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Un-Othering the Black Experience: Storytelling and Sociology

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Stories of Identity among Black, Middle Class, Second Generation Caribbeans

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Abstract

Lorick-Wilmot contextualizes her ethnographic research on middle class second generation, self-identified black Caribbean immigrants (MSGCIs) within the current field of sociology of race, identity and American immigration. To that end, she provides an overview of theories and introduces a new, alternative framework called “Triple Identity Consciousness” to identify and understand the complex and nuanced phenomena of MSGCI identity and identity performances. The chapter also provides an important discussion on the research’s ethnographic methodology, including participants’ demographic information, and why studying the experiences of the MSGCI in the United States is relevant today.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    According to Howard Winant (2004:4), “The whole framework of double consciousness draws upon this legacy: it describes a subjectivity both sundered and fused, an identity divided by forces originating both within and outside the self. The concept of the veil also recognizes the black soul’s striving for wholeness, for synthesis and integration: after all its “dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”

  2. 2.

    The concept of “dialectic” refers to a relationship that simultaneously embodies both antagonism and interdependence that develops over historical time and that links the small-scale and large-scale dimensions of social life.

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  1. Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

    Yndia S. Lorick-Wilmot

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  1. Yndia S. Lorick-Wilmot
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Lorick-Wilmot, Y.S. (2018). Un-Othering the Black Experience: Storytelling and Sociology. In: Stories of Identity among Black, Middle Class, Second Generation Caribbeans. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62208-8_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62208-8_2

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