Forced Immigration:

                  ~  The Fragility of the African-American Family

    Circumstances of the particular arrival of the African-Americans to the United States, and inefficient plans of actions toward their instauration and support to establish them in society motions have projected unfavorable socioeconomic conditions and racial stereotypes that overstressed male-female relationships throughout today.

     The initial factor that sabotaged African-American marriages was the significance of slavery. As African-American were seen as belonging to an inferior race who had no legal rights as a person and were constitutionally declared as ‘no fully human’ they were violently separated from their families. While emotional bonds were diminished, females were sexually exploited. Males were regarded as oversexed, promiscuous, considered incapable of marital commitment, were denied the fatherhood rights of their offspring and treated as invisible, their names were not listed on birth records but only the slave’s mother name and the owner were recorded on born children.

       The legacy of slavery, Post-War instability, northward migration and inappropriate programs to establish African-American in the society, left marriages vulnerable to continued assaults on the stability of their families. 

In the wider society and at every class level, restrictions of economic opportunities and the discrediting of African-American identities have generated social inequality affecting employment, housing, health and education; blacks tend to have less prestige, power and wealth, greater difficulty gaining acceptance, often viewed as dangerous, aggressive or subordinate, more likely to be ignored and given lower quality services than whites.

    Currently, while African-American value marriage, they marry less. When they do marry, they separate or divorce, and are less inclined to re-marry. According to a study of Elaine Pinderhughes about African American Marriage in the 20st Century, responsible factors increasing the fragility of African-American marriages derived from their legacies and societal role, other than the socioeconomic aspect that make men unattractive for marriage are associated with the male/female unequal sex ratio. A smaller number of marriageable men than women derived from higher death rates from disease, poor healthcare, high rates of drug and alcohol abuse, gang activity, violent crime and consequent imprisonment and psychiatric hospitals residencies (28.8% are black males) reduce significantly the suitable men spectrum. Subsequently, half of African-American children live in one-parent families and these children constituted half of all awaiting for adoption.  

    Orlando Patterson's Rituals of Blood: Consequences of Slavery in two American Centuries comments that the most devastating impact of the ‘holocaust of slavery’ was ‘the ethnocide assault on gender roles, especially those of father and husband, leaving deep scars in the relations between Afro-American men and women’ (1998, p.25) 

    Today, African-American suffer disproportionately and have higher morbidity from stress diseases and higher rates of cancer and HIV-AIDS. Byrd and Clayton's An American Health Dilemma: A Medical History of African-Americans and the problem of Race (2001) claim that since they arrived as slaves, ‘they have had the worst health care, the worst health status, and the worst health outcome of any racial or ethnic group in the United States’ (p. 33)

    The actual increased nurturance of African-American men transmitted by mothers throughout generation should not need to be more subtle to that offered to white men in order to compensate for the psychological risks which males are exposed, since this cultural attitude sets up distorted expectations, affecting them in ways that later contribute to problems in marital intimacy. In order to pare social maleness, they should be raised with equal treats.

     Another important factor weakening marriages is the existing stronger ties between blood and kin than the bond of family.

   The decline in marriage is also affected by the increased income of African-American women and the higher like-hood of receiving professional degrees than black males. This historical tendency of southern families to educate female child was to keep her out of domestic service and sexual exploitation.

  While most black women prefer being married and some marry down in socioeconomic class, high-income and highly educated females fear loosing what they achieved to a less successful male partner. Women are most likely to remain single or never marry because they emphasize achievement, independence, and self-reliance. Although, the need for a father for the children and financial considerations tend to outweigh romantic love as the primary reason for remarrying, African-American women (which have the higher rates of mother-only families through the States) are less likely to remarry for economic reasons, since wives of this subculture earn about the 90 percent of the income earned by their husbands, according to Betty Yorburg's Family Realities.

National programs should be established to support African American people’s pair-bonding choices, reinforcing economic equities and help to lower the high male mortality and undesirably, making these prime targets for policy changes. Considering the devastating impact of the ethnocide assault on gender roles done throughout generations especially those of father and husband, since family nucleus has been broken and manhood stereotype degraded, plans of action should focus particularly on the African-American male function. Strong ties should be enhanced inside the family nucleus between spouses or lovers, rather than between blood and adopted kin in order to lower the rates of marital instability and divorce.

