Achieving Identities: Black Ivy Graduates and Meaning Making at the Intersections

• In Event: 324 - Section on Race, Gender, and Class Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 02. RGC and Education

Abstract

Departing from a social determinism that assumes an oversimplified relationship between class status and racial identification among black elites, I use the case of blacks educated at elite universities to advance a changeable and conditional relationship between the two. The two views that have dominated the discourse are crystallized in E. Franklin Frazier’s conception of the black elite as an intentionally separate, self interested, status seeking group of social climbers failing in its responsibility to the masses, aware of its privileged position, but unwilling to participate in any collective racial project and Du Bois’ conception of the black elite as a vanguard advancing the race, embracing its leadership role in the larger black population. I use a combination of methods to explore the social political realities of black elites, highlighting the multi-positionality of the status and the ways privilege and disadvantage operate simultaneously within it. The research emphasizes the narratives black educational elites construct around their career, family, social and residential choices and consumer and political behavior to shed light on their various allegiances and the roles they play in the disparate social worlds they occupy. By illuminating the varied cultural scripts from which blacks elites draw, I offer a multiple, multi-vocal corrective approach to the limited understanding of the practices and norms of the myriad groups that comprise the U.S. black population.

Author

• Nina A. Johnson, Northwestern University