally chose to abandon
those husbands who sacrificed so much to bring them to the USA; and
Wives that were by far much younger than their husbands, some almost half the ages of
their husbands.
Although I may not authenticate the virility of these cases, the fact that these stories are
published with actual names and addresses and that nobody has come forward to contest them or
sue the paper for defamation of character proves enough of reliability. On the other hand, there is
the legal system, which tends to support such wives against their supposedly abusive husbands.
And many attorneys have stood to gain exorbitant sums of money for defending these wives
against their husbands, not so much because the husbands are at fault, but more because the system
is easier on the wives, who easily become prey to any law authority that tends to side with them.
The age factor in marriage
Although in the new world dispensation age has become a very powerful determinant of
marriages, it is necessary for us to examine the evolution of this “age” thing. In the early 60s, when
I was still a kid, the predominant African wisdom was for a girl to get married to an older man
who was well established, had a house and the means of subsistence, and who was capable of
providing a place for her, setting food on the table, providing clothes and more importantly security
and protection for the family. These things were subsumed under the acquisition of a
52
house, a trade, and the physique and physical presence of the man. That is why in the fictional
Okwonkwo scenario, women still want to marry Mr. Okwonkwo for the security and future he
represents even though he has several wives and disciplines theme severely. It was hard to find a
young man getting married to an older lady, for it was men who took care of their wives, not the
other way round. These men had to be well established and settled in business and in their homes.
Today, age instead plays a very negative role; in some cases, it has become was a means to an end
rather than the end of the journey.
Some of these young women were not ashamed to get married to older men because it was
permissible and understood within the local cultural context that that was the norm. In fact,
marrying your age-mate was considered reckless behavior for, as parents asked, who was going to
take care of whom when you married young and of the same age? Within the African context,
especially among the Graffis of Bamenda land, it was much preferable for a young girl to get
married to an older man who was well-settled and ready to make a family. The lady moved into a
house that was well-equipped and the husband was somewhat “settled” and ready to be married
and had then stable means to maintain his family without asking for financial support from the
parents. I recollect my grandmother-in-law asking my wife, who is only a couple of years younger
than I, about our readiness for marriage. She asked who was going to take care of whom since I
had just graduated from college and was too young to assume the duties and responsibilities of a
husband and an in-law. This question and apprehension had nothing to do with whether we loved
each other or not; but with the fundamental traditional notion that an older and well-settled man
can provide for and protect his wife and in-laws more than an upstart or young “ye-ye man” (a
good-for-nothing man) who may not know the commitment he his bargaining for.
53
While it could equally be argued that there are indeed abusive husbands among some of
these cases, and this is not just an African or immigrant malaise, the reactions of the couples again
bring to the forefront one of the major losses African families go through. Abuses in marital homes
are hardly a result of age differences, especially when a woman was not coheres into the marriage.
However, the immigrant African situation is different, especially when the women came into
marriage as a stepping stone to a better life abroad. Such marriages end in estrangement because
the younger wife prefers a new life with a younger lover or age mate.
In the case of some African women who elope with younger men, it is questionable if these
women really marry older African husbands in good faith. It has been clearly documented from
first-hand information that some of these girls accept elderly men just to come over to the USA
and run away. We have had situations where young girls arrived in the USA and in less than a
month were able to abandon their supposed husbands for more seemingly financially sound youth
who could not afford to bring them here from Africa, but who are willing to take the risk of
seducing these girls under the cover of the American legal system of freedoms and rights. A priest
friend of mine who counseled many of these women and men who went through these challenges
in Dallas, Texas, recollects a pattern in these cases. As soon as they elope, the girls either claim
incompatibility through age, or some sort of abuse where the law is inclined to side with them on
the basis of their gender, age disparity and the stereotypical approach to African men as women
abusers.
In response to the above and to preempt the experience they have gone through, some of
these African men have engaged in discussions about what to do. As a result, it is becoming very
common practice now to find African men who have resorted to marrying native African
Americans and white ladies in response to the of the violation of the sanctity of the marital home.
