The Challenge of Marginalization: The Experience of Africans in Europe and in the United States

Abstract

For many Africans who come to study or to settle in the United States, it is often a shock to realize that far from being issues of the past, racism and sexism are still very much current realities. They soon realize the vast difference between espoused values of equality and the lived realities of inequality in spite of the monumental achievements of the civil rights movement and the women’s movement. For many Africans who are trying to make a living, the cost of racism is very high. It entails putting up with much subtle and covert racism; and not talking about it because their positions are not secure. The shock of racism and its attendant marginalization in the United States are unparalleled, because they are not expecting it. Angus (1997) very perceptively captures this unprepared-ness: “Many Pan- African immigrants have experienced social and political turbulence in their . countries. Most have experienced social and class discrimination, but few had experienced overt racial discrimination” (2). Consequently, they are taken unawares and do not have the skills to deal with it constructively and the perpetrators get away with the offense at the expense of the victims.