Edited by Azizi Powell
This pancocojams post presents general information about Cabo Verde and several excerpts about Cape Verdeans in the United States.
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Thanks to all those whose research and writing are quoted in this post.
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INFORMATION ABOUT CAPO VERDE (formerly named "Cape Verde")
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Verde
"Cape Verde ...or Cabo Verde...; Portuguese: [ˈkabu ˈveɾdɨ]), officially the
Republic of Cabo Verde, is an archipelago and island country in the central
Atlantic Ocean, consisting of ten volcanic islands with a combined land area of
about 4,033 square kilometres (1,557 sq mi).[10] These islands lie between 600 and
850 kilometres (320 and 460 nautical miles) west of Cap-Vert, the westernmost
point of continental Africa. The Cape Verde islands form part of the
Macaronesia ecoregion, along with the Azores, the Canary Islands, Madeira, and
the Savage Isles.
The Cape Verde archipelago was uninhabited until the 15th
century, when Portuguese explorers discovered and colonized the islands, thus
establishing the first European settlement in the tropics. Because the Cape
Verde islands were located in a convenient location to play a role in the
Atlantic slave trade, Cape Verde became economically prosperous during the 16th
and 17th centuries, attracting merchants, privateers, and pirates. It declined
economically in the 19th century after the suppression of the Atlantic slave
trade, and many of its inhabitants emigrated during that period. However, Cape
Verde gradually recovered economically by becoming an important commercial
center and useful stopover point along major shipping routes. In 1951, Cape
Verde was incorporated as an overseas department of Portugal, but its
inhabitants continued to campaign for independence, which they achieved in
1975.
[...]
Cape Verdeans are descendants of Africans (free or slaves)
and Europeans of various origins. There are also Cape Verdeans who have Jewish
ancestors from North Africa, mainly on the islands of Boa Vista, Santiago and
Santo Antão. A large part of Cape Verdeans emigrated abroad, mainly to the
United States, Portugal and France, so that there are more Cape Verdeans
residing abroad than at home."...
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ONLINE ARTICLE EXCERPTS
EXCERPT #1
From https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1980/07/06/cape-verdeans-face-identity-problem-in-us/48c820db-a050-45b4-a633-f3dc776351e0/ Cape Verdeans Face Identity Problem in U.S.
By Kathy SawyerJuly 6, 1980
"They came to this country from a miniature melting pot of
their own -- the descendants of white Portuguese and black Africans. Theirs is
an ethnic tapestry shot through with threads from the Chinese, the Jews, the
Moors, the Indians.
For the 300,000 Cape Verdeans in the United States -- nearly as many as in the Cape Verde Islands -- the age-old question of identity is particularly profound.
"My children never knew they were black unitl they went outside the neighborhood," said Donna Cruz, a waitress in the historical waterfront section of this former whaling capital. "The way I was brought up, you'd never say you were black. You were Portuguese. You didn't hang around with Negroes . . . Now we're taught to have pride."
Cruz is a Cape Verdean-American, one of the thousands who emigrated to the United States over the last century to escape the perpetual poverty of their drought-swept island country off the west coast of Africa. They refer to their exodus as the only large-scale "voluntary," or non-slave, emigration from Africa.
[….]
Stretching along both sides of Akushnet Avenue, about 12,000
Cape Verdeans live in a neighborhood of clapboard and shingle homes and blocks
of public housing. Jukeboxes in bars feature Cape Verdean "mornas,"
or laments of farewell, and women cook a rice-and-bean dish called jagcida or,
in American slang, "jag."
Yet so few Americans know about them that when they venture outside their familiar neighborhoods -- here, in Pawtucket, Providence, Boston and a few other places -- as Cruz says: "It's very interesting trying to explain who we are and what we are."
[…]
In keeping with the great paradox of the modern American
"melting pot," a contingent of Cape Verdeans traveled from New
Bedford to Washington last fall to try to persuade the U.S. Census to give them
their own category in the 1980 count. They wanted it based on their ethnic
background as Cape Verdeans, not as race.
They won a concession: instructions on the long form only, asking citizens to be specific when they identify their origins and mentioning Cape Verdeans as an example.
