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

Abstract

Spanish

French

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.

Keywords

Cultural socialization ethnic socialization Haitian Americans racial socialization second-generation

Introduction

The family plays a significant role in how children learn about race and racism (Hughes et al., 2006), privilege and power (Hagerman, 2018), class (Barnes, 2016; Dow, 2019; Lareau, 2003), and cultural traditions (Jacobson, 2008). Much of the scholarship has bifurcated racial and ethnic socialization practices. Racial socialization primarily focused on how African American families teach children to navigate systemic racism (Barnes, 2016; Dow, 2019) while simultaneously ensuring positive self-esteem (Collins, 2016). This scholarship has grown to include racial socialization strategies in Latinx (Morales, 2012; Vasquez, 2010), American Indian (Cheshire, 2001), Asian American (Juang et al., 2018), and white families (Hagerman, 2018; Jacobson, 2008), given that race structures the lives of all individuals living in a racially-stratified society. Ethnic socialization demonstrated how immigrant families navigated pressure to assimilate into the dominant culture while preserving cultural identity and customs (Hughes et al., 2006). This bifurcation underestimated ‘how distinct yet intersecting dimensions of race and ethnicity combine to shape the position of group members and their process of inclusion or exclusion within highly stratified societies’ (Valdez and Golash-Boza, 2017: 2204).

In this article, I draw on 41 interviews and 10 months of ethnographic fieldwork to examine how second-generation Haitian American parents negotiate the intergenerational transmission of ethnicity and the preparation to navigate systems of racial oppression within a multicultural setting. 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.

Theoretical framework

Context of reception

Black immigrants and their children occupy the same ‘collective Black’ category as African Americans and other non-white groups in the US (Bonilla-Silva, 2004), though they often distinguish themselves ethnically to escape the ‘representations of (negative) black stigma’ (Kretsedemas, 2008: 829; see also Bashi Treitler, 2013). The relationship between Black immigrants, African Americans, and the larger American society heavily depended on the context of reception (Portes and Zhou, 1993), which shaped Black ethnic groups’ positions vis-a-vis each other and determined which cultural markers carried more social capital (Aranda, 2017; Clerge, 2019; Kretsedemas, 2008). Haitian immigrants encountered a poor context of reception in the US (Aranda et al., 2014; Doucet, 2014; Stepick, 1998), including ‘pervasive negative stereotypes, a stagnant economy and a federal governmental resolved to block entry and settlement’ (Aranda et al., 2014: 21). Haitians were subsequently marginalized in Black communities as outsiders, neither part of Black America nor the Caribbean diaspora (Clerge, 2019). Haitian youth constructed and negotiated their identities within this cultural context (Doucet and Suárez-Orozco, 2006; Stepick et al., 2001). Some Haitian American teenagers opted to pass as ‘undercover Haitians,’ or assimilate as African Americans, to avoid further stigmatization by their peers (Doucet, 2014; Stepick, 1998). The need to hide their ethnicity waned with the rising popularity of Wyclef Jean in the late 1990s, which help shed Haitian identity of much of its stigma (Ulysse, 2006), giving young Haitian youth and the second generation an opportunity to (re)assert ethnic pride (Stepick, 1998). Children of Haitian immigrants moved toward less assimilated identities, such as Haitian and Haitian American (Stepick et al., 2001). Their once reviled ethnicity made inclusion possible within a multicultural metropolitan because they could market themselves as ‘ethnic’ as opposed to African American (Etienne, 2020). Structural racism, however, ensured a limited inclusion. The children of Black immigrants also lack many of the cultural cues that marked the first generation as immigrants so that ‘to the average white American onlooker, the accent-less, network-less second generation is made up of just plain American blacks’ (Bashi Treitler, 2013: 133).

