My dissertation topic is on the effect that culture has on black Caribbean immigrant’s political organization and economic performance in the United States. What originally sparked my interest in this topic was the suggestion that Black Caribbeans have higher socioeconomic attainment than native born blacks. In various guises, this hypothesis has appeared throughout the 20^th century yet the empirical evidence has been less than conclusive on this point . The most general conclusion that can be drawn from the analyses of the socioeconomic achievement of black Caribbeans is that, while some black Caribbean immigrant groups do have higher than average levels of educational and economic achievement, the advantage is neither as large, nor as widespread, as anecdotal evidence suggests. Kalmijn (1996) found that the socioeconomic advantage is primarily limited to blacks who immigrated from British speaking areas while conversely, Spanish and French speaking black immigrants tend to do significantly worse than local born Afro-Americans. Interestingly however, Kalmijn also found that the children of Anglophone Caribbean born immigrants do even better than their parents. This suggests that the advantages of being a black Anglophone-Caribbean in the US are not limited only to the first generation. Indeed, the advantage appears to be portable, cumulative and intergenerational.

The central puzzle that my research will address is the complex relationship between social capital, human capital, ethnic culture and political/economic ‘success’. By determining which specific aspects of culture allow Caribbean blacks to succeed economically and politically I hope to shed some light on the linkages between culture, social capital and economic performance. Social capital consists of various types of interpersonal networks, trust, obligations and shared values or norms. Following on the work of Putnam, North and Fukuyama, I believe that the presence of strong "civil traditions" facilitates enhanced economic and political performance . The key element in this scenario is the development of social capital and its affect on overcoming lower amounts of human capital and/or various structural factors that impede the socioeconomic mobility of black Americans in the United States. The answer to this puzzle, so I suspect, is that the black communities in the United States with stronger ethnic identities (i.e. those with greater amounts of social capital) also have the greatest economic and political success. In short: Instead of being a hindrance to mobility, strong ethnic ties can help you do better in capitalist countries.

Theoretical Explanations for the

Differences in Performance:

There are many variables which can possibly account for the economic and political differences between Afro-American and Caribbean blacks. In a contentious and frequently cited passage Thomas Sowell (1978:48) argues that West Indian blacks experience, "a higher incidence of ‘success’, and lower incidences of social pathology," because of three primary factors:

1. West Indian society experienced different patterns of slavery which resulted in less psychological/community devastation. In other words, slavery in the West Indies was qualitatively different from the US case which resulted in a less psychologically crushing burden for West Indians.
2. West Indians had greater experience as peasant small holders, thus providing them with a valuable entrepreneurial history.
3. Due to demographic superiority, West Indian blacks faced a broader occupational range than most native born US blacks. (1978:46).

There are several other theories that attempt to make sense of the different levels of economic success of different groups of American blacks. In the context of the United States, William Julius Wilson has argued that blacks from the inner-cities have fewer positive role models then do other racial groups . A possible explanation for the differences in achievement could be similarly attributed to the demographic differences that exist in most of the former British-speaking Caribbean colonies. Blacks from these Anglophone Caribbean islands such as Jamaica and Barbados often find themselves in the majority in their countries of origin, while Spanish and French speaking blacks tend to live in societies in which they are a minority. Applying the logic of Wilson’s argument suggests that Anglophone Caribbeans have a greater range of role models to choose from as they grow up. This might provide a possible answer to Kalmijn’s 1996 findings that the earnings advantage of black Caribbean immigrants is limited to those groups from English speaking islands (where blacks are generally in the majority).

Several other ‘supply side’ explanations for the differences between Caribbean and native born blacks have been suggested as well . Palmer analyzed INS statistics from 1962-71 and found that the United States exerts a ‘strong pull’ on Caribbean societies most highly educated professional and technical workers due to the lower earnings potentials that exist on the island. Tidrick also found that among university students in Jamaica the most achievement oriented students often expressed a desire to leave the island due to limited occupational opportunities. Finally, there is also some evidence to suggest that public education in Anglophone Caribbean countries is more rigorous than it is in countries such as Haiti, the Dominican Republic or Cuba. This might lead to higher human capital endowments among immigrants who attended schools in their countries of origin and might also partially explain the earnings differences between English and Spanish origin Caribbeans.