But the burden of defining themselves remains with the individual Cape Verdeans.
Along "the avenue," (Akushnet was the name of the whaling ship that carried Herman Melville to sea and helped inspire "Moby Dick"), you can hear many variations, usually in good-natured tones, on their color question.
You hear about Cape Verdeans who, regardless of skin color, consider themselves white and will "hit you with rocks" if you consider them otherwise. You hear of the young Cape Verdean doctor who lives in the suburbs of Boston with his white wife and their children, and who comes home alone to visit his dark-skinned relatives.
You hear about the rising generation of Cape Verdeans, many
of whom have taken up the banner of black pride, seeking refuge, as their
parents often see it, in an unambiguous identity. "They feel left out;
they want to belong somewhere," said one mother.
You hear about the tensions between the new arrivals and the "old guard." The newly arrived immigrants, intent on the economics of survival, are sometimes bewildered by the raised ethnic consciousness of their Americanized countrymen. Other new arrivals are disappointed by Americanized Cape Verdeans who have forgotten their native culture altogether.
Occasional outbreaks of gang violence between young blacks and Cape Verdeans occurred until the '60s focused national attention on civil rights issues. Then things began to change.
"We have a lot of the same problems, a lot of talk about over a beer, you know," said one young Cape Verdean, a plant worker, who said he thinks of himself as an Afro-American.
"Being a Cape Verdean is very, very complex," said Deonilda Rosa, an American-born Cape Verdean who works in the New Bedford office of Rep. Gerry E. Studds (D-Mass.) "You can get a different perception from each person you talk to."
At Alfred J. Gomes Elementary Mary G. Andrade teaches
immigrant children who speak Portuguese and their own unwritten dialect Crioulo,
about their culture as well as how to speak English as a second language.
She teaches them about both their Portuguese and their black
African sides, she said, explaining; "I tell them we come in all colors,
hair textures. We all have our own characteristics, our blackness, our
whiteness, our in betweeness. "
[...]
Anyone asking for unemployment figures or other information learns that Cape Verdeans cause special headaches for local bureaucrats and public officials.
"It's a hell of a mess and there are no simple answers," said William Tansey of the state unemployment compensation office in New Bedford. He ran through a litany of the changing government code system as it might apply to Cape Verdeans: Portuguese/European, black, caucasian, "other than white," and so on.
"I have two Cape Verdeans in my office," he said.
In the struggle for jobs in the area's factories, fish processing plants and on merchant ships, Costa said, employers tend to lump all black faces together, regardless of what they call themselves.
Generally, Costa said, Cape Verdeans share equally with
blacks and other low-income Americans the problems of unemployment, youthful
drug addiction, low pay and lack of education. And they count under federal
minority hiring requirements.
Some employers reportedly prefer to hire Cape Verdeans over Afro-Americans because they consider them "less black" but they still count under minority requirements. And some employers say they prefer Cape Verdeans because they not only count as minorities, but also are bilingual and can help in dealing with the large Portuguese population in New Bedford and nearby areas."....
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EXCERPT #2
https://globalboston.bc.edu/index.php/home/ethnic-groups/cape-verdeans/ Global Boston,
retrieved January 14, 2023
Settled by Portuguese in the mid-fifteenth century, the Cape
Verde archipelago consists of ten arid islands off the coast of Senegal in West
Africa. As the Portuguese imported slave labor from the mainland, the islands
soon became a center of the slave trade and a provisioning point for ships
traveling along the African coast. In the mid-nineteenth century, severe
drought conditions and poverty drove many former slaves and mixed-race Cape
Verdeans to seek work on whaling ships plying the Atlantic. Some later settled
in the whaling port of New Bedford, setting in motion a migrant stream to
southeastern Massachusetts that peaked between 1890 and 1921. Coming mainly
from the islands of Brava and Fogo, the early migrants were disproportionately
male, often migrating seasonally on packet ships run by Cape Verdean companies.
Migration declined dramatically in the early 1920s under US
immigration restriction and tight Portuguese controls on Cape Verdean
emigration. Even after passage of the 1965 Immigration Act, emigration rates
remained low; it was not until the Republic of Cape Verde won its independence
in 1975 that foreign visas became more widely accessible. By the 1980s, Cape
Verdeans would be migrating across Europe, Brazil, and the US, but particularly
to New England, which was well known because of its historic connections to the
islands.