Others have resorted to becoming polygamous. They go to Africa and marry women who do not
54
mind staying at home in Africa as the traditional African wife. These women understand that at no
time will they lay claim to coming to the USA to join their husbands for as long as these husbands
return to them every summer, or every Christmas and summer. The husbands perform their familial
responsibilities by sending them money regularly and providing them a nice home, financial
resources and all the bare necessities that they need in Africa, and the power of the American dollar
has often eased these responsibilities. Whenever they visit the wives in the summer, they make
sure they leave them pregnant or with young children to keep them preoccupied child-rearing. To
them, the Americanized women, many who have become stubborn and abusive, can take care of
themselves, releasing them to take care of the African wives who may not even have stable means
to support themselves and the new families.
The above pattern of behavior is a recent trend that, though not yet popular, seems to be
gathering momentum among Cameroonian and Nigerian immigrants in the USA. Here again we
see another heavy burden on the husband, who is more often than not forced to distribute his
income among these children and the two wives, who eventually get to know each other. This
definitely cannot be a way out of husband-wife conflict, for the second wife brings with her her
own bundle of problems: she wants her own children and money to take care of these children, she
too wants to be recognized as the husband’s wife and to be dowried, and the American African
wife is torn between suing for divorce, which is expensive and even disgraceful, or accepting the
idea that her husband has another wife in Africa who may threaten her privileged position close to
her husband.
On the other hand, the American children are traumatized because they cannot phantom
their father having another wife in Africa. They cannot gather the courage to tell their American
colleagues about this disgraceful and seemingly barbaric attitude exhibited by their father. A
majority of these children have resorted to an early life of independence, truancy, dropping out
55
of school,, drugs, and uncontrolled sexual exploits and promiscuity. The father cannot chastise
them anymore for his own attitude may even be considered worse than his children’s behavior. I
have witnessed families torn apart by this double life syndrome. The marriages end up not only
being on the rocks, but in court for divorce. In some cases, the wives or husbands move to other
states either to avoid the embarrassment of facing friends who will continue to remind them about
what they have lost, or to start a new life somewhere else in the hope that nobody will know them
or inquire about their previous life. They suffer a tremendous loss of self-pride, dignity, and self-
confidence, in fact, a defeat resulting in self-dejection.
The dilemma of the children
As I have previously discussed in other publications and again supported by numerous
reports in the Nigerian African Herald in Dallas and supported by researchers like Takougang,
Nchinda, among others, each year African families in the USA look forward to the graduation of
their children from universities and colleges. Most importantly, they look forward to and welcome
with enthusiasm the graduation of these children from professional schools— medicine, law,
pharmacy, engineering, to mention only a few. These success stories come with hidden and
sometimes very denigrating stories of how the children attained the success. One practical problem
African parent’s face is their children’s perception of the parents’ level of knowledge. Nchinda
(2014) recently narrated the story of a father who was invited to talk to his child’s class about
Africa and the apprehension that surrounded the child accepting the father to come talk to the class.
True as it was that the father represented the African in the child and that the child saw the father’s
presentation as a reflection of their background and level of intelligence, it was equally obvious
that the child doubted the father’s ability to stand his ground in terms of the knowledge and style
of presentation, especially when the father was not particularly academic.
56
In other words, there seems to be a growing disaffection between some African immigrant
parents and their American children, the latter who believe sometimes (though unconsciously) that
their parents’ method of approach and heavy African accents create embarrassment for them, and
that his situation would further consolidate the American colleagues’ repulsive attitude toward
them. I have overheard children correct their parents’ accent or word usage and sometimes even
avoid their parents’ presence in public functions. The most ridiculous thing is that some of these
parents are well educated even in the American system, but the society has castigated everything
“foreign” or “alien” so much that these parents are not good enough. The children complain of the
parents’ dressing style, hair-do, make-up and other artificial trappings that are more American than
African. Although we may recognize the children’s desire to make the parents fully integrated into
the American system and to represent the best of Africa, there is the concomitant psychological
stress that these children subject their parents to. At work these parents face the rejections and
discriminations of the “other” Americans, and at home, their children tend to indirectly “reject”
them for not speaking, dressing or behaving like the “typical Americans.” These parents are at a
loss, as they are no longer at ease, both at home and in the outside-the-home world.
