Scholars like myself are often concerned with exploring the shifting and complex dynamics and changes that occur across racial and ethnic communities over time. Readers in this topic area may be most familiar with works by William Julius Wilson , Elijah Anderson , Thomas Shapiro , Melvin Oliver , Amanda E. Lewis , Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton and Mary C. Waters , to name a few, who have focused on the experiences and outcomes for underserved communities, working class African Americans, and/or new immigrants. As these racial and ethnic communities continue to expand and diversify a range of public and private, urban and suburban, social, economic, and political spaces, different lenses are needed to understand this complexity.
This book Stories of Identity among Black Middle Class Second Generation Caribbeans: We, Too, Sing America is a sociological exploration (albeit a self-exploration, too) that examines the salience of race and ethnic identity in the stories children of Caribbean immigrants tell about their complex experiences navigating public and private spaces. Inspired by Langston Hughes ā 1945 poem āI, Too, Sing America ,ā my research points to the continued struggle blacks experience to be heard and seen as a valued, vital part of Americaās cultural, social, political, and economic fabric.
As folklore suggests, Langston Hughes was compelled to write a response to Walt Whitman ās (1886) poem āI Hear America Singing. ā For many, Whitmanās poem celebrates America and the individuals that make the country great. Line by line, Whitman lists different Americans by their occupations such as carpenter, mechanic, boatmen, shoemaker, and girl sewing, each singing āwith open mouths, their strong melodious songs.ā Yet, Whitmanās patriotic poem was one that reflected a particular vision of America; a vision that celebrates the working class men and women whom he saw as striving to build the country at the end of the nineteenth century. By my own analysis, Whitman imagines America as a chorus comprising a multitude of voices singing together for a common good.
In contrast, Langston Hughes ā poem, I assert, challenges Whitmanās vision of America by pointing out there are many other voices, particularly the black voice, that should be included in this great vision. For Hughes, the contributions blacks have made (and continue to make) toward building America are equally great but are rendered invisible because of their āblackness ā and subsequent subjugation. Hughesā poem confronts continued racism, segregation, and oppression experienced by African Americans and the first wave of voluntary Caribbean immigrants (pre-1950s) by declaring that such injustices will not render blacks undeserving of the freedoms and inalienable rights afforded to all.1 In effect, Hughes asserts āI, too, Sing America ā as an equally important voice in Americaās chorus that should be heard when Whitman āhearsā America singing. It is my intention that this book confronts the persisting invisibility of people of African descent in the United States in the twenty-first century. In particular, I intend to celebrate the āsongsā or narratives of middle class, adult children of self-identified Black Caribbean immigrants who contribute to the building of contemporary society but are often invisible in the āchorusā of America. In effect, these stories represent their heart song, āWe, Too, Sing America.ā
In the social science literature, this generation of middle class black Caribbean immigrants is a segment of the African American community that is often under-researched/documented and represented as āAmerica.ā I contend this population has very similar experiences with racism and classism, prejudice and discrimination as any other groupings of people of color living in the United States, but are often not examined because they have the ātrappingsā of middle class lifestyle āthe idealized notion of the American Dream . The narrative analysis I employ throughout the book intends to bring to the forefront their everyday experiences in challenging structures of oppression, via their racial and ethnic identity assertions, as black people, as children of immigrants, and as part of an established black middle class.
More specifically, the purpose of Stories of Identity among Black Middle Class Second Generation Caribbeans is to share the stories of this generation of black immigrants and unveil the complexities that define black lives across the spectrum of the United States. These stories are important because they reveal nuances to the human experience as it relates to race and peopleās evolving sense of identity; the moments black people articulate the critical instances of self-discovery and expression. This book expands the focus of the black experience in the United States to include the intersections of race, class, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality: how race, class, gender, and immigrant ancestry plays out in the United States; the emotional trade-ins or the psychological expense involved with having access to āwhite resourcesā or being singular blacks in white spaces; and the kind of global experiences African descendants can have, are able to reflect on and develop strategies to navigate diverse places and racial heterogeneous spaces that are both welcoming and hostile to black people and broadly, people of color in the United States and elsewhere.
I am personally motivated to conduct and share this research because it is a challenge for me (to find an articulation of myself) and for others interested in this scholarly exploration to overcome the predominant cultural models about black people and specifically the second generation black immigrant in the United States. It is a cognitively accessible narrative most associate with black people, which was made popular by Daniel P. Moynihan over 50 years ago in the controversial report The Negro Family: The Case for National Action (also known as the Moynihan Report): that the majority of blacks are poor/low income/working class with negative pathologies (i.e., failure, powerlessness, and exploitation). I am sure I cannot be alone in reacting to this persisting American cultural frameworkāmy frustration and loathing of such a myopic and denigrating racist ideology that suggests it is legitimate and true. My intention is to share the āotherā/unheard stories of the black experience in the United States that resonate for all people; stories that are apolitical but are not ārace-free;ā stories that defy the anti-black and pathological ways the diversity of black voice and personhood are traditionally portrayed in literature, research, and popular culture. These are stories of family, struggle, resistance and triumph, individuality and collectivity that speculate on the fate and destiny of black people across the United States and for generations to come.
