This is an unpublished, original beat story written for the Reporting and Writing I class of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.
If you happen to receive an invitation to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday in Bedford-Stuyvesant with Catherine Lewis – better known as “Miss Catie” by the neighborhood – by all means, take it. Her animated personality and jovial laugh will keep you slapping your knee well into the night. But when you finally sit down at Miss Catie’s table for the evening’s meal, try not to appear alarmed when your eyes survey the table and can’t locate the candied yams, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie that make up the usual trimmings of the most traditional of American meals.
Instead, you might find a bowl of leafy greens tossed with diced green bananas to your left, a steaming bowl of plush rice flecked with green peas and doused in coconut juice to your right and, directly in front of you, a hearty fish stew whose main ingredient goes by the less-than-flattering name of “cacabelly.”
That’s because Lewis, 53, is an immigrant from Grenada, one of the many English-, French- or Dutch-speaking Caribbean islands collectively referred to as the West Indies. Since Lewis moved to her quiet, tree-lined street in brownstone Brooklyn in 1994, more than 27,000 West Indian immigrants have settled in the area. Together, they are changing the face of Brooklyn’s premier black neighborhood – and redefining the associations of the word “black” by instilling a healthy dose of calypso, Toussaint L’Ouverture and Pirates of the Caribbean in a neighborhood better known for hip-hop, Malcolm X and Do the Right Thing.
“I don’t really keep the American Thanksgiving,” Lewis said, adding that she also holds a “spiritual service” that includes prayer, candles and Bible readings. “We do it in our way.”
To some, Bedford-Stuyvesant’s West Indians appear as black as the rest of the 75 percent of U.S. Census-designated “African-Americans” in the neighborhood. But to others, including many residents of Bed-Stuy, they are really “ethnic blacks” – sharing a skin color with their neighbors but holding vastly different cultural traditions and customs, much like the Irish, Italians, Poles and Jews before them.
Yet an unprecedented struggle faces immigrants from the West Indies living in Brooklyn’s black mecca: as black immigrants, they must combat not only racism and immigration prejudice from other ethnic groups, but from the native-born African-Americans that Bed-Stuy is known for, said Carolina Bank Muñoz, an assistant professor of sociology at Brooklyn College.
“This is the first immigrant group where being an immigrant is an asset over being American,” Muñoz said. “It’s just trickier, because of how skin color is associated.”
West Indians have been arriving on American shores since 1965, when immigration laws were eased for people from the Caribbean. Since the tightening of visa regulations in the late 1980s, however, West Indians have faced increasing odds to enter the U.S., particularly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
For Lewis, who works as an airport security guard, that means continuing the tradition of the self-starting, opportunistic American immigrant. If you offer a West Indian immigrant $10 to clean an entire building, they’ll do it so that they can send money home to their family, Lewis said.
“We’re like scavengers. They should welcome us,” she said. “We do the jobs people don’t want to do. We have a quarter to catch.”
Muñoz said this usually results in an employer’s preference toward immigrants rather than native-born blacks.
“There’s definitely a lot of resentment. I see it in my students,” Muñoz said. “I see a lot of tension between the two groups, in part because there’s a fundamental lack of understanding between them. One group comes to the U.S., is working really hard, and says, “See, I’m making it, I’m achieving the American dream, what the hell’s wrong with you? You’re just lazy, you have your citizenship.’
“But that group is saying, ‘There’s a legacy of Jim Crow laws, slavery, and legally-institutionalized racism into the Sixties. That inequality is supposed to go away? That’s just not the case, that’s not how these things work.’ ”
Landlord and union construction worker Eric Byam, 43, said West Indians should respect their native-born neighbors for fighting for the right to work for pay. Byam was born and raised in Bedford-Stuyvesant, and owns a brownstone on Greene Ave. His father was from Trinidad, his mother was from the southern United States, and he identifies himself only as an “African-American.”
“A lot of immigrants come over here and forget that African-Americans opened up the jobs that they are working,” Byam said. “The Caribbeans slide on in there on the backs of the African-Americans and say they got the jobs on their own. No – you got the jobs that the African-Americans fought for. A lot of people in the community forget that.”
“A lot of us have to crawl before we walk. [But] a lot of us expect to walk before we crawl.”
Unlike the current generation of West Indians, the first generation hasn’t yet come to terms with the fact that the n-word can apply to them, too, Byam said.
“Some of them think they’re better, because they’re from the island,” he said. “They say, ‘I’m not the n-word.’ They don’t think they’re niggers…they don’t want to accept it.”
Though the community is vastly accepting of her and her family, Lewis said she occasionally feels tension from the rest of the African-American community.
“They say, ‘You dirty stinking immigrant, you go home,’ ” Lewis said. “And I say, ‘God bless, you are my black sister,’ and I pay no mind.”
Being black in the U.S. is a really different thing that being black in the Caribbean, Muñoz said.
“When you lose your accent [in the U.S.], you basically just become black, and face all of the stigma associated with it,” Muñoz said.
Lewis’ daughter, Techia, said the racism she experiences overrules any island ties she has. Techia is a 30-year-old nursing student at Queensborough Community College.
“Every day, I have to wake up as a black woman,” she said. “It doesn’t matter if I’m West Indian or not.”
Lewis said it’s all in how you carry yourself.
“I’m proud, black and beautiful,” Lewis said. “I shouldn’t let nothing stop me.”