The tensions the parents face are compounded by children who tend to side with the outside
world instead of supporting their parents. I have heard of children who ganged up with friends to
come and torment the parents for money for drugs and other fanciful objects. Some of the young
girls have brought unwanted pregnancies home and left the delivered children with their parents
without any child support7. These grandparents have summoned their African motherhood to
embrace and bring up these innocent children. The girls want to be Americans in their exercise of
freedom and liberty, yet remain Africans in their delegating of responsibility for child rearing to
the parents, who are glad to accept. Though this operates on a microscopic scale,
57
this microcosm adds to the macro scale of the external world to accentuate the frustration of some
of the parents. I know for sure that these kids just want to be proud of their parents for having
made it, but some of them do not understand the sacrifices their parents made or are making to
bring them to where they are now. In addition, many of them have questioned the relevance of the
extended family, especially the family back home and why their parents here in the USA continue
to sustain the home-front (Nchinda 2014:49-51). They have not and do not want to buy into the
idea that the African extended family is an integral part of their family here and that the tentacles
of such a family have held the families together. Whether we accept their plea for a more restricted
immediate family or not, these children’s voices raise very reasonable and pertinent concerns about
survival and self-preservation, which undergirded the initial raison d’être of immigration.
Furthermore, the parents become stressed by the youngsters’ decision to date and get
married to the other native African Americans or White Americans. This frustration does not
emanate from a subtle racism from the parents, but more so from a fundamental belief that some
of these native-born Americans do not share the same or have similar cultural values like the
traditional African native culture. These disparities inevitably lead to disagreements over money
usage and the role parents will continue to play in the lives of their children. The Africa-born male
child8 will understand that the extended family entails commitment on his part to the in- laws who
were responsible for raising and educating his bride/wife for which they have to be eternally
grateful and beholding to the parents. They count themselves as the “other” children of their in-
laws, as part of the extended family, which is reflected in their engaging in family activities and
festivities with the in-laws. Most African parents look to a future when their own children will get
married to their “own,” to one of them who knows their cultural values and respects and lives by
their precepts. That is part of the continuity that is enhanced in and realized
58
through family hegemony. However, some of these non-African in-laws are antagonistic to such
views and would consider these views as an infringement into their family life, a violation of their
privacy. Once this happens, the African parents see the family as falling apart; they feel they are
losing their children to a culture that does not recognize them. The parents feel marginalized and
that they are losing their own children.
The newly released film entitled Lost in Abroad: Have We Forgotten Our Roots?, written
and directed by Chijindu k. Eke is a vivid dramatization of the current and past situations and
dilemmas these African families faced and continue to face in the USA as they navigate through
the cumbersome problem of educating their African children about African cultural values,
juggling between returning to African (especially to Nigeria) where dual citizenship is allowed
and settling in their new home here in the USA. In the final analysis, Obi is domed to remain in
the USA because there is nothing in Nigeria to return to; he will be a bigger “stranger” in Nigeria
than he is here in the USA. His first attempt to go home ended in his being kidnapped.
Can the lost be found?
According to Adrienne Clarkson’s “Belonging: The Paradox of Citizenship” (2014),
humankind cannot resist the paradox of citizenship, which is constantly challenged and modified
by color, ethnicity, and physical appearance caused by the great “movement of peoples between
countries and continents.” The increasing cultural diversity in the United States is a fact that cannot
be ignored. This diversity has been augmented in recent years by many factors, some of which are
global economic interdependence, the lightning speed of communication and media coverage, the
ecological pressures from overpopulation and industries or the lack thereof in foreign countries,
the regional tensions based on ethnic and religious divisions, the movement for freedom and
political self-determination, mass migrations of people fleeing lost dreams or seeking new
aspirations, and the sheer desire to pursue academic dreams and international trade.
59
The newest Americans ( for so must they be called) – the immigrants and refugees coming in
record numbers over the past two decades from Africa, Central and South America, Asia, Europe
and the Caribbean – have made the world’s problems visible in America in recent history.
According to Richard Holeton (1992), experts predict that ethnic diversity in the United States will
continue to increase exponentially. However, he continues, change and resistance to change is the
constancy of human history that impedes the co-existence and acceptance of these differences.
This brings to the fore the question of how we are to accept or accommodate these differences and
at what stage in the development of these relations will we start to address these problems.
Adegbile (2008) hopes that the “resurgence of nationalism and African consciousness in
African American life … will probably force an exploration of the many subjects relating to
African and African American relationships which await investigation” (267). Unfortunately,
many studies tend to revisit Africa as a monolithic continent or as a fragmented curiosity for
political and geographical inquiry. Or, as Ngwang said in “Africa in African American Literature”
(2003), the African American looks at Africa as an Edenic past to which he escapes from the
frustrations and rejections emanating from the political insecurities experienced in the USA.
