Explaining Afro-Caribbean Social Mobility in the United States: Beyond the Sowell Thesis

Extract

A considerable debate has surrounded the question of Afro-Caribbeans and their social mobility in the United States, much of it based on or written in response to the work of Thomas Sowell. The polemical purpose of a large portion of this literature has diminished its value: designed to deny or excuse American racism or to lay the blame for the sorry predicament of Afro-America on Afro-Americans themselves, it has operated in a historical vacuum as far as Afro-Americans are concerned. Equally so Afro-Caribbeans, whose history—largely ignored in studies of American and Afro-American history—is also, inexplicably, neglected in the large literature on nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American immigration. The debate over Afro-Caribbean social mobility and Sowell's controversial arguments has been dominated by anthropologists and sociologists with little expertise or apparent interest in the history of Afro-Caribbeans and their immigration to the United States and little acquaintance with the historical experience of Afro-Americans. This historical vacuum must be filled if we are ever to make sense of the Afro-Caribbean experience and, in particular, the social mobility of black immigrants in the United States.