Abstract
In this chapter, Lorick-Wilmot examines the MSGCIs’ identity negotiations and assertions in public spaces. These public spaces include the neighborhoods they live in, their places of employment as “the singular black” and the black “community” they serve (locally, globally and symbolically). She points to the specific cultural capital performances and activities the MSGCIs engage in and their responses to the factors of oppression and liberation they experience in their daily lives as second generation Caribbean immigrants.
You were born where you were born and faced the future that you faced because you were black and for no other reason. The limits of your ambition were, thus, expected to be set forever. You were born into a society, which spelled out with brutal clarity, and in as many ways as possible, that you were a worthless human being. You were not expected to aspire to excellence: you were expected to make peace with mediocrity.
―James Baldwin , The Fire Next Time
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- 1.
Here, I am considering Michael Dawson’s (1995) concept of “linked fate” from his book Behind the Mule: Race and Class in African American Politics. According to Dawson, linked fate is a sentiment among blacks that one’s prospects are ultimately tied to one’s race. Thus, the experiences of the black middle class are linked to their ties, both voluntary and involuntary to working class and low-income blacks on the basis of race—whether it is because of residential segregation that causes blacks to live in the same urban areas or neighborhoods or by virtue of the persisting gaps in employment, income, wealth, education, and health that exist between blacks and whites in the United States.
- 2.
The reference to the concept of social Darwinism in the workplace derives from Charles Darwin’s work and Herbert Spencer’s structural functional analysis of Darwin’s notion of biological determinism—the idea of “survival of the fittest.” Conceptually, the capitalist workplace is observed to privilege a “dog-eat-dog” culture that thrives on competition and hierarchy that place different values on workers’ capabilities according their race, ethnicity, and gender. At its worst, the workplace culture is criticized for using tools like evolution and genetics to legitimize discrimination against women and racial-ethnic minorities (e.g., women are blamed for their lack of leadership roles and their inability to negotiate higher salaries).
- 3.
The “context of reception,” a concept elaborated by Alejandro Portes and Ruben Rumbaut, calls attention to the complexity of the situation that immigrants enter and the disadvantages that they and their children confront: Success in the new society depends not only on what immigrants bring, such as skills of use in the new labor market, but also on how they are received. See http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/second-generation-last-great-wave-immigration-setting-record-straight
- 4.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is a federal law that prohibits employers from discriminating against employees on the basis of sex, race, color, national origin, and religion.
- 5.
Loving v. State of Virginia (1967) is a landmark court decision of the United States Supreme Court, which deemed laws of interracial marriages illegal and unconstitutional. The case was brought by Mildred Loving and Richard Loving, whose marriage violated the state of Virginia’s anti-miscegenation statute, the Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which prohibited marriage between people classified as “white” and people classified as “colored.” The Supreme Court’s unanimous decision ended all race-based legal restrictions on marriage in the United States.
- 6.
In 2012, the US Census Bureau released a brief, “Households and Families 2010,” showed interracial or interethnic opposite-sex married couple households grew by 28% over the decade from 7% in 2000 to 10% in 2010. States with higher percentages of couples of a different race or Hispanic origin in 2010 were primarily located in the western and southwestern parts of the United States, along with Hawaii and Alaska.
- 7.
This report is based primarily on two data sources: the Pew Research Center’s analysis of demographic data about new marriages in 2008 from the US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) and the Pew Research Center’s analysis of its own data from a nationwide telephone survey conducted from October 28 to November 30, 2009, among a nationally representative sample of 2,884 adults (pp. iii).
- 8.
Data from the National Center for Educational Statistics show that in 2015, 24.6% of black women and 18.5% of Latino women earned bachelor’s degrees or higher in comparison to 46.6% of white women earning bachelor’s degrees or higher.
- 9.
See National Center for Educational Statistics’ table 104.20 “Percentage of Persons 25 to 29 years old with Selected levels of Educational Attainment by Race/Ethnicity and Sex: Selected Years, 1920 through 2015.” https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d15/tables/dt15_104.20.asp#; accessed: July 24, 2016.
- 10.
Data from the National Center for Educational Statistics show that in 2015, 17.6% of black men and 14.5% of Latino men earned bachelor’s degrees or higher in comparison to 39.5% of white men earning bachelor’s degrees or higher.
- 11.
“Knapsack of costs” derives from Peggy McIntosh’s (1988) article excerpt “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” where she likens white privilege to an invisible knapsack of benefits which whites automatically accrue because of the mere color of their skin and costs which those unable to take advantage of the benefits experience micro-aggressions and the residual impacts of implicit bias.
- 12.
The strong black woman myth stems from post-slavery stereotype that depicts black women as aggressive, indefatigable work mules, able to “plow” through hard situations without any help from others, especially men. They are also depicted as sassy and apathetic, being without vulnerabilities and unable to get hurt (both physically and emotionally). See Tamara Winfrey Harris’ (2015) The Sisters are Alright: Changing the Broken Narrative of Black Women in America.
- 13.
At first glance, it would seem that the “Uppity Negro” syndrome is a myth or stereotype that challenges the racist belief of black inferiority. On the contrary, the uppity Negro is the well-dressed black who “puts on airs” and aspires to whiteness (i.e., confident and outspoken and against the ill-treatment of whites) but does not know his or her “true” place, which is to be docile and subservient to whites. See David Pilgrim’s (2015) Understanding Jim Crow: Using Racist Memorabilia to Teach Tolerance and Promote Social Justice.
- 14.
Here, I refer to Cornel West’s analysis of W.E.B. Du Bois’ concept of double consciousness from his essay, “The Dilemma of the Black Intellectual” (1985:124) where he says “caught between an insolent American society and insouciant black community, the Afro-American who takes seriously the life of the mind inhabits an isolated and insulated world. This condition has little to do with the motive and intentions of black intellectuals; rather it is an objective situation created by circumstances not of their choosing.”
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Lorick-Wilmot, Y.S. (2018). Performing Identity in Public. In: Stories of Identity among Black, Middle Class, Second Generation Caribbeans. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62208-8_7
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