Ethnic-racial socialization

For Black families, racial socialization rarely intersects with ethnicity. Most research has focused on middle-class African American families (Barnes, 2016; Dow, 2019; see Turner, 2020 for an exception). Recent studies, however, often used the terms ‘Black’ and ‘African American’ interchangeably when scholars included Black immigrants and their children within the sample. For example, Dow (2019) posited three approaches to teaching middle-class Black children how to maintain class status and develop Black identities. One of the approaches curiously incorporated the daughters of immigrants as mothers raising children who straddled multiple racial and ethnic boundaries. These mothers wanted their children to be global citizens, unencumbered by racial classification and ideas of an authentic Black identity (Dow, 2019). In their efforts to demonstrate the complexities and breadth of the Black experience, these mothers would engage in ethnic socialization to an extent. While Dow (2019) focused on the mothers’ shared racial identity, Duchatelier-Jeudy (2015) more explicitly examined the racial and ethnic socialization processes of Haitian immigrant families, further demonstrating how the children of Black immigrants navigate the two processes. Duchatelier-Jeudy (2015) noted that while racial and ethnic socialization were distinct processes, each process informed the other and co-occur. When engaging in racial socialization, Haitian immigrant families strived to cultivate a racial identity in their children ‘steeped in culture and history’ and delivered messages about race ‘within a Haitian framework and often with the purpose of nurturing a different identity that is not ingrained in the meaning of blackness in the United States’ (Duchatelier-Jeudy, 2015: 167). Haitian immigrant families also focused on connecting their children with Haitian ethnic culture to offer an alternative sense of blackness in the US, not to separate their children from African Americans.

Immigrant families socialize their children about their ethnic heritage, history, and language as well as their race ideologies (Roth, 2012), perception of other ethnic and racial groups (Bashi Treitler, 2013), and potential romantic partners (Manohar, 2008; Morales, 2012). As recent immigrants, ethnic socialization emerged as the recreation of cultural traditions and continued use of language from their country of origin (Hughes et al., 2006; Umaña-Taylor et al., 2013). Extended residence in the US heightened immigrants’ awareness of racism and the subsequent ethno-racial messages shared (Hughes et al., 2006; Woldemikael, 1989). Retention of ethnicity among the immigrant second generation functioned as a form of positive assimilation and provided a protected channel of upward mobility (Portes and Zhou, 1993), though racial discrimination prohibited children of Black immigrants from utilizing ethnic retention in the same manner, instead experiencing downward assimilation (Gans, 1992). Children of immigrants and successive generations would need to make a more concerted effort to encourage continued ethnic identification (Dhingra, 2007; Hughes et al., 2006) yet later generations were more likely to allow their children’s interest in the ethnic culture to guide their socialization process (Umaña-Taylor et al., 2013). However, with each successive generation, the family alone is unable to convey ethnic socialization across multiple generations and requires non-familial support through a stable ethnic core (Telles and Sue, 2019).

Due to the overlapping nature of these two broad areas of socialization, Hughes et al. (2006) proposed ‘cultural socialization,’ defined as the ‘parental practices that teach children about their racial or ethnic heritage and history; that promote cultural customs and traditions; and that promote children’s cultural, racial, and ethnic pride, either deliberately or implicitly,’ to provide a more precise terminology (p. 749). This article builds on cultural socialization by taking an intersectional approach to examining how Black immigrant families negotiate ethnic and racial socialization as a ‘racialized ethnicity in the U.S. context’ (Aranda, 2017: 2234). The second generation, while not having many of the cultural traits of the first generation, would still participate in cultural practices to (re)create ethnic spaces for their children (Dhingra, 2007) and merge the best aspects of their parents’ and American culture (Kasinitz et al., 2008) while still preparing their children for the consequences of structural racism.

Methodology

This article’s analysis emerged from a larger project examining the ethnic-racial socialization practices of second-generation Haitian American parents living in the Miami metropolitan area, the leading destination for Haitian immigrants in the US (Ogunwole et al., 2017). From September 2015 to October 2016, I conducted 41 in-depth interviews and 10 months of ethnographic fieldwork. I recruited participants from various networks such as churches, cultural organizations, and my own networks to capture the diversity within the Haitian American community. Each participant was the child of a Haitian immigrant, born in the US or migrated by age 12, and had children.

The tape-recorded interviews lasted between one and six hours. Interview questions focused on childrearing practices, family life, and ethnic and racial experiences. Interviews were transcribed and analyzed using a grounded theory approach. This allowed emergent and frequently mentioned categories to guide the research and allowed Haitian Americans to speak for themselves without imposing my theoretical framework and immigrant experience, even if one generation removed.

