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Introduction

Caribbean people have been migrating to the United States the turn of the twentieth century in search of a better life , what has resulted due to the large concentration of Caribbean immigrants is a hub of Caribbean culture that impacts everyday life and has helped narrative that goes beyond previous understandings of what it means to be Caribbean in United States Black Caribbean people mostly reside in the Western and Southern regions in the United States. There have been tremendous improvements in employment practices, and economic legislation in the US to encourage equality in the past century. The changes have been aimed at adjusting the disparities that exist in the labor market, and organizational cultures, both in the private and public sectors, and gender and ethnic equality at the workplace. However, despite the changes in labor and economic policies, there has been a noticeable disparity in labor, and organizational cultures that bar Black Caribbean Men and women from enjoying equal privileges like employees from other races (Assari & Moghani Lankarani, 2018). This research seeks to reveal workplace inequalities in the workplace against Back Caribbean men and women. Comment by Goldwasser, Robert: Your opening statement is long and has no citations. It should have an impact and should include information from a credible source. Comment by Goldwasser, Robert: A sentence like this must be supported. You must include a citation showing where this information comes from. Comment by Goldwasser, Robert: I understood that your focus was to be on the misconceptions leading to workplace barriers for Caribbean men and women in the USA.

The workplace inequalities that will be investigated include educational levels, organizational culture, and privileges offered in different organizations among various races. Employees are accorded training and educational privileges to improve their skills so that they can be able to handle more demanding duties and to be best suited for promotions. These privileges have been provided in biased ways in many organizations in which Black Caribbean men and women are among the least privileged (Black-Chen, 2013). This research will examine the cultures of different organizations and show that there is a discriminatory trend in educational privileges against Black Caribbean men and women. Comment by Goldwasser, Robert: Are workplace inequalities the same as workplace barriers? Comment by Goldwasser, Robert: You are getting ahead of yourself here. Discrimination may be one of the workplace barriers, but we will discover that from your data collection. You should not come to any conclusions yet.

Another workplace culture that this research seeks to examine is the trend in which employees in many organizations have been placed in different socioeconomic levels. Research has shown that the level of how important an employee is considered in socioeconomically stratified organizations is measured by their races, financial status, and gender (Bridgewater & Buzzanell, 2010). These attitudes have placed Black Caribbean men and women in low-rank hierarchies irrespective of their integrity and competence at the workplace. This research will explore different ways through which Black Caribbean men and women have been stereotyped in socioeconomically stratified organizations and the resultant negative effects they experience. Comment by Goldwasser, Robert: This is not clear. Which employees? Which organizations? Comment by Goldwasser, Robert: Again, you are reaching your conclusions before you complete your research. From your interviews, you will analyze the data collected and determine the impact on Caribbean men and women.

Equality in job distribution encompasses equitable distribution of positions depending on the diversity of the applicants and the number of employees of the same race in the department of concern. It also requires that employees should be competent in all areas such as sciences, engineering, or other technical departments irrespective of their race and gender, if they are sufficiently skilled and competent in the professions (Boumlik, Reem& Alberts, 2017). This research explores job distribution and presents findings that indicate that there are fewer Black Caribbean man and women in technical and managerial positions as compared to perceived racially superior races. Comment by Goldwasser, Robert: Who says this? You must cite your sources. Comment by Goldwasser, Robert: Again you must clarify this since we don’t know what the findings will be. You expect that you will hear a certain theme of discrimination and inequality, but you may not. First we do the research, and then we come to conclusions based on our findings.

Interviews will be conducted to examine different disparities that contribute to workplace barriers, which obstruct Black Caribbean men and women from enjoying privileges given to other perceived superior workplace colleagues. The feedback expected from the questionnaires is that all Black Caribbean men and women experience one or more difficulties in the workplace. The difficulties are expected to be related to race, individual respondent’s culture, organizational culture, and socioeconomic classes consistent with previous researches (Stockman, Hayashi & Campbell, 2015: Black-Chen, 2013). The expected results should prove that the workplace barriers contribute to Black Caribbean men and women: poor motivation in the workplace, sexual harassment, contemptuous attitudes towards them, and health complications such as stress and depression because of the workplace issues. Comment by Goldwasser, Robert: Explain this in more depth. Will the interviews be face to face? Who will be interviewed?