The new immigrants differed in many ways from the old. Their
island origins have been more diverse—they come not only from Brava and Fogo
but also from Saõ Tiago, Saõ Vicente, and Saõ Nicolau. The gender ratio of the
new wave has been much more balanced, and the newcomers also include the more
prosperous and educated as well as the poor.
Settlement
During the first wave of migration, most Cape Verdeans
settled in New Bedford, as well as in adjacent areas of southeastern Massachusetts
and Rhode Island. Over the course of the twentieth century, a small migrant
community developed in Boston, but most of the city’s Cape Verdean population
has arrived since 1975. Coming earlier than other African national groups (who
mainly arrived after 1990), Cape Verdeans are the city’s largest African group
and the sixth largest foreign-born group overall. Constrained by racial
discrimination and segregation, Cape Verdeans have settled in predominantly
black and Latino areas of Roxbury and Dorchester, especially in the area
between Dudley Square and Upham’s Corner. The city of Brockton, an older
industrial city located between Boston and New Bedford, has been another key
settlement area, with Cape Verdeans making up roughly a third of the city’s
foreign-born population in 2014."...
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EXCERPT #3
From
Journal of Cape Verdean Studies
Manuscript 1024
Where Blackness and Cape Verdeanness Intersect:
Reflections on a Monoracial and Multiethnic
Reality in the United States
Callie Watkins Liu
This item is available as part of Virtual Commons, the
open-access institutional repository of Bridgewater State University,
Bridgewater, Massachusetts.
© 2019 Callie Watkins Liu
Where Blackness and Cape Verdeanness Intersect: Reflections on a Monoracial and
Multiethnic Reality in the United States
Callie Watkins Liu
Stonehill College, USA
"Abstract
As a Black American and fourth generation Cape Verdean
American growing up in the United
States, I’ve found that race and ethnicity are frequently
conflated in ways that obscure my social reality and identity or put two integrated parts of myself
into opposition with each other. In examining my own ethno-racial experience, I use critical
race studies and identity construction to disentangle the structural concepts of race and ethnicity
and build a frame work for understanding my own integrated existence within the United States. ….
[…]
Frequently Cape Verdean scholarship focuses on the Cape
Verdeans in the Cape Verde
islands, or immigrant experiences and Diaspora communities.
Immigrant related research might address questions of integration, identity or challenges
such as deportation. The broader research looks at the transnational relationships across the diaspora
and as they relate back to Cape Verde.
There is very little work, in the United States based
research, that moves past the initial
immigration questions to look at life “post-integration.”
This leaves out the experiences of
families like mine, where I am the fourth generation in the
United States yet maintain a Cape
Verdean and American identity.
[…]
The False Dichotomy of Race or Ethnicity – Working to See
Each and Both
Born to a Black American Father and Cape Verdean American
mother, I was raised and
always identified as Black (or Black American) and Cape Verdean, yet at different moments in my life people have asked me if I consider myself “Black or
Cape Verdean?” This question
confused me tremendously, as though the person had just
asked whether I was left handed OR did I have two feet? Two coexisting parts of myself
unnecessarily and suddenly put into
opposition with each other. Over time, I’ve come to believe
that much of this confusion comes
from how the distinct yet interrelated social constructions
of race and ethnicity are often
conflated into one construct.
Ethnicity is commonly understood in the US as culture and heritage related to ancestry and place of origin. Though it may correlate with phenotypic traits (such as skin color, body type, hair texture), ethnicity is not defined by phenotype. Such an identity comes from a combination of heritage and internal assertion of belonging to that group. For example, my Cape Verdean ethnic identity comes from my ancestors being Cape Verdean combined with my own internal association with this ethnic membership. It is internally and not relatively defined.
Ethnicities are not mutually exclusive. The association with
one ethnic heritage does not
automatically negate the validity of another heritage within
the same person. Further, this
identity is in no way affected by the presence of someone
else’s ethnicity. I am no more or less Cape Verdean if I stand next to a person who is ethnically
Greek, Nicaraguan or Nigerian. My relationship to this identity only varies depending on my
relationship to the Cape Verdean culture and community.
