(Im)migrations, Relations, and Identities of African Peoples: Toward an Endarkened Transnational Feminist Praxis in Education.

Abstract

I'll see some Black people, I'll think they are Africans and they can understand you, but they're really prejudiced and racists, like [when you] come from Nigeria, they'll be like, Oh, you're African! [in a derogatory tone] and I'll say, What are you? You are African, because your ancestors are. But I don't think they understand reason, like they don't appreciate their culture and they're really prejudiced against us. (Ekene, personal interview, March 2008) Because that's just way they are ... They always go and be prejudiced. Even at this school, they look at you Oh, you areAfrican, and I say, Yeah so are you. (Ekene, personal interview, March 2008) Thank you so much for letting me take part in your study. It has made me begin to ask myself, Who am I? An African-American or Ghanaian? But like I told you sometimes I consider myselfa Ghanaian, because I am happy to have a background, to actually be from somewhere ... (Abena, participant journal entry, March 2008) As seen in above quotes from Okpalaoka (2009a), in order to answer question of who we are as African people, we need to take a closer look at role that history, time, displacement, and geographical location have played in our migrations and dynamism to nature of identities we adopt within and across national contexts. The notion of ascendancy, as it relates to African people, is attributed to Kohain Hahlevi, a Hebrew Israelite rabbi, who coined term African ascendant as opposed to African descendant to describe people of African heritage and their forward-moving nature. According to him, term descendant may imply a downward or backward moving process. In same vein, ascendancy implies a progressive movement that calls us to consider a different language or discourse for ways we talk about people of African origin. Looking within ourselves and our common history to (re)member who we are is critical to confronting dominant discourses that seek to define us. But remembering who we are means that we have to address dearth of knowledge about Africa and Africans and African (im)migration experience in our society and in our schools. While research and literature have kept pace with experiences of major immigrant groups such as Asians (Takaki, 1998; Zhou 1999), Latino/as (Suarez-Orozco & Suarez-Orozco, 1995; Suarez-Orozco & Todorova, 2003), and Black Caribbeans (Waters, 1991, 1994), there is still a noticeable dearth of research about Black African immigrant children (Rong & Preissle, 1998). Rong and Brown (2002a) argued that the lack of research on Black immigrants denies public and policy makers opportunities to explore many urgent and intriguing issues concerning Black immigrants, therefore denying public insight into special needs of these immigrants which have been neglected (p. 249). The focus of this article will be on sense of what an African (American) (1) identity could mean when viewed through processes of migrations and fluid identities of contemporary African immigrant children as they interact with their African (Americans) peers in our schools. The purpose of this article is to use data (2) from a study of West African immigrant girls and their process of ethnic identity construction to support our position for new discourses and methodologies that challenge dominant discourses surrounding Black educational experience in our schools. This purpose can be articulated in two central questions that guide this article. First, how do we develop a new understanding of variations of term African and by placing it in a global context (and American in parentheses to designate those who were born of African people brought to U.S. during Trans-Atlantic slave trade)? Considering that demographics of schools continue to reflect changing faces of immigration due to increase in Black African immigration, this article will trouble our rather taken-for-granted notions of term/name African (American). …