ABSTRACT
The United States is believed to be a melting pot of various cultures as people around the world continue to migrate to this country for various reasons. While several factors such as skin color, accent and clothing enable Africans to have their identity noticed, many times however, such features have not been entirely reliable in distinguishing between Africans who have lived in Africa from African Americans. To explore ways in which bargaining is used by store keepers in America to undermine Africans' identity to their advantage, the chapter draws from lines of research that use developing perspectives of identity, particularly Social Identity Theory (SIT), which assumes individuals choosing an identity through bargaining to reveal an identity aspect that gives them the most benefit. It also draws from the works of Shayo (2010); Klor and Shayo, (2010), Penn (2008) as well as Dickson and Scheve (2006)'s game theory and behavioral game theory to highlight how bargaining benefits store keepers when they seek to connect with Africans through rationalist framework that focuses on how shared identity can be used to alter bargaining outcome. By examining dialogues that the author had with various shop keepers in numerous American stores, data seems to suggest that bargaining reveals that shop keepers use bargaining to identify Africans as beggars: when they ask for discounts; Africans as static/unprogressive – when they behave as if they live in Africa even though they live in America, and Africans as lacking dignity – when they choose to not be ashamed of bargaining as a bad behavior. Ultimately, the chapter indicates that many Africans have succeeded and progressed academically and economically, but several Americans and other immigrants to America use bargaining as a tool to undermine the progress attained by Africans, thus belittling African identity. It also discusses the implications of the discussed perceptions for future research and suggested ways they can be mitigated.