Instead, we need to move past these myopic and stereotypical approaches to much more committed
approaches as embraced by the Africanists. Indeed, this new generation of African immigrants in
the USA is sandwiched between pro-integrationist sentiments of the 40’s and 50’s who considered
African Americans not particularly related to Africa, and the White liberals who have attempted
to create room for these Africans to integrate with Americans. As such, the “Back to Africa
Movement” of the Marcus Garvey era was more an escape from the unpalatable relationships that
challenged the Blacks in the USA than “a return home” to the motherland.
60
This then is a unique opportunity for African Americans and African-born Americans to
shed off the coat of resistance to begin a new page in their relationships. The burden of re- starting
lies on both shoulders. Recently, an administrator in an HBCU made a passing remark about the
African and African American relationship by referring to “an African bother who acts and
behaves as if he is superior to their African American counterpart.” He was even shocked to notice
that the African-born African American is as offended by the use of the word “Foreigner” as an
African American is by the “N”9 word. Indeed, the associations or connotations attached to the
reference of an African-born American as a “foreigner” or an “alien” are as disgusting, degrading
and disrespectful as the “N” word associated with the Blacks. My daughter, who lives with her
family in Cincinnati, Ohio (a much northerly state from Texas and South Carolina), had a similar
experience when her American colleagues of color made negative allusions to “these aliens” who
look like them and come over here and compete with them for jobs. As soon as they detected an
accent in my daughter’s speech, they followed that up by saying they were referring to Mexican
aliens. (Unfortunately, many of them cannot differentiate between Latino/Hispanic and Mexican
origins – an ethnicity and a nationality). While this is not the place and time to discuss these
connotations and emotional relationships, I would be remiss not to allude to this unfortunate
situation as a reflection of this slippery slope of relationships. Again, the administrator’s assertion
of these so-called ethnic differences and his reaction to the African brother’s behavior is an
unfortunate situation where the seeds of discrimination are sown. For an administrator, whose
responsibility is to enforce the mission statement enshrined in globalization and diversity, to refer
to a naturalized African as a “foreigner” is, to say the least, most unfortunate and politically most
incorrect. When those in authority encourage and almost endorse this attitude, it sets precedents
and an atmosphere for non-collaboration between the
61
native African Americans and the naturalized African Americans, whereby the latter become the
“endangered” species, the marginalized.
Again, it is not for want of understanding that the above attitude tends to define the
relationships between the native African Americans and the naturalized African Americans. It is a
culmination of antagonism and an inherent distrust built by either side that leads to this love- hate
relationship. Students have been noted to use this disruptive image to settle scores with their
international professors, many of whom try to be strict in the application of academic policies and
rules and regulations. Unfortunately, in most of these cases, the accuser tends always to be a
favored one, projected as victim of the sex-crazed African whose primary aim is to dehumanize
women through disrespect. The instructor’s friendliness and search for belonging becomes
interpreted as an attempt to gratify sexual desires or to extend the African aggressiveness and
barbarism to the female victim.
The issue of belonging or a search to belong is so important to many of these naturalized
African Americans because they find themselves torn away from their original homelands where
they enjoyed daily reunions and group activities. Although immigration is a choice, in some cases
it is choice between unpalatable options: remaining in Africa under has and hostile political and
social conditions and poverty and going away from the loved ones to a strange and foreign land
where they are suddenly thrust into a society where people live isolated lives and delight in
solitariness. The naturalized African American attempts to find ways to feel at home and to be
accepted into his or her new community. The attempt to belong, to be accepted by his African
American brethren, backfires as some of the African Americans resist or look at this initiative as
some form of invasion of their privacy and thereby harassment. A case was reported of a
naturalized African American who approached a native African American lady who lives alone
and was sick. The African went to his African American neighbor to inquire if she needed
62
anything (medication or supplies) which he could rush to the store to acquire for her. The lady
gracefully appreciated and thanked the neighbor for the concern and asserted that she had taken
some medication and was fine. The gentleman told her that she should call on him if she needed
any assistance. A few days after this incident, the naturalized African was summoned into their
boss’s office and slapped with a sexual harassment complaint and a list of other unwarranted
attitudes that were deemed aggressive and subtle harassments.
