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While there is actually little to almost no African connection in Miami or in much of FL, indirectly, there are African-influenced subcultures from the Caribbean such as salsa, mambo, reggae, zouk, and calypso in music, food such as Jamaican, Haitian, Trinidadian, and Bahamian, as well as Afro-Latino cultures such as Cuban, Puerto Rican, Dominican, and even from Colombia, Venezuela, and as far away as Brazil, and even spiritual and religious beliefs such as santeria, voodoo, & obeah, the latter two directly from Africa. And let's not get started about the genetics of many, if not all of the Miamians outside of the elitists that have escaped from their Latin American countries such as Cuba and Venezuela.
Many here speak a European language, whether English or Spanish, but trying to deny whatever links to Africa, if not the city, at least from the people, is very ignorant to say the least. While Miami doesn't have an African community anywhere in South FL, it does have Afro-descended cultures mainly from the Caribbean and not to mention from many of the black American who've called Miami home!
As an Afro-Caribbean myself, you have absolutely no clue what you're talking about.
The fact that you mention "food" says it all. Most of our food is variant of East Indies, European and Native American cuisine -- not African. Souse (do you know what this is, without looking it up?), curry, saltfish, roti, dahl, etc.
The Caribbean is a mish-mash of cultures from around the world if anything. We happen to be black, descendants of African slaves (generally) but have our own very distinct cultures and cuisines that formed through a variety of historical events. Even reggae is a mashup of all sorts of stuff and was influenced by all sorts of things, including American Jazz, Soul & R&B, and ESPECIALLY Southern Funk.
Having black people from the Caribbean doesn't link Miami to Africa any more than having American blacks in Atlanta does.
Last edited by Arcenal813; 05-08-2024 at 04:23 PM..
Miami/Dade County is one of the few major cities/counties in the United States that offers plenty of water and warm temperatures year round, it is one of two with no State income tax, and the only one on the Atlantic coast.
Wealthy US northerners come to Miami-Dade County for those reasons and because it is still in the United States.
Wealthy Central and South Americans come to Miami-Dade County for the very reason that it is in the United States under the protection of US law and access to US financial markets.
Wealthy Europeans come to Miami-Dade County because of low US tax rates, the protection of US business law, and access to US financial markets.
Poor Central and South Americans come to Miami-Dade County for the very reason that it is in the United States, a safe haven from serious poverty and ubiquitous violent crime.
It is all relative.
In Miami-Dade County I see United States Postal Service trucks every day, the United States Federal Bureau of Investigations has offices in Miami, there are United States federal courts in Miami, the United States Federal Reserve has a branch office in Miami, the only legal tender in Miami-Dade County is United States Federal Reserve Notes (the US dollar), there are a United States military assets in Miami-Dade County, etc., etc., etc.
There is no doubt whatsoever that Miami-Dade County is the United States.
As an Afro-Caribbean myself, you have absolutely no clue what you're talking about.
The fact that you mention "food" says it all. Most of our food is variant of East Indies, European and Native American cuisine -- not African. Souse (do you know what this is, without looking it up?), curry, saltfish, roti, dahl, etc.
The Caribbean is a mish-mash of cultures from around the world if anything. We happen to be black, descendants of African slaves (generally) but have our own very distinct cultures and cuisines that formed through a variety of historical events. Even reggae is a mashup of all sorts of stuff and was influenced by all sorts of things, including American Jazz, Soul & R&B, and ESPECIALLY Southern Funk.
Having black people from the Caribbean doesn't link Miami to Africa any more than having American blacks in Atlanta does.
And as somebody of Afro-Caribbean heritage, you should know better. You ever heard of coucou??? It's a sweetened cornmeal mash and a cousin to kenkey, a dish made in West Africa (mainly Ghana) and served mainly in the Windward Islands region. I ate one from a Grenadian restaurant and it tasted a lot better than the kenkey, which is a sour and bitter taste.
