African Immigrants Find A Divide With U.S. Blacks

They range from surgeons and scholars to illiterate refugees from some of the world's worst hellholes - a dizzyingly varied stream of African immigrants to the United States. More than 1 million strong and growing, they are enlivening America's cities and altering how the nation confronts its racial identity.

"To white people, we are all black," said Wanjiru Kamau, a Kenyan-born community activist in Washington, D.C. "But as soon as you open your mouth to some African-Americans, they look at you and wonder why you are even here. Except for the skin, which is just a façade, there is very little in common between Africans and African-Americans. We need to sit down and listen to each other's story."Since 1990, the African population has more than tripled in places as far-flung as Atlanta, Seattle and Minneapolis, where Africans now constitute more than 15% of the black population. The biggest magnets are New York City and metro Washington, D.C. including its Maryland and Virginia suburbs.Census data from 2000 show 43% of Africans in USA have college degrees, higher than the adult population as a whole. Compared with African-Americans, the immigrants' average household income is higher and their jobless rate lower.

Jacqueline Copeland-Carson, a black scholar at the University of Minnesota, is optimistic that African immigrants and African-Americans will outgrow any strains, which she blames partly on stereotypes. "Some Africans view African-Americans as violent, lazy, intellectually inferior - U.S. blacks are taught that the Africans are less civilized, not as capable," she said. In D.C., as in some other cities, there has been occasional friction between recently arrived Africans and the entrenched, politically powerful black American community. Some native blacks bristled at a proposal - later withdrawn - to nickname a bustling one-block stretch of 9th Street officially as "Little Ethiopia." More broadly, civic leaders say there is some resentment among working-class blacks who view the newcomers as threats to their jobs in such fields as health care, civil service and hotel work. In an overture to the newcomers, the D.C. city government last year formed an Office of African Affairs.

This gesture ruffled some feathers - not all black American leaders felt it was needed, and some Africans say they have been disappointed by a lack of dynamism in the office's first few months of operation.Bobby Austin, a vice president at the University of the District of Columbia, has been one of a relative handful of prominent blacks in the city to delve deeply into the tensions and misunderstandings. American blacks, Mr. Austin said, do not see themselves as immigrants and often do not comprehend the Africans' desire to come here. Persistent conflict and corrupt government in much of Africa prompted more to follow later, and the surge increased in the 1990s because of the Diversity Visa Lottery, a federal program boosting immigration from countries that traditionally sent few people. The largest groups of Africans in the United States are from Nigeria, Ethiopia and Ghana, but the influx is diverse.

The refugee program, for example, is accepting people from roughly two dozen African countries each year.Some Americans, black and white, assume the Africans must share a common culture and outlook with one another, when in fact they may feel no deep bond with another ethnic group from their own country, let alone with Africans from distant corners of the continent. Immigrant leaders trying to encourage solidarity among Africans have found that task challenging.