Overview

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.

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9781498554497

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Grey and Janoski have produced a ground-breaking comparative study of mobility among African Americans and Afro-Caribbeans in the U.S. Drawing on both social psychological and historical-structural analysis, they deploy multiple perspectives and methods to examine each populations' means of understanding and coping with racism. Avoiding the cultural and class biases of previous studies, the authors investigate the unique background and context in which each group is embedded. Then, drawing on symbolic interactionist methods, they analyze interviews which allow them to identify a number of strategies respondents use to work towards success in American society. Strategies for Success among African-Americans and Afro-Caribbeans offers significant advances in theory, methodology, and research design over existing inquiry into racialized populations. In so doing, the book contributes greatly to our understanding of race, culture, group identity, and social stratification. -- Steve Gold, Michigan State University

Grey and Janoski have produced a ground-breaking comparative study of mobility among African Americans and Afro-Caribbeans in the U.S. Drawing on both social psychological and historical-structural analysis, they deploy multiple perspectives and methods to examine each populations' means of understanding and coping with racism. Avoiding the cultural and class biases of previous studies, the authors investigate the unique background and context in which each group is embedded. Then, drawing on symbolic interactionist methods, they analyze interviews which allow them to identify a number of strategies respondents use to work towards success in American society. Strategies for Success among African-Americans and Afro-Caribbeans offers significant advances in theory, methodology, and research design over existing inquiry into racialized populations. In so doing, the book contributes greatly to our understanding of race, culture, group identity, and social stratification.--Steve Gold, Michigan State University A superb analysis of how variation in the size of the black community accounts for differences in the ways that African Americans and Afro-Caribbeans respond to discrimination.--Suzanne Model, emerita, University of Massachusetts at Amherst

Author Information

Chrystal Y. Grey earned her doctorate in sociology from the University of Kentucky. Thomas Janoski is professor of sociology at the University of Kentucky.

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