Chonika Coleman-King, assistant professor in the Department of Theory and Practice in Teacher Education, earned her PhD in 2011 from the University of Pennsylvania. She teaches in the Urban-Multicultural Teacher Education Program at UT, and her professional interests include preparing teachers for diverse contexts, addressing racial bias in schools, and the racial and ethnic socialization of immigrants. She has recently published her research in The (Re-)Making of a Black American: Racial and Ethnic Socialization of Caribbean American Youth (2014), which is the latest book in the Peter Lang series on Black Studies and Critical Thinking.
In The (Re-)Making of a Black American, Coleman-King explores the ways children of Black immigrants from the English-speaking Caribbean come to understand their racial and ethnic identities, given the socialization messages they receive from their parents and their experiences with institutionalized racism and racial hierarchies in U.S. schools. In contrast to earlier studies that have offered broad generalizations about Caribbean immigrants, this book provides a detailed and nuanced analysis of the experience of these students as they strive for academic success while negotiating the reality of race in America. Grounded in the notion that racism is an inescapable marker of the Black experience in the United States, this book highlights the contradictions between parental and school socialization messages and the struggle that ensues as Caribbean American youth are forcibly (re-)made into a specific brand of Black American.