Black middle-class Britannia

Identities, repertoires, cultural consumption

Ali Meghji

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781526143075
• eBook ISBN: 9781526143099
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book analyses how racism and anti-racism affect Black British middle class cultural consumption. The author argues there are three black middle class identity modes: strategic assimilation, class- minded, and ethnoracial autonomous. People towards each of these identity modes organise their cultural consumption according to specific cultural repertoires. Those towards strategic assimilation draw on repertoires of code-switching and cultural equity, consuming traditional middle class culture to maintain equality with the white middle class in levels of cultural capital. Ethnoracial autonomous individuals draw on repertoires of browning and Afro-centrism, showing a preference for cultural forms that uplift Black diasporic histories and cultures.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of tables
• Series editors’ foreword
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction – Taking off the colour-blind goggles: crafting a study on Britain’s Black middle class
• 2 Towards a triangle of Black middle-class identity
• 3 White spaces: consuming traditional middle-class culture
• 4 Constructing and using Black cultural capital
• 5 Revisiting race and nation: double consciousness, Black Britishness, and cultural consumption
• 6 Race, class, and culture in the British racialised social system
• Appendix: Building a reflexive case study of the Black middle class
• References
• Index