Ethnicity is not necessarily hierarchical or polar, while
race is inherently so. Race in the
United States is an externally constructed (through policy,
norms, practices and culture),
polarized power relation based on phenotype that everyone is
placed into. White only exists,
because there is “Black.” The sole definition of white is to
not be black and to have more access to power, privilege and resources relative to Black or
non-white populations. The US is a white supremacist society, where white, heterosexual,
Christian, wealthy, cis-gendered men, are supposed to be at the top, and everyone else is supposed to
be varying degrees of below that.
Though the US, like every society, is based on intersecting power structures, race is a dominant social structure and you generally do better, the closer you are to white and the further you are from black.
Even though the white supremacist racial hierarchy is
socially constructed, it still carries
very real implications for people’s lives. Although the
first Africans to arrive in the United States had many different ethnicities, generations of living this
racialized existence together has generated a Black American ethnic culture, contingent upon
yet distinct from the initial African ethnicities. For example, as Vilna Treitler describes in
her book,
dark in skin tone, were largely concentrated in the Southern
United States prior to 1970;
believe their people descend from persons who traveled from
the African continent
involuntarily even if, more often than not, they cannot
pinpoint the national origin of their
ancestor with any certainty; identify in great numbers with
the Baptist faith; founded the
music tradition known as ‘jazz’ and are known for ‘soul
music’ and ‘soul food’; and that
other Americans tend not to intermarry with them, your mind
would conjure up the ethnic
group “African Americans’ (2013, 21).”
This reality that Treitler describes is unique to the United
States and to this racialized group. Even though ethnicity is usually rendered invisible
when talking about Black Americans, the Black American reality is that of a specific ethnic
group constructed within the United States.
Thus, my own identity is the integration of two US based
ethnicities, Cape Verdean American
and Black American.
Regardless of how light or dark your own skin may be, if you
have parents or any ancestors
considered black, you are black. In contrast, whiteness is
lost once there is any non-white mixing because white is defined by “purity”. This means that even
though there is lots of phenotypic variety in the United States, and long history of
“miscegenation”, those nuances are ignored because they are erased from the national narrative.
There have been some fluctuations in terms of how groups are
racialized, but the overall
system stays intact. For example, historically the Irish and
Italian immigrants were considered
“ethnic whites” and “non-white”, but now they are considered
white. Similarly, Arab Americans
who had been racially considered white, are recently
becoming racialized into a distinct “nonwhite” category.
Though non-black groups in between may shift closer to one end of the racial spectrum or the other, Black and White are always in structural hierarchical opposition to each other with white always being on top and groups considered Black are never re-racialized into the White category.
In contrast to the US system, Cape Verdean national identity assumes mixed populations (racially and ethnically) and phenotypic diversity. The rigid racial system in the US is often an unwelcome and invasive experience for immigrants who come from places, like Cape Verde, where the social hierarchy is not based on such stringent racial categorizations.
Ethnicity is distinct from race, but ethnicity is used to
racialize, or racially categorize, groups in the US and place them in the social hierarchy. Groups are categorized as White or
nonwhite, then they may be Black or perhaps a racialized “other”. Racialization occurs based on phenotype,
lineage and even place of origin. Regional racialization occurs when whole geographies along with anyone from
that geography carries that racialization.
For example, Latin American countries are racialized as “non-white” or “Brown”
and even though a person may be racially white within Latin America, once they are in the United States, they are placed in
the non-white category of “Latino.”
Cape Verdean population and families have vast phenotypic variety that
challenge US based racial assumptions –like many other communities in the US and globally (e.g. Latin America, The
Caribbean or Creole communities in the United States) – however, given that Cape Verde is considered part
of Africa (which then defines you as Black) and almost everyone of Cape Verdean descent has (or
is assumed to have) at least “one drop” of black blood, Cape Verdeans in the US
would always be considered Black and not white.
Making Cape Verdean and Black racially synonymous, while
ethnic particularities remain.
This structural reality of racialization may decide a
person’s racial designation, yet
individuals may or may not internalize that designation.
