Contesting 'Black,' Negotiating 'Asian’: Second-Generation Indo-Caribbean Identities in New York City and Toronto

From New York City to Toronto and on emerging Instagram pages, second-generation Indo-Caribbeans are engaging in both local and transnational processes of racialization, distinguishing themselves as neither Black nor Asian. This study examines the multiple ways in which second-generation people, the children of immigrants of Indo-Caribbean ancestry from Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago, are advocating for a specific Indo-Caribbean identity in both physical and virtual spaces, using New York and Toronto as anchors. In unpacking these dynamics, my study examines how racial politics in the Caribbean, coupled with racialization processes in New York and Toronto, impact second-generation Indo-Caribbean identity construction and their advocacy efforts around establishing specific Indo-Caribbean communities. I employ qualitative methods through 70 qualitative interviews, 20 ethnographic observations of community events and a content analysis of 70 social media posts. This study documents how Indo-Caribbeans negotiate their processes of racialization in four distinct modalities. First, I critically examine how global anti-Blackness impacts both race relations in the Caribbean and racial hierarchies in the US and Canada. I trace how racialized legacies in Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago, lead the first-generation to construct racialized narratives which are used by the second-generation to understand their parents’ migration trajectories. Second, I show Indo-Caribbeans understand their positionality as not Black nor Asian through their everyday interactions with Afro-Caribbean and South Asian people. Third, I highlight how the second-generation reproduces and challenges the legacy of these divisions as they advocate for Indo-Caribbean communities both in physical spaces in New York and Toronto and using virtual spaces through social media platforms. Last, I unpack how community organizations and digital activists negotiate the meaning and positioning of second-generation Indo-Caribbean identity, which is heightened during the pandemic and after the murder of George Floyd. Pandemic activism denotes a spark in advocacy after the murder of George Floyd and the COVID-19 pandemic. Though these discussions generate physical and virtual spaces to negotiate identity and belonging in relation to anti-Blackness, the prevalence of discursive debates on social media heightened by pandemic activism reinforces boundaries of Indo-Caribbean identity that can uphold anti-Black ideologies. Studying New York and Toronto provides a distinct examination of how both local and transnational experiences and discussions about race and racism impact the second generation as they engage in advocating for Indo-Caribbean identities in these two cities. Ultimately, this study underlines how transnational formations and negotiations of race and cultural identities contribute to the construction of second-generation Indo-Caribbean identity, which challenges the boundaries of Black and Asian. A comparative perspective also permits a richer understanding of the centrality of anti-Blackness and racial boundaries in shaping racial identities in the Caribbean and how they subsequently shift with differing racial hierarchies in the US and Canada. By examining transnational formations and debates on racial identity, this study fills the gaps in migration studies that push for a more critical examination of racialization processes in the second generation.

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