Forty-one Haitian Americans (28 women, 13 men) and their families partook in the study. The participants were heterosexual parents in a variety of familial formation patterns – single parents (6), married (23), divorced (3), separated (2), and cohabitating (7) couples. The sample consisted primarily of second-generation Haitian Americans. Eleven parents were part of the 1.5 generation, arriving in the US by the age of 12. The remaining parents were either born in the Miami metropolitan area or moved to the city as adults. Middle-class and middle-class aspiring Haitian Americans comprised the sample. More than half of the participants had a bachelor’s degree and/or a professional degree. The average income was US$ 66k; the participants were employed in various occupational fields, such as law enforcement, health care, and finance. Families with higher household incomes had more resources to supplement the transmission of ethnicity within the home, such as frequent trips to Haiti and enrollment in cultural activities after school. In contrast, middle-class aspiring families kept ethnicity as a private affair with additional support from immigrant grandparents. The majority (23) of participants were married to and/or had children with another Haitian individual (immigrant or co-ethnic). Each participant had at least one child (in total, there were 79 children represented), ranging from toddlers to adults.

My ethnographic field notes accompanied and complemented the interview data I collected. I immersed myself in the Miami context in multiple aspects: the gentrifying portions of Miami that attracted tourists, international attention, and Black millennials, as well as the ethnic enclave of Little Haiti and other Haitian social spaces. I attended natural hair events, Haitian Creole classes, church services, beach days, and city council meetings. These settings provided access to various facets of Miami and enabled me to capture life for Haitian Americans in the city.

Findings

As Black ethnic families, Haitian American parents transmitted ethnicity across generations while navigating structural racism. Three main themes emerged from their experiences. First, Haitian American parents wanted to pass on their ethnic culture to their children and made many efforts to do so as part of a cultural mandate to keep the culture alive. Second, Haitian Americans and their children are racialized as Black, which compels a confrontation of raising Black children in the US. Third, Haitian American parents negotiate their hopes for implementing Haitian culture into the third generation with the realities of raising Black children in the majority-minority city of Miami.

Know who you are: Importance of Haitian ethnicity in family life

The ability to resist ‘Americanization,’ or full assimilation into the broader Black population, was an underlying aspect of ethnic socialization. Couched in tropes of ethnic pride, many Haitian American parents utilized ethnic socialization to distinguish themselves from African Americans. When I introduced myself to Leila¹ at a cultural event in Little Haiti, she smiled and exclaimed, ‘oh, we’re very Haitian!’ She took up cultural engagement with no hesitation because she was adamant that her two children embraced Haitian culture. After all, ‘we’re not gonna get, you know, Americanized at this point.’ Leila believed that her efforts were paying off because her seven-year-old son ‘loves telling people about the fact that he’s Haitian and that . . . he goes to Haiti.’ Part of the fear of Americanization stemmed from the reality of the precariousness of Black ethnicity within the US. When Haitian Americans and their children shed their ethnicity, they did not become American. Instead, they became African Americans (Kasinitz et al., 2001).

This cohort of second-generation Haitian immigrants came of age during the height of Haitian stigmatization in the 1980s and 1990s; thus, growing up Haitian meant that many second-generation Haitian Americans were vulnerable to ostracization and harassment by their peers (Stepick, 1998). These experiences shaped the development of Haitian Americans’ ethnic identity and the continuation of the culture in the lives of their children and the US context (Duchatelier-Jeudy, 2015). Reginald, a father of four, regretted spending his teenage years embarrassed of his ethnicity, but placed most of the responsibility of developing ethnic pride on the adults in his life.

[O]ur parents, they didn’t do a good job explaining to us who we are, and who we were . . . when you don’t know who you are, you don’t know your history, of course you’re going to be ashamed . . . because you don’t know no better . . . the things that I know right now, if my parents were to instill those things into me when I was younger, I wouldn’t have been [ashamed]. But yes, I was, when I was a kid. Because I didn’t know.

Reginald spent his early formative years in Haiti before making major transnational moves – first to the Bahamas, then the US. His futile efforts to hide his ethnicity, with a common Haitian last name no less, was ‘stupid’ but stemmed from a ‘lack of knowledge.’

Experiences such as these made the need to continue Haitian culture into the next generation imperative. Because, as Reginald explained it, ‘that’s your parents’ duty to pass that on to the generations’ and equip their children with knowledge about their culture. Nadia, a mother of three, tried her best to include Haitian culture in her children’s lives.

It’s in everything I say and do just so that they don’t lose it and they understand that you shouldn’t be embarrassed to be Haitian. It’s fun. It’s a great culture to be part of. Look at the food that we eat. Look at how beautiful the countryside is, and things like that.

