Tuesday, 6 June 2006: African American Minority vs. the immigrant narrative.

Text-objective discussion leader: Kaylee Daniel

Objectives 2 and 3: African American narrative contrasts with Immigrant narrative in that their minority experience does not include assimilation, the US as a melting pot, the stages of the Immigrant Narrative, or Character by generation. 

While the United States has traditionally been referred to as a melting pot, this is not possible for African Americans, as they remain distinct as a race many generations after coming here.  In “No Name in the Street,” the author talks about doing something as benign as catching a cab in NYC as being dangerous for a black man:

“The American situation being what it is, and American taxi drivers being what they mostly are, I have, in effect, been forbidden to expose myself to the quite tremendous hazards of getting a cab to stop for me in New York” (287). 

Even as well educated and well-spoken as this man is, he knows that he will stand out as a minority and be looked upon differently in our society. 

Then in “The Lesson,” the narrator discusses fear about entering FAO Schwarz:

“Not that I’m scared, what’s there to be afraid of, just a toy store.  But I feel funny, shame.  But what I got to be shamed about?  Got as much right to go in as anybody.  But somehow I can’t seem to get hold of the door, so I step away for Sugar to lead.  But she hangs back too.  And I look at her and she looks at me and this is ridiculous” (149). 

Once again, these kids have fear of doing something that we take for granted because of the color of their skin.  They know that they will be noticed and be under suspicion even if they don’t openly admit it.  These passages articulate that African Americans do not experience stage 4 of the Immigrant Narrative—Assimilation to dominant American culture and loss of ethnic identity.  They also differ from Immigrants in their characterization by generation.  While the first generation is seen as heroic and clueless for the most part (slaves), and the second generation is divided and conflicted, they never reach the third generation of assimilation.  The few that do “assimilate” and “make it” feel ambivalent as seen in “No Name”:     

"The guilt of the survivor is a real guilt--as I was now to discover.  In a way that I may never be able to make real for my countrymen or myself that I had 'made it'...by the use of a name which had not been mine when I was born and which love had compelled me to make my own--meant that I had betrayed the people who had produced me.”

1.                  Why do you think that the author of “No Name” feels such shame for having “betrayed” his people?  Immigrants are generally proud of doing this even against the wishes of their families (i.e. girls going to college). 

2.                  Ms. Moore seems to have the opposite feelings and wants not only succeed personally, but wants to help the neighborhood kids better themselves as well.  She goes so far as to bring them to the most expensive toy store around and use their dismay at the costs of things they will never afford to show them the evils of inequality and American “free-enterprise” society.  What do you think makes her see things so differently from the author of “No Name?” 

In the stages of the Immigrant Narrative, Immigrants generally reach stages 3,4,and 5 in their quest to assimilate into American society.  Slavery perverted these stages for African Americans but they still exist in terms of their nightmare rather than in terms of “The American Dream.”

In Alice Walker’s “Elethia,” the story centers around a “funny” statue of a former slave in the window of a local café’ owned by a descendent of the former slave-holder.  The local kids later stole and cremated it, keeping the ashes.  At the end, the narrator says, “And she was careful that, no matter how compelling the hype, Uncle Alberts” in her won mind, were not permitted to exist” (308). 

1.      What did she mean by this in a broad sense, and how does this relate to stage 5, rediscovery or reassertion of ethnic identity? 

2.      How do you think the town kids felt about burning the statue, or, what metaphor was the narrator intending to draw?