Voices of Foreign-Born African American Teacher Educators in the United States

This is a book that exposes silenced and invisible voices in Colleges/Schools of Education. These voices of African immigrants are seldom heard in serious educational quarters since most foreign-born teacher educators try their very best to play by the rules as immigrant minorities. However, they find themselves between cultural continuity and cultural discontinuity. They are pressured to do well by their families in their native countries; but these pressures force them to forget home and think about survival strategies in their new found home. Very often, they do well and at tremendous costs! Additionally, they are expected to be happy and endure all kinds of mistreatments with a smile because they seem to have fewer survival options. On the one hand, they are generally treated as Blacks; and as Blacks, they encounter racist behaviours. On the other hand, they are treated as invisible, primitive, and inferior Blacks who have nothing to share and who are supposed to be seen and not heard. As a consequence, they endure discrimination from both native born African Americans and Whites in America. Interestingly, when they are confident, they are labelled as arrogant, troublemaker, foreigner, chauvinistic, and so on. When they are quiet, they are labelled as incompetent, timid, naïve, unprepared, and so on. The tendency is to forget that they are human-beings with aspirations to do well and contribute to their "new" society, that is, America. The critical question then is, how can they do well or contribute to the advancement of their new society if they are not given opportunities to learn, teach, serve, or grow?