Doctoral Dissertation Research: Black, Brown or Asian? : Afro- and Indo-Caribbean Immigrants Encounter Race in the United States

University Of Chicago, Chicago IL

Investigators

Abstract

Scholars have traditionally understood the American racial hierarchy through the lens of the "Black-White" color line, reflecting the primacy of our most historically consequential axis of racial distinction. However, the old Black-White model is increasingly inadequate for understanding racial and ethnic categories in the United States. The declining primacy of the Black-White model of race relations highlights the urgent need for scholarship on relationships between racial/ethnic minority groups. This project addresses this emerging need by examining inter-minority stratification between those classified as Black and those classified as Asian by taking advantage of the unique case of Afro and Indo-Caribbean immigrants to the United States. Both groups share similar cultural backgrounds while being classified in the United States into different racial/ethnic groups. The analysis combines a quantitative study of the earnings and residential locations of Afro and Asian Caribbean immigrants to the United States with in-depth interviews of immigrants that seek to better understand their own racial and ethnic identification in their adopted home country. This project will enrich our understanding of how inter-minority relations will likely to reshape 21st Century America's increasingly diverse, and rapidly shifting racial and ethnic landscape. Using the case of Afro- and Indo-Caribbean immigrants, this study thus examines: (1) How Black and Asian phenotypes are being treated in the labor and housing market, controlling for cultural characteristics and human capital (2) How culturally integrated Black and Asian immigrants from the same sending societies react to American racial categories, and (3) What factors predict the kinds of ethno-racial choices that Afro- and Indo-Caribbeans make in response to US racial categories. The first question assesses the effect of racial ascription on socio-economic opportunity. The latter questions examine how racial identification may recursively reshape the prevailing racial hierarchy. A mixed-methods approach is used to answer these questions. Multivariate analyses of data from the American Community Survey's Public Use Micro-Data Samples are used to compare structural incorporation outcomes among Afro- and Indo-Caribbeans in the US. One year of ethnographic observation, and data from 120 extended interviews are used to shed light on how Afro- and Indo-Caribbean immigrants make ethno-racial choices in response to the American racial context. Fieldwork will be conducted in New York, which has long been the primary destination for Afro- and Indo-Caribbean immigrants to the US, and which today still boasts America's largest Caribbean populations. This study will shed valuable light on the evolving nature of racial/ethnic relations in 21st Century America's increasingly diverse mosaic.