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Like Father, Like Son? Reflections On Black Cultural Capital And Generational Conceptions Of Work, Quaylan Allen, Travis D. Boyce

Education Faculty Articles and Research

This article extends our understanding of Black middle-class social mobility by examining successful cases of social reproduction. Specifically, using autoethnographic methods, two Black junior faculty reflect upon their fathers’ uses of cultural capital and the generational differences in conceptions of appropriate work. For the first generation middle-class Black fathers, material realities and the technocratic nature of their work influenced their interpretations of appropriate employment. In contrast, the second-generation’s access to particular cultural and economic capital influenced the sons’ conceptions of work, demonstrating generational differences in Black middle-class occupational ideology. Responding to deficit views on Black mobility, this article highlights the …