Heritage in the Making: How Black Elite Parents Negotiate Cultural Transmission (Poster 24)

• In Event: AERA Poster Session Friday 11:45am
  In Invited Poster Session: AERA Promising Scholarship in Education Research: Dissertation Fellows and Their Research Poster Session

Abstract

What, if any, roles do wealth, education, and culture play in the genealogy of Black elites in the United States? Drawing on interviews with 48 well-resourced Black families across multiple U.S. cities, this work examines how well-resourced Black parents' pre-parenthood experiences—their origin stories, educational formations, professional pathways, and racial identity work—shape their cultural transmission goals and parenting philosophies. By tracing how cumulative experiences of racialization and class mobility inform parents' visions for family identity, this work demonstrates that Black elite identity formation is neither monolithic nor static, but rather emerges through complex negotiations of migration, memory, education, professional achievement, and the ongoing work of defining what it means to be Black in elite spaces.

Author

• Chinyere Odim, Brown University