Nadia’s fear that her children might be embarrassed about their ethnic heritage reflected many Haitian youths’ experiences during her childhood. The majority of the parents in this sample raised their children within the exact geographical location they grew up in, further fueling their projection of embarrassment onto their children. Nadia’s children attended racially diverse schools and never mentioned mistreatment due to race or ethnicity. Yet Nadia still recalled her experiences growing up, marred by marginalization and the ‘bad blood’ between Haitians and African Americans. This pain often made it difficult to understand the next generation. Anel, a father of three, explained:

I think with these kids, it’s more of a fashion [being Haitian], it’s more [like] hip-hop to them, but for us [older generation], it’s something we fought for so, they didn’t have to teach us to have that pride . . .

The third generation is growing up within a context in which being Haitian is a source of pride; David, a father of two, joked that ‘everybody wants to be Haitian’ now. Though ‘Haitians just recently start[ed] getting respect,’ as one participant clarified, second-generation parents still insisted on instilling a positive meaning of Haitian ethnicity in their children – mainly so that the next generation could recognize and appreciate the sacrifices of their ‘forefathers’ in Miami.

Yet even with their incentives to continue Haitian culture into the next generation, many parents worried about the future. Daphney, an expectant mother, shared concerns about her upcoming role as a culture bearer (Jacobson, 2008):

. . . most of the kids that are born now [to the US-born children of Haitian immigrants], they don’t like the Haitian culture. Like they try to throw it to the side, or they don’t even bother to learn it. And I’m like it’s such a beautiful culture if you get to know it and understand it. So, for me being a soon-to-be parent, I don’t want my child to miss out on that.

Her confession reflected a broader phenomenon repeated across the US. Daphney, like many other second-generation parents, desired to pass on her ethnic culture but often faced barriers to this endeavor. While Haitian American parents tried to impart the importance of Haitian culture to their children, the reality of their lived experiences demonstrated that they were raising Black children within a white supremacist nation, which had dire consequences for their children if they did not prepare them to navigate racial oppression.

‘They see Black first’: The realities of raising Black children in America

Haitian American parents understood themselves as racially Black, unable to escape American racial hierarchies and racialization; consequently, their children faced the same reality. Though sharing a racial category with African Americans, Haitian Americans approached racial socialization as fostering a racial identity immersed in Haitian culture and history and cultivating a non-US-centric sense of Blackness (Duchatelier-Jeudy, 2015). Haitian American parents often had three responses to raising Black ethnic children. Some parents were hyperaware of race and made a point to address racial problems head-on. These parents wanted to prepare their children, and other Black youth around them, for racism and discrimination in a way that their immigrant parents had not done for them. Some parents followed their immigrant parents’ lead, choosing to focus on being Haitian and ethnic identity formation rather than racial identity. These parents raised their children to transcend race and withheld explicit racial messages, though this strategy did not prohibit others from ascribing a Black racial identity to the child. The majority of parents navigated between the former approaches to best respond to a particular situation. Each response recognized that the child was Black and had Haitian ancestry but approached racial socialization differently, often a result of their own experiences.

The parents who made an effort to prepare their children for racial bias and discrimination specifically emphasized their Black racial identity over their Haitian ethnic identity. Fabienne, a mother of two, was adamant about not shielding her children from the realities of the world. Her immigrant parents did not speak about racism with her, instead choosing to emphasize ethnicity as she was growing up. She felt woefully unprepared because ‘when people see me, they don’t see a Haitian. But they see a Black girl first.’ She refused to continue that cycle.

. . . I have a 12-year-old brother and I tell him straight up how the world works. I don’t sugarcoat anything . . . I tell him . . . you are a Black boy . . . but to a lot of people you are a grown man and you’re perceived that way, so you have to act accordingly. The same kind of foolishness that your little friends are doing, you can’t do it. Why? Because you’re Black. Why? Because you’re a Black boy. I tell him straight up, and that’s how I’m going to treat my son.

Fabienne and her Haitian American husband Jean characterized their family as ‘very much Black-centered’ and ‘very much like power to the people.’ The couple underwent significant personal changes in their early twenties. By ‘reclaiming [their] humanity,’ they more closely aligned their lives with aspects of the African diaspora untouched by white supremacy. Their commitment to Afrocentrism ranged from the simple – reading books with Black main characters by Black authors or attending protests and rallies with the kids – to the more time-intensive such as homeschooling. They decided that once it was time for their oldest to start kindergarten, Jean would leave his job to educate their children using an Afrocentric curriculum. Their family put a lot of effort into the racial socialization of their children because:

. . . [t]hey pick up a lot. They are literally sponges . . . It’s amazing. If you start teaching them now, like, they know. [My son] loves his skin. He loves his hair. He loves who he is. He loves his name. He will tell people this. He will tell people this, and we teach him early on.