Finally, there is also evidence to suggest that language plays an important role that may help to explain black immigrant’s different experiences with discrimination once they arrive in the United States. On the one hand, a British accent may help Caribbean blacks during their interactions with whites who might be more inclined to look favorably upon people with British accents. On the other hand however, given white American’s fascination with both French and British culture, this would not explain why Caribbean born blacks from French-speaking islands fare so much worse in the labor market presuming that accent alone is the causal factor. Whether or not whites act consciously on the perceived differences in language, Caribbean blacks themselves are often well aware of their own linguistic differences as Kasinitz so amply illustrates during an interview with one of his informants:

The Garifuna have a distinctive and unusual history compared to the majority of other black Caribbean immigrant groups who are most often considered in the scholarly literature as national, instead of ethnic, immigrant groups. The Garifuna never had a direct experience with slavery and this fact forms a large part of their collective mythologies. The Garifuna are racially black yet they speak their own language which is a combination of Amerindian (Arawak) and African languages. The fusion of African and Native American languages is the result of their unique history. Garifuna origin stories claim that they are descendent from Hispañola bound Africans who were destined to become plantation slaves. According to their legends, these Africans were rescued by the fierce Carib Indians who regularly attacked European colonial outposts. Once freed, the Africans came to live amongst the Carib Indians on the island of St. Vincent and that is how their unique culture began. As a penalty for siding with the French in the war against the British, the black Garifuna were exiled from St. Vincent island by the British Navy in 1797.

The Garifuna initially were dropped off on the Bay Islands but they ended up leaving the islands and settling all throughout the Eastern coast of Central America starting in Honduras and stretching North into Guatemala and Belize. The Garifuna are relatively homogenous culturally. Many speak Garifuna in addition to Spanish or English, depending on the dominant language of the country of origin. It is estimated that there are close to 200,000 Garifuna in the world today and almost half of them reside in the United States . The majority of Garifuna who migrated to the US settled in New York, however an estimated 25,000 live in the South-Central and Pico-Union areas of Los Angeles. There are also sizable Garifuna enclaves in New Orleans, Miami and Chicago. The chart below provides population estimates for Caribbean blacks that live in the Los Angeles region.
 

While it is not possible to specifically identify the Garifuna ethnic sub-group from these data, blacks who report Belizian or Honduran ancestry represent 31.7% of the total number of Caribbean blacks living in Los Angeles which is consistent with the 25,000 estimate by Gonzalez. The problem with trying to identify the Garifuna from these statistics is that the Garifuna are not the only blacks who live in Honduras, Guatemala and Belize, although it is likely that they represent a sizable majority of individuals reporting ancestors from one of these countries in the 1990 census.

Measuring Political Organization and Economic Performance

Broadly speaking, the dependent variables in this study are economic performance and political organization while the independent variable is culture. Economic performance is relatively easy to measure by conducting demographic surveys and analyzing the results (income, educational attainment, occupational prestige, employment status, fertility rates, etc.) however political organization is more difficult to ascertain. Almost all statistical analyses of the economic performance of Caribbean blacks have relied on data from the US Census. While this is certainly a good place to begin, it is not possible to identify ethnic subgroups such as the Garifuna based only on the questions in the Census. In order to get more reliable data specifically on the Garifuna I will develop and administer a short demographic questionnaire that will ask questions on income, occupation and educational variables during my interviews. While I do plan on using quantitative research methods to derive socioeconomic data, I do not want to limit myself only to quantitative analysis. My preferred research methodology is a combination of both quantitative and ethnographic methods because I believe that independently, each method reveals only one piece of the larger puzzle that interests me.

Political organization is an important component of the black Caribbean community in the US because it is primarily through political organization that collective groups are able to gain greater opportunities from elites . Kasinitz interviewed political leaders and went to various voluntary association meetings in order to collect data for his book Caribbean New York. Similarly, I will survey the political landscape of the Garifuna community by going to voluntary association meetings (there are many Garifuna voluntary associations) and by interviewing political and community activists, however my goals will differ from Kasinitz’s on several fronts. Since I am primarily interested in the role of Garifuna culture on economic performance and political organizations I will be looking at both the leadership and the rank and file of voluntary associations with the intention of defining the texture of Garifuna culture. Since I presume that Garifuna culture does indeed play an organizing role in the creation of Garifuna voluntary associations, my goal will be to determine how the Garifuna mobilize and manipulate their culture in ways that either facilitate, or hinder, economic performance and political organization.

