How are Afro-Caribbean immigrants integrated into the American political process? More precisely, how does race affect the political incorporation process for this group of foreign-born blacks? This question lies at the heart of this study. In the vernacular of the social sciences, political incorporation is the key dependent variable under scrutiny. The standard descriptive measures of political incorporation include naturalization rates, registration and voting data, party affiliation, and elective officeholding. Although this study devotes some attention to these important outcome measures, the focus is directed less on the outcomes and more on the process of political incorporation itself.

More pivotal to this study are the identities, interests, ideological agendas, and strategies that inform and animate the process for Afro-Caribbean immigrants. The aim is to provide a critical account of how Afro-Caribbean political integration has unfolded and how their experiences compare with those of African Americans and European immigrant groups. The study explores how these black immigrants relate to the political process, conceive of their political interests, view themselves, see themselves in relation to other groups, and make sense of the political world.

This last series of questions brings me to another important point about the analytic focus of this study. The project is necessarily concerned with race, ethnicity, self-definitions, and group identities. This book, as I noted at the outset, seeks to understand how race affects the political incorporation process.

The United States has been a nation of immigrants for much of its history. Although it has not always extended the ready welcome implied by the famous Emma Lazarus poem, it has nonetheless long been the leading host country for the world's migrants. At the turn of the last century, this country absorbed unprecedented numbers of newcomers. Today, at the dawn of a new millennium, the United States is experiencing yet another great wave of immigration. More than 25 million immigrants have entered the country since the 1960s (Jones-Correa 2002). The current immigration flow is, in fact, historically unprecedented, both for its numerical proportions and for its demographic composition.

First, the number of newcomers to the United States in the last four decades has exceeded the high-water mark achieved during the last great wave of migration to this country from 1880 to 1920. With this latest influx of immigrants, there are now over 35 million foreign-born people living in the United States, that is, more than 10 percent of the total population. The proportions are even more substantial in cities around the country. Thirteen of the nation's cities house more than half of the immigrant population. For instance, roughly one of every three New Yorkers is a person of foreign birth (Logan 2003). Immigrants constitute even greater shares of the population in Los Angeles and Miami (ibid.). Their proportions are expected to continue inching upward, as the current immigration trends show no signs of abating.

Unprecedented numbers of non-white and non-European immigrants have entered the United States over the last four decades and now pose a historic challenge for the American democratic experiment. The arrival of these newcomers marks the first time this country has confronted the challenge of incorporating large numbers of non-European, non-white voluntary immigrants into the political system. To be sure, the United States has a long record of proven success in absorbing immigrants into its political, civic, economic, and social life. Indeed, this country has a long-standing global reputation for integrating newcomers from abroad. The process has not always been seamless; nor has the welcome always been warm. But immigrants to the United States historically have been able to achieve political incorporation. They have managed to adapt to the country's civic norms, participate in the political process, even influence its outcomes, and by doing so, they have reinvigorated and legitimized American democracy.

Yet the majority of the immigrants in this well-known saga of successful incorporation have immigrated from Europe. The fact that most of today's foreign-born newcomers, in contrast, are non-white, non-European racial minorities prompts questions and even doubts about whether they too will be able to achieve the standard of political incorporation attained by their European predecessors. Although this country's reputation for integrating immigrants is relatively strong, its record of incorporating non-white, non-European racial minorities has been problematic and mixed at best.

Afro-Caribbean immigrants are the sleeping giant of New York City politics – a stirring Goliath not yet quite awakened to its full strength. This is a common lament among Afro-Caribbean community leaders. They complain low rates of political participation have prevented Afro-Caribbean immigrants from achieving a level of electoral and governing influence commensurate with their growing numbers. One leader, long active in the city's political life, fretfully observed, “In our community, we have too many aspiring leaders, and too few followers” (Sengupta 1996a, 8). He and other elites believe Afro-Caribbean political mobilization has been slow, halting, and frustratingly out of pace with the group's increasing numerical strength and the ambitions of its politically minded leaders. These worries about the relative political quiescence of Afro-Caribbean immigrants inevitably prompt questions about the group's long-term prospects for incorporation.

Under both the pluralist and the minority group perspectives, the incorporation process begins with new groups' mobilizing and participating in formal – and sometimes informal – politics. These first steps toward political integration are measured typically in increased rates of registration, voting, and – in the case of first-generation immigrants – naturalization. These basic political acts are all taken as indices of a group's growing engagement with the American democratic process. They often serve as building blocks for other forms of political participation. That is, engagement in one arena, say, voting in local elections, is usually correlated with participation in other arenas (Verba et al. 1995).

How are Afro-Caribbeans and the millions of other recent immigrants from Asia and Latin America adapting to the American political system? How is the political incorporation process unfolding for these newcomers in the cities where they have settled? These groups are part of a long historical succession of outsiders who have attempted to become insiders and gain a foothold in American democracy – from European immigrants in the early twentieth century to African Americans only a few decades ago. Although the research on today's newcomers is just emerging, there is an established political science literature on the earlier generations of outsiders, European immigrants and African Americans. This body of research potentially provides a road map for charting how the new wave of newcomers might adapt to American political life.

Before I delve into the experiences of Afro-Caribbean immigrants, I use this chapter to explore this literature and establish the theoretical scaffolding for the study. First, I offer a definition of political incorporation that extends beyond the usual focus on outcomes to consider the dynamics of the process. I then review the details of the dominant models of incorporation – specifically, the pluralist and minority group approaches – to set the stage for the analysis in the following chapters.

