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Chapter 1: Making Home: Culture, Ethnicity, and Religion among Farmworkers in the Southeastern United States, by Alejandra Okie Holt and Sister Evelyn Mattern
- University of Texas Press
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chapter 1 Making Home Culture, Ethnicity, and Religion among Farmworkers in the Southeastern United States Alejandra Okie Holt and Sister Evelyn Mattern Today, farmworkers are not the homogeneous group portrayed in Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath in the 1930s. In this chapter we explore how farmworkers change and are changed by the cultures they encounter and the complex ethnic relationships of the United States. Until the 1960s most farmworkers along the East Coast were African Americans. Now Latinos make up the large majority of farmworker populations in most areas of the country. We focus on Latinos in general —and Mexicans specifically—because in total they make up almost 90 percent of the farmworker population. We also discuss other important groups of workers such as Haitians and seasonal African American farmworkers.We highlight aspects of farmworkers’ lives that reflect their cultures and histories, as well as the processes of acculturation experienced by immigrant farmworker families. Characteristics of Farmworkers While 88 percent of farmworkers today are U.S.- or foreign-born Latinos, other ethnic and racial groups contribute to the farmworker mosaic. The National Agricultural Workers Survey (NAWS) is a study of farmworkers, field packers, and supervisors in crop agriculture that excludes H-2A guestworkers and unemployed agricultural workers. The most recent NAWS study includes a total of 4,199 interviews that were conducted from October 1996 to September 1998. It finds that 1 percent of total farmworkers are foreign-born Asian, 7 percent are non-Latino U.S.-born whites, 1 percent are U.S.-born African Americans, 1 percent are born in other foreign countries, and 2 percent are other U.S.-born. The survey finds that the primary language of 84 percent of farmworkers is Spanish, while 12 percent are native Englishspeakers , and 4 percent speak other native languages such as Tagalog, 23 Making Home Ilocano, Creole, and Mixtec. Most of the white farmworkers surveyed by the NAWS live in the Midwest and Great Plains and perform postharvest and supervisory jobs. The NAWS survey reveals that 20 percent of farmworkers are women (Mehta et al. 2000). NAWS groups seasonal and migrant farmworkers together, so the findings do not show the higher percentage of African Americans who labor as seasonal workers in the South. The survey presents only a macro-level picture of the composition of agricultural workers and does not reflect regional variations where certain racial or ethnic groups are present in large numbers. Unfortunately, extensive demographic studies on the ethnic and racial composition of the agricultural labor force by geographic region are not available. African American Farmworkers Up to the 1960s many southern African Americans left their home bases each spring and settled in northern agricultural communities for three to five months during the summer harvest season. African Americans migrated from Florida as groups of single men, while others traveled in family groups. Migrant workers would supplement the labor of local African American men and women, local high school students, and farm wives during harvest time. Some African American crews from Florida and Texas migrated to Georgia and the Carolinas and then to Delaware and New York through the 1980s (Griffith and Kissam 1995, 77). However, as early as the 1970s, many African Americans found work opportunities that allowed them to stop migrating and continue working as seasonal farmworkers in their own communities, while others moved to cities to find non-agricultural employment . Most African American farmworkers today work on southern farms on a seasonal basis. For instance, African American seasonal farmworkers continue to harvest sweet potatoes in eastern North Carolina in October after many Latino workers have migrated to other states for work. Other African American workers continue to work in food production . For example, African American women have worked for generations processing Atlantic blue crabs along the Pamlico and Pungo Rivers in Beaufort County in eastern North Carolina. Many women who are now in their seventies and eighties started picking crabs when they were young children to help their families. They follow a tradition passed [44.199.212.254] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 15:31 GMT) 24 The Human Cost of Food down by their mothers or grandmothers. In the past, crab picking was one of the few jobs available for women in this area of the state, other than harvesting vegetables or corn on nearby farms. For some time, white women weighed and packed crabs, while African American women did the picking. Now, few white women or men work at...