Sociology

The African-American history dates back to slavery in the earliest years of the 17th century up to date. The complete word African- American denotes a fair way of referring to the descendants of African in servitude slaves of Virginia, Jamestown and other black people. The term Black Americans raised connotations of prejudice resulting from segregation in respect to color hence the change to African -American. Today, the African-American is an underscore representation of black people from African, Caribbean, Central America and South America.

In accordance to Shaw-Taylor and Tuch (2007), the non- Hispanic blacks socioeconomic outline shows that they are better placed than some Whites and Asians. This however does not justify the overall exposition that the African-American have persevered the most squalid conditions of the time in their fight to remain afloat in the changes and development of America in the 19th and 20th century. The demographic results of America since the first census have revealed an increased number of African-American in the United States. They have included immigrants not born in U.S.A but a mixture of those born in sub-Sahara and drawn from Central and South America and the Caribbean.

In this work, the limelight will be on the African-Caribbean origins, and life in America and the issues of prejudice, segregation and racism and other issues as per to the jurisdiction of this work. The Afro-Caribbean as they are referred to are non- Hispanic and originate from the Caribbean highlands of Jamaica, Trinidad, Tobago, Bahamas, Barbados, Dominic and Haiti. The Afro-Caribbean Americans are not spared the torturous path of their counter parts African American after migrating to United States. In his analysis of the Caribbean immigrants politics of incorporation, Rogers gives the reader an insight that racism is a looming obstacle that the Afro-Caribbean have to go through.

The study analyzed in this work shows quite a number of Afro-Caribbean are not contented with America and at the same time cannot realign with the home origins (Rogers, 2006). Different researches by sociologists, economists and historians have attempted to conduct studies on the question of race and its influence on the socioeconomic and public levels ending in confusing results. However, the Afro-Caribbean has better conditions than the African American thus not overly affected by racism.

On the other hand, prejudice is on the rise against the Afro-Caribbean in the form of police brutality. In a research carried out by Rogers, respondents gave very strong sentiments that Caribbean youths would be marked as part of the prejudice to blacks and would lead to deportation out of the system.

Although this is not as rampant as in the case of African-Americans, considerable information shows that they receive police discriminations as part of race based relations in America. The prejudice and racism dates back to the early European American Protestants who captured slaves for working in their plantations in the New World. Arising from their view of a black man as primitive and supported by famous and influential people like Aristotle and Herodotus, they propagated claims that the black color was inferior thus should be treated in such extremity (Shaw-Taylor  Tuch, 2007).

The Afro-Caribbean were affected by the looking glass wall effect, a term coined by Cooley in 1902. They see poor images of themselves in the eyes of the white dominant group. To the Caribbean, the whites see them as drug addicts, people with no profession, no skills and slaves who are out to clean their houses, generally as black. This can be said to be backed by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 thus resulting to discrimination of all immigrants whether Haitians or Japanese and from slavery (Sylvester, 1998).

Affirmative action is meant to place the ethnic minority at equal opportunities to the rest of the major population in America. The rationale is to give the individuals a chance at the same level with other players either in the job market or competition in other forms of life in the American society and secondly as a way to repay back any disadvantages meted out against the individual in the past due to his or her status. According to Schaefer (2004), the Afro-Caribbean Americans have been affected by affirmative action in the sense that they have benefited from it better than the African-American in United States.

The prejudice against blacks and other immigrants in America saw the introduction of redlining. Redlining originated from barring the issuance of loans and mortgage to those areas that were designated to be habited by interracial groups. The argument was that they could not be able to repay such interests. The Federal government therefore instructed the banks not to invest in such areas. Later, this discrimination was used in racial segregation towards the minorities of America and hence paralyzing the housing market. In the end, such people of black origin found themselves overwhelmed by poor living conditions. The attempts to redress such issues were done to overhaul the practice thus the passing of the 1968 Fair Housing Act and the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977.

Like their counter parts the African American and other illegal and minor immigrants, Afro-Caribbean Americans have not been spared. Dual labor market is the categorization of labor into primary and secondary statuses. In the primary unit category, high education levels are a concern with emphasis on highly acquired and trained skills with outstanding package, accrued benefits and health benefits thus white collar jobs are offered. On the other hand, the secondary unit is for the unskilled and the semi-skilled involving manual blue collar jobs. These are jobs that do not attract high salaries, health benefits and there are no promotions. The Afro-Caribbean have found themselves in such situations where like in California State getting a drivers license is hard. For most of them they only engage in menial jobs like house cleaning, house helps, making hamburgers and lawn cutters.

This has been extended even to institutions like schools where the minorities attend schools in the suburbs. In this sense, the schools meant for the whites and other majorities are well equipped with resources and skills trained are meant for the primary jobs in stark contrast to the Afro-Caribbean who have to struggle to  get  places to learn English as part of the requirement to survive in America. This has a direct result to institutional discrimination where the blacks and others minorities do not have the necessary technical and technological requirements.

They are seen as a whole as those lacking the qualities and skills necessary for American development. They are considered primitive and of lower mental status in comparison to the whites and other majorities thus even if the blacks and the other minorities have the necessary requirements like in a job promotion or interview, they are considered deficient. The mainstream United States culture is varied and dominated by the whites and the majority. However, the Afro-Caribbean have maintained their culture in dance, songs, literature and language just as African Americans have risen in black literature, art RB, hip hop and pop culture. The identification of international singers like Wycliffe Jean to international standards is a true confirmation of the prowess of the parallel acceptance and occurrence of the Afro-Caribbean and mainstream cultures in America.