And let's not forget the rice, which is also consumed heavily in West Africa. The peas may be Caribbean, but rice is a major staple in West Africa. And both West Africa and the Caribbean are known to prefer hot and spicy foods. The Indian influences are much stronger in Trinidad, Guyana, and Suriname, while Jamaica, Haiti, and the Bahamas have large Afro components due to population. You've heard of the Rastafarians, right??? Anywhere there's going to be a significant Afro population in the Caribbean, there's always going to be Rastas!!!
Of course, the cuisine will be utterly different than West African cuisine. English Caribbeans don't eat fufu, kenkey, egusi, and jollof (the best West African dish) in large numbers like that, and West Africans don't eat beef patties, jerk chicken, curry goat roti, nor doubles the same way Caribbeans eat them. Even the curry chicken from India is vastly different than the curry chicken that's served in Trinidad due to the ingredients and the preparation. There's much more red pepper and salt in the Caribbean variety than there is in India, which tastes more like vinegar.
Deep dish pizza, albeit derived from Italian pizza, is purely American since the originators weren't Italian, but an American, frankfurters from Germany weren't originally eaten with a hot dog bun until 1871 in Coney Island (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Feltman), the Aztecs originally ate tacos with fish and soft corn tortillas until the Spanish came and greatly improved the dish by eating it with ground beef or chicken, tomato base, and vegetables, ice cream in America is completely different than the gelato served in Italy (again), and the British have the worst cuisine in Europe, if not the world, only thing that's to rave about in Britain are the fish and chips, and Jamaicans, Trinidadians, Bahamaians, Bajans, and the Guyanese don't eat fish and chips in the Caribbean unless they're in Britain, and you're saying that the British have had some huge impact on Caribbean cuisine???
You should be ashamed of yourself!!! That's why I'm grateful that the Africans, Indians, and the Caribs have had a huge impact on the food in the English Caribbean as opposed to the British. Maybe the porridge, but then again, I've never been a huge fan of porridge, and I'm also Afro-Caribbean!!!
P. S. And to answer your first question, souse is picked pork. I don't eat it and don't really eat pork unless it's pepperoni or sausage found in pizza. As a matter of fact, outside of pizza, I do my best to refrain from using pork products.
LOL! Okay. You go ahead and tell the Caribbeans and Latinos of Miami that they currently have strong ties to African culture.
Why the heck are you bringing up fish n chips? Saltfish, eaten all over the Caribbean, is more what I was referring to. SALTED COD. Also, souse is very much inspired by European cuisine. As is black pudding. Black pudding, yes, the very food FROM BRITAIN.
The primary rice eaten in the Caribbean is Basmati and Jasmine. Not African rice.
Breadfruit, comes from East Asia.
Curry is a daily staple in every household.
As is Chow Mein.
Sugar cane?
Rum?
Black cake?
Shall we go on?
Go ahead and tell me more about my own culture, and about where I live.
Again, no, the average African would find little to nothing familiar about any sort of culture in Miami. And Caribbean culture means nothing to them. It is WILDLY different.
I have family that moved and settled in Senegal. Two words that can describe what they went through when they moved there: culture shock.
*I've gotten multiple, MULTIPLE reps from the post you responded to. You are utterly clueless, and borderline insulting.
Last edited by Arcenal813; 05-09-2024 at 09:20 PM..
LOL! Okay. You go ahead and tell the Caribbeans and Latinos of Miami that they currently have strong ties to African culture.
Why the heck are you bringing up fish n chips? Saltfish, eaten all over the Caribbean, is more what I was referring to. SALTED COD. Also, souse is very much inspired by European cuisine. As is black pudding. Black pudding, yes, the very food FROM BRITAIN.
The primary rice eaten in the Caribbean is Basmati and Jasmine. Not African rice.
Breadfruit, comes from East Asia.
Curry is a daily staple in every household.
As is Chow Mein.
Sugar cane?
Rum?
Black cake?
Shall we go on?
I can't speak for nor claim every Latino that's in Miami or South FL as Afro Latino. You know that every Latino ain't the same and the term Latino is a huge, broad brush extending from Mexico all the way to Argentina, which are a wholly different set of Latinos of predominately European (Italian, Spanish, French, and even German and Polish) descent. The concentrated Afro Latino communities lies in the Caribbean areas of Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and parts of Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, and extending into parts of Belize.
