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Thats probably not true, there are many people from the "Great Migration" that came from mostly the Carolina's, descendants of slaves that came straight from Africa.
And their descendants came from the South 40, 50, maybe even 80 years ago. It's becoming harder and harder to find Blacks whose ancestry is 100% Black American in NYC just as it is becoming harder to find someone here is whose is 100% Irish. People may claim Irish as a first ancestry, but it's unlikely they can trace back their entire lineage to Ireland.
It's not hard to believe. West Indians have been a relatively large population in New York for a long, long time.
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Escaping the decline of the sugar industry and looking for better economic opportunities in the north, West Indians immigrated to New York City in large numbers. By 1930, almost a quarter of Harlem residents were West Indian.
There was another source I found (can't find it now) that states that one out of every five Black New Yorkers was of West Indian ancestry in 1950. Given the endogamy rate in the Black community, you could work out the mathematical odds of a Black person having West Indian ancestry. Sure, there are Blacks whose grandparents were all born in the South, but I never said that wasn't the case.
Atlanta is very Afro-centric. So is Baltimore. But I would say Baltimore has more of that conflict and tension. Race relations in Richmond and Raleigh are actually very peaceful!
Why is Miami not getting votes? Although it's not racial as much as it is ethnic. Isn't the tension between Cubans and non-hispanic whites/cubans vs. Haitians/dominicans/puerto ricans/ect, AA vs. Haitians/Jamaicans pretty prevalent?
Speaking of people I didn't know were West Indian, we can add Audre Lorde to the list. I knew she was a New York native but didn't know she was Bajan.
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Lorde was born in New York City to Caribbean immigrants from Barbados and Carriacou, Frederick Byron Lorde (called Byron) and Linda Gertrude Belmar Lorde, who settled in Harlem.
Tyson was born and raised in Harlem, the daughter of Frederica, a domestic, and William Tyson, who worked as a carpenter, painter, and at any other jobs he could find. Her parents were immigrants from Nevis in the West Indies. Her father arrived in New York City at age 21 and was processed at Ellis Island on August 4, 1919.
According to Nancy Foner, 42% of second-generation West Indians in New York classify themselves simply as "African American." So there are a ton of Black New Yorkers nobody even thinks of as being West Indian. Most people would probably assume Stokley Carmichael was from Chicago or something, not a West Indian kid from the Bronx.
A lot of black people in New York have Caribbean ancestry, however there are plenty of straight up AAs as well.
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Originally Posted by intheclouds1
I find that VERY hard to believe.
I bet y'all didn't even know my Main Man Billy Dee was West Indian.
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Williams was born in New York, the son of Loretta Anne (1915-2016), a West Indian-born elevator operator from Montserrat, and William December Williams, Sr. (1910-2007), an African-American caretaker from Texas.
West Indians are often in our midst without us even knowing it.
I know West Indian and AA culture in NYC is largely intertwined, however there are plenty of straight up AAs in NYC. Keep in mind, some of them might have transplanted from other states in more recent years, in addition to the great migration.
I know West Indian and AA culture in NYC is largely intertwined, however there are plenty of straight up AAs in NYC. Keep in mind, some of them might have transplanted from other states in more recent years, in addition to the great migration.
I never said there are no people in New York who have four grandparents and eight great-grandparents all from the American South. I'm saying that that's becoming increasingly difficult to find because most people aren't screening out people of West Indian ancestry on Match.com. And if you meet someone in New York, the chances that that person is of partial West Indian ancestry will be high. That's simply the mathematical reality.
Both of your parents might be from North Carolina. And then you meet someone like Kerry Washington whose father is from South Carolina and mother from Jamaica. Your kids will then have three grandparents from the Carolinas and one from the Caribbean. In all likelihood, they will simply identify as "African American" even though they have Jamaican ancestry.
That's something that's very common in the Tri-State area. Decades of intermarriage means that more people than not are going to have some Jamaican or Bajan somewhere in their lineage (even if they don't know it). The Census can't possibly capture everyone of West Indian ancestry because someone who had a grandfather that came from Jamaica in 1940 probably just thinks of themselves as African-American.
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