As her children grow older, Fabienne planned to continue having explicit age-appropriate discussions about the realities of being Black in the US while instilling her children with racial pride. This is not to say that Fabienne and Jean do not celebrate aspects of Haitian culture; they made a concerted effort to ensure that their children were exposed to Haitian culture as well. Instead, the couple consciously avoided what he called ‘culture tripping,’ or when ‘people are so wrapped in their culture and trying to say, well, my culture is best [that] they lose sight of the fact that before we were all even Haitian or Bahamian, we were all Black first.’ Highlighting their children’s racial identity did not negate their ethnic identity but rather prepared them for the realities of being a Black child in America.

Other parents employed a post-racial approach to racial socialization, raising ‘their children to embrace their racial or cultural background and encouraged them to not be circumscribed or constrained by them’ (Dow, 2019: 104). Though she was born in the US, Leila was raised in an upper-middle-class family in Haiti. She attended elite private schools and primarily socialized with other members of the Haitian bourgeoisie before she returned to the US for her post-secondary education. Leila’s family never sat down to have a conversation about being Black; it was implicit knowledge. There was no need to reiterate the point. Leila continued this practice through her parenting: recognizing a Black racial identity through Haitian ethnicity. As a lawyer, she was not naïve about the world in which she was raising her two children but chose not to focus on racial issues. She did not believe that these issues added anything to her family’s life ‘other than stress and panic.’ To the best of her ability, she explained to her seven-year-old son that race was a social category, and society filled those categories with meaning.

[to her son] . . . [Y]ou’re you . . .You’re in the perfect skin. You’re in the perfect space. The way God wanted you to land here is how you landed. So, don’t ever let anybody tell you any different. You are just as worthy as anybody out there and just hold on to that. Don’t even engage in these kinds of conversations . . .

She clarified that these conversations were a waste of his time and did not ‘add to him.’ However, as he gets older, she planned to keep him abreast of racial issues because, again, she was ‘not in the twilight zone . . . you can’t act ignorant.’ Until then, Leila focused on her children’s class socialization. The weekend before school started, Leila planned a family lunch. Her Haitian American husband recommended a chain restaurant, which would be easier for two children under 10. Leila opted to go to a waterfront restaurant with breathtaking views of the Miami skyline dotted with yachts. She wanted her son to become familiar with these settings ‘because one day, when he is in a situation where he’s talking to the president of a company, he’s not gonna feel too small because he’s already been around that. If they invite him, it’s not gonna be his first time being around that.’ Her upper-middle-class upbringing prepared her to navigate various social environments, regardless of her race, and she planned to do the same for her children.

To a lesser extent, Nadia followed a similar practice to Leila. Her educational experiences shaped how she related to her three children. She and her Haitian American husband made prudent financial decisions to choose their children’s schools. Her three-year-old attended an expensive Montessori school, while the eight- and seven-year-old went to an international baccalaureate elementary school. The schools were diverse – neither predominately white nor Black – with a vigorous curriculum. Most importantly, her children would not be the ‘token Black kid.’

For my kids, though, I tread the waters very carefully when it comes to race, just because I don’t want to raise kids that’s so aware of their skin complexion . . . [as if speaking to her children] you excel. You’re smart. You can do whatever you want; there’s no boundaries. And I know eventually, they’ll learn [about race] on their own . . .

Many of Nadia’s significant educational moments were marked by racism – from a teacher suggesting that she would not get into her top choices without affirmative action to experiencing imposter syndrome while attending a predominately white college because she could not understand complex concepts as quickly as her classmates. These experiences prompted Nadia to expose her children to the possibilities of life uninhibited by racism. She encouraged her kids to think about college by visiting her alma mater, developing their curiosity, and believing that they could attend anywhere with hard work.

Leila and Nadia agreed that race should not be the deciding factor in their children’s lives, choosing not to belabor the suffering of minorities in the US, while Fabienne and her husband were vigilant about the effects of racialization on their children and fought against this by surrounding their children with positive racial messages. The difference between the two sets of parents primarily stemmed from their personal experiences of race and racism. Fabienne and Jean led a life closely connected to the African diaspora. Leila’s positive experience with Blackness in Haiti gave her space to focus on other aspects of her identity, such as her ethnicity, while Nadia’s feelings of inadequacy prompted her to choose educational institutions to offset potential racist encounters.