Group identity has been a key concept for understanding how racial minorities and newcomers to the United States have achieved political incorporation. The classic literature on early European immigrants, for example, emphasized group identity as a resource for political engagement (Wolfinger 1965; Dahl 1961). Researchers believed feelings of group identity motivated European newcomers to naturalize, register, and go to the polls to support their coethnics running for political office. Identity thus was seen as a powerful fuel for immigrant political incorporation. The concept holds an even more important place in accounts of African Americans' bid for inclusion in the American polity. Studies of the civil rights movement, for example, suggest group identity served as a key rallying device for African Americans in their efforts to overcome discriminatory barriers. It helped galvanize thousands to engage in collective action to demand equal rights to participate fully in all arenas of American society (Chong 1991; Morris 1984; McAdam 1982).

It is no surprise, then, that scholars of contemporary immigration are also turning their attention to the concept of group identity (e.g., Lien, Conway, and Wong 2004; Lien 2001; Marschall 2001; Jones-Correa and Leal 1996). Insofar as previous studies give political weight to group identity among African Americans and early European immigrants, there is reason to wonder whether it will have similar significance for today's mostly non-white newcomers. The question is whether racial or ethnic group identity becomes politically salient for recent immigrants as they adjust to life in the United States.

Brooklyn is awash with signs of the Caribbean. All along Flatbush Avenue signals of a vibrant Caribbean immigrant presence shout at even the most casual observer. Storefronts advertise Caribbean nostalgia – the bright green, yellow, and black colors of a Jamaican flag, a palm tree, a stack of island newspapers in the window. But this is not empty symbolism – the Caribbean has come to New York. Small, garrulous groups of men and women congregate in front of Caribbean bakeries and restaurants to discuss the news from back home. Their animated conversations are thick with the inflections of Caribbean dialect. Jitney vans and dollar cabs perilously jockey for position as they compete for fares along the busy thoroughfare. Above the din, the sounds of calypso, reggae, and reggaeton music ring out. This is black New York.

Only a short train ride away is Bedford-Stuyvesant, one of the city's older African-American neighborhoods.

The previous chapter revealed Afro-Caribbean immigrants' ties to the home country make for notable differences in how they and their African-American counterparts understand what it means to be black in this country and respond to racial discrimination. The next logical step in the analysis is to determine whether those differences translate to political behavior. Do the differences in group identity uncovered in the previous chapter extend to political behavior and attitudes? Or do these two groups of black ethnics pursue similar options in their attempts to achieve political representation and influence? This question takes us full circle to a key empirical focus of the book: ascertaining whether Afro-Caribbeans are following the same path to political incorporation as their native-born black counterparts.

Addressing this fundamental question requires taking a closer look at the political attitudes and behavior of New York's Afro-Caribbean immigrants. Have these black ethnics developed the same political views or outlook as their African-American counterparts? Or do they subscribe to a different set of political opinions? Have Afro-Caribbeans begun to make the same demands for racial redistribution and systemic reform African Americans made in their own earlier bids for political inclusion? Or have these foreign-born blacks pursued an alternative course?

To address these questions, this chapter dissects the newly emerging Afro-Caribbean ethnic politics. First, I consider which kinds of policy interests and political claims Afro-Caribbean leaders have advanced on behalf of their immigrant constituents – to see whether they mirror or deviate from the patterns established by African Americans.

Although the Democratic Party's neglect of Afro-Caribbean immigrants may fly in the face of standard pluralist predictions, it would hardly surprise most exponents of the minority group perspective. Scholars who subscribe to this view believe exclusion from dominant political parties – and most mainstream institutions, for that matter – is an all too common shared reality for racial minority groups in the United States. According to this line of thinking, foreign-born minorities, no less than their native-born counterparts, are bound to encounter barriers to their participation in the many key arenas of American life. African Americans are, of course, the paradigmatic group in this regard. The history of their exclusion from the major parties and other mainstream American institutions is well known (e.g., Frymer 1999).

Yet the literature on urban political incorporation is replete with examples of African Americans' mobilizing from independent bases outside conventional party channels to demand racial inclusion, systemic reform, and sometimes a radical redistribution of resources – in cities such as Chicago and Atlanta (e.g., Grimshaw 1992; Pinderhughes 1987; Kleppner 1985; Carmichael and Hamilton 1967). Not surprisingly, then, minority group scholars would expect Afro-Caribbean immigrants to follow the example of their native-born counterparts and mount an insurgent movement for inclusion, in light of the unwillingness of the Democratic Party to draw them into the political process. Indeed, exponents of the minority group view arguably would predict a race-based alliance between Afro-Caribbean and African-American New Yorkers to press for greater black political incorporation.

Chapter 3 noted Afro-Caribbean elites complain their constituents are akin to a sleeping giant, because so many have been slow to become citizens and participate in formal politics. But the immigrants were jarringly awakened from their slumber in 1996. New York's Afro-Caribbean neighborhoods were suddenly abuzz with frenzied talk of American citizenship. Afro-Caribbean politicians urged eligible constituents to file naturalization papers. Community newspapers, such as the Carib News, featured articles on the imperatives of becoming an American citizen. Alongside these were the daily print ads for advocacy groups established to help immigrants acquire citizenship. Finally, there were also weekly stories tallying the scores of Caribbean immigrants flooding to Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) centers and legal offices to file their petitions.

As I sat in the cramped Queens office of Caribbean Immigrant Services (CIS) on a brisk autumn afternoon, a steady stream of immigrants arrived in search of help with their applications. All around Brooklyn and Queens, the word was on the street: “Did you file your naturalization papers yet?” In small circles of friends, Afro-Caribbeans called each other to find out who had filed, who had not, and where to find legal help with their applications. There were ready remonstrations for those who had not, and relieved commendations for those who had. It is no exaggeration to say New York's Afro-Caribbean community was consumed with the idea of American citizenship in the summer and fall of 1996.