Forging a Diasporic Nigerian Ethnicity in the United States and Britain

Chapter 4 examines why the Nigerian second generation in both the United States and Britain did not forge a reactive black ethnicity as predicted by segmented assimilation theory. It describes how blackness can be constructed to be ethnically diverse. The chapter details how the Nigerian second generation are forging a diasporic Nigerian ethnicity in the United States and Britain via two simultaneous processes required in identity formation: signaling difference from members of other groups and establishing similarity to determine the boundaries of group membership. I thoroughly discuss the cultural, moral and socioeconomic boundaries established by the Nigerian second generation to delineate ethnic parameters between themselves and their proximal host. I also explain why the second generation in Britain does not draw as sharp of a boundary between themselves and their proximal hosts compared to their U.S. counterparts.

“You Are Not Like Me!”

Chapter 2 shows how the proximal host is a crucial actor influencing how the second generation of Nigerian ancestry identify. How the presence of the proximal host affects identity formation among the black second generation is generally overlooked in segmented assimilation theory and is a key factor emphasized in beyond racialization theory. The chapter details how relations with the proximal host in childhood, particularly feelings of rejection and exclusion based on perceived physical and cultural differences, laid the foundation for developing a distinct ethnicity in adulthood. I discuss the responses of the proximal hosts in the United States and Britain to the Nigerian second generation when they were young. What was viewed as discriminatory responses by members of the proximal host by the Nigerian second generation fostered a feeling of being black but different among the Nigerian second generation. The tense relations between proximal hosts and the African second generation required the young Nigerian second generation to start the process of defining what being black meant to them and defining a diasporic ethnic identity differentiating them from their proximal hosts.

“It’s Un-Nigerian Not to Go to College”

Chapter 3 examines how ethnicity serves as a form of capital for the Nigerian second generation in both countries. The discussion of ethnicity as capital being a source of progress for the second generation has heretofore been largely limited to a discussion of certain Asian groups in both countries. In this chapter, I extend the discussion of ethnicity as capital to a group of the black second generation. The chapter examines how ethnicity became a resource for the second generation of Nigerian ancestry facilitating their good educational and occupational outcomes, outcomes that were ethnicized and used as an ethnic boundary between themselves and their proximal hosts. A larger discussion of how the Nigerian second generation balance their race and ethnicity in the United States and Britain begins in this chapter.

Introduction

Idowu Damola grew up in a poor family in a very bad neighborhood in a large New Jersey city.1 He recalls walking along the glass-strewn block where he lived, “with people yelling and screaming and fighting. It was a pretty run-down place.” His big break came when he won a full scholarship to an elite all-boys prep school in Connecticut. After he graduated, Idowu went on to study business and finance at Yale University, one of the top ten universities in the United States. At the time I spoke with him, Idowu had just started working as an investment broker on Wall Street. To get there, he had taken advantage of affirmative action opportunities available to black people in the United States. His progression from a “run-down” street in urban New Jersey to a coveted white-collar job on Wall Street is an American success story, a story that exemplifies the promise many immigrants see in America....

On the Horns of Racialization

Chapter 5 discusses the endpoints of the ethnic identification journey of the Nigerian second generation. A key endpoint is that they are integrating into the black middle class. The chapter utilizes the minority culture of mobility framework to examine how respondents’ middle class status affects how they interact with their proximal hosts and how their experiences in and interactions with white people in professional settings affect their identity. The chapter uses respondents’ experiences of racial discrimination, exhibitions of racial solidarity, voting patterns, use of class as a sorting mechanism to order interactions with proximal hosts and develop middle-class identities, and in the United States, their views on whether black immigrants and their children should benefit from affirmative action policies, to illustrate how the Nigerian second generation balance race and ethnicity and how race intersects with ethnicity and class in British and American societies. The chapter discusses how in the extremely important arena of the workplace, the experiences of British respondents differ from those of their American counterparts. They have experienced more racism and discrimination living in Britain, racism that is more often covert than overt. This chapter tells their stories of growing up different from Caribbeans and their experiences of discrimination, which has engendered feelings of not belonging to Britain.

Conclusion

In the conclusion, I rearticulate the main points of beyond racialization theory. I discuss what the experiences of the adult second generation of Nigerian ancestry in the United States and Britain reveal about the intersections of race, class, national origin, and ethnicity in these countries. I discuss what their experiences tell us about the future of the color line and understandings of blackness in the United States and Britain. The experiences of the second generation of Nigerian ancestry show that the ethnic, cultural, and socio-economic diversity among black people is being recognized and increasingly so. Their experiences suggest that their presence in the black middle class in both countries has the potential to change the largely negative ways black people are viewed and possibly help redefine what it means to be black in these two countries.

Feeling American in America, Not Feeling British in Britain

In chapter 6, I show how the specific history an immigrant group has with the receiving country is an important aspect of the context of reception which does not receive sufficient attention in segmented assimilation theory’s discussion of the black second generation. I show how national contexts—specifically how national identity and legacies of the past, from slavery, to colonialism, to color segregation—influence identificational assimilation among the second generation. The chapter analyzes respondents’ responses to two questions: What does being British or American mean to you, and do you feel British or American? It explains why, in the American case, most of the second generation articulate shared national myths and sentiments, but in the British case the second generation had narratives that, though widely shared, were not the national myths. Engaging the multiculturalism literature, the chapter discusses how legacies of the past and national identity are two rarely-considered factors affecting immigrants’ integration over time. Given the increased linkages between immigration and national security in discourse and policy, these findings add to our knowledge of the factors impacting the degree of national identification among immigrants.

Setting the Context

It is a sociological truism that context matters. After all, identity is not created in a vacuum. Instead, people develop their identities as they interact with other groups while navigating the social, political, and economic milieu of the country they live in—a milieu greatly influenced by the country’s specific racial history. Chapter 1 presents a succinct discussion of the social, political, and racial contexts in which the black second generation in the United States and Britain form their identities. The chapter also provides more information on the African diaspora in both countries and the Nigerian communities in particular. And it briefly sketches the history of Nigeria and provides a socio-demographic profile of Nigerians. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the socio-demographic profile of the parents and second generation involved in this study.