On Mon, 16 Dec 2002, Dan Minette wrote: > My "daughter" Nelli and I had a long talk last night about world politics, > Africa, Europe, the US, land mines, Iraq, etc. Toward the end of it we > discussed multi-generation African Americans. She said that that she has > been told repeatedly that she wasn't "black enough" because she takes hard > classes, goes to model UN, etc., instead of "chilling." She noted that > first generation African Americans do much better than muli-generation > African Americans. > > I've got a couple of questions about this: > > Is this a reasonable sample? > > Why?
(Reggie sorta beat me to it, but I'll post what I was writing anyway.) I'm not sure what you mean by "sample," but the phenomena you describe (accusations of being not-black-enough for failing to conform to certain social expectations) isn't new. The term "oreo" leaps to mind, sadly. One doesn't have to be a first-generation African American to get hit with this term, but such a person would be a prime candidate for not having assimilated the stereotypical behaviors of the subculture to which she appears to belong but really doesn't. I wonder how much of the increased success of the first-generation immigrant should be attributed to a lack of native minority-specific burdens and/or hangups, and how much should be attributed to the likelihood that the set of voluntary immigrants probably includes a higher proportion of people with resources and/or focused purpose than the native population as a whole. Marvin Long Austin, Texas Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Poindexter & Ashcroft, LLP (Formerly the USA) _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l