The above incident reveals a couple of things about this tenuous relationship between the
two groups. There is an almost complete lack of trust between the two camps, especially when one
camp continues to denigrate the other or cast the other in unacceptable and “misfitting” terms. The
African thrives on and delights very much in assisting neighbors or being his or her neighbor’s
keeper, without necessarily expecting anything in return. In return, he or she expects his or her
neighbors to do the same in times of need. In fact, research has shown that very few of the
naturalized Africans have been engaged in rapes or abusive relationships with their native African
American friends. Instead, African cultures frown on rape, which is not a common crime in Africa.
The reverse has been true among native African Americans, which again makes any person wonder
what originates or catalyzes this suspicion and betrayal of trust. Indeed, this tenuous relation
further goes to correlate John Middleton’s assertion that Black Americans are not particularly
related to Africa and Africans (p.267). According to him, the African American mentality has been
submerged in “the knowledge of how different kinds of oppressions manipulate others for purposes
of effective control and exploitation … and the corrosive acids which oppression releases upon the
personalities of oppressors and the oppressed alike” (p.269). This corrosive acid sometimes tends
to be released by some African Americans on the naturalized African Americans whose simple
daily approaches to relationships are view from the myopic prism of the oppressor/oppressed
syndrome. It would be unfortunate to view the new
63
African, the New Negro, or New Nigger10 as the oppressor who should be resisted by the
supposed oppressed or the African American who is likely to be oppressed by the African.
Several thinkers have advanced a multitude of approaches to confronting the fear of
change. According to Salman Rushdie (1988), we can choose, on the one hand, to celebrate this
“transformation that comes of new and unexpected combinations of human beings, cultures, ideas,
politics...” Or we can elect to share a “wider geographical love of mankind” (Paley, 1974). On the
other hand, we can choose to be attacked by local fears, or perhaps we may choose to wait and
hope for a better life (Didion, 1983, 1971). Or perhaps we can choose not to choose at all. Whatever
choice we make, we shall at a certain point face this cultural monster- change-, and the sooner we
prepare for it, the easier will be the encounter. Indeed, Langston Hughes’ most referenced poem
“Harlem” suggests several options, none of which is palatable when the dream is deferred. Since
we seem to be debunking this myth of success and collaboration, the explosion suggested at the
end of the poem seems to be the most likely way out. The present day reactions to police brutality
against American Blacks seems to have been a vindication of Hughes’ apocalyptic prediction at
the end of “Harlem” (1951), a poem that deals with similar unresolved dilemmas, “ Or does it
explode?”
And if we do choose to prepare for this encounter, how are we to go about it? This will call
for the re-evaluation of what constitutes culture. For lack of a better definition, I will turn to
anthropologist Renato Rosaldo’s definition as quoted by Holeton who sees culture as the “forms
through which people make sense of their lives, rather than more narrowly to the opera of art
museums” (xxii). These forms include everything from the dialect or language people speak to the
way they eat their food, build their homes, educate their children, treat strangers, define gender
roles, tell stories, and perceive life in general. In fact, all human conduct, according to
psychologists and anthropologists, is culturally mediated, and each of us carries personal and
64
cultural baggage that colors our view of life. Consequently, denying a child the truths and values
of his or her culture is tantamount to denying this child the sole means of making sense out of life.
Or, giving the child a distorted version of his or her culture is distorting the child’s education or
substituting a real and authentic version with an illusion that will quickly fade. This brings us
closer now to the problem before us: accommodating or introducing authentic African culture into
the lifestyle of mainstream African American society.
I used the adjective authentic here as a buffer against the several myths and stereotypes
through which Africa has been introduced to the Western world, particularly to America. Paul
Bohannan and Philip Curtin (1995) and Vincent B. Khapoya (1998) have discussed in varying
degrees some of the myths about Africa which have completely distorted the authentic image of
Africa to America. They excused this unfortunate encounter on ignorance and a myopic view of
Africa as presented by Hollywood’s Tarzan, the frightful stories of the Safari, and the jungles of
Africa where people supposedly move naked and live either in trees or in caves. While these
portraits are exotic and sometimes romantic to others, they however present a strange and
outlandish Africa to most Africans. In fact, only 5% of the African landmass is classified as
“jungle’, if by jungle we mean the rain forest and the savage people shown on TV who constitute
a microscopic minority. Personally, I have never seen a lion, a giraffe or most of the animals shown
on TV and in Safari travel leaflets or pamphlets though I was born and raised in Sun- Saharan
Africa. Consequently, the African child who is introduced to this version of Africa is as alien to
Africa as any other non-African. Most African children born in urban areas have had their
encounter with these exotic and barbaric pictures only through TV cartoons or films.
