Abstract
Lorick-Wilmot examines contemporary race relations in terms of post-Civil Rights era policies, ethnicity, education, employment, residential patterns, language choice and treatment by law enforcement, and as it relates to the American Dream trope of middle class success. She presents the national demographic profile of Middle Class Second Generation Caribbean Immigrants to show their social import, both in numbers and their place at the intersection of several social strata, by pointing to the ways this cohort of English, French, Dutch and particularly Spanish-speaking people are identified and counted in the US Census. Lorick-Wilmot argues these census counts reveal the intersectional and complex ways legacies of colonialism and colorism influence this generation’s racial and ethnic self-identification and their identification by the government, which have direct implications for the communities they reside in.
What’s wrong with black people anyway? Why is it important for society to culturally appropriate our music, our style, and vernacular and at the same time tell us that our cultures are deviant, that we are poor, lesser than and not worthy of respect, humanity, and adoration like other people in America? Black people from all over the world come here and are loved and hated at the same time. It makes no sense but makes me strongly believe race and racism is very much alive and well.
—Joachim, 34 years old, Family Therapist and Community Health Worker
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Notes
- 1.
UCLA-Civil Right Project’s research, whose projects are often funded and in collaboration with private universities, US Department of Education, US Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the White House Council on Women and Girls. These data makes the correlation between high poverty, crime, unemployment, and housing segregation and apartheid schools and its low expectations for children of color, including the Caribbean immigrant children that attend them.
- 2.
According to the US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey 2011 Brief 2011, the term Latin America and the Caribbean includes all countries in Central and South America and the Caribbean. Often Latin America or Latin American is used as a catchall term to refer to the countries and people from these areas, regardless of racial, ethnic, religious, and linguistic distinctions (English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Dutch).
- 3.
According to the US Census Bureau definitions, people born in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands are considered native-born to the United States although distinctions are made between those who are born on the islands versus the mainland United States.
- 4.
Current Population Survey Series and its Supplements, which are sponsored by both the US Census Bureau and the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS), which collects and distributes US census data, are two sources of census data center statistics that captures a range of demographic data, including immigration and immigrant generation, fertility, employment, and occupational mobility. The Pew Research Center also pulls data from these same census data sources and supplements.
- 5.
I am reminded of an important quote from Ruben Rumbaut: “If ‘race’ was an innate, permanent trait of individuals, no such variability would obtain. Instead, these data exemplify how ‘race’ is constructed socially and historically—and spatially as well.” See Ruben Rumbaut’s (2009:28). Pigments of Our Imagination: On the Racialization and Racial Identities of ‘Hispanics’ and ‘Latinos.’
- 6.
U.N.’s International Decade for the African Descendant (2015–2024): http://www.un.org/en/events/africandescentdecade/index.shtml
- 7.
GED, also known as a test for general education development, is offered to students who do not complete high school or are unable to meet requirements toward earning a high school diploma.
- 8.
Because of gender roles and division of labor practices of women and their relegation to caring for children and family, women’s employment and educational level are often factors used to predict children and family outcomes.
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Lorick-Wilmot, Y.S. (2018). What Does Race Have to Do with It?. In: Stories of Identity among Black, Middle Class, Second Generation Caribbeans. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62208-8_3
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