African Americans as immigrants
The topic of African Americans as immigrants encompasses the complex historical and social dynamics that have shaped their experiences in the United States. Unlike other immigrant groups who arrived voluntarily seeking new opportunities, the majority of African Americans trace their ancestry to forced migration through the transatlantic slave trade. This distinction has fueled debates on racial identity and belonging, often leading to tensions with newly arriving immigrants who compete for economic resources and job opportunities. Throughout history, African Americans have faced systemic discrimination, particularly during the establishment of chattel slavery in the colonial era, which created a rigid racial hierarchy that perpetuated divisions between them and white immigrants.
As the Great Migration unfolded in the early 20th century, many African Americans moved from the rural South to urban centers in the North, seeking better employment amidst increasing competition from European immigrants. This competition often resulted in racial tensions, exemplified by incidents like the New York City draft riots in 1863. In more recent decades, immigration patterns have shifted, with a significant rise in Latin American immigrants, complicating the socio-economic landscape for African Americans. While some African American leaders have sought to build alliances with Latino communities, perceptions of competition for jobs and resources remain. Additionally, contemporary political attitudes towards immigration among African Americans reflect a growing concern for job security, mirroring broader societal trends and revealing the intricate interplay between race, immigration, and economic opportunity in America.
African Americans as immigrants
SIGNIFICANCE: The way most African Americans arrived in the Western Hemisphere and whether they should be viewed as immigrants has significantly influenced debates on race in America. This has fueled tensions, with some perceiving immigrants as being favored over the established African American community.
Over the general, long-term perspective on history, the relationship between African Americans and other immigrant groups to the United States has revolved around mutual suspicion and competition. This aura of suspicion and competition has been heavily overlain and exacerbated by the racial issues that had already been set in place during the early colonial era. During the early seventeenth century, the few Africans who were transported to colonial Virginia, Maryland, and New England colonies held the status of indentured servants. Chattel slavery similar to that already in place in Spanish and Portuguese America had yet to secure legal status in the North American colonies. However, events moved rapidly. Spurred by concerns about the long-term stability of the system of indentured servitude and questions of interracial marriage and sexual unions, the various English colonial governments put into place legalized systems of permanent, racially based chattel slavery.
Massachusetts was the first North American colony to institute slavery on the Latin American model. However, it was in Virginia in 1661 that the southern slavery modelwhich would persist to 1865was set in place. By the end of the seventeenth century a legal and social code of separating the “Black” and “White” races was firmly fixed. This system of racial separation endured, in its various permutations, into the late 1960s. As it would prove, this was to be the general rule whether or not these “Whites” were long-establishedand mainly of English stockor part of subsequent waves of immigration from Ireland, Scandinavia, or central, southern, or eastern Europe. When society was defined in racial terms, all White personsregardless of their condition in societycould look upon themselves as “preferred” over all African Americans.
Great Draft Riot of 1863
Communities of free African Americans existed from early colonial times. However, because of the growing incompatibility of the chattel slavery system outside the South, they flourished to a far greater degree in the northern colonies and statesparticularly in the more vibrant economic climate of northern urban centers. As a distinctly identifiable and socially and legally denigrated minority, African Americans invariably competed with newly arrived White immigrants for the lowest-paying jobs. With substantial White immigrant communities in nearly every major center by the 1860s and increasing numbers of African American slaves escaping into the North on the Underground Railroad, relations between Black and White communities grew more tense.
The U.S. Civil War (1861–65) was resented by many White northerners as being waged to eliminate slavery. These people feared the prospect of great numbers of freed Black slaves coming north from southern plantations to threaten the livelihood of poor Whites. In 1863 the first military conscription in the United States brought this resentment to fever pitch, as lower-class Whites saw themselves as being compelled to participate in a struggle to free Black slaves that would work against their own interests.
In New York City, this resentment sparked a series of events that culminated in a bloody draft riot. In July 1863, a motley group White of protestors German and Irish immigrant laborersrapidly degenerated into a mob and began a rampage of vandalism, arson, assault, and murder. Over a four-day period, they burned down an orphanage for Black children and relentlessly brutalized African Americansas many as two thousand of whom may have fled the city in search of safety.
Twentieth Century Developments
The great New York City draft riotnotorious and horrific in its scope as it wasset the tune for subsequent northern and midwestern riots against African Americans. This ongoing violence was partially fueled by the anxieties and feelings of insecurity on the part of White immigrant groups. Anti–African American sentiment among White immigrants grew after the Civil War and during the early twentieth century. Meanwhile, during the first three decades of the new century, a movement that became known as the Great Migration saw the movement of many thousands of African Americans from the South to the North, where they sought employment in urban centers. The same years also saw a massive influx of European immigrants into the United States.
