Please join us for the talk and the reception after in the lounge.

Speaker: Karyn Lacy, University of Michigan 

Drawing from ethnographic and interview data collected from a study of black mothers and children who are members of an elite social club, this talk explores the transmission of a black, distinctly middle-class culture from the mothers to their children as the mothers attempt to socialize children into their preferred black racial identity. Within the organization, children interact with similarly positioned peers. In doing so, they learn the norms and rituals of black middle-class culture. In this talk, I show precisely how mothers do the work of constructing their children’s racial identity and the extent to which children embrace the black middle-class culture so highly valued by their mothers.

This talk is co-sponsored with the Africana Studies Program.