In Bed-Stuy, West Indians redefine Brooklyn’s black mecca
This is an unpublished, original beat story written for the Reporting and Writing I class of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.
If you happen to receive an invitation to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday in Bedford-Stuyvesant with Catherine Lewis – better known as “Miss Catie” by the neighborhood – by all means, take it. Her animated personality and jovial laugh will keep you slapping your knee well into the night. But when you finally sit down at Miss Catie’s table for the evening’s meal, try not to appear alarmed when your eyes survey the table and can’t locate the candied yams, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie that make up the usual trimmings of the most traditional of American meals.
Instead, you might find a bowl of leafy greens tossed with diced green bananas to your left, a steaming bowl of plush rice flecked with green peas and doused in coconut juice to your right and, directly in front of you, a hearty fish stew whose main ingredient goes by the less-than-flattering name of “cacabelly.”
That’s because Lewis, 53, is an immigrant from Grenada, one of the many English-, French- or Dutch-speaking Caribbean islands collectively referred to as the West Indies. Since Lewis moved to her quiet, tree-lined street in brownstone Brooklyn in 1994, more than 27,000 West Indian immigrants have settled in the area. Together, they are changing the face of Brooklyn’s premier black neighborhood – and redefining the associations of the word “black” by instilling a healthy dose of calypso, Toussaint L’Ouverture and Pirates of the Caribbean in a neighborhood better known for hip-hop, Malcolm X and Do the Right Thing.
“I don’t really keep the American Thanksgiving,” Lewis said, adding that she also holds a “spiritual service” that includes prayer, candles and Bible readings. “We do it in our way.”
To some, Bedford-Stuyvesant’s West Indians appear as black as the rest of the 75 percent of U.S. Census-designated “African-Americans” in the neighborhood. But to others, including many residents of Bed-Stuy, they are really “ethnic blacks” – sharing a skin color with their neighbors but holding vastly different cultural traditions and customs, much like the Irish, Italians, Poles and Jews before them.
Yet an unprecedented struggle faces immigrants from the West Indies living in Brooklyn’s black mecca: as black immigrants, they must combat not only racism and immigration prejudice from other ethnic groups, but from the native-born African-Americans that Bed-Stuy is known for, said Carolina Bank Muñoz, an assistant professor of sociology at Brooklyn College.
“This is the first immigrant group where being an immigrant is an asset over being American,” Muñoz said. “It’s just trickier, because of how skin color is associated.”
West Indians have been arriving on American shores since 1965, when immigration laws were eased for people from the Caribbean. Since the tightening of visa regulations in the late 1980s, however, West Indians have faced increasing odds to enter the U.S., particularly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
For Lewis, who works as an airport security guard, that means continuing the tradition of the self-starting, opportunistic American immigrant. If you offer a West Indian immigrant $10 to clean an entire building, they’ll do it so that they can send money home to their family, Lewis said.
“We’re like scavengers. They should welcome us,” she said. “We do the jobs people don’t want to do. We have a quarter to catch.”
Muñoz said this usually results in an employer’s preference toward immigrants rather than native-born blacks.
“There’s definitely a lot of resentment. I see it in my students,” Muñoz said. “I see a lot of tension between the two groups, in part because there’s a fundamental lack of understanding between them. One group comes to the U.S., is working really hard, and says, “See, I’m making it, I’m achieving the American dream, what the hell’s wrong with you? You’re just lazy, you have your citizenship.’
“But that group is saying, ‘There’s a legacy of Jim Crow laws, slavery, and legally-institutionalized racism into the Sixties. That inequality is supposed to go away? That’s just not the case, that’s not how these things work.’ ”
Landlord and union construction worker Eric Byam, 43, said West Indians should respect their native-born neighbors for fighting for the right to work for pay. Byam was born and raised in Bedford-Stuyvesant, and owns a brownstone on Greene Ave. His father was from Trinidad, his mother was from the southern United States, and he identifies himself only as an “African-American.”
“A lot of immigrants come over here and forget that African-Americans opened up the jobs that they are working,” Byam said. “The Caribbeans slide on in there on the backs of the African-Americans and say they got the jobs on their own. No – you got the jobs that the African-Americans fought for. A lot of people in the community forget that.”
“A lot of us have to crawl before we walk. [But] a lot of us expect to walk before we crawl.”
Unlike the current generation of West Indians, the first generation hasn’t yet come to terms with the fact that the n-word can apply to them, too, Byam said.
“Some of them think they’re better, because they’re from the island,” he said. “They say, ‘I’m not the n-word.’ They don’t think they’re niggers…they don’t want to accept it.”
Though the community is vastly accepting of her and her family, Lewis said she occasionally feels tension from the rest of the African-American community.
“They say, ‘You dirty stinking immigrant, you go home,’ ” Lewis said. “And I say, ‘God bless, you are my black sister,’ and I pay no mind.”
Being black in the U.S. is a really different thing that being black in the Caribbean, Muñoz said.
“When you lose your accent [in the U.S.], you basically just become black, and face all of the stigma associated with it,” Muñoz said.
Lewis’ daughter, Techia, said the racism she experiences overrules any island ties she has. Techia is a 30-year-old nursing student at Queensborough Community College.
“Every day, I have to wake up as a black woman,” she said. “It doesn’t matter if I’m West Indian or not.”
Lewis said it’s all in how you carry yourself.
“I’m proud, black and beautiful,” Lewis said. “I shouldn’t let nothing stop me.”