Title Information
Title
Black Identities Revisited: New and Old African Americans in Middle Class New York
Name: Personal
Name Part
Clerge, Orly
Role
Role Term: Text
creator
Origin Information
Copyright Date
2013
Physical Description
Extent
viii, 366 p.
digitalOrigin
born digital
Note
Thesis (Ph.D. -- Brown University (2013)
Name: Personal
Name Part
Itzigsohn, Jose
Role
Role Term: Text
Director
Name: Personal
Name Part
Silver, Hilary
Role
Role Term: Text
Reader
Name: Personal
Name Part
Henry, Paget
Role
Role Term: Text
Reader
Name: Personal
Name Part
Dill, Ann
Role
Role Term: Text
Reader
Name: Personal
Name Part
Baiocchi, Gianpaolo
Role
Role Term: Text
Reader
Name: Corporate
Name Part
Brown University. Sociology
Role
Role Term: Text
sponsor
Genre (aat)
theses
Abstract
Two important social transformations have occurred since the 1960's: The rise of the black middle class and the influx of immigrants from Latin, America, Asia and Africa. The cultural and economic outcomes for first and second-generation West Indian immigrants are often linked to the culture and neighborhoods of the black poor/underclass. However, we understand little about the ways in which the black middle class is a potential pathway of integration for today's immigrants. This dissertation investigates the social identities and residential patterns of select black immigrants in the middle class, Haitians and Jamaicans, and compares them to the African American middle class in Queens and Long Island, New York. I draw from the literature on social inequality and immigrant incorporation in order to analyze the ways in which blacks in the middle class are forming their racial and class identities and how this process differs across space. This dissertation uses qualitative interviews, participant observations and census data in order to unpack the cultural lives of black ethnics and the socioeconomic landscape of their neighborhoods. Findings demonstrate that ethnicity, generation and space matter in the identity formation of black middle class ethnics. The African American middle class has a place specific culture of mobility, which is partially adopted by the Haitian and Jamaican middle class. The racial and class identity convergence between these groups provides key evidence that the African American middle class is a potential pathway of socio-cultural and economic integration for today's immigrants. These findings demonstrate that the segmented assimilation theoretical framework should incorporate the black middle class into its paradigm. This research speaks to the sociological debates on the socioeconomic incorporation of today's immigrants and the racial and ethnic relations between new and old minorities.
Subject
Topic
immigration
Subject
Topic
race & ethnicity
Subject
Topic
urban sociology
Subject (FAST) (authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/908690")
Topic
Emigration and immigration
Subject (FAST) (authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/1123961")
Topic
Sociology, Urban
Record Information
Record Content Source (marcorg)
RPB
Record Creation Date (encoding="iso8601")
20131219
Language
Language Term: Code (ISO639-2B)
eng
Language Term: Text
English
Identifier: DOI
10.7301/Z0FT8JCZ
Access Condition: rights statement (href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/")
In Copyright
Access Condition: restriction on access
All rights reserved. Collection is open to the Brown community for research.
Type of Resource (primo)
dissertations