These two approaches also complicate how class intersects with racial socialization. While class status does not shield middle-class and middle-class aspiring Haitian American parents from racism, they can draw on various practices to avoid discrimination (Dow, 2019). Unlike low-income Black single mothers (Turner, 2020), Leila and Nadia utilized class resources to navigate their fears for the children’s safety through school and neighborhood choice as well as an embodiment of respectability politics (Barnes, 2016; Dow, 2019). The need to prepare for racial bias and discrimination might emerge in families ‘lack[ing] the necessary resources to alter their children’s social environments, as their limited resources mean they often live in overpoliced, dilapidated neighborhoods, and their children attend underresourced schools’ (Turner, 2020: 245). Yet, Fabienne and her husband earned a higher household income than the other two families and still opted to engage in explicit age-appropriate discussions about race with their children, younger siblings, and cousins.

Most second-generation Haitian American parents took a more balanced approach and responded to racial events as they occurred. For instance, Simone protected her two children from the racial horrors of the US but could not prevent them from encountering the reality outside of the home. They attended a predominately Black school where race-related stories often circulated quickly, particularly instances of police brutality. Her children asked many questions, such as ‘why did they kill that Black boy?’ as they tried to make sense of what they saw on the news, heard from their friends, and learned during Black History Month. Simone grappled with how to talk to her young children about race without frightening them. Thus far, her strategy has been not to watch the news while her children were around, but she recognized that this was a short-term solution. The Disney movie Frozen captured Genevieve’s four-year-old daughter’s attention, and she eventually wanted to change her hair so that she could look more like Elsa. Genevieve persuaded her daughter to settle for a French braid but had an in-depth conversation with her husband about renouncing Eurocentric beauty ideals in their home. When Cassandra’s teenage daughter witnessed a white co-worker call another Black woman a racial slur, which resulted in a violent physical confrontation, she came home visibly distraught. After comforting her, Cassandra told her daughter

. . . you better not ever, ever take that from anybody. The moment they do something [like that] you let me know . . . because we don’t play . . . don’t you ever let nobody ever call you no [racial slur] or anything, especially not from a white person.

Rather than allow her daughter to ruminate on the incident, Cassandra instructed her to call the company’s human resources department to file a complaint. Cassandra would not tolerate racism and did not expect her young teenager to deal with it either, but she recognized that her daughter might encounter similar discrimination incidents later on while in the workforce. Regardless of how Haitian American parents addressed the role of race in their children’s lives, the US racial system and racialization informed their parenting.

‘But we were born here, Mom. We’re American!’: Raising Black ethnic children in multicultural Miami

Haitian American parents negotiate their hopes to continue Haitian culture for their children against the realities of raising Black ethnic children in the US, particularly while living in a multicultural majority-minority city that values ethnicity (Etienne, 2020). The Miami metropolitan area boasts a diverse population: Hispanics make up the majority at 66%, followed by Blacks at 17%, with a diminishing white population (Portes and Armony, 2018). Here, I address the challenges parents face when passing on ethnic culture within this context: (1) Haitian culture competes with the dominant ethnic cultures of Miami; (2) the third generation was not always receptive to the process despite their parents’ best efforts.

Haitian American parents often feared that Haitian culture could not compete against the other cultures that their children came into contact with through school, friends, and the media. One such culture was the ‘Spanish’ culture.² Ruth regretted not teaching her three adult children Haitian Creole:

I should have [taught them] because the Spanish culture, they make sure their kids learn to speak Spanish. I think with our culture, the Americanization, we’re not teaching our kids. So, I think we’re really dropping the ball.

She initially only spoke in English to include her husband, an African American, within household conversations. Her children also felt that Creole did not count as being bilingual in Miami. Daphney observed that her co-ethnics ‘tend[ed] to speak to [their] child in English and forget that the child needs to learn Creole. And by the time you’re trying to get them to learn Creole, they don’t want to. All their friends speak English, and it’s not cool to speak, you know, a different language unless it’s Spanish.’ While language might be a powerful expression of culture, in Miami Creole only connects Haitians with Haiti and the Haitian diaspora. As Miami settled into English–Spanish bilingualism in the 2000s, Spanish has become the dominant language in many interpersonal interactions, excluding non-speakers (Aranda et al., 2014). Nadia willingly enrolled her two oldest children in a Spanish dual-language elementary school. She observed, however, that she was often in opposition with their school.

It’s just that they go to this school, where it’s like, ‘Spanish, Spanish, Spanish. Hispanic Heritage Month, Spanish, Spanish, Spanish’ . . . So I have to make sure that they understand that ‘you’re Haitian and this is your culture and be proud of it.’

