Keeping it in the family: Cultural socialization among Haitian American families

Abstract

The broad areas of ethnic and racial socialization have been studied as essential aspects of immigrant and African American families. Yet, there has been less understanding of how these processes intersect, specifically within second-generation Black immigrant families. This article draws on 41 interviews and 10 months of ethnographic fieldwork to explore how ethnically-identified Haitian American parents transmit ethnicity and prepare their children to navigate systems of racial oppression. Findings demonstrate how these processes operate concurrently within second-generation Black immigrant families amidst parental motivation for transmitting ethnicity across generations and the realities of raising Black children in a majority-minority city.