Balancing stigma and status: racial and class identities among middle-class Haitian youth

This article examines the identity formation of middle-class Haitian youth. Segmented assimilation theory predicts that the Haitian second generation will integrate into the black American underclass or maintain strong ethnic group identities. The black middle class, however, is an unexplored pathway of cultural assimilation. This paper uses the literature on the racial and class experiences of the black American middle class as a departure point for understanding the boundary work of middle-class Haitian youth. Based on qualitative interviews and a focus group, we uncover the mechanisms of identity formation for this invisible population. Racial, ethnic and class boundaries compel Haitian youths to create strategies of either empowerment or distancing. They negotiate between their middle-class status and ethnoracial exclusion in a racially segregated neighbourhood, an ethnically homogenous church and a mixed-race school setting. This study's findings extend our theoretical understandings of middle-class immigrants and their identity work.     

Sociocultural Factors and School Engagement Among African American Youth: The Roles of Racial Discrimination,Racial Socialization,and Ethnic Identity

This study investigated the links between racial discrimination and school engagement and the roles of racial socialization and ethnic identity as protective factors in those linkages in a sample of 148, sixth through twelfth grade African American adolescents from working and middle-class two-parent families. In home interviews, youth described their ethnic identity, discrimination experiences at school, and school engagement (school bonding, school grades, school self-esteem), and parents rated their racial socialization practices. Analyses revealed that discrimination was negatively related to school self-esteem and school bonding. Racial socialization had additive effects on school self-esteem and school bonding, but did not moderate the discrimination—school engagement association. For boys, ethnic identity had additive effects on school bonding, but for girls, ethnic identity moderated the relation between discrimination and school bonding: when girls experienced more discrimination and had a lower ethnic identity, they reported lower school bonding. Discrimination, racial socialization, and ethnic identity were not related to school grades.     

Student Voice as Agency: Resistance and Accommodation in Inner-City Schools

In this article we describe the results of a comparative case study of two inner-city high schools located in the southeastern United States. One school, a citywide school with high admission standards, enrolls an all-African American lower-to-middle-class population. The other school enrolls a more ethnically and racially diverse population of students from a single lower-class neighborhood. Using Grossberg's notion of identity politics, we describe how students' racial/ ethnic identity to a greater or lesser degree becomes both a means of resistance and accommodation to white hegemony.     

Puerto Rican High Achievers: An Example of Ethnic and Academic Identity Compatibility

Although research finds that members of some involuntary minority ethnic groups tend to develop oppositional identities, Puerto Rican students studied in this research project at an urban high school did not associate school success with "whiteness." These students were academically successful while still maintaining their ethnic identity. They were not accused of acting white, did not mask their academic accomplishments, and did not assume raceless personas. Different conceptualizations of ethnicity, sociohistorical context, and class may account for their maintenance of ethnic identity while achieving success in school.     

Navigating Cultural Crosscurrents: (Post)anthropological Passages through High School

This article presents a (post)anthropological framework for understanding adolescent coming-of-age in U.S. public high schools. Coming-of-age is conceived as a complex, fluid, seemingly contradictory process of identity formation and community integration in which adolescents representing diverse ethnic, racial, gender, and social class locations navigate myriad conflicting cultural crosscurrents through cultural productions within the institutional structures of their schools as well as economic, kinship, religious, and political domains of community life. A case study of an underachieing Mexican American senior shows how these navigations may open up creative possibilities as adolescents make their passages through high school.     

Ethnic identity on display: West Indian youth and the creation of ethnic boundaries in high school

The black immigrant population in New York City has grown exponentially since 1990, such that West Indians now compose the majority of the black population in several neighbourhoods. This article examines how this ethnic density manifests among youth in high school, and how it has influenced ethnic identity formation among second-generation West Indians. My findings are based on twenty-four interviews and eight months of participant observation in two Brooklyn high schools from 2003 to 2004. The results show that in both schools, Caribbean island identities have become a ‘cool’ commodity within peer groups. Further, although it was important to express pride in one's island identity, these young people often blurred their national origin boundaries by drawing on Jamaican popular culture as way of projecting a unified ‘West Indian identity’. The research also uncovers evidence of a de-stigmatization of Haitianness as a way to incorporate them as cultural insiders into the larger Caribbean collective.     

What Does Africa Have to Do with Being African American? A Microethnographic Analysis of a Middle School Inquiry Unit on Africa

In the United States, "race" and "black identity" are becoming more complex with the increasing numbers of individuals who identify as "black and foreignborn." Emanating from a year-long study in an urban middle school classroom and a microethnographic investigation of a two-week unit on Africa, this article employs a Pan-African framework to examine how schools and the broader society serve as sites where black identity is contested. The article concludes with implications for education, society, and the study of race and black identity in classroom life.     

