In a connected world, African Americans are coming to see themselves as part of a global population. Recognition of this expanding phenomenon was the subject of a recent special issue of YO! Youth Outlook. Andrea Jones, Stanley Joseph and Caille Millner are on the staff of YO! Youth Outlook, a newspaper by and about young people published by Pacific News Service.

INTRODUCTION

By Andrea N. Jones

Blacks in America have been trained to look at ourselves as small -- a "minority." But as global thinking sweeps the American consciousness, the Black people can stand up and see that Africans are a majority population in the world. Due to migrations, explorations, and the Arab and Trans-Atlantic slave trade, we find our African cousins in Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, Asia, and Australia. Today, we see Eritreans, Haitians, and other African people joining our communities. At the same time African culture continues to have a powerful effect on non-Black people.

This global reach, when tied to a belief that solidarity among African people is needed for social, political and economic justice, has a name -- Pan-Africanism.

The two articles included here present a few of the many facets of the Pan-African story. They suggest that as we see ourselves in our cousins, we won't be able to ignore our kinship or our differences. Our consciousness of African people will undoubtedly grow stronger in a time when it may count the most.

LIVING BETWEEN TWO AFRICAN CULTURES -- HAITIAN AND AFRICAN AMERICAN -- IN ONE PLACE

By Stanley Joseph

If you pass by, you might think I'm just "another Brotha" but a longer look and the accent in my voice show that I'm not from around here.

I'm Afro-Haitian American -- a descendant of Africans who were slaves but took their freedom on an island known as Haiti.

My parents moved to Florida, where I was raised. My parents' generation wanted a better life for their children and grandchildren. They were not prepared for the end of their own culture and the effects of bi-culturalism on their children.

"When I was growing up in Haiti..." is a phrase all too familiar to young Afro-Haitian Americans as parents and grandparents constantly portray their past selves as children who followed orders. Our reply has become equally familiar -- "You're not in Haiti anymore."

I don't think our parents were always aware of how hard it was for us to fit in. As Haitians, we were not accepted by African Americans.

The stereotype was that Haitians were ashy black with heavy island accents. The way our parents dressed us -- girls would wear yarn bows in their hair and church dresses to school while the guys were suited up with tennis shoes -- made us easily identifiable punching bags for the majority of the school.

I managed to pass as African American because I dressed average and picked up a Southern drawl that hid my Creole cadence.

I would play football in the streets with the African American boys next door, go to the park with them, and fish in the canal behind our homes. If I talked back to my mother, she would say I picked it up from "the boy next door." Haitian adults viewed African Americans as rude Black people who didn't have respect for themselves and others. To my mother, I was displaying this behavior.

Many Haitian parents feared their Afro-Haitian-American children's new identity. I remember one friend who got punished for playing video games because his parents thought it was a form of gambling. My mom was appalled when I got an Incredible Hulk doll for Christmas one year. She waited until I was asleep to throw it away.

Immigrant children often feel their parents are trying to enforce values that clash with the values of American society. Most Haitian teenagers won't speak their parents' language, Creole, or deal with anything Haitian because it ties them to a heritage to which they do not feel connected.

It wasn't until my family moved to a Haitian neighborhood when I was in my teens that I began to accept my Haitian heritage. I began to speak Creole, eat more Haitian food and hang out with Haitian kids.

That neighborhood did not make me 100% Haitian. Today, I crave sweet potato pie, hot water cornbread, biscuits and hot links. African Americans have been my role models, my family. In our old neighborhood, folks would always keep an eye on me so I wouldn't get in trouble. Contrary to what my mom thought, I felt that in the African American community I learned when to give respect and also to speak up if someone does me wrong.

Today we see Haitian kids becoming rappers instead of the doctors their parents want, writers instead of preachers. Our parents now see that part of the price they've paid to come to America is that their children have become a new breed. We are a Black community that is increasing, yet sometimes ignored. If you look a bit closely, you'll see us.

THE CARIBBEAN/AFRICAN AMERICAN GAP CAN BE BRIDGED WITH UNDERSTANDING

By Caille Millner

It's a tough thing to swallow at 11 years old that different groups of Black people aren't going to get along.

I was a budding Black nationalist, a citizen of the African Diaspora (or so I thought), and I couldn't understand why islanders looked at me with such contempt on my Caribbean vacation.

"Mom, why won't they speak to us?" I asked, deeply concerned after smiling at every black face I saw and getting nothing in return. "They won't even look at us."

My mother hesitated, unwilling to crush my crystalline castles in the sky.

"Some Caribbeans don't like Black Americans," she said. "They think we don't work as hard as they do and that we don't appreciate what we have."

That episode stayed with me when I went to college and found that I was part of an endangered species, at least at my school. An estimated 40 percent of Black students at Harvard are of Caribbean descent, at least 10 percent are from African countries and a number come from other places.

Differences between African Americans and Caribbeans here mirror differences on a much larger canvas. Like all races, Black people are fractious -- we have some work to do

"I hadn't had any interaction with Caribbean people before I came here," says Baratunde Thurston, 21, a senior at Harvard. "When I got here it was like culture shock, and stereotypes abounded on both sides."

Most Caribbean students are either immigrants or the children of immigrants and that, says Thurston, is the source of the difficulty. "Being immigrants and choosing to come here, they have an attraction to the American Dream. They chose to be here. We [African Americans] did not choose to be here. Slavery chose us, we feel alienated from the American Dream.

"There is a crucial difference in our historical situations that affects everything: our value systems, our lifestyles and the way we interact with each other."

In addition, years of exposure to mass media images have made many immigrants inclined to believe African Americans are lazy and criminal. African Americans, for their part, resent these new arrivals sweeping in and jumping on the capitalist bandwagon without knowing who built that wagon and at what cost.

These are gross generalizations, I admit, but there are kernels of all these thoughts in every interaction -- only they're buried, so there's a lot of misunderstanding and resentment that we as Black people haven't addressed.

Thurston says African Americans have every right to be suspicious of immigrants who have no understanding of where we're coming from. "It's been a trend that African Americans have fought and struggled and died for equality while other minorities quietly ride our coat-tails," he says. "You have to wonder. Is this just us laying the groundwork for these Caribbean Blacks to make it and we wind up getting the short end of the stick?"

Clem Pollydore, 21 and an immigrant from Guyana, says he understands these misgivings but claims that part of the problem also lies within the African American community itself. "Blacks in America feel like they have been trying so hard to get ahead and have gotten nowhere -- there's the tendency to get disheartened. I think Caribbeans have really benefited from a strong work ethic, respect for elders, and greater instances of two parent families -- things that African Americans should strive for more than they have."

So it's a historical thing. And an economic and values thing. Knowing this doesn't make the conflict go away. America has always benefited when minorities squabble for the crumbs instead of uniting and making a dash after the whole pie.

"We're just splitting hairs," says Pollydore. "We spend too much time fighting when we should be trying to understand. That's the key to forming a unified force across the Diaspora, you know?"

Pollydore also believes that as more Blacks of Caribbean descent are born in the United States, the debate will change.

"I am Caribbean but I grew up in America among African American culture, feeling that culture and the effects of my race -- not my ethnicity."

So there's the hope for my castles in the sky. Caribbean Blacks may come to understand why African Americans are so angry. And we'll stop fighting them for the dubious position of being a successful minority in the United States. Nothing like a bit of reality, American style, to create a revolution.