“Strategic Racial Socialization: How First-Generation Nigerian Immigrant Parents Confront and Adapt to U.S. Racialization”

Transnational identity and racialization processes profoundly shape how immigrants perceive racism and subsequently socialize their children in the U.S. While much of the existing research on racial socialization has focused on the resistance strategies of Black Americans or the color-blind ideologies prevalent in White American families, less attention has been given to the nature of these practices within Black immigrant communities. Drawing on 28 semi-structured interviews with first-generation Nigerian immigrant parents, I find these parents use color-blind, personal achievement, and ethnicity-centered frameworks to challenge racialization and achieve social mobility. I develop the concept of strategic racial socialization to explain how Nigerian immigrant parents consistently use race-neutral strategies, differing from those of native-born Black Americans yet resembling those of White Americans, to navigate racism. Rather than viewing their approaches as passive responses to racism, I argue that their socialization practices are shaped by their intersecting and sometimes conflicting transnational, immigrant, and ethno-racialized identities. Grounded in racial socialization and racialization research, this study highlights the cultural tools and practices that first-generation immigrant parents use to confront racialization, fostering a worldview focused on achievement and ethnicity to shield their families from the stigma of being part of a racialized group. The paradoxical relationship between racial identity, immigration, and social mobility reveals how African immigrant communities adapt their socialization strategies to navigate the complexities of race in a racially stratified society.

keywords: racialization, racial socialization, racial identity, social mobility, African immigrants, Nigerians, immigration, race and ethnicity.