Chow Mein has absolutely nothing to do with the Caribbean unless it came from the numerous Chinese restaurants throughout the Caribbean, especially in Trinidad, where there's too much Chinese restaurants the same way that there's way too much KFC in the island. The government down there needs to enact laws stopping the proliferation of fas food restaurants such as KFC. You can also get chow mein in America and Britain, since the food is essentially Chinese and not American, British, and especially Caribbean in nature!
There's over 100 strains of rice that's cultivated and consumed in Trinidad alone!!! Basmati and Jasmine rice isn't the only strain of rice in T&T. The rice that was first cultivated in Trinidad was first brought to the island back in 1812, when the Merikins brought the crop here as "food security" (https://iica.int/en/press/news/trini...al%20priority.; https://newsday.co.tt/2021/02/04/mor...in%20Trinidad.). Nowadays, the Indo-Trinidadian control much of the agriculture, but the first ones were the Merikins.
Sugar cane was cultivated in the Caribbean and rum was produced by European powers in Britain, France, and Spain since Europe didn't have any vast sources of sugar, so the Caribbean and the rest of the Americas became the main source of sugar due to the triangular trade of raw products to Europe, manufactured products from Europe to the British colonies in Africa and the Caribbean, and African slaves were mainly forcibly sent to the Americas and the Caribbean to work in sugar plantations. In the Caribbean, due to the similar climates in comparison to Africa, a lot of slaves escaped from the plantations and hid within the mountains to start maroon communities in Jamaica, Trinidad, and especially Suriname, where it seems like some of the Afro-Surinamese look almost like they've never left Africa!
Go ahead and tell me more about my own culture, and about where I live.
Again, no, the average African would find little to nothing familiar about any sort of culture in Miami. And Caribbean culture means nothing to them. It is WILDLY different.
I have family that moved and settled in Senegal. Two words that can describe what they went through when they moved there: culture shock.
*I've gotten multiple, MULTIPLE reps from the post you responded to. You are utterly clueless, and borderline insulting.
I'd like to know which part of the Caribbean are either you or your family from??? You said Senegal, which is a Francophone nation, and I'm assuming that since your family moved to Senegal, then either you or your family must be from Haiti! Speaking of Haiti, you haven't even talked about Haiti's cuisine, but Jamaica's instead. My question is what gives??? Jamaican food, while very tasty in it's own right, doesn't represent the entire Caribbean, as there's different cuisines in different parts of the Caribbean. I also don't buy the fact about different posters complaining about my recent posts, as if that were the case, they'd vent their frustrations in public as opposed in private!
Jamaicans don't do conch like the Bahamians, which is an exquisite dish, and the Bahamians aren't knows to jerk like the Jamaicans. Bajans do flying fish, Vincentians are known for their breadfruit, and the best cuisine IMHO, from Trinidad, has made everything from curry chicken, roti, doubles, curry shrimp, peanut punch, and aloo pie. If you have Haitian background, you haven't even displayed one thing which comes from Haiti, and that, my friend, either makes you confused or ashamed, and that's a shame considering Haiti does have a rich history. I guess you can't save everybody!!!
Anyway enough of this. Back to the original point: Miami has little to no cultural ties to most anything in Africa, and Africans are not (and unlikely will any time in the near future) moving here, or anywhere in Florida, in droves, unless flown in by the government under asylum/refugee programs.
Here I am engaged in arguments with someone who admitted they don't live in Florida, and thinks the people of Kendall would welcome a bunch of highrises and skyscrapers going up.
Last edited by Arcenal813; 05-10-2024 at 01:09 PM..
Guyana, Suriname, Trinidad and Barbados.