The Personal and Scholarly Journey
In her 2005 book On Beauty, Zadie Smith wrote, āthe world does not deliver meaning to you. You have to make it meaningful...and decide what you want and need and must do.ā A few years after reading Zadie Smith ās book, my mind could not help returning to that line; a line which resonated with me more strongly than when I first read the book.
One afternoon I was organizing my homeās library when my daughter saw me perusing through several of my yearbooks and asked me about the people in the pictures. After a while, she made an observation and asked: Did many of your friends in high school and college have parents from the Caribbean like you? In fact, that was who I primarily lived among and went to school with. These same friends grew up in households where English, French, Spanish, or a creole of one of these languages was spoken on a daily basis; where some had to negotiate generational dynamics that required translating important documents for parents whose command of American English was not strong while others had parents who were para- and semi-professionals with high educational expectations for their children. Now of course, where I lived with my parents in Brooklyn and went to school was, in large part, consciously determined by economic factors. The Fort Greene, Eastern Parkway, Flatbush, and Crown Heights neighborhoods and communities were economically similar but also racial-ethnically and culturally distinct as compared to, say, Bay Ridge or Red Hook in the 1980s. Yet, as Bill Bishop argues in his 2008 book, the Big Sort, we all have a tendency to seek out and fraternize with others that are similar to us in a number of ways or at least, to cluster in communities of like-mindedness.
For those I have remained in contact with over the years, these friends have lived in major metropolitan cities, both in the United States and abroad. Many, if not all, own their own homes, either condos or single-families, graduated from college, and earned an advanced or professional degree. These friends also remain connected to their parentsā home country, whether they are planning to āplay mas ā at an upcoming carnival, are feverishly referencing their carnival tabanca post-carnival festivities, or are visiting relatives and actively supporting family members or school communities in the Caribbean.
On social media, I would see signifiers of middle class material culture and social status in their pictures, which point to my friendsā access to disposable income: designer handbags, luxury cars, and collections of art are seen in the background. Of course, it would be remiss of me not to consider Erving Goffman ās theories of identity and presentation of self in social media and the ways people communicate status and position in public spaces. There is a certain degree to which people generally present an idealized version of themselves in terms of how they want to be perceived by othersāa āfront-stageā persona . Yet in their same posts on social media, I also see glimpses of the kind of intellectual, personal, and professional work my friends engage in around issues that affect them and matter to themāa āback stageā persona . In fact, these same friends post articles, essays, videos, and even, well articulated rants on a variety of social justice topics often related to issues of race, class, and gender inequality and how they see these issues impacting their home lives, work, and wellbeing in the United States, the Caribbean, and across the world.
In my mindās eye, I return to my daughterās observation and consider the ways these āfront-stageā and āback stageā personas interact on a daily basis; the constant negotiations we all make in our interactions with others and across contexts, such as in our home, work, and community lives. I began to deeply consider my own presentation of self; the ways I learned as a child to identify with my parentsā Caribbean culture. And then learning as an adult how I, too, must do the work to balance how I perceive myself with the ways others perceive me in public and private spacesāas a woman, black person, an American, a child of Caribbean immigrants , an educated woman of color with a PhD, and a person who occupies a middle class social and economic space.
Then the idea came to me like a bright light in a dark tunnel. I listened carefully as my girlfriend spoke. It was then I was reminded of Zadie Smith ās quote. I wondered how is it that we all make meaning in our everyday lives? How do we make life meaningful in the midst of balancing multiple identities of race, gender, class, and ethnicity? What are the stories we tell ourselves and tell others about these negotiations? How can stories help to rid ourselves of the isolation and pressure we may feel when balancing these front and back stage personas? How do these performances become complicated by the fluidity of oneās own assertions of racial, ethnic, gender, and class identities?
Often academics, including myself, will frame this kind of meaning-making process as being ābetween two worlds,ā a model where individualsā racial and ethnic identities and social location are positioned between being invisible and visible, as seen in Benjamin Giguere , Richard Lalonde , and Eveline Lou ās article, Living at the Crossroads of Cultural Worlds, June Jordan ās poem, Moving Towards Home, Laura Moss ā, The Politics of Everyday Hybridity, Stuart Hall ās, A Place Called Home, Pauli Murrayās, Proud Shoes: The Story of an American Family, and Roy Bryce-Laporte ās seminal article, Black Immigrants: The Experience of Invisibility and Inequality, to name a few. By all accounts, population studies such as the Pew Research Center ās 2013 report Second-Generation Americans: A Portrait of the Adult Children of Immigrants indicate that I and others like me are a part of the overall population that is responsible for changing the face of America, equally impacting the nationās economic landscape. And yet our stories, filled with the nuance of struggle and triumphāfor confronting inequities, clearly intending to assert voice, position, visibility as experienced everydayāare often unheard or marginalized. In my small attempt, I aim to help make the world meaningful; I decided what I want and need and must do is to share the stories of people that are like me, second generation Caribbean immigrant, middle class, and who self-identify racially as black.
I will be transparent and admit that my presentation of these narratives takes on...