The school was a microcosm of raising children in Miami, where Spanish was a dominant language. Nadia often stressed, ‘we’re Haitian!’ However, her eight-year-old son refuted her claim by explaining, ‘technically, you’re not Haitian because you were born here, so that means you are an American.’ When Nadia reminded her children that their dad was born in Haiti, they fell into a fit of laughter as if they bested their mother.

While parents expressed a desire to continue their culture, their children did not always fall in line with the process or identification. Many parents hoped that their children would continue identifying as Haitian but recognized, as did their children, that the third generation was twice removed from the immigrant experience. The third generation’s American citizenship often caused tension as the second generation attempted to convince their children to remain connected to the culture. Simone already worried about her children’s ethnic identification. At ten- and eight-years-old, her children often say they’re not Haitian. When she doubled down on the identification, ‘they’re like, “But we were born here, mom. We’re American.”’ Simone tried to persuade her children to think of themselves as Haitian but often to no avail. Though her children distanced themselves from a Haitian ethnic identity, they expressed pride in their heritage and spoke a few common phrases in Creole ‘because it’s the cool thing to do’ within their schools with many first- and second-generation Haitian students.

Most parents wanted their children to identify with the Haitian culture, however tangentially, because they viewed their children as part of the Haitian diaspora. Genevieve believed that she would give her two daughters the freedom to decide what Haitian culture meant for them. She could only do so much as a parent. While she did not expect them to accept all aspects of Haitian culture, a complete denial of ancestry was out of the question:

[I’m] definitely no[t] with the ‘I’m not Haitian at all.’ No, uh-uh. [Laughs] I’m not with that. Nope, nope, nope. As long as they acknowledge that they have Haitian ancestry and [if] there are certain aspects of the Haitian culture that they don’t really identify with, that’s cool with me – but to flat-out be like ‘no, I’m not Haitian at all’? No ma’am.

For Genevieve, the connection to Haitian culture was paramount. It was such an essential part of her life that she could not even imagine her children committing ‘cultural suicide,’ even in the third generation (Stepick, 1998). Wesley accepted that his son would have some distance from Haitian culture:

For him, you know, it’s not as a prominent thing, because he doesn’t hear Creole as often as I do . . . like at this point now, all of his cousins and stuff are all [third] generation Haitian people . . . he’s more Americanized than even I am, I would think. So, I definitely try to make an effort to you know, let him know what the deal is with the Haitian culture and experience it because I want it to be a part of his life.

Wesley’s son would not have the same cultural advantages as his father; Haitian culture would not be a significant feature of his life growing up. Wesley tried to privilege Haitian ethnicity in the home – his small family lived with his parents during his medical residency program and his Afro-Latina wife learned how to cook Haitian dishes. Even so, Wesley realized that Haitian culture would slip through his son’s fingers. He would be even ‘more Americanized’ than his father. Mona, a mother of two, regularly spoke of her Haitian heritage pride but readily admitted that she let cultural practices slide:

As much as I think I am connected, I am not. I’m starting to realize some large discrepancies . . . there’s nothing I have done or instituted to really foster the culture that I grew up with, the culture that I profess to love.

As she reflected on her parenting choices, Mona realized that her lack of engagement demonstrated a contradiction given how much she stressed the importance of Haitian culture. Mona accepted that she succumbed to the pressures of assimilation. When raising her 23-year-old son, Mona focused on his future – doing well in school, the company that he kept, and his career. She wanted to share Haitian culture with him, yet she ‘gave in . . . I should have put up more of a fight in terms of exposing [him] to a variety of things.’ Her choice to focus on raising a successful, educated Black man overshadowed the importance of ethnicity. Mona noted that her son rarely expressed interest in Haitian culture, nor did she share stories about her family’s immigrant history. However, she would prefer ‘that he identify himself as someone who is of Caribbean descent as opposed to – and see, here again, is that bias – as opposed to African American.’

Alternatively, a few parents identified their children as Black American. Ruth used to cook Haitian food and continue ethnic practices from her childhood. Her children soon tired of the traditional dishes, and more aspects of Haitian culture tapered off to accommodate them. Her children developed a social circle composed primarily of Haitian immigrants and second-generation Haitian Americans. Despite their growing re-interest in Haitian culture, when her children ethnically identified themselves as Haitian in front of her, Ruth corrected them. She told them ‘no you’re not, you’re a Black American, not Haitian.’ She considered her children to be Black American because they were born in the US and presumed that they tried to associate themselves with Haitian people because she was Haitian. They did not have a relationship with their African American father’s family. Yet Ruth’s rejection of their ethnic identity continued the pattern of earlier immigrant generations controlling the claim to ethnic authenticity and identity (Espiritu, 2001; Lundy, 2011).