Schooling, Language, and Ethnic Identity in the Basque Autonomous Community

Basque-versus Spanish-schooled students in San Sebastian, Spain, understand ethnic identity differently. The former are more likely to speak Basque and to consider the Basque language key to Basque identity. The latter are more likely to claim "biethnic" identities based on territory. The Basque case suggests that an understanding of educational efforts to reverse language shift require an examination of the language ideologies reigning in popular culture, the public sphere, and the home and school domains.     

Coming of Age in a Multicultural World: Globalization and Adolescent Cultural Identity Formation

The aim of this article is to explore implications of globalization for adolescent cultural identity formation. The thesis is that adolescents increasingly form multicultural identities because they grow up knowing diverse cultural beliefs and behaviors. First, ways that adolescents increasingly have exposure to different cultures are illustrated with ethnographic and cross-cultural work. Then, 3 emerging research issues are raised: (a) the extent to which it is important whether a multicultural identity is based on first-hand versus indirect (media-based) interactions with diverse peoples, (b) how cultural identity formation may take diverse developmental paths depending on the particular cultures involved, and (c) gains and losses that occur when persons form a multicultural identity rather than an identity based primarily on one cultural tradition. Finally, the article suggests using multiple methods that are sensitive to different perspectives in research on globalization and adolescent identity formation.     

Affiliative ethnic identity: a more elastic link between ethnic ancestry and culture

This paper explains the development of affiliative ethnic identity: an individual identity rooted in knowledge, regular consumption and deployment of an ethnic culture that is unconnected to an individual's ethnic ancestry until that individual regards herself, and may be regarded by others, as an affiliate of a particular ethnic group. While ethnic culture remains identifiably linked to a particular ethnic ancestry, ideological, institutional and demographic changes have elasticized the link between ancestry and culture, making the formation of affiliative ethnic identity possible. Multiculturalism and its accompanying value of diversity have become institutionalized such that individuals regard ethnic difference as something to be recognized and celebrated. The prevalence of ethnic culture in schools, ethnically infused products of popular culture, demographic changes and growing interethnic contact allow individuals, regardless of ethnic ancestry, ready access to multiple ethnic cultures, providing the basis for the formation of affiliative ethnic identity.     

‘I don't want to see it’: decoupling ethnicity and class from social structure in Jewish Israeli high schools

Social inequality in Israel's education system has often been analysed with top-down structural models. This study inquires, instead, how students understand their position in the stratified structure of opportunities at school. Our quantitative and qualitative data, gathered in Jewish high schools in Israel, indicate that, despite clear ethno-class distribution in academic tracking, students reject the logic of identity politics and consider ‘free will’ to be the main factor determining tracking. In light of the Jewish-Israeli national identity, which rejects class and ethnic divides, the reference point for the system of classification at school shifts to the autonomous individual. Our findings show that students use consumerist and psychological discourses to dismantle ethno-class identities and depoliticize the classification system at school.     

All right,Vegemite! 1 The everyday constitution of an Australian national identity

In the past seventy years the food‐spread, Vegemite, has become a symbol of Australian national identity. This paper examines the historical process by which this identity has been constituted, focussing on advertisements of Vegemite in print and on television from approximately 1923 to 1960. The marketing of Vegemite during this period coincided both with the desire for a distinctive national identity and with technological developments in food processing, communications, and health care. The promoters of these images and messages, drawing upon an egalitarian ideal of good health for all and the belief in the benefits of science, have also emphasized Vegemite's contribution to the health of Australian children. These early childhood associations with Vegemite and school suggest how the everyday intimacies of food contribute to a sense of a national identity.     

Beyond the 'Village' Rhetoric: Creating Healthy Communities for Children and Adolescents

In this article, we explore the intertwining of moral identity and the social and cultural context. First, we review existing research on moral identity that has considered the role of social others and the cultural environment. Then we pose questions to further research in this area and offer a 3-level framework with which to understand how the cultural world influences moral identity development. Central to this framework is an analysis of the cultural practices within which moral identities develop, as well as the institutional contexts that support these practices and the social interactions that comprise them. Finally, we illustrate the components of framework using examples of data from 2 studies-1 focused on how an inner city Muslim school worked to foster the moral identities of students and the other on the development of civic identities among urban teens in a community action program.     

