Drawing on data from a two-year ESRC-funded project into The Educational Strategies of the Black Middle Classes,1 this article examines how middle class blacks negotiate survival in a society marked by race and class discrimination. It considers respondents’ school experiences, marked as they are by incidents of Othering and racism and explores both the processes by which they came to an awareness of their status as racially minoritized and how they made sense of and managed such incidents. The majority of our respondents have made the transition from working class to middle class during their lifetimes. It is argued that these early formative experiences of racism and this class transition have facilitated the development of a complex set of capitals upon which middle class blacks are able to draw in order to signal their class identity to white others therefore minimizing the probability of racial discrimination.
BourdieuP (1986) Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste. London: Routledge.
2.
CarbadoDGulatiM (2004) Race to the top of the corporate ladder: What minorities do when they get there. Washington & Lee Law Review61: 1645–1693.
3.
CooperFR (2005) Against bipolar black masculinity: Intersectionality, assimilation, identity performance, and hierarchy. University of California Davis Law Review (39): 853–906.
4.
DuBoisWEB (1996) The Souls of Black Folk. London: Penguin.
5.
FanonF (1967) Black skin, White masks. London: Pluto Press.
6.
GillbornD (2008). Racism and Education: Coincidence or Conspiracy?London: Routledge.
7.
GilmanS (1992) Black bodies, white bodies: Towards an iconography of female sexuality in late nineteenth century art, medicine and literature. In: DonaldJRattansiA (eds) ‘Race’, culture and difference. London: Sage and Open University Press.
8.
HallS (1997) Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London: Sage.
9.
HewittR (1986) White Talk Black Talk: Inter-racial Friendship and Communication Amongst Adolescents. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
10.
HillM (2002) Skin color and the perception of attractiveness among African Americans: Does gender make a difference?Social Psychology Quarterly65(1): 77–91
11.
HobsonJ (2003) The ‘batty’ politic: Toward an aesthetics of the black female body. Hypatia18 (4), Fall/Winter, 87–105
12.
hooksb (2000) Where We Stand: Class Matters. New York: Routledge.
13.
hooksb (1992) Black Looks: Race and Representation. Cambridge, MA: South End Press.
14.
HunterML (2005) Race, Gender and the Politics of Skin Tone. Oxford: Routledge.
15.
KingJE (1995) Culture centered knowledge: Black studies, curriculum transformation and social action. In: BanksJEBanksCM (eds) Handbook of research on multicultural education. New York: Macmillan.
16.
KorhonenA (2005) Washing the Ethiopian white: Conceptualising black skin in renaissance England. In: EarleTFLoweKJP (eds) Black Africans in Renaissance Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
17.
LacyK (2007) Blue-Chip Black: Race, Class and Status in the New Black Middle Class. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
18.
Ladson-BillingsGDonnorJ (2008) The moral activist role of critical race theory scholarship. In: DenzinNKLincolnYS (eds) The Landscape of Qualitative Research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
McKenleyJ (2005) Seven Black Men: An Ecological Study of Education and Parenting. Bristol: Aduma Books.
21.
MooreK (2008) Class formations: Competing forms of black middle-class identity. Ethnicities8(4): 492–517.
22.
PlattL (2009) Ethnicity and family. Relationships Within and Between Ethnic Groups: An Analysis using the Labour Force Survey. London: EHRC & Institute for Social & Economic Research, University of Essex.
ReynoldsT (2009) Exploring the absent/present dilemma: Black fathers, family relationships and social capital in Britain, The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science624(12): 12–28.
25.
RollockN (2006) Black School Governors in London. London: London Metropolitan University.
26.
RollockN (2011) Unspoken rules of engagement: Navigating racial microaggressions in the academic terrain. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, First published on: 25 February 2011 (iFirst).
27.
RollockNVincentCGillbornDBallS (under review) Middle class by profession: Class status and identification amongst the Black middle classes.
28.
StrandS (2008) Minority Ethnic Pupils in the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England Extension Report on Performance in Public Examinations at Age 16. Research Report DCSF RR-029, London: DCSF.
29.
VincentCBallS(forthcoming) Being strategic, being watchful, being determined: Black Middle Class parents and schooling.
30.
WoodMHalesJPurdonSSejersenTHayllarO (2009) A test for racial discrimination in recruitment practice in British cities. Research Report No 607. Norwich: Department for Work and Pensions.
31.
YoungIM (1990) Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
