Seminar: African Immigrant Dreams and American Realities
| Date/Time: | Wednesday, 18 Nov 2009 from 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm |
|---|---|
| Location: | 290 Carver |
| Cost: | free |
| Phone: | 515-294-2179 |
| Channel: | College of Liberal Arts and Sciences |
| Categories: | Lectures |
| Actions: | Download iCal/vCal | Email Reminder |
An extensive literature has contributed to the assumption that black immigrants are, on average, more educated, and show higher levels of socio-economic achievement and labor participation than African Americans. In fact, the assumption that black immigrants have the highest average educational achievement, and are overrepresented in higher education, particularly in Ivy League institutions in comparison to African Americans has become one of the most hotly debated issues in the news media, among notable African American intellectuals, and scholars of immigration and affirmative action. An important shortcoming of this literature is that it presumes an undifferentiated black immigrant population, and spouses a universal success story. The universal black immigrant success story thesis suffers from both methodological and substantive issues. Methodologically, the primary data used to support success story are derived from large scale aggregate data, and obscure the tremendous differences across black immigrant groups. Black immigrants are represented in the entire continuum of the American class structure, and therefore, any representation of a uniform experience in not empirically defensible. Substantively, it ignores the conditions under which different black immigrant groups emigrate from their respective countries. The purpose of this presentation is to revisit the black immigrant success story thesis by examining variations in the educational and economic achievement patterns across African immigrant groups in the United States.