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Caribbean-Americans Face Battle to Improve Status
Migrant settlers and citizens of the US from the English-speaking West Indies have gained notable successes in America. According to the Harvard Encyclopaedia: "Their patterns of assimilation, their economic advancement, their impact on other blacks, and their leadership in political movements have revealed both the potential for individual achievement and the limits on opportunity afforded blacks in the United States". Here, a prominent academic administrator looks at this century's record and spells out some future concerns to readers of the Carib News, the a premier Caribbean-American newspaper in New York. Additional excerpts explore a range of views on Caribbean, American and global issues. Race at the close of the twentieth century
Basil Wilson, As we close out the twentieth century, a similar backlash that occurred at the end of the nineteenth century has reared its ugly head but with less venom and less bloodshed. There has been a proliferation of hate groups in the last couple of years but the white militia movement will have difficulty sustaining itself as we enter the twenty-first century based on the growing racial and ethnic complexity of contemporary American society.
Changing perspectives The role of the state has certainly changed in the latter half of the twentieth century. At the beginning, the state aided and abetted lynch mobs and the Jim Crow political system. The state is less on the side of the racist forces and the federal government is still willing to use its power judiciously to ensure racial justice.... Recently the federal government has stepped in and appointed a federal monitor who will ensure that practices of racial profiling are discontinued. Equally significant is the role of the African-American vote that turned out in record numbers in the 1998 congressional and gubernatorial elections which hopefully put a break on the country's rightward drift which is often synonymous with racism.
Difficult road ahead From the Carib News, New York, 4 January 2000, p.15 What we can achieve in the 21st century The Carib News As we ponder what lies ahead in the new century and the new millennium, some things are clear. We are caught up in a world that's being driven by high-tech innovation and hegemony. The concept of the global village, which was once considered a philosophical construct, has become a reality in a few short years. The world will get smaller in the years ahead. The business executive in Kingston, Nairobi, New York, Georgetown, Santiago, Accra, Tel Aviv or Rome has the world of e-commerce at his or her fingertips with the click of a mouse. At the same time the Bajan mother or the Grenadian father, not to mention the Trinidadian uncle, can send an instant electronic message to a close relative studying on a U.S., British, Canadian, Australian or French university campus without having to pay through the proverbial nose for the privilege of saying "hello" and inquiring "how are you"?
Representation on world bodies It's highly unlikely that many Jamaicans and other West Indians who looked ahead in 1900 imagined the day when their birthplace would sit with the leaders of Great Britain, the U.S., France, Russia and China and decide some of the pressing international issues.
Improved health and education For their part our children, be they American , Canadian or Caribbean, will benefit from greater access to higher education. Institutions such as the University of the West Indies, the University of the U.S. Virgin Islands and their counterparts elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere can be expected to throw open their doors to a much larger body of students through distant learning and other modern and revolutionary techniques. Sweetness gone; what to do? Not at all. People from the Caribbean, Africa and other developing regions of the world have shown a remarkable ability to adapt to change. We have been forced to pick up the pieces after monstrous hurricanes have struck our shores and on each occasion we have emerged better than we were before. A determination to adapt to change, a willingness to meet roadblocks head on and not simply to survive but prosper has been the hallmark of our existence.... We must look forward to an acceleration of that process towards greater equality in the 21st century, confident in the knowledge that if apartheid in South Africa, colonialism around the world and the high-handedness of totalitarianism can be defeated then our dreams can become a reality. From the Carib News, 4 January 2000, p.14 Further Reading
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