America's Cape Verdeans aim to be counted

EAST PROVIDENCE, R.I. - Life on an American military base in Japan offers enough in the way of culture clashes. But even within his first-grade class on the Yokota Air Base, where his father was a tech sergeant, Derek Andrade sensed that his classmates viewed him as something of a cultural riddle.

"Since I had straight hair and because I wasn't that black and wasn't that white, they said, `Well, what are you?' "

Andrade, now a construction worker and father of two, has answered so many variations of that question over his 41 years that he can't keep track, he said the other day, sipping an after-work beer at the Cape Verdean Progressive Center. Last month, while getting his taxes done at an accountant's office, a stranger addressed him in a language that sounded like Spanish. Or was it Portuguese?

Questions of identity have never been simple for Cape Verdean Americans. Many descend from a patchwork of African, European, Moorish and even Jewish ancestors. The complexities transcend lineage and enter the worlds of colonial history and politics.

Cape Verde, a group of islands in a lonely patch of the Atlantic west of Africa, was uninhabited until the Portuguese colonized it in the 1400s and imported African slaves to work the land. The islands finally won their independence in 1975, but not before developing their own cuisine, music and language.

Now, take all that and drop it into the United States. Though large numbers of Cape Verdeans settled in Rhode Island and Massachusetts, they make up such a microscopic minority nationwide that mentioning the islands outside New England often draws quizzical stares.

`I want to be counted'

So the question presents itself: If you're Cape Verdean, what do you check off on the census form? For many years, the government questionnaire has asked people to choose one: white, black, Hispanic, Asian/Pacific Islander or American Indian.

This year, Cape Verdean leaders are refusing to choose. They have been telling their countrymen to write in "Cape Verdean" under the "other race" category and under a separate question about ancestry.

Cape Verdean groups have staged rallies in the Providence communities of East Providence and Pawtucket and persuaded the Census Bureau to print 100 T-shirts that say: "I am a Cape Verdean - I want to be counted in the year 2000 Census."

Community leaders have preached the census on Portuguese-language radio and cable-TV programs. The Cape Verdean Consulate in Boston held a ceremony to declare that "for the first time, we have an opportunity to know exactly how many of us there are."

And Cape Verde's honorary consul for Rhode Island, Francisco Feijoo Barbosa, 69, has invited people to a back office in his Pawtucket furniture store, where he and his sons help fill out forms.

National pride grows

Behind the campaign is both a national pride that has been building since Cape Verdean independence and a recognition by the Census Bureau that more and more Americans are refusing to cram their identities into tiny boxes.

For the first time, the census is letting people check off more than one race. And though the census has asked a separate question about ancestry since 1980, the Census Bureau did something this year that Cape Verdeans say they appreciate: It listed "Cape Verdean" as an example under the ancestry question.

Cape Verdean leaders say they hope a big count this year will strengthen their political muscle and add heft to their applications for grants for local social-service agencies and cultural institutions.

"We want what any other American wants," said George Lima, 81, a former state lawmaker who organized the census rally in East Providence. "We want economic power, a good education, good health."

But a good count may be hard to come by.

For starters, Cape Verdeans have been undercounted for the same reasons as other immigrant groups: a distrust of government and a sizeable population - some 23 percent of the total in 1990 - that is not fluent in English.

But experts believe Cape Verdeans' hybrid ancestry and the country's complex political history also have played a role.

In 1980, five years after Cape Verdean independence, 4,545 Rhode Islanders identified their ancestry on the census as at least part Cape Verdean. In 1990, 10,080 did. That's a larger number than every state except Massachusetts, but Cape Verdean leaders still believe the real number here is three to five times as large.

"A lot of Cape Verdeans still identify as Portuguese, they identify as black American, they identify as Spanish," said Luis Rosario, an electronics engineer who is president of the Cape Verdean American Community Development Inc., a social service agency in Pawtucket. "So it's going to be a little work to get them to identify as Cape Verdean. It's not an overnight thing to do."Balking at labels

Cape Verdeans first came to the United States in large numbers in the late 1800s, finding work on whaling ships and on fishing docks. Virtually all called themselves Portuguese even though many had darker skin and Cape Verde had its own culture.

"Before independence in Cape Verde, just the assertion that you were Cape Verdean was an anticolonial statement, because that meant you rejected being Portuguese," said Richard Lobban Jr., an anthropology professor at Rhode Island College who has written two books on Cape Verde and a pamphlet on Cape Verdean Rhode Islanders.

Among later waves of immigrants, many identified as black Americans. A few, including Lima and Clifford Montiero, rose to the presidencies of traditionally black local civil-rights groups after encountering the same discrimination as African Americans.

A still newer wave of immigrants has balked at the black label, saying they view themselves as culturally distinct from most African Americans.

Yet at least one person questions whether identifying as Cape Verdean on the census may actually water down the overall count of minorities. Montiero, the president of the Providence NAACP, said he is proud of his Cape Verdean ancestry. But Montiero marched with civil-rights demonstrators in Selma and Washington, D.C., in the 1960s, and says he has always checked off African-American on the census.

"I'm not denying my Cape Verdean ancestry, but I don't know if the Census Bureau knows what Cape Verdean is and how to classify it," he said. "I'm really concerned that with many of these subdivisions, we get confused as to what the real agenda is. The problem I face in America is the color of my skin."