“Surely, anyone can Enjoy Coffee”: Black Canadian Immigrants’ Conceptualizations of Blackness and Whiteness in Emerging Adulthood

The majority of Black Canadians are recent immigrants from the Caribbean and Africa, which complicates both acculturation and racial identity literatures. On one hand, Black Canadian immigrants must acculturate to a society where anti-Black racism is prevalent and they are racialized, resulting in potentially unique acculturation processes (e.g., Medina et al., under review). On the other hand, Black Canadians may develop a racial identity in addition to (and that is unique from) their ethnocultural identities (e.g., Waters, 2000). Despite these complexities, the impact of racialization on Black people in Canada is understudied. The purpose of this mixed methods study was to investigate the psychological implications of acculturation and racial identity for Black Canadian immigrants in emerging adulthood. In this paper, I examine participants’ (N = 215) open-ended responses detailing epistemological understandings of what it means to be Black in Canada. Participants ages 16-30 (M = 21.18, SD = 3.53) were asked to define “mainstream Black culture” and “mainstream White culture.” They also described what they think Black people of other ethnocultural groups feel about their own ethnocultural group, and their experience of being Black in Canada. Using social identity theory (Tajfel, 1974) and tridimensional acculturation (Ferguson et al., 2012) as guiding frameworks, data were explored for emerging themes. Preliminary analysis of the data suggests the importance of individual meaning-making around race, as participants revealed varied conceptualizations of Blackness and Whiteness. Understanding young Black Canadians’ racial meaning-making is a key first step in supporting their positive identity development.