“Yet, despite widespread reporting of our racial strife, Black immigrants continue to come to America in ever increasing numbers. Once here, their belief in American greatness remains intact. If they had to come all over again, most say they would. In this we can take solace and even dare contemplate that our racial divide may be exaggerated. In any event, it can be overcome, and is overcome, every day. …
“Black immigration is a belated rebuke to the efforts of the American Colonization Society, which enticed free Blacks to move to Africa in the 19th Century. It represents a vote of confidence in America, its principles, its institutions and its people.”
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People seem to be mistaken lumping all people considered “black” by white Americans into a single uniform class. I read one analysis from several decades ago which split Black Americans into three groups, based on where their ancestors were as of Emancipation: “free persons of color” (mostly in the North), freedmen, and abroad (mostly in the Caribbean). It noted that the statistics for the three groups were very different, with the black Caribbean-Americans doing much better. In particular, a lot of the leaders of the civil rights movement had Caribbean backgrounds. (I couldn’t find what Tim Scott’s antecedents are.)
What I hadn’t thought about until now was that the three groups must not have intermarried much, as otherwise they wouldn’t be distinguishable as of 1980 or so.
And I read a sociological study of teenage working-class Americans in the 1980s, who were starting to have serious economic stress. The black teenagers would vigorously argue with the researcher that they had as good a chance in America as anyone, despite growing up in public housing. But he did mention they were the children of Americans. The white teenagers said everything was stacked against them.
Another interesting reference is Gregory Clark’s “The Son Also Rises”: “Chapter 13 shows that black Africans, for example, have substantially more physicians per 1,000 members than the general white population in the United States.”
I’ve read informal references that say that black Caribbean immigrants into the UK have done poorly, but black African immigrants into the UK have done well.
So there’s a lot of variation.