Motherlines Conceived from Disparate Roots

In the 70 years since E. Franklin Frazier published The Negro Family in the United States (1948), black communities have witnessed the arrival of black immigrants in unprecedented numbers. Literature on this population suggests that, although African American, African, and Afro-Caribbean families are similarly marginalized by the resuscitation of antiblack practices, they fail to locate refuge in one another. Racial stereotypes work internally to distort and degrade their perception of the “other.” African Americans doubt the authenticity of the foreign-born families that move into their neighborhoods or purchase local businesses, while black immigrants conceive of native-born parents as unmotivated and their children as self-destructive.