Within my own family, even though
Cape Verdeans would generally be considered Black, the
degree to which individuals might
embrace that (if at all) would vary. For example, my light
skinned Cape Verdean grandmother
was angry that my mother had come home from college with a
dark skinned Black American
boyfriend, and even when I was coming to understand race as
a child, this same grandmother loved when I said she was white because of her skin tone,
while my politically racialized mother who strongly identified as Black cried when I said she
looked white. As Black Immigrants from the same immigrant community, each person navigates these
dimensions differently. Everyone, in the United States has a race and an ethnicity
though one may be more salient than the other for a variety of reasons. Race is an
identity that is largely externally constructed and defined. If everyone else in society
perceives you as part of that racial category, then that is part of your racialization regardless of how
you see yourself. Ethnicity is largely an internal construction process, primarily determined by individual
assertion as opposed to external imposition.
To ask the question are you “Black or Cape
Verdean”, is to take a racial framework (polarized and hierarchal) and apply it to an ethnic
question (multiple and not inherently hierarchical). To assert Cape Verdeanness is to primarily
assert ethnic identity, even though that ethnicity has been racialized as Black. To assert Black
Americanness is to primarily assert a racial identity, even though it also carries cultural and
ethnic attributes. Even if the weights may shift more one way or the other, racial and ethnic identity
are both present and do not have to exist in opposition to each other.
Phenotypically, I have Brown skin, with characteristics, such as hair texture and nose shape that clearly mark me as a Black person in the US. I have Black American ancestry from my Black American father. I am both perceived and understand myself as a Black person, in addition to the ways in which Cape Verdeans are automatically racialized as Black in the US.
Given my, Cape Verdean American mother, personal engagement with my Cape Verdean heritage and phenotypic diversity within Cape Verdean populations, I am also accepted and understood as Cape Verdean or Cape Verdean American. Because of my racial and ethnic embeddedness, I relate to, but am not limited by either of the social structures. Instead, I draw on both to expand how I relate to myself and others.
[…]
The US supremacy system has created a false dichotomy of
race and ethnicity (through
policy, norms, and national narratives), where the presence
of one frequently implies the denial or erasure of the other. This dichotomization and erasure
can generate distance and hostility within and between Black and Cape Verdean (or Black
immigrant) communities. Asserting ethnic identity may be interpreted (or many in fact be)
denying Blackness, and immigrant communities may shun blackness in a range of implicit and
explicit ways. Though I have experienced my identity in an integrated way, this has
required that I push back on erasure or antagonism within my own communities. On my Cape Verdean
side, I was frequently simply swept into the Kriola identity and the Black Americanness
would mostly be ignored. While on the Black side, a person might respond “Naw girl, you just
black,” in response to me naming my Cape Verdean identity.
I would suggest that Black immigrants are not simply
rejecting Blackness but that this
might be a place where race and ethnicity are being
conflated in this resistance. There may be both an ethnic resistance – to refuse the loss of ethnic
connection in the face of an assumed assimilationist immigration trajectory in the United States
– and, or, a racial resistance – the refusal to be categorized or see oneself in terms of
stereotypes and perceived Blackness.
Black resistance to ethnic naming may be more nuanced as
well. Given the myriad of ways that our Black existence is constantly being
invalidated, threatened and undermined, along
with the persistent denial of Black ethnicity, and polarized
racial structure, it’s not surprising that affirming ethnicity can be experienced as racial
invalidation. By decoupling race and ethnicity and interrogating these resistances further I believe we would
discover a more multifaceted understanding of these experiences. Historically, global
liberation movements have played an important role in bridging racial and ethnic resentment
fostered by the dominant power systems.
The1950s through the 1970s was a time of asserting positive identities in the African Diaspora. Cape Verde was entrenched in struggle for independence while Black Americans in the US were asserting their own Black racial identity and fighting for their own independence.
As Cape Verdeans were going from Portuguese, to black Portuguese, to Cape Verdean; Black Americans were going from colored, to negro, to African-American and Black31. Each striving to construct an identity and sense of self separate from the colonizer or oppressor. The cultural revolutions of the mid twentieth century brought many Black immigrants into to new racialized consciousness and connection to Black America.”…
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