“Talking Black”: Examining Black Immigrant Youth’s Cultural Identity Through Peer Culture and Black American English

Abstract

The process of adopting Black culture as manifested in the United States is one that many Black immigrants undergo. This chapter focuses on Black immigrant adolescents' cultural identity development in the United States. Like immigrants from other ethnic groups, these first-and second-generation adolescents of African or Caribbean descent learn to navigate and balance their cultures of origin with the destination (host) culture (Berry, 2005). For many, the differences between the two cultural frames can cause some conflict for the individual immigrant and their families (Benet-Martinez & Haritatos, 2005). In this chapter, the host culture under consideration is the Black American (sub)culture: As racially Black, there is an implicit expectation that Black immigrant youth learn about, adopt, and grow to identify with Black American culture, despite inherent ethnic differences. For Black immigrant youth especially, there are several socializing spaces that can promote a connection to Black American culture, including schools, communities, and peer groups.This chapter examines the peer ecology as a critical context for cultural identity development. The developmental literature cites peer relationships as a critical influence on adolescents and their evolving senses of self (Phinney et al., 2001;Rageliene, 2016). Through peer socialization, immigrant adolescents can also internalize aspects of culture and language. This chapter uses qualitative data to explore how Black immigrant youth, through their peers, learn about and grow fluent in Black American English 1 (BAE) or the dialect that has been spoken by generations of Black Americans (Smitherman, 1977). The responses from a small focus group study provide evidence for this chapter's organizing framework where I argue that Black American youth peer culture is a catalyst for language exploration which then 1 This language has also been known elsewhere as African American Vernacular English, Ebonics, African American Language, and Black English Vernacular, among other names (Long, 2003). B. Thelamour (*)