Unfortunately, determining the influence of culture is a much more difficult then estimating either economic performance, or evaluating the success of political organization. In fact, simply arriving at a general definition of culture is a topic of ongoing scholarly debate which I can not possibly attempt to resolve here. For my purposes, I borrow Jeffrey Alexander’s definition of culture as, "the ‘order’ corresponding to meaningful action," . By contrasting order and action, I include both the subjective meanings that allow individuals to make sense out of their world (order) and also the actions that flow from the individual’s understanding of those subjective meanings. The more tangible components of culture include the various symbols, norms, values and beliefs that individuals share with each other by virtue of their common association. In the case of immigrant communities their culture is often ‘thicker’ than those who have lived among non-immigrants thus giving rise to the illusion of cultural assimilation. While it is sometimes true that culture becomes thinner the longer an immigrant ethnic group has lived in the United States, this is by no means a universal or inevitable process. Some immigrant ethnic groups such as the large wave of Germans who arrived during the 19^th century successfully assimilated while others, such as orthodox Jews in New York and German Mennonites seem to hold tenaciously onto their distinctive cultural practices. Like many other immigrant communities in the US, the Garifuna are consciously struggling to maintain their own language, religious, ritual, musical and festival traditions in the face of the homogenizing influences of the dominant American culture.

The importance of culture in the case of the Garifuna has everything to do with their view of themselves as a distinct ethnic, racial and cultural group. They have a proud heritage of resistance to both slavery and to British colonialism. The Garifuna frequently draw on this cultural heritage in order to differentiate themselves from the dismal racial category of African-American. This process of differentiation is essential for the maintenance of their own ethnic identity because, once they migrate to the US, they run the risk of being ‘assimilated’ into the American society as African-Americans. Assimilation is something that the Garifuna actively struggle against and I believe that one of the consequences of their maintaining separate ethnic and cultural identities will be higher socioeconomic achievement and greater political mobilization when compared to native born blacks.

The ‘cause’ of economic success in this argument is the greater amount of social capital that flows from the maintenance of ‘thick’ cultural practices and a strongly held sense of ethnic community. As Robert Putnam has argued, the presence of strong civic traditions appears to be an important factor that helps to explain the greater economic prosperity and institutional efficiency of northern, as opposed to southern Italy. I wish to borrow Putnam’s argument and apply it to the Garifuna in order to show how strong ethnic and cultural ties too, can help provide some of the same advantages that are afforded by communities with strong civic traditions. Having a strong sense of belonging to a fairly dense ethnic community can encourage the development of voluntary associations which can be of direct economic and organizational benefit to the Garifuna. Mutual aid societies and revolving credit associations are just two examples of voluntary associations that can provide immigrants with important economic and organizational resources that might partially explain their greater rates of success. This explanation is particularly plausible considering the generally poor lending history that American financial institutions have had providing credit to African-American neighborhoods (Lipsitz, 1995; Massey and Denton, 1993). Of course I am only speculating about the causal linkages between strong ethnic communities and success at this point. The only way to actually determine the exact role that culture plays will require fieldwork.

Of course no sociological analysis would be complete without also considering the limitations and opportunities that are mediated by social structures. In the case of immigrants to the United States there are a large number of structural variables that directly influence their socioeconomic status. Among some of most important variables for black Caribbean immigrants to the Los Angeles area include variation in the local occupational structure, changes in US immigration laws, immigrant cohort sex ratios, the total size of the local ethnic group, housing segregation, racial discrimination and so forth. In both my initial research and in my subsequent fieldwork I will attempt to take as many of these variables into account as possible.

The question of what role culture plays in the formation of Garifuna political organizations and what effect it has on economic performance is primarily one of ethnic identity construction. The Garifuna are good at consciously deploying ethnic identity in ways that consistently reinforce their group identity. Garifuna immigrants to the US are particularly at risk of losing their Garifuna language abilities and as a result Garifuna community leaders are active in trying to get both young people and adults alike to learn the language. For example, in New York Garifuna activists and parents successfully lobbied the New York City School District to recognize, and put in place, English/Garifuna bilingual instruction in local public schools. In addition to the Garifuna language, the community also defines itself through other distinctive cultural practices such as Garifuna music, dance (the punta and punta rock), ceremonies and ritual (Settlement Day and the dugu) and food (casava).

In what appeared to be a moment of victory in the struggle to define Garifuna ethnic identity, one young Garifuna musician told a reporter that, "Garifuna people have gained a lot more respect (as a result of punta rock). It has become trendy to identify with Garifuna," . If the Garifuna are indeed successful at making Garifuna identity "trendy" among their children, then the transmission of Garifuna culture to future generations makes it much more likely that strong ethnic and cultural ties will persist into the future.

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