Discussion and conclusion

This article examines how Haitian American parents negotiate cultural socialization by teasing out the simultaneous processes of ethnic and racial socialization. Cultural socialization embodies two concurrent processes for Haitian American parents, specifically to nurture identities shaped by Haitian ethnic culture and provide multiple meanings of Blackness. The findings demonstrate how cultural socialization operates within second-generation Black immigrant families amidst parental motivation for transmitting ethnicity across generations and the realities of raising Black children within the context of a majority-minority city as well as contribute a more nuanced understanding of the continuation of Haitian ethnicity into the third generation.

As Black ethnics, Haitian American parents recognize the precarious positionality of Black ethnicity in the US and the ease with which Black ethnics can fade into the Black racial category within a generation or two (Kasinitz et al., 2001), but also the need to prepare their children for the realities of the being Black in America. Raising Black children in Miami has consequences that challenge Haitian American parents’ ability to engage in cultural socialization. Described as a ‘global city,’ Miami hosts a diverse population (Portes and Armony, 2018), including the largest concentration of Haitian immigrants in the US (Ogunwole et al., 2017). Haitian American parents benefit from some ‘structural and institutional forces that promote and sustain ethnicity’ when raising their children, such as immigrant replenishment (Telles and Sue, 2019: 179). The large Haitian immigrant population in Miami provided the third generation the opportunity to (re)connect with members of the first and second generation who were not part of their family and potentially develop a closer attachment to Haitian culture. This may also lead to more heterogeneity within the third generation cohort and disputes of authenticity (Telles and Sue, 2019; Waters and Jiménez, 2005). As the second generation, many parents incorporated a diasporic Haitian identity that distanced Haitian Americans from the stigma of poverty (Etienne, 2020) while nurturing class socialization as well. The socioeconomic status of the families underlined their approaches to cultural socialization, affording the families various opportunities such as dropping down to one income to start an Afrocentric homeschool curriculum, utilizing after-school programs for language retention, enrolling their children in expensive private schools, or, potentially, believing that they could shield their children from racism.

Preliminary interviews with adult members of the third generation reveal that they were developing a pan-Black ethnic identity, where they are neither African American nor Haitian but Black. I cannot discount the possibility that many members of the Haitian diaspora may no longer want to maintain their ethnic heritage due to their ‘experiences with pervasive racial inequalities and interaction with native-born African Americans,’ which inspires ‘a shared racial and African American identity’ (Thornton et al., 2017: 496). The growing unrest with white supremacy and its many consequences introduces numerous contexts in which racial identity gains more salience. During fieldwork, I noted Haitian flags during a Black Lives Matter (BLM) march. After the murder of George Floyd, numerous Haitian American social media outlets addressed the issue and highlighted young Haitian Americans protesting at rallies around the US.

Given the small sample size of ethnically-identified Haitian Americans, I cannot generalize the findings to all children of Black immigrants. My findings do provide insight into how Haitian Americans engage in cultural socialization as a racialized ethnicity in Miami, a multicultural majority-minority city, and the obstacles they face, such as competition with dominant ethnic cultures and potential resistance to ethnic identification from the third generation, despite living in the leading destination for Haitian immigrants in the US.

Future research should further expand the findings presented here to explore cultural socialization among non-ethnically-identified Haitian American parents. This strain of research would expound on the underlying reasons for engaging in cultural socialization. Second, further research should investigate how Haitian Americans shape how their children conceptualize Blackness within the US context. Haitian American parents shape how their children view race and ethnicity and, ultimately, the trajectory of Haitian ethnicity in the US.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author thanks Adrienne Lee Atterberry for the invitation to participate in this special issue on parenting and intergenerational relationships, the anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions, as well as Siqi Tu and Marta Elliott for their feedback on earlier versions of this article.

Funding

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program under Grant No. DGE-1037525. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

ORCID iD

Vadricka Y. Etienne

Notes

Author biography

Vadricka Y Etienne is an Assistant Professor in Sociology and Gender, Race, and Identity. Her work lies at the intersection of race and ethnicity, immigration, and family, focusing on second-generation Black immigrants.

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