Ex wife: Saint-Martin
No wonder it was a culture shock for your family. The Senegalese, outside of tribal tongues, speak French. Not sure if it's your side or your wife's, but French is the official language of Senegal.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Arcenal813
Chow Mein is a HUGE staple of Caribbean cuisine. Otherwise, things like this wouldn't be found in every single Caribbean market around:
Chow mein can be found anywhere there is either a Chinese restaurant or a signifiant Chinese community. Since there are a lot of Chinese in Jamaica and Trinidad, of course you'll see a lot of Chinese restaurants in those islands. By your same logic, chow mein can also be considered a major part of American, Australian, British, and Canadian cuisines since the Chinese have also settled in those regions. Let it go!!! Chow Mein tastes good and all, but chow mein isn't found only in the Caribbean!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Arcenal813
Anyway enough of this. Back to the original point: Miami has little to no cultural ties to most anything in Africa, and Africans are not (and unlikely will any time in the near future) moving here, or anywhere in Florida, in droves, unless flown in by the government under asylum/refugee programs.
Here I am engaged in arguments with someone who admitted they don't live in Florida, and thinks the people of Kendall would welcome a bunch of highrises and skyscrapers going up.
Dude, Miami (and the rest of the world) is changing, whether you like it or not, and it will not surprise me that a new group of migrants will eventually find their way to either Miami or some other metro area in the near future. Arabs in FL are the third or fourth largest population in the US, behind only CA, MI, and NY (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_A...y_state_(2010)), with many Arabs migrating to FL from either MI, OH, NJ, and NY to FL locales. When you think of Arabs, it's usually, NY, NJ, and MI because those are the much older Arab communities in the US, but FL has caught up with the Northern states to be the 4th largest.
Before the 60's, man Cubans used to go to Miami for shopping and supplies since buying the same products in Cuba was more expensive due to shipping costs so it made sense to buy in Miami and ship them to Cuba as opposed to buying those same products in Cuba. And before the 60's, Miami didn't have a huge Cuban (and Latino) population like it does now. Now, Miami is one of the largest Latino concentrations in the US. Haitians didn't have a huge presence until the 80's and 90's when many Haitian refugees migrated to Miami in makeshift rafts from Haiti to the FL shore.
Before the 80's, Miami was basically just another major city, with only one sports team (the Dolphins) that played in a college football stadium, and practically little to no economy other than the tourist economy. It was in the same rung as an Atlanta or a Charlotte. Now, Miami has the largest concentration of int'l banks in the nation, as well as the second largest concentration of medical research facilities in the US. It's also the undisputed "capital of Latin America" and has the Latin American HQ of even hi-tech firms such as Apple, Google, and Microsoft. In 2018, it was also an Alpha city along with more established US cities such as Chicago and LA (https://www.lboro.ac.uk/microsites/g...orld2018t.html). Soon, MIA will have direct connections to the Far East (Tokyo, Taipei, and Hong Kong)and Australia, and just maybe a few more points in Africa such as Cairo, Accra, and Cape Town. Not a lot like NY or DC, but just enough to have some sort of economic and financial ties to Africa. Yes, currently, there's really no direct cultural connection to Africa, but there are Afro influences in the Spanish and English Caribbean communities in Miami. Do you think salsa, merengue, and mambo came directly from Spain? No, the heavy influences came from Africa! All the Caribbean is is nothing more than a melange of Euro, Afro, and indigenous cultures, and in some cases, Asian.
For what it’s worth, Miami’s growth has practically flatlined in recent years, as it is practically built out, and environmentally, it can’t sustain much more unless major infrastructural changes occur. Maybe in the distant future, but not right this moment.
Most of my family speaks French as well, as we have a lot of family in Quebec (mainly Montreal.) But yes, French African culture was likely a large part of the culture shock. Really though, Africa as a whole os going to feel as foreign culturally to any American (not the country, but the continents) that would be akin to white Americans moving to Russia.
Maybe one day there will be strong cultural ties with Florida and Miami, but I believe a surge of immigrants via government asylum programs will be needed first, similar to what happened and is happening again in NYC.
Miami is currently receiving migrants from Venezuela, Colombia, and Nicaragua as we speak. The only growth I see is the number or condos and multifamily units that are being built around Miami-Dade. The so-called "negative growth" are you have mentioned is practically FL's undercount of about 3.5% of it's population. Had the 2020 Census been properly administered, more than likely, FL would've had a population of about 23.4 million people, as opposed to the 22.6 million that it currently has!
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