Drawing on data collected during a 2-year Economic and Social Research Council-funded project exploring the educational perspectives and strategies of middle-class families with a Black Caribbean heritage, this paper examines how participants, in professional or managerial occupations, position themselves in relation to the label 'middle class'.
Reports on data drawn from a study exploring the educational strategies of 62 Black Caribbean heritage middle-class parents. Considers the roles of race and class in the shaping of parents' educational strategies.
Argues that the task for the researcher is attempting to understand how race and class differently interact in particular contexts. Concludes that a focus on Black Caribbean heritage families can further develop the concept of concerted cultivation, and demonstrate the complex ways in which, for these families, such a strategy is a tool of social reproduction but also functions as attempted protection against racism in White mainstream society.
Draws on qualitative data exploring the experiences of first-generation middle-class Black Caribbean-heritage parents, their own parents, and their children. Focuses on the different ways in which race and class intersect in shaping attitudes towards education and subsequent educational practices.
Develops a theoretical framework of biopolitical performance with which to approach the 1957 televised broadcast of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn's A Drum Is a Woman. Presented on the drama anthology program The United States Steel Hour, this theater-music-dance suite fused elements of Afro-Caribbean rhythm with swing and bebop to tell a history of jazz, featuring acclaimed performers such as Carmen de Lavallade, Margaret Tynes, Joya Sherrill, and Talley Beatty. Argues that through their experimentation Ellington and Strayhorn created a hybrid performance in the mode of "calypso theater": a formal and thematic engagement with an Afro-Caribbean performance history.