For some children of immigrants, ‘African American’ doesn’t fit their unique, Black experiences in the US

• Second generation Americans, or the children of immigrants, are a growing part of the US population.
• Not all children of Black immigrants assimilate or accept labels like 'African American.'
• Activists say combating racism is sidetracked by debates about country of origin.
• See more stories on Insider's business page.

Alex Love is a born and raised New Yorker. She's lived in that city for the past 34 years she's been on this earth. But unlike many Americans, she doesn't like McDonald's, favors a chicken patty over takeout, and says "good morning" to strangers she passes on the street.

"I grew up knowing that I was American, but not a 'regular American,'" the consultant told Insider.

Both Love's parents are from Barbados. So how she shows up in American society and views her Blackness was first shaped by that Black immigrant experience.

"If you have a parent born in another country, even though you're born here, your upbringing is still predominantly led and shaped by where your parents came from and their own culture," said Haitian-American journalist, Edvige Jean-François who speaks extensively on the Black immigrant experience.

Straddling the line of an African American and Black immigrant identity can even make it difficult to feel connected to historical milestones and celebrations unique to the US, including recent Juneteenth commemorations.

"I think that it's great that people are celebrating, but I don't feel connected to it," she said. "For me, I can trace my history within Barbados so that's where I feel rooted."

Black, second-generation immigrants spoke with Insider about that intersectionality, and how they internalize American Blackness through a different lens than their African American counterparts whose existence dates back to US slavery.

Children of Black immigrants are growing part of the population

Second-generation immigrants - people born in the US with at least one immigrant parent - make up 12% of the American population, according to a 2017 Pew report.

But the term can also be applied to those born abroad and raised in the US.

Black immigrants with parents from the Caribbean, Northern and sub-Saharan Africa, and a smaller group from Canada and Europe are included in that makeup.

"Unfortunately, people do look at [all] Black people here as being black when it comes to these things and don't recognize our individual cultures and ethnicities," Jean-François said.

Vice President Kamala Harris has had her own Blackness called into question on account of her Jamaican heritage. And former President Barack Obama faced lingering attacks on a racial identity, and US citizenship from the far-right who pinpoint his Kenyan father.

With parents or guardians from countries where Black people are usually the dominant majority race, some second-generation immigrants like Love hold a different view of their place in the US in comparison to African Americans with longstanding history here.

Sociology professor Nancy Foner noted pressure to reject the dominant culture "is usually found in first-generation immigrants," but with second-generation immigrants often "a small minority" still favor their ancestral home and cultural practices.

For those that do, their reasons can be as rooted in societal anti-Blackness in the US that positions African Americans as inferior, as it is cultural pride. As a result, some second-generation Americans, even those who migrated to the US as a child attempt to distance themselves from African Americans.

"My upbringing is very heavy on manners. I kind of had a different standard," Love said. "So I kind of grew up believing that Americans didn't have as good manners as Caribbean kids."

One of the things that she found most challenging was navigating between being identified as Caribbean and being identified as African American, especially being born and raised in the US.

Black immigrants don't always accept with the term 'African American'

Foner said there is often a struggle second-generation Black immigrants face to define their Blackness, often most closely associating with their parents' homelands.

"They think of themselves in many cases as African Americans, but they also think of themselves in many cases as Jamaicans or Nigerians," she told Insider. "And because of how other Americans view race, they have a problem establishing their ethnic identity."

Some research suggests most children of immigrants eventually assimilate, taking on the cultural norms of where they reside to better fit in with the world outside of their homes.

But that's not always the case - especially for Black second-generation Americans whose parents themselves may be unaware of the societal nuances that dictates what it means to be Black in America.

Those who lean heavily towards becoming more Americanized may do so with the intent of being part of the African American culture.

Jean-François told Insider she was keen to learn about Blackness in America and determined to understand the African American experience beyond what she learned in her Haitian home.

Her parents, who migrated to the US in their 30s and 40s, didn't necessarily understand the systemic racism, redlining, economic disenfranchisement, or just being treated differently primarily because of the color of their skin.

Their idea of navigating American society and becoming successful hitched on the cornerstone of attaining proper education and avoiding political or social activism and groups - something they didn't associate with their African American counterparts.

Jean-François' own experience proved that to be untrue having moved to Canada, then the US. She was first made aware of her racial difference when, at eight years old, a white girl asked Jean-François whether her parents had left her in the toaster for too long.

Love, too, came to the realization that what she learned in the home sometimes did not translate to when she was out in the world as a Black person, especially in the corporate world.

At home, she was taught to be humble, keep her head down, and that with a good education and hard work she would be successful. But "that has not been true, in my experience, in the [American] workforce," she said.

There are times, she said, when she had to be bold and make herself seen in a way she was told African Americans behaved to get ahead.

But as part of the African diaspora overall, Love told Insider African Americans and Black immigrants are connected through shared traumas of slavery and segregation.

Institutional racism impacts Black Americans no matter country of origin

Black immigrants are part of the larger Black community in America and have similarly been treated institutional racism. As recent as 2018 the killings of St. Lucian American Botham Shem Jean and Jamaican American Saheed Vassell made national and international news as two Black immigrants who were victims of police brutality.

Differences like Jamaican, Ghanaian, or Panamanian may be important at home - not within American institutions that devalue Black skin regardless of whether it carries a blue or red passport.

"Being Black in America, the rest of the world doesn't care what my name is," Ephiphane Yohou, a Maryland-based global marketing strategist said, adding non-Black people seldom say 'let me go and find out where her last name comes from.'"

"If you're Black, you're Black," she told Insider.

Yohou, whose parents migrated from the Ivory Coast in West Africa, is often subject to the same stereotypes as all Black Americans - including the over-policing of her dress, hair, and mannerism in the workplace.

She says the complexity of being Black in America, with various ethnic backgrounds, is all rooted in the desire to be accepted and free in the US - regardless of if a Black person is born in America or makes a home here for themselves.

The diaspora has been uniting to fight against racial injustice, including marches in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. Second generation Americans' lived experience also uniquely position them to fight against anti-Black racism while amplifying imm migrant issues.

Black immigrants are detained and deported at disproportionate rates relative to their population, and many young migrants from Africa and the Caribbean are DACA recipients.

"We have to recognize African American cultures in the fight that they have waged historically, for African Americans, but all Black people who come here have benefited and are benefiting from it," Jean-François said.

Even though their upbringing resulted in two different views of where they stand on being Black in America, both Love and Jean-François agree on one thing: being a Black person in America means dealing with racism.

With that experience nearly universal across the diaspora, Jean-François says country-of-origin debates detract from liberation for all Black people, no matter where they're born.

"Whether or not we celebrate our individual cultures, when it comes to America and how they view Black people, we face the same challenges," she said.