Consequently, the presentation of culture in strictly absolute dichotomies of civilized and
uncivilized, advanced and backward, enlightened and dark , the noble savage and the depraved
65
stigmatizes cultures without paying close attention to the real contents of each culture. After all,
each culture has its discontents.
Indeed, Langston Hughes in “Theme for English B” hints at the sameness that unites all
races, even black and white. In the poem, he reiterates that blacks and whites in the USA are part
of each other and that they all form the entity called humanity, all loving similar things. This
culture blend will therefore encourage the African child to feel accepted and part of the system,
and the American child to feel part of a global entity without losing his or her identity. This spirit
of sameness, carried a little further and higher, would break the artificial walls we have constructed
around ourselves out of what the American poet Robert Frost calls tradition. In the near future, the
children would focus their energies on “uplifting others by focusing on one another’s beauty and
higher-self wisdom”… and this process will “raise the energy level and creativity of the group
exponentially” (Redfield 1996: 173). Nevertheless, Redfield recognizes that many of us have
trouble uplifting each other because our natural tendency is to dislike or distrust each other without
knowing why. The essence of this integrative method lies in making children feel the
connectedness, the fibers that link them and us to one another without destroying our “otherness,”
our cultural identities. For, the essence of education is the breeding of successful children who,
according to Plato of old, will grow up to be ideal individuals armed with ample knowledge to
confront the challenges of our multicultural world, a world we haven’t created out of desire, but
one we have inherited out of need.
It is quite true that many African Americans know very little about Africa apart from the
myths I discussed earlier. Fortunately, several universities are offering courses and creating
African and Africana studies departments and organizing student exchanges and studies abroad
aimed at introducing students to the various cultures and cultural values of Africa. These initiatives
will definitely fill in the cultural gap created by the typical mainstream curriculum
66
followed in most American colleges and universities. The knowledge gained from these studies
goes a long way to provide the needed starting point of an educated understanding of African
values and cultures and a glimpse into why Africans are the way they are.
As Peter Farb succinctly put it in his article entitled “How to talk about the World”
(Holeton, 69-80), “people respond to their environment in a way that has great survival value” and
that “words ...are more than simple labels for specific objects: they are parts of sets of related
principles.” Farb came to this conclusion only after experiencing and experimenting with pupils
from different cultural backgrounds. Therefore, knowledge of this connotati0n in language, which
goes hand-in-hand with the functions of language in different cultures, will go a long way to assist
the African American in a better interpretation and understanding of Africa. Farb goes into a
detailed analysis of the shades of meanings in reference to kinship in America and other cultures
which present confusion in a situation where the speaker and the audience do not share the
linguistic background. Therefore, knowledge of these different shades of meanings will definitely
go a long way to let the teacher appreciate problems of the non-native speakers and to facilitate
the student and teacher to accommodate, if not tolerate each other.
What I have attempted to do is to propose a methodology of bridging the gap between the
African-American and the African. The idea here is for the African American and the African
immigrant to go back to school to accommodate their differences, many of which are superficial,
in order for them to more fully understand their complementarity without losing their cultural
identity. It is true that irrespective of how many of those values are included in the program, the
African child cannot necessarily remain African, but he should not be encouraged to lose his or
her African-ness through neglect, ignorance or omission. In fact, Adrienne Clarkson (2014), the
former Governor-General of Canada viewed the influx of diverse population in Canada and
realized that this natural human avalanche could not be avoided and in looking for a solution to
67
it, she reverted to the Bhutanese principle of “‘Gross National Happiness,’ which places serious
value on the harmonious well-being of people- the three principles of generosity, ethical behaviour,
and tolerance.”
N
o
t
e
s
1 The African Herald. Vol. 24, No. 6 (June 2013). This volume publication coincided
with end of school year festivities and college/university graduations. The Herald editor Dr.
