ABSTRACT
African American identity (i.e., the meanings surrounding being a Black American, generated both by Blacks and by outgroup members) has gone through continuous construction and revision over the past 400 years, a consequence of the economic, social, political, and psychological outcomes afforded Blacks in the United States since the country’s beginnings. More recently, changes in immigration patterns have challenged the definitions of African American identity. During the past 40 years, West Indian and African Blacks—groups with different sociocultural and historical relationships to race than Black Americans—have immigrated to the United States in increasing numbers. These immigrants are broadening the social construction of blackness in the United States. In this chapter we address the ways in which immigrant status, ethnicity, and race intersect for Blacks living in the United States, and how the very meaning of the African American or Black identity is changing in the process.
