Ethnic and racial identities of second-generation black immigrants in New York City.by Mary C. WatersThis article explores the types of racial and ethnic identities adopted by a sample of 83 adolescent second-generation West Indian and Haitian Americans in New York City. The subjective understandings these youngsters have of being American, of being black American, and of their ethnic identities are described and contrasted with the identities and reactions of first-generation immigrants from the same countries. Three types of identities are evident among the second generation - a black American identity, an ethnic or hyphenated national origin identity, and an immigrant identity. These different identities are related to different perceptions and understandings of race relations and of opportunities in the United States. Those youngsters who identify as black Americans tend to see more racial discrimination and limits to opportunities for blacks in the United States. Those who identify as ethnic West Indians tend to see more opportunities and rewards for individual effort and initiative. I suggest that assimilation to America for the second-generation black immigrant is complicated by race and class and their interaction, with upwardly mobile second-generation youngsters maintaining ethnic ties to their parents’ national origins and with poor inner city youngsters assimilating to the black American peer culture that surrounds them.© COPYRIGHT Center for Migration Studies of New York Inc. 1994The growth of nonwhite voluntary immigrants to the United States since 1965 challenges the dichotomy which once explained different patterns of American inclusion and assimilation - the ethnic pattern of assimilation of immigrants from Europe and their children and the racial pattern of exclusion of America’s nonwhite peoples. The new wave of immigrants includes people who are still defined "racially" in the United States, but who migrate to the United States voluntarily and often under an immigrant preference system which selects for people with jobs and education that puts them well above their "co-ethnics" in the economy. Do the processes of immigration and assimilation for nonwhite immigrants resemble the processes for earlier white immigrants? Or do these immigrants and their children face very different choices and constraints because they are defined racially by other Americans?This article examines a small piece of this puzzle - the question of the development of an "ethnic identity" among the second generation of black immigrants to the United States from the Caribbean. While there has been a substantial amount of interest in the identities and affiliations of immigrants from the Caribbean, there has been very little research on the identities of their children. The children of black immigrants in the United States face a choice about whether they will identify as black Americans or whether they will maintain an ethnic identity reflecting their parents’ national origins. First-generation black immigrants to the United States have tended to distance themselves from American blacks, stressing their national origins and ethnic identities as Jamaican or Haitian or Trinidadian, but they also face overwhelming pressures in the United States to identify only as "blacks" (Stafford, 1987; Foner, 1987; Sutton and Makiesky, 1975; Woldemikael, 1989; Kasinitz, 1992). In fact, they have been described as "invisible immigrants" (Bryce-Laporte, 1972), because rather than being contrasted with other immigrants (for example, contrasting how Jamaicans are doing as compared with Chinese), they have been compared to black Americans. The children of black immigrants, because they lack their parents’ distinctive accents, can choose to be even more invisible as ethnics than their parents. Second-generation West Indians in the United States will most often be seen by others as merely "American" - and must actively work to assert their ethnic identities.The types of racial and ethnic identities adopted by a sample of second-generation West Indians(2) and Haitian Americans in New York City are explored here, along with subjective understandings these youngsters have of being American, of being black American, and of their ethnic identities. After a short discussion of current theoretical approaches to understanding assimilation among the second generation, three types of identities adopted by members of the second generation are described and the different understandings and experiences of race relations associated with these different identities are traced. Finally this article suggests some implications for future patterns of identity development.Immigration from the English-speaking islands of the Caribbean has been substantial throughout the twentieth century, but numbers of immigrants coming from the West Indies and Haiti really grew following the change in the immigration law in 1965 (Bryce-Laporte, 1987; Kasinitz, International Migration Review Winter 1994 v28 n4 p795(26) Page 1- Reprinted with permission. Additional copying is prohibited. -G A L E G R O U PInformation IntegrityEthnic and racial identities of second-generation black immigrants in New York City.1992). According to the 1990 census, there were 1,455,294 foreign-born blacks in the United States or 4.8 percent of blacks nationwide. The vast majority of these are from the Caribbean. Miami and New York City are the chief destination cities for these immigrants, and the concentration of foreign-born blacks and their children is much higher in these cities. Currently, about 25 percent of the black population in New York is foreign born, with a substantial and growing second generation (because the census does not ask a birthplace-of-parents question, it is impossible to know exactly how many second-generation West Indians there are currently in the United States). During 1990-1992, I conducted in-depth interviews of immigrants and their children in New York City, designed to explore assimilation patterns and issues of racial and ethnic identity.The overall study was designed to explore the processes of immigrant adaptation and accommodation to the United States, to trace generational changes in adaptation and identification, and to explore the reactions of immigrants and their children to American race relations. Interviews with black and white Americans who interacted with the first and second generations were included in order to