By Vishnu Bisram
Scholars have not researched the presence and experience and aspects of life of Guyanese in the USA. Hate of and prejudice against non-Whites lead to various types of stereotyping of immigrants like Indo and Afro-Guyanese. Guyanese in the US have suffered from racial hate, prejudice and stereotyping long before they even set foot on US soil, the first time during the late 1930s as students and later as immigrants post-1965. In the US, similar to Guyana or in Canada, everyone is a hyphen-American – Italian, Irish, Anglo, German, Jamaican, Ukranian, Greek, etc. and every group has their own neighbourhood community and everyone prefers to live among their own nationality and so too are Guyanese.

Black Americans historically have been victims of race hate since slavery and Jim Crow laws post-emancipation; Afro Guyanese are grouped under the African American category. Indians have not been permitted to immigrate into the US even when British Indian troops defended US interests overseas and even when Indians in California fought racism. They were not welcomed until well after 1965 when racist Immigration Laws were reformed because of shortage of skilled labour. Pre-1965, laws prevented settlement of Indians and their acquisition of property. Cheddi Jagan, one of the earliest if not the first Indian Guyanese to study in the US, narrated his experience of prejudice and hate (from Whites) while studying in the US late 1930s and early 1940s causing him to gravitate towards and living among Black Americans. He too, like Blacks, had to ride in the back of the bus during the Jim Crow period. He preferred to live in Black neighbourhoods.

Indian and African Guyanese experienced rank hate and prejudice post 1965 when they started settling in the US. Indian Guyanese were conspicuous by their physical looks and colour and subjected to vile racist remarks and told to go back to India. Afro Guyanese could fit in with Black Americans and were subjected to similar abuse the latter suffered. Since they could be mistaken as Black Americans, they did not experience the same types of insults as Indians who could not hide their racial identity. Overall, Indo and Afro Guyanese suffered the same abuses as all immigrants did – taking away jobs from those born in America. Indians and other immigrants were subjected to poor conditions and maltreatment. Even born Black Americans abused Black immigrants like African Guyanese and other West Indians for enjoying the benefits of their struggle against White racism. Indians were/are intensely abused by all racial groups – Whites, Blacks, Hispanics – and to a lesser extent by Asians under which category they are grouped. On the charge of taking away jobs of born Americans, the truth was/is immigrants worked in jobs which Americans refused or unwilling to work at or lacked qualifications; most of the jobs were low paying and or lacked prestige until during the 1990s when Guyanese gravitated towards high-salaried employment having pursued higher education and obtained certification in various professions.

Indians were often mistaken for native or indigenous Americans (pejoratively referred to as Red Indians) and linked with them and also called “savages”. Indians initially were put down as being uneducated, illiterate, and poor (indeed most Indian immigrants were poor) and lived in mud flats or thatched huts. I recall a student at City College in 1977 asking me how was my mud flat in India. (During my college days, I did not come across many Americans, not even professors, who knew where Guyana was much less anyone who knew of the presence of hundreds of thousands of Indians in the Caribbean and millions around the globe. Once an American (White, Black, Hispanic, Mongoloid) look at an Indian, he or she was from India. They did not know that Indians, like Africans, were dispersed around the globe to labour to enrich White-owned companies. That was the level of background education of almost every American. Their knowledge of global history and geography was very limited).

Stereotypes against Indians tend to mirror descriptions found in books and the media. Indian and African Guyanese, in fact almost every immigrant of colour, were seen as “stupid” and “morally Inferior”, “uncivilised”, “unsanitised”, and called “foreigner” even though many would have been born in the US. White Americans felt Indians and other immigrants of colour couldn’t speak English and that they were “illiterate”. (Little did they know that the greatest writers in the English language are/were Indians and that India has been the largest English speaking country). I recall an incident where a White student at City College, upon my telling him I was going to my speech class, responded: “Oh you are learning English”. He wasn’t aware it was an elective course on “Art of Oratory” but it would not have made a difference to his thinking. He, himself, could not speak English with the right grammar and pronunciation of words. But he had an in-built prejudice, like most Americans, that immigrants couldn’t communicate in English. Some of the best and leading American writers are immigrants. In recent years, Indians, in fact Asians, have been described as model minority and other groups are encouraged to emulate them. They have the highest percentage of high school graduation, college graduation, educational attainment, median family income, home ownership, rate of home ownership and fastest among immigrants, employment rate, and the lowest crime rate, lowest in social welfare recipients, among other positives. Indian Guyanese become home owners between three and five years after arrival in USA, the same as most other Indians; Panjabis become home owners between eight and ten years after arrival.

In recent years, companies have sought to recruit Indians to employ and even to manage businesses especially in the science, tech, engineering, and medical fields. Guyanese, both Indos and Afros, are prized for their contributions to the US in various fields of endeavor, particularly in health. Many Guyanese are on the front lines attending to patients combating COVID-19. But they still face prejudice at the job and even in housing as many cannot live in almost exclusive ‘white’ zones. Thus, they remain in their own ‘Richmond Hills’ and ‘Flatbushes’.
Guyanese have come a long way since their early presence in America in the late 1960s through the 1990s. They are increasingly being accepted into the mainstream and recognised for their contributions to the growth and development of USA.