Tubman Talks with Kelston Cort

Biography:Please meet Kelston O. Cort, a doctoral candidate in the Social & Political Thought programme at York University. He holds a B.Sc. in Sociology (Hons) from the University of Guyana, and a M.Sc. in Sociology, specializing in Developmental Studies from The University of the West Indies. Broadly speaking, his research interests are situated along the academic terrains of critical spirituality, higher education, labour studies and family studies. More specifically, Cort’s current research focus presents an intersectional understanding of the ways in which the social class location and the racial ascription of Black families of Caribbean heritage inaugurate and animate the experiences and educational outcomes of their children who are currently pursuing undergraduate studies at post-secondary institutions in Toronto. Throughout his professional life across the Americas, Kelston has been a vocal advocate and a fierce social activist for positive youth and community development. Cort is also the recipient of the Ontario Graduate Scholarship, (OGS).

Abstract: Reviewing critically the studies of Cose (1993), Feagin and Sikes (1994), Lacy (2007), Pattillo (2013), Rollock et al. (2015) Wright et al. (2021) and James (2021), evidently remind us of the innumerable ways in which racism is reducing and removing the high socio-cultural and economic currencies of Black middle-class families. But Black middle-class families readily adopt various “practices of living” to contain the impact of racism from completely eroding their socio-cultural and economic currencies, by deploying the collective force of their community cultural wealth. The use of the community cultural currencies upholds the class-based structure of Black middle-class families, cementing the racial identity formation of Black children, removing the social isolation they face primarily in predominantly White communities and serves to re-position Black youth on a successfully academic path. This invaluable contribution of the larger Black community deserves greater theoretical attention. Therefore, by utilizing the tenets of the community cultural wealth framework, we underscored and illuminated the collective utility of the Black community, showing a constellation of parallel socio-cultural and geographic relationships that continuously sustain the middle-class structure. Even though class remains connected to the ways inequalities of outcomes are experienced, the socio-cultural security of Black middle-class families remains at the generosity of wider Black community. In this way, scholars of social class should take the community currencies of the wider Black community into consideration, especially when trying to understand the complex structural nature and child rearing practices of Black middle-class families in Western class-based societies.

Keywords: Black middle-class; community cultural wealth; racism