Formation of ethnic and racial identities: narratives by young Asian-American professionals

This article examines Asian-American professionals’ ethnic and pan-ethnic attachments and identities through fifteen autobiographical essays. Classical assimilation theory predicts that well-educated Asian-American professionals will be highly acculturated into the white middle class, with little retention of their ethnic subculture; yet many of our essayists had strong, bicultural orientations. Their high level of social assimilation, reflected in their friendships and intimate relationships with whites, indicates that Asian Americans can socially assimilate without relinquishing their culture. Most of the 1.5 and second-generation essayists tried to hide their ethnic culture and non-white characteristics during their early school years. Yet, they experienced a painful but gradual establishment of an ethnic identity, usually beginning in their college years. Some contributors also expressed varying degrees of pan-Asian identity and a moderate level of Third World racial identity.     

Borders of violence - boundaries of identity: demarcating the Eritrean nation-state

This article explores the concepts of borders and boundaries in the formation of an Eritrean national identity. The dialectical relationship between the State of Eritrea and its borders towards the Sudan and Ethiopia are addressed in order to analyse how this relationship influences the formation of a 'formal' national identity. The cultural, political, religious and historical configuration of the Eritrean frontiers makes it difficult to demarcate a particular Eritrean identity, distinguishing it from Sudanese ethnic and religious identities or historical-politico and ethnic Ethiopian identities. The Eritrean border conflicts with the Sudan and Ethiopia are used as empirical cases to show how state violence through the mobilization of the multi-ethnic national army is employed in order to manifest a significant other that the 'formal' Eritrean national identity may be contrasted against. The article concludes that the Eritrean boundaries of identity and borders of territory are still in the making, and what they will eventually embrace and contain remains to be seen.     

Notes and news

Some anthropologists perceive an increasing nationalisation or even globalisation of cultures and identities. Others, however, stress that in many places villagers assert their right to a local identity. This article discusses how the inhabitants of the Dutch island of Texel have renegotiated and articulated their identity within the context of processes of nation building and state formation in the Netherlands. It aims to show that nationalisation of culture and localisation of identity are inextricably intertwined.     

The (dis)similarities of white racial identities: the conceptual framework of ‘hegemonic whiteness’

This article examines the processes of white racial identity formation in the United States via an examination of a white nationalist organization and a white antiracist organization. Findings indicate that the construction of white racial identity in both groups is based on the reproduction of various racist and essentialist ideologies. The realization that there is a shared ‘groupness’ to outwardly different white identities has the potential to destabilize the recent trend that over-emphasizes white heterogeneity at the expense of discussion of power, racism and discrimination. As a resolution to this analytic dilemma, this article advances a conceptual framework entitled ‘hegemonic whiteness’. White identity formation is thereby understood as a cultural process in which (1) racist, reactionary and essentialist ideologies are used to demarcate inter-racial boundaries, and (2) performances of white racial identity that fail to meet those ideals are marginalized and stigmatized, thereby creating intra-racial distinctions within the category ‘white’.     

Gender and ethnic identity among second-generation Indo-Caribbeans

This article discusses second-generation Indo-Caribbean (West Indian of Indian descent) teenagers’ ethnic identities, through a look at their taste preferences and self assertions of identity. Both Indo-Caribbean young men and women draw from multiple influences on their identities. In terms of tastes in clothing and movies, however, girls are more interested in things Indian, and in “Indian culture”. Boys, on the other hand, choose to distance themselves from an Indian identity. Three factors explain these gender differences in choices about ethnic identity: (1) different media images for South Asian men and women; (2) a school context lending different levels of peer symbolic status to perceived Indian boys and girls; and (3) a gendered process of migration by which women maintain stronger cultural roots in the new country. The findings in this article point to the need to pay attention to gender differences when considering ethnic incorporation.     

Lona's Links: Postoppositional Identity Work of Urban Youths

The postoppositional identity work of urban high school students is described. The youths had engaged in oppositional identity work that led to breakages with their worlds. Lona was a central figure who forged symbolic and social links that enabled the youths to construct "true" selves and to express identities in ethical relation to others. Lona's links engendered a politics of reconciliation that empowered marginalized youths to resituate their selves within, and transform, their worlds.     

Recent advances in plant centromere biology

The centromere, which is one of the essential parts of a chromosome, controls kinetochore formation and chromosome segregation during mitosis and meiosis. While centromere function is conserved in eukaryotes, the centromeric DNA sequences evolve rapidly and have few similarities among species. The histone H3 variant CENH3(CENP-A in human), which mostly exists in centromeric nucleosomes, is a universal active centromere mark in eukaryotes and plays an essential role in centromere identity determination. The relationship between centromeric DNA sequences and centromere identity determination is one of the intriguing questions in studying centromere formation. Due to the discoveries in the past decades, including "neocentromeres" and "centromere inactivation", it is now believed that the centromere identity is determined by epigenetic mechanisms. This review will present recent progress in plant centromere biology.