***

  The legacy of slavery and the subsequent treatment that has destroyed African American cultural practices placing them in a disoriented and destructive situation falling into undesirable social patterns, project an absence of guidelines for marital behavior. Promoting programs towards the African-American culture should be founded to conform positive patriarchal traditions enhancing inspirational roots, roles, models and ideals. The significance of studying the African-American culture is to place an in-risk-of-disappearing community from the social 21st Century landscape in the societal spectrum; sociopolitical improvements must be done in order to avoid that their relative invisibility became a physical reality.         

Intro to Global Migration.

“Man born free, and wherever he is in chains” 
(Rousseau, 1762)

       Hello, I’m a CUNYBA student exploring global migration issues for my FIQWS course.

     In response to lessen so much tension and in an effort to enlighten so much uncertainties I found on the matter of actual global migration I’m publishing this interactive web blog with my researches and thoughts where any furtive visitor can have a say by posting a comment.

    While building this public blog for my presentation, I was thinking in welcoming and making feel comfortable a particular type of cyber-viewer; not just the proficient American tech and beyond e-surfer, but the curious one interested on contributing to improve the means of our human condition.

     In my research, I’ve been touched by the topic from the beginning; since I’m just one of the hundreds of Italian descendants born in Argentina that widely spread throughout the world after fleeing one of the greatest country’s economic collapses, I became to be one of the million of United States’ immigrants myself. I have dear friends and relatives in different points of the Earth divided by political boundaries and non-contemplative immigration policies that, while await for its appointed turn to be reformed, set us apart for 10 long years and counting.

       The experiences of the immigrant that tries to open its way through a foreign culture is as rich and unique as wonderful and aching, where cultural disconnection, identity misconception and melancholy plague the days. Looking forward I realized that most people conforming the actual world, and backwards through generations, have gone through the same experiences to populate the globe and so structured the breathtaking new forms of cultures that we appreciate to day.

      When I first saw this video “Happy People Dancing on Planet Earth” (click here to see full screen), that actually one of my brothers sent me from Madrid to, in a way, tell me that he missed me, I felt overwhelmed by the strength in which, defying human diversity, geographical and temporal distances, it still communicates a fresh message of human common bonds such as happiness and joy.

       What else is it actively saying? It says that the superiority of the human race allowed it to populated all the earth, speaks about the incredible ability humans have to modify its natural environment building spectacular structures like bridges, tunnels, towers, temples and cities to comfortably live in it, as the faculty to create and find ways of transportation (as we see bicycles, trains, cars, motorcycles, ships, airplains and cammels!), as that conquered space and reigned under sea, that is rich in diversity and that by it, it accepts different agreements with the existing social order (as we notably see through India's, Papua's and Fiji island's dances), that its administrations are going through different stages (like the demilitarized zone in Korea). That cultures have different ways to identify themselves (showed by the way they dress like FIFA's soccer shirts, saris and by their background as the Panama Canal, Eiffel Tower, the Sydney Museum, Tenochtitlan Temple, etc), that humans settled where they found a factual way of life in indistinct geographical accidents (as plains, mountains, forest, jungles, shores and fjords etc), that they evolved differently due to different life conditions, that they posses rich variety of hue characters and moods (displayed by the color of their clothes), that they express happiness through different dances (like traditional dances such as the German 'aiho', the choreographed Indian, and the performed scream Japanese martial-art, etc.) and that they went through uneven histories that shaped their culture (appreciated by the background they picked to dance like Caminito Street in Buenos Aires). There's a big conversation here and it is the overall sense of unity given by the common dance that express freedom and solidarity transcending human boundaries. The social language used here is the physical primitive that always has communicated just what it needed to communicate since beginning of times to speak about well-being.

        I watched this video hundreds of times, and every time I wonder about the vicissitudes that generations have gone through and the countless of factors that influenced events in certain ways to give shape to the cultures of the many countries that are shown here that, linked by the simplicity of a dance, have been forged by the traumatic and restless human diaspora. And that after all humans have gonne through, still find capricious ways to not let go primitive habits of making some submissive to others.

         And I think about how many people to day are impeded of their dearests because of human cruelties as such unfitted laws that we impose to one another.

      From a spatial view of the planet Earth you surely wouldn’t notice these human boundaries but the brilliance of an only sun rising from the horizon giving us life to all of us.

     I'm a dreamer, and this blog is my place where I explore ways to contribute to build a more compassionate world.

                                                                                                ... Come along!