Strategies for success among African-Americans and Afro-Caribbeans : overachieve, be cheerful, or confront / Chrystal Y. Grey and Thomas Janoski.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Grey, Chrystal Y., author.

Janoski, Thomas, author.

Series:

Critical Africana studies

Critical Africana studies : African, African American, and Caribbean interdisciplinary and intersectional studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

African Americans--Social conditions.

African Americans.

Black people--West Indies, British--Social conditions.

Black people.

Social mobility--United States.

Social mobility.

Black people--Race identity.

Social conditions.

United States.

Social mobility--West Indies, British.

African Americans--Race identity.

Black people--Race identity--West Indies, British.

Black people--Social conditions.

West Indies--British West Indies.

Physical Description:

xxxv, 188 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Lanham, Maryland : Lexington Books, [2018]

Summary:

How can African-Americans and Afro-Caribbeans from the former British colonies be so different in their approaches toward social mobility? Chrystal Y. Grey and Thomas Janoski state that this is because native blacks grow up as "strangers" in their own country and immigrants from the English-speaking Caribbean are conversely part of "the dominant group." Unlike previous research that compares highly educated Afro-Caribbeans to the broad range of African-Americans, this study holds social class constant by looking only at successful blacks in the upper-middle class from both groups. This book finds that African-Americans pursue overachievement strategies of working much harder than others do, while Afro-Caribbeans follow an optimistic job strategy expecting promotions and success. However, African-Americans are more likely to use confrontational strategies if their mobility is blocked. The main cause of these differences is that Afro-Caribbeans grow up in a system where they have many examples of black politicians and business leaders (35% -90% of their countries are black) and African-Americans have fewer role models (12-14% of the United States are black). Further, the schooling system in Afro-Caribbean countries does not label blacks as underachievers because the schools are almost entirely black. A further problem that African-Americans face is the resentment of a small but significant number of blacks who have little social mobility. They accuse socially mobile African-Americans of "acting white," which is a phenomenon that Afro-Caribbeans almost never face and they call it "an African-American thing." To demonstrate this difference, Strategies for Success among African-Americans and Afro-Caribbeans does a historical-comparative analysis of the differences between the black experience after slavery in the United States and Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, and St. Kitts-Nevis. The authors interview fifty-seven black people and find consistent differences between the US and Caribbean black citizens. Using theories of symbolic interaction and ressentiment, this work challenges previous studies that either claim that Afro-Caribbeans are more motivated than African-Americans, or studies that show that controlling for class, each group is more or less the same. Book jacket.

Contents:

Introduction: While both are successful, how can they be so different?

The constraints and opportunities of vastly different Black histories

The diverse identities of Black Americans and Caribbeans

Crafting basic strategies for success

Using more complex strategies for success at work and in the public

Viewing the other : defending strategies of success among fellow Blacks

Conclusion and advice to the ambitious

Appendix A: Methodologies and participation in the study

Appendix B: Semi-structured questionnaire.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Grey, Chrystal Y. Strategies for success among African-Americans and Afro-Caribbeans.

ISBN:

9781498554497

1498554490

OCLC:

1004512028