17189: (Hermantin)Ssun=Sentinel-Book examines assimilation of Miami immigrants (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Book examines assimilation of Miami immigrants



By Madeline Baró Diaz
Miami Bureau

November 8, 2003

Immigrants and those who were born in the United States have been
interacting -- and clashing -- since the nation was formed.

But in recent decades the Miami area has altered long-held beliefs on how
immigrants adapt to their new homes and how those new homes adapt to them.

Four college professors from Florida International University and the
University of Miami have documented the phenomenon in their book, This Land
is Our Land: Immigrants and Power in Miami, the result of a study that used
the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce, hotels, restaurants, factories and a
high school as laboratories.

The book details how Miami-area immigrants have not had to assimilate as
other groups of immigrants did in the past. Instead, native-born Americans
ended up adapting to the newcomers, and the newcomers also made adjustments.

"In Miami, you can see both sides are changing," said Alex Stepick, director
of the Immigration and Ethnicity Institute at FIU and the book's principal
author. "You end up with a sort of mixed culture."

Stepick and co-authors Guillermo Grenier, a sociology and anthropology
professor at FIU; Max Castro, senior research associate at UM's North-South
Center; and Marvin Dunn, a historian of Miami's black community and chairman
of FIU's psychology department, will participate in a panel discussion of
their book at the Miami Book Fair today.

"Miami is probably the city that has most changed and been most rapidly
changed by immigration since the 1960s," Stepick said. "In terms of
understanding how immigration changes America, Miami is the place to be,
like New York was the place to be 100 years ago."

While many theories on immigration were previously based on how immigrants
assimilated into society in places such as New York and Chicago, Stepick
said these days Miami and Los Angeles are used as models.

This Land is Our Land looks at the various ethnic communities that make up
Miami-Dade and how they interact with one another. Cubans, who Stepick says
avoided the traditional route of assimilation by virtue of their ability to
gain economic and political power relatively quickly, feature heavily in the
book, but the researchers also looked at white and black "native-born"
Americans, as well as Haitians.

One chapter, "Just Comes and Cover-Ups," examined the relationship between
African-Americans and Haitians by looking at how students at Miami Edison
Senior High School dealt with the influx of Haitian immigrants into a
predominantly African-American school. Researchers were able to observe how,
in the course of a decade, young Haitians went from trying to pass as
African-Americans so they would be accepted to taking pride in their
culture.

Jean-Robert Lafortune, chairman of the Haitian-American Grassroots
Coalition, said there are "still a lot of barriers that need to be broken"
in terms of the relationships between Haitians, African-Americans and
Latinos in Miami.

"I think it is a real challenge for the community at large [to learn] how to
cope, how to tolerate different groups," he said.

Although Haitian youngsters have felt more comfortable claiming their
Haitian identity, Lafortune points out that tensions continue to exist
between young Haitians and young African-Americans, sometimes spilling over
into gang rivalries.

"I always see both groups having a common destiny in Florida and
Miami-Dade," he said. "We also have an obligation to bypass some differences
that may prevent both communities from reaching out to each other."

The research was paid for by the Ford Foundation through a project in which
Miami and five other cities studied how newcomers and established residents
interacted.

The Miami study began in 1989 and was conducted through interviews and
observation of the day-to-day activities of Miami residents.

Stepick says he hopes the book will shed some light on the complexity of how
people from different ethnic backgrounds relate to each other.

"I think it will really reveal at the national level how the black-white
paradigm is insufficient," he said. "I think it will reveal the dynamics
that are behind promoting good or bad relationships."

Madeline Baró Diaz can be reached at mbaro@sun-sentinel.com or 305-810-5007.
Copyright © 2003, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

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