Richard O. Nwachukwu dedicated the editorial first article to the success of the Nigerian and by
ex-tension African children in “Nigerian Children: Making Parents Proud” (p.1 & p16) He then
brings out a catalog of Nigerian families that have recently have children graduated from
professional, especially medical and legal fields, in addition to the regular college graduates.
2 For lack of a better word, I will use Africa and African here to refer specifically to those
African immigrants or children born to them that claim African ethnicity or origins. Most of them
will be the first and second generation African immigrants to the USA.
3I call them the native African Americans to separate them from those blacks that have a
greater claim to having foreign blood or are recent immigrants from the Black world.
4Also see Joseph E. Holloway in Introduction to Africanisms in American Culture
(Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1991). Here he refers to the tussle between Melville
J. Herskovits and E. Franklin Frazier. His interest here is in identifying remnants of African
cultures in the Americas and the Caribbean rather than in understanding the fundamental and
underlying connectedness of Africans and African Americans
5 The African Herald. Vol. 22; No. 11 & 12 (Nov-Dec 2012), pp 1-3. In the first article
of this volume, Seyi Oduywela of Africaninterst.com narrates the heartbreaking story of Sunday
68
Atam in “I thought Life would be Better in the United States” who was of the generation of those
who left Nigeria through difficult channels and finally arrived the USA to create a place for the
69
family. Unfortunately, when his wife and children eventually arrived, he turned to his Church
brethren for assistance in navigating the settlement and paperwork problems and immigration.
Instead, his brethren betrayed him by using his illegal status against him and seduced his wife and
children who abandoned him. “Since 2002, Sunday Atam was denied access to his children, was
not allowed to talk to them yet he pays child support on the children” (p.2).
6 The African Herald. Vol.25 No.4 (April 2014). Under the front page title article
“Nigerian Man Charged with Killing his 36-year-old Wife in Houston, Texas,” on Saturday March
22, 2014 in Harris County, Houston Washington (PSN) gives the details of the killing of Dr. Isioma
Ebegbodi nee Unokanjo (MD) by her husband Martin Ebegbodi as an end to a stormy marriage.
Washington then presents an array of other killings that were similar to this: the shooting of
Babatope Owoseni ,nine months pregnant by her husband in April 2014 in East Orange, New
Jersey; the killing of a Registered- Nurse wife by her husband Kelechi Charles Emeruwa in Silver
Spring, MD for spending money lavishly for her father’s burial in Nigeria against the advice of the
husband; the killing of an unidentified Registered Nurse in Tennessee by the husband; the Killing
of a Registered Nurse wife by her husband Johnny Omorogieva in Euless, (Dallas neighborhood),
TX.
7I hope my friends will forgive me for exposing and x-raying their double lives, for
somewhere down the line somebody will tell their story. It is a story that should be told with
compassion since most of these incidents are typical reactions to the broken family’s and\or
disaffections that have resulted from immigration.
8Within the traditional African context, the male child is considered the main heir to the
father, the guardant soldier poised to provide for and support both his aging parents and younger
siblings and his own immediate family. This is a responsibility that is considered almost sacred
and incontestable. The male child has no say in it other than just to accept it when that time
70
arrives, but he prepares for it all his life and loves looking forward to this challenge. This concept
his highly celebrated by Dr. Richard O. Nwachuku in The African Herald Vol. 24, No.6 (June
2013) who, while celebrating the accomplishments of female children who recently earned their
MD also reminds the African parents of the need to lay more emphasis on male children: “It is
important that Nigerians in the United States work harder on the boys. Because these high
achieving girls must marry someday. And they want high achieving boys/men too” (p.16). And if
they cannot find Nigerian high achieving men, they will definitely marry to some other African
men or Americans adding to the “lost investment” paradigm.
9The “N” word is usually used as a euphemism for the offensive “Negro” word, with its
variance of Nigger, which recollects and reminds us of slavery and the attendant ills thereof.
10 I first confronted the word the New Negro or New Nigger in Frankfort, Kentucky in the
1990s when our African American colleagues use it as a euphemism to identified or refer the
Africans (either naturalized or not) who could lay claim to the typical African American with
ancient roots in America. This was evident in times of crisis when the African sided a position
many of them opposed or occupied positions some of them though belonged to them.
71
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