Carnegie Reporter, Vol. 2, No. 2 | New Americans, Fresh Off the Presses, page 2 (low bandwidth)

Carlos Cortes, a retired historian at the University of California, Riverside, who has studied the ethnic press—and who recalls that his own grandparents banned Spanish at home when they arrived in this country from Mexico—agrees that assimilation is being delayed. But he insists on a distinction between assimilation and acculturation. And the ethnic media, he says “are accelerating acculturation.”

That’s in fact what most students of the ethnic media seem to think—that the ethnic media are simultaneously acclimatizing newcomers to America while helping them retain their native culture. What ethnic papers and broadcasters are doing, in other words, is “bridging the gap,” just as Garry Pierre-Pierre tries to do with the Haitian Times in Brooklyn, and just as the ethnic press has always done.

In fact, the role of the ethnic media hasn’t changed all that much in the last hundred years or so, even if immigration—and America—have changed plenty. Barbara Reed says the ethnic press historically has performed a variety of functions. It gave immigrants a chance to “control their own message,” and thereby shape their own image of themselves. It was a forum of opinion, and also provided editorial leadership to a given community of immigrants. Another role was what Reed calls “surveillance,” meaning that an ethnic paper would monitor how the rest of society was looking at “us.” Are they accepting? What is the nature of the stereotypes they have for us?

And let’s not forget commerce. The ethnic press gave advertisers a way to reach immigrants, who in turn got a way to obtain goods and services of special interest to them, or at least provided by someone who might speak their language or, quite literally, understand where they were coming from. Ethnic papers have also served to keep immigrants to one city apprised of their countrymen’s doings in other parts of America, as well as to keep everyone up on the news of the home country. Finally, says Reed, “many of these publications acted as a teacher” of group heritage to a younger generation that might have been born in America and thus lack first-hand knowledge of the old country.

Pashree Super Pat says this is why he puts money from his other business ventures into InterThai/Pacific Rim News, an English-language paper he publishes in Los Angeles: “It’s almost like a donation. We do this for the education of young people, to continue the Thai culture and tradition.”

Another thing the ethnic media historically have taught was “what it means to be a citizen in this country,” Barbara Reed says, adding that, “Usually these publications didn’t tell people for whom to vote. But they did tell them to vote.”

A Presence in the Community
Walking the streets of central Brooklyn with the editor of the Haitian Times is an eye-opening experience, especially if you grew up there, as this reporter did. It’s summer, stiflingly hot, and this is a neighborhood that was once on the ropes. It’s still relatively poor, but there are no vacant shops, and the streets aren’t menacing in the least. Once overwhelmingly African-American, this section of Brooklyn is now largely Caribbean, with Haitians living among Jamaicans, Barbadians and other island immigrants. French signs make Haitian churches and shops obvious, and Haitian foods are available from sidewalk vendors. Pierre-Pierre points out a storefront he finds particularly interesting; it’s a business that helps immigrants send money home, one that has succeeded despite the size and prominence of Western Union because, says Pierre-Pierre, they understand the Haitian market and speak the people’s language. They know, for instance, that some immigrants want to send not just money but food, so they handle this as well, arranging for the purchase of items in Haiti that customers can pay for here.

There is a constant flow of money and goods from Haitian neighborhoods back to the island, which is why, in Brooklyn, you often see someone wrestling a large cardboard barrel into or out of a vehicle. These are shipping containers, but they are not to be confused with the battered metal barrels seen on the streets of the same neighborhoods. “These are jerk cans,” Pierre-Pierre explains, used to prepare a popular form of Caribbean barbecue.

On this particular day, Pierre-Pierre heads for the offices of Brooklyn’s annual Caribbean parade, where he wants the Haitian Times to have a modest presence. The parade is a big deal, but not that many Haitians participate. “We’re trying to change that,” he says. (La Opinión participates in a similar parade in East Los Angeles.) The parade office is in a storefront, and one of the women working there takes an interest in his venture. She works for an HMO and asks for his business card, which Pierre-Pierre obligingly provides.

“The Haitian Times plays a very important role in the community,” says the Reverend Philius Nicolas, pastor of the Evangelical Crusade of Fishers of Men, a Haitian-oriented church in Brooklyn’s Flatbush section. Nicolas is an uncle to Abner Louima (a Haitian immigrant who was the victim of a notorious and brutal 1997 attack by former police officer Justin Volpe inside a Brooklyn police station) and praises Pierre-Pierre for his coverage of that case as well as for his overall knowledge of Haitian life in Brooklyn. He adds that the paper is important for another reason: “There are several other newspapers, but this one is unique because it’s published in English, so other people will learn what’s going on in the Haitian community.”

The soft-spoken 40-year-old Pierre-Pierre says he decided to publish the Haitian Times because he saw the need for a Haitian paper focused on Haitians in this country, one that was free of the strong factionalism he says infects the two main Haitian papers that were already publishing. His target audience, he says, is the younger, better-educated generation—his own cohort—rather than those who refuse to make the mental leap from Creole-speaking exile to English-speaking American. He wants young, upwardly mobile Haitians to stay put and, more important, get involved, which is why he publishes in English. Culturally, he says, Haitians value education highly, but “a lot of educated Haitians stay away from the community.”

Pierre-Pierre’s own route to the community was a circuitous one. His middle-class family brought him to America from Haiti when he was eight years old, and he grew up in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Like many Haitian immigrants, he experienced some friction with American-born blacks, yet decided to attend predominantly black Florida A&M University, out of a desire, he says, to attend college with high-achieving blacks in an environment where being black was more the norm. He also did a stint in the Peace Corps, during which he met his American wife, who is white.

Although a major goal of the paper is raising its readers’ political consciousness—it encourages them to become citizens and urges the citizens to vote—it doesn’t endorse candidates. “Not yet,” says Pierre-Pierre. “You have to develop your base, grow your community, develop an identity, develop credibility. It’s a step you evolve into.” Still, covering politics is a top priority; this season, for example, the Haitian Times carried an interview with New York State Comptroller and Democratic gubernatorial candidate H. Carl McCall (who was later defeated by incumbent governor George Pataki), and the paper covered the 42nd Assembly District race in Brooklyn. “We guide,” Pierre-Pierre says of his philosophy. “We let people know the importance of registering and voting, what it means to their kids’ education.”

Like the many ethnic papers that have come before it, the Haitian Times focuses on helping readers—in this case, the 500,000 Haitians in the New York metropolitan area—find their way in their new country. “They’re making the transition from exiles to an immigrant group,” Pierre-Pierre says. “As they make that transition, I’d like the Haitian Times to be dead center guiding that.”

One challenge has been making sure the Haitian Times is dead center rather than merely dead. Unable to raise as much financing as he’d hoped before launching the tabloid-sized paper in October 1999, Pierre-Pierre puts out his 15,000 circulation weekly on a budget so tight he can’t even pay himself a salary.

Next page: One of the challenges facing every ethnic publication in acculturating immigrants is keeping up with evolving readers.

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