As Jim Crow segregation systems became more rigid throughout the South and economic conditions there generally worsened, African Americans sought comparative freedom and better employment opportunities in northern cities, in which they formed ethnic enclaves. New York City’s Harlem and Boston’s Roxbury became two of the largest and best known of such communities. As Black southerners were moving north, large numbers of eastern and southern Europeans were entering the United States, enlarging or creating their own ethnic enclaves. They were also coming into competition—at times violently—with African Americans for jobs. Interactions between Jews and African Americans were more ambiguous because of the existence of small but vocal groups within both communities harboring attitudes of racial exclusivity and religious anti-Semitism.
The 1960s witnessed both the ebbing of the old immigration patterns and the crest of the civil rights movement. Although African Americans made major political and economic strides as a result of the successes of the civil rights movement, their very success engendered a new consciousness among members of other minority groups, particularly Asian Americans. Through the ensuing decades, the numbers of Asian Americans were considerably augmented by refugees from military conflicts in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. However, the great rise in Latin American immigration would prove to have the greatest impact on African Americans.
“New Immigration” and African Americans
By the last decades of the twentieth century, American Latinos and Latin American immigrants—often collectively known as Hispanics—combined to overtake African Americans as the largest ethnic minority category in the United States. However, Latinos comprise people from many highly disparate nationalitiesincluding Puerto Ricans, Cuban Americans, Mexican Americans, and other groups with roots in Central America, South American, and the Caribbean. To complicate their relationship with African Americans even further, many Latino groups contain strong Black elements. Consequently, there has been measurable outreach between African Americans and Latinos. Some African American community and legislative leaders have joined with Hispanic leaders to support liberalized immigration policies. Many educational institutionsespecially historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs)have actively recruited students from Hispanic communities.
Despite increasing African American cooperation with Hispanics, the major American political parties have tended to treat Hispanics and African Americans as separate and distinct voting blocs. For example, the Republican Party heavily courted Hispanic voters during the 2000 national elections and 2004 national electionsa modest outreach initiative by the George W. Bush administration to enlist greater African American support was stymied by the handling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans. What was perceived as a belated and inadequate response by the Bush administration was roundly criticized. Despite the setbacks incurred to the GOP by Katrina, outreach efforts to both the African American and Latino voting communities by the Republican party would continue for the next two decades. In the 2020s, the GOP achieved notable success with both communities that it spurred a cause for concern among the Democratic Party members. The election of the first African American presidentBarack Obama in 2008and the 2024 candidacy of Kamala HarrisBlack and of South Asian descentnonetheless, dampened these nationwide trends.
A question generating great differences of opinion has been what the impact of increasing Hispanic immigration—both legal and illegal—might have on already high unemployment rates within the African American community. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported in November 2015 that the unemployment rate varied between different ethnic and racial groups in the United States in 2014. African Americans and American Indians and Alaska Natives tied for the highest rate of unemployment at 11.3 percent, while for Hispanics or Latinos the rate was 7.4 percent—compared to an overall unemployment rate of 6.2 percent. The BLS report notes these differences were associated with many different potential causes. Nonetheless, almost a decade later in 2024, BLS statistics showed a much closer convergence in unemployment percentages. Among adult males 16 years and older, in the second quarter of 2024, African American unemployment stood at 6.3 percent. Latino male unemployment in this same age group was 4.6 percent. The same female age demographic showed African American unemployment at 5.6 percent and Latino unemployment at 4.8 percent.
The 2024 Elections and African American viewpoints on Immigration
The 2024 Presidential elections offered an opportunity to assess African American sentiments on immigration. The topic of immigration—a forefront topic in American politics for the previous decade—was again a primary issue in this election. Data indicated African American viewpoints on immigration mirrored all of American society in that a greater percentage of this group now favored controls. This included members of the Democratic Party whose members had historically been more favorable to easing restrictions to entry.
As an example of immigration sentiments in the 2020s, a 2023 study by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs indicated Hispanic Americans to hold the most positive viewpoint percent favored an increase in immigration. A majority of African American respondents to the poll suggested levels should remain unchanged
The predominant characteristic indicating a particular viewpoint on immigration remained political party affiliation. According to 2024 data from Pew Research, immigration was a more prioritized issue among Republicans—seventy-six percent—than Democrats—thirty-nine percent.
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