Living Between Stigma and Status: A Qualitative Study of the Social Identities of Highly Educated Black Canadian Adults

Abstract

This article draws on qualitative interviews to explore the commonalities, contradictions, and tensions in the identities and lived experiences of 16 highly educated and upwardly mobile Black Canadians who were born and raised in Canada or born in another country and raised in Canada. In contrast to both popular and scholarly discourses that essentialize Black people, the experiences and perceptions of study participants were characterized by polyconsciousness, ambivalence, fluidity, and hybridity. Most reported feeling a simultaneous sense of estrangement and belonging in a Canadian context largely perceived as Eurocentric and White centered. A sense of alienation from Canada led many to embrace their transplanted ethnocultural heritage as well as a transcendent Black racial identity. Despite the protective and empowering function that a Black identity can provide in the context of a society perceived to be racist, most participants shared a complex and conflicted relationship with Blackness. While many embraced essentialist and counterhegemonic constructions of Black identity, they also resisted the discursive constraints of this and other identity categories. Because of their academic and occupational accomplishments along with other factors, participants reported occasionally having to defend or justify their Blackness to racialized peers. Finally, many participants viewed middle-class ideals of success as a vehicle for improving the plight of the Black community as a whole. In this vein, these individuals attempted to use their educational and career success to challenge racial stereotypes, furnish youth with positive role models, and equip Black people to become agents of social change.

Notes

¹I consider my research participants to possess a middle-class consciousness insofar as they have “assimilated middle-class norms and values” through their undergraduate educations and are pursuing or have achieved middle-class careers (Cockerman, as cited in Beagan, 2001, p. 586). Being middle class is not simply a matter of educational attainment or income, but a form of consciousness in which certain values, norms, and aspirations are embraced.

^aDenotes participant of mixed race.

^bFor participants not born in Canada, age of arrival in Canada is indicated in parentheses.

²Each person was sent via electronic mail his or her interview transcript and a penultimate draft of the doctoral dissertation from which this article emerged. Fifteen of the 16 individuals who took part in this study received these materials. The contact information for one participant, Jane, changed without my knowledge and I therefore was unable to send the items to her.

³I am a Canadian-born Black man who, at the time that I undertook this research, was a PhD candidate in my early thirties. The fact that I am a Black investigator could have been a double-edged sword in this particular research context. On the one hand, this racialized status may have provided a basis on which to build rapport and secure the trust of some participants. On the other hand, it might have introduced a particular kind of bias into the interview process because some participants may have perceived me as wanting to hear more about certain types of experiences than others.