Sociology and Anthropology Department

How does ethnic identity manifest among contemporary second-generation West Indian youth? In this essay I argue that the ethnic identities of post-1990s second-generation West Indian youth in Brooklyn are best characterized as “hybrid identities.”  Diaspora communities like the one created by West Indian immigrants in Brooklyn provide ideal conditions for the development of hybrid identities, the fusion of two or more cultures coexisting in a single individual (Smith and Leavy, 2008).  In addition to the question already posed, this paper will explicate how second-generation West Indian youth experience, make sense of and express the inherent complexity of  identities that emerge from living in a hybrid cultural space.  My analyses are based on the premise that there is something new and different about the way in which second-generation West Indian youth today conceptualize their ethnic identities (Richards, 2007) as opposed to their representation in publications based on the Brooklyn West Indian experience  in the 1980s and early1990s (Waters, 2001, Zephir, 2001).  Most prominent among them is the work of Waters (2001) who described a cultural disconnect between most working class West Indian youth and their immigrant parents.  Waters, (2001)  and others predict that the greater salience of ethnicity among middle class youth would rapidly erode, much like their working class counterparts,  as racial discrimination became a more prominent fixture in the lives of these young people (Waters, 2001; Portes and Rumbaut, 2001;  Kasinitz, Battle  and Miyares,  2001).

Sorting out the various macro and micro causes of black mothers' downward residential mobility is extremely difficult, though past research has been fairly successful in identifying and explaining the mechanisms by which structural factors constrain black residential change. The sociohistorical context in which black mothers operate, however, is largely ignored in these studies. We argue that past scholarship on black women's social history offers some helpful insights into the " residential desires and decision making " related to black women's social location. This article pinpoints instances of downward residential mobility among a sample of disadvantaged black mothers and works to elucidate both structurally and culturally related circumstances that help to explain them. In particular, it seeks to connect " residential desires and decision making " to sentiments black women have had historically toward their family and community obligations. This study interweaves quantitative and qualitative data from the Baltimore Study, which traces the movement of disadvantaged black mothers in and out of socioeconomic categories, including in and out of poor neighborhoods over a thirty-year period of their life course (approximately 1968–1996).

The black immigrant population in New York City has grown exponentially since 1990, such that West Indians now compose the majority of the black population in several neighborhoods.  This article examines how this ethnic density manifests among youth in high school, and how it influenced ethnic identity formation among second-generation West Indians. My findings are based on twenty-four interviews and eight months of participant observation in two Brooklyn high schools from 2003-04.  The results show that in both schools, Caribbean island identities have become a ‘cool’ commodity within peer groups. Further, although it was important to express pride in one’s island identity, these young people often blurred their national origin boundaries by drawing on Jamaican popular culture as way of projecting a unified ‘West Indian identity’.  The research also uncovers evidence of a destigmatization of Haitianness as a way to incorporate them as cultural insiders into the larger Caribbean collective.

Although social inequality is critical to the study of sociology, it is particularly challenging to teach about race, class and gender inequality to students who belong to privileged social groups. Simulation games are often used successfully to address this pedagogical challenge. While debriefing is a critical component of simulation exercises that focus on teaching about social inequality, empirical assessments of the significance and effectiveness of this tool is virtually non-existent in sociology and other social sciences. This paper analyzes the significance of debriefing in a simulation game called " Cultural Capital in the Classroom " in order to address this lacunae in the pedagogy literature. The analyses reveal that the simulation contributed to students developing a greater degree of empathy for the working class and that the individual debriefing was a crucial step in developing students' critical thinking skills. Students gain even deeper insights during the collective debriefing session, which influenced them to question the validity of the ideology of meritocracy.

The tracking literature examines how academic hierarchies contribute to race and class differences in
academic achievement, but it pays scant attention to how school structures also influence students’ racial
and ethnic identities. Relatedly, race/ethnicity and immigration scholars focus on how schools serve as sites
for observing the social construction of racial and ethnic identities but do not account for how school
structures actively shape these identity outcomes. This study makes a contribution to the immigration,
race/ethnicity, and education literatures by examining how academic tracking influences the racial and
ethnic identities of second-generation West Indian students. Consistent with the tracking literature,
the author finds that Mayfield High School’s academic hierarchy contributes to the racialization of West
Indian students and, in doing so, intensifies their racial group consciousness. It also shows how academic
tracking simultaneously increases the salience of ethnic identity among Afro-Caribbean students. These
findings point to the significance of educational institutions in shaping racialization processes in schools and
contribute to broader conversations regarding the evolution of the color line in American society.

This article argues that visual representations of the U.S.–Mexico border wall in the popular media, including Time Magazine and National Geographic, portray the border region as lifeless and desolate. These representations negate the possibility of viewing the border as a dynamic and diverse area that is verdant and home to communities and rich cultural histories. The article begins with an overview of popular representations of the U.S.–Mexico border, focusing on the ways that this imagery reinforces calls for militarizing it. The authors then offer alternative representations of the border through their own anthropological photo essay of the U.S.–Mexico border wall.

Live music political events thrived during the year 2000 as marketers praised their ability
to animate “ethnic” publics.  I analyze one such effort, jointly hosted by the Democratic
National Committee and the Hidalgo County Democratic Party, with contradictory
assessments on its function and capacity.  In this article, I show how central the
segmentation of national and local politics are to these contrasting visions democracy.
The local-national disconnect underscores the operation of a model of democracy as
consumer choice and its implications for democratic participation.