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  • The Atlantic

    How the Africans Became Black

    A Liberian-American reflects on the experiences of Africans who have moved to the United States, a growing community that accounts for 3 percent of the U.S.’s foreign-born population.
    by Wayétu Moore Dec 13, 2012 8 minutes

    A Liberian-American reflects on the experiences of Africans who have moved to the United States, a growing community that accounts for 3 percent of the U.S.’s foreign-born population.

    liberia banner.jpg

    Yama Sumo, a former refugee from civil war in Liberia, sits by her sidewalk vegetable stand outside a housing project in the Park Hill section of Staten Island in New York City on September 20, 2007. (Mike Segar/Reuters)

    After leaving my 9-to-5 job, I was led to a New York Immigration Coalition job posting. While waiting in the coalition’s lobby for an interview, a copy of a popular Time Magazine cover caught my eye. WE ARE AMERICANS, the cover read. The photo on the cover featured faces of various brown and yellow immigrants, eager and hopeful, representing both the spirit of America’s revolutionary history and its inevitable future. I was remembering my own family’s immigration when I stopped to wonder: Where are the Africans?

    U.S. immigration debates are overwhelmingly centered on immigrants from Latin America. Proportionately, Mexicans and central Americans far outnumber other immigrant groups in the United States. According to a Migration Policy Institute study, since 1970, “a period during which the overall U.S. immigration population increased four-fold, the Mexican and central American population increased by a factor of 20.” In a

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