The Brown & White

Black students of all backgrounds are lumped into one group, but they do not feel like a community, students said at a brown bag lunch discussion in the Multicultural Center on Feb. 25.

African, Caribbean and Haitian students said they weren't welcomed by black Americans when they came to the U.S.

The African cultures are misunderstood by Americans, including black Americans, Temitope Adekanbi, '12, said.

Adekanbi said she has been rejected by black Americans and has not felt connected with that community, although she has become an American citizen. She said she has had negative experiences with black Americans, such as being called names because she is from Africa.

"The African students' community, regardless of being from West Africa or East Africa, even though we are very different, we are like brothers and sisters of one people," Adekanbi said. "But I don't think that passes over into the African-American community."

Even though Eva Gathura, '12, spent most of her childhood in the U.S., her family raised her in the Kenyan culture, she said.

"It is hard for me to connect completely with the African-American culture, but then again it is hard for me to connect completely with the African culture," Gathura said.

She said she gets along with both black American and African students but it can be difficult to find a niche.

Because every African tribe has its own history, and Africans define their identity by that history, whereas black Americans do not, Gathura said.

"Our experiences are different," she said. "African-Americans go back to their slavery roots, and we'll never be able to connect completely to that."

Not only African students feel disconnected from the black American culture, but Caribbean and Haitian students said they don't feel like they fit in either.

On college applications, students can check a box to identify their ethnicity. For some people checking a box is simple, but Marcella Dillard, '12, said her mother wanted her to check the "Other" category and write in Caribbean American because that is her true background and heritage.

The struggles of modern black immigrants are happening now, but the struggles black Americans faced occurred years ago with slavery and segregation, Dillard said.

"I guess it is more recent for us and that's why we feel it more," she said.

Dillard said her mother and grandmother wanted her to have a separate identity from black Americans because they felt their family worked hard to get to the U.S., while many black Americans were born here, she said.

Dillard said her family members are considered illegal immigrants, but they feel they have worked hard to get here. She said she thinks black Americans are not as driven.

"This is why I came to Lehigh," she said. "This is why I'm trying to better myself. Because I don't want to be labeled with the blacks who aren't trying to go anywhere."

"I think the whole American culture is lazy," Chelsea Gotch, '11, said. "There are lazy people of every race and it is not fair to stereotype African-Americans that way."

John McKnight, director of the multicultural affairs office, said it is hurtful to hear the judgments and generalizations the African, Caribbean and Haitian blacks are making about black Americans as a community.

It is like blacks from other countries are seeing black Americans with the same prejudiced and stereotypical views that many see them with, he said.

McKnight said there is a huge divide between blacks in the U.S. based on the way their respective families arrived here.

With black immigrants becoming immersed in a new culture and black Americans not able to trace their lineage further than their ancestors' arrivals in the U.S., lack of identity exists on both sides of the divide, McKnight said.

"It is unfortunate that, from an African-American perspective, there is a lack of identity because you're not really able to trace your African roots," he said.

The conversation was very rich and full of personal thoughts and insights, McKnight said. He said he was glad to see the conversations moving to a deeper level.

"Students need to challenge what they know from experience and the way they were raised to seek a different point of view," McKnight said.

"I can sense we are not done with this conversation," he said.

Future discussions should focus more on the Lehigh community rather than society as a whole, but this conversation was a good starting point, he said.

McKnight said the discussion was a strong ending to Black History Month.