Background

The widespread diversification of the American and global economy has given rise to unprecedented market development and economic opportunities. Consequently, minority groups have made giant steps in the workplace since the removal of segregationist and discriminatory laws in the United States (Holder et al. 2015). The tremendous transformation of the American workplace environment has been described as the feminization of the workplace and the changing complexion of the workforce. Despite the increasing pace of diversification of the working population, persons of color continue to be underrepresented both at the skills-based job positions and leadership levels in the American corporate society (Holder et al. 2015). This is especially true for the black Caribbean men and women professionals, who constitute only one percent of the country’s corporate officials’ Black women form a significant component of a growing source of talent for the corporate America and have for a long time been considered in the middle-level management (Holder et al. 2015). Nonetheless, as they undergo career progression to the leadership status, they face numerous challenges. These problems pose obstructions to their ascension to corporate senior executive levels, and their eventual overall career advancements. Holder et al. (2015). mention racism as a crucial factor in explaining the underrepresentation of women of color in the workplace and the stressful experiences that they undergo as they try to improve their careers. A significant fraction of business firms in the United States also express hesitance to hire black Caribbean men and women out of the widespread belief that they lack skills, leadership capabilities, savvy, and able to spearhead successful competition in the corporate society. Comment by Goldwasser, Robert: You depend to heavily on Holder. You must find some other sources. Comment by Goldwasser, Robert: Your theoretical framework is missing and that is an important part of your Chapter 2. What are the theories that frame your research study? You must find theories on racial equality, on diversity in the workplace and on other similar topics to develop your Chapter 2.

Numerous studies often focus their attention on the general black Caribbean men and women however more so the women population. Consequently, there is still paucity in research about the specific workplace challenges that black Caribbean men and women face in the United States. The population of black Caribbean men and women has been on the rise in the United States. In the last 50 years, the United States has witnessed approximately 1.5 million increases in the Caribbean immigrant population (Wells-Wilbon & Vakalahi, 2015). Most people of Caribbean descent living in the United States are from more than 15 countries. Out of these nations, 90 percent identify themselves as blacks from countries such as Cuba, Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Antigua, Haiti, and Trinidad. There is major group diversity among the black Caribbean men and women as reflected in their language variations. Although the most dominant language among black Caribbean people is English, others speak Spanish, French, and Dutch. Over 80 percent of Caribbean blacks come to the United States due to the strong family connections that they have with their American counterparts and the proximity of the Florida coast to the Caribbean (Wells-Wilbon & Vakalahi, 2015). Most Caribbean people reside in Florida and New York. Nonetheless, there is an increasing pattern of their migration that spread to other parts of the country, such as New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Georgia. By 2008, about 69 percent of Caribbean blacks were legally authorized to live and work in the United States (Wells-Wilbon & Vakalahi, 2015). Like their European immigrant counterparts during the Progressive Era, modern black Caribbean groups settle in concentrated urban communities or near urban centers where there are employment opportunities and social amenities. Since 90 percent of Caribbean men and women are from English-speaking nations, their rate of participation in the American labor force is high, approximated at 75 percent (Wells-Wilbon & Vakalahi, 2015). However, black Caribbean women are less educated than their African and African American women. More than half of black Caribbean population have at least a high school level of education and are hired mainly in service-related jobs, construction, extraction and transportation. A few of this group find themselves in administrative jobs.

There is a wide gender disparity among Caribbean women in the American workforce. While the females have higher degree of immigration and 73 percent are participants in the labor force, they often lag in terms of earnings by 9 percent to 13 percent, thereby resulting in economic problems (Wells-Wilbon & Vakalahi, 2015). Although they have a strong and long-standing immigration history to the United States, black Caribbean women remain a disadvantaged and underserved population due to racism and anti-foreign attitudes. While such attitudes have improved gradually over time, they continue to permeate into almost all aspects of the American social system. For instance, health problems, lower level of education, and increased rates of single parent households, frustrate their efforts to seek employment opportunities in the United States. During their childhood, black Caribbean girls, experience strenuous problems due to urban lifestyle (Wells-Wilbon & Vakalahi, 2015). These include social isolation from America’s mainstream culture, exposure to slum culture, and an attitude of materialism because of the excessive consumption of media contents. Those who reside in communities with insufficient resources, inadequate schools, and high rates of domestic violence often face the biggest obstacles to seeking a decent employment opportunity. In the face of these adversities, Caribbean black women, especially those who reside in urban centers, often maintain that their Caribbean heritage and identity is still significant to them in their effort to buffer the challenges of residing in an urban neighborhood (Wells-Wilbon & Vakalahi, 2015). Cultural barriers also frustrate their efforts to operate within the mainstream American cultural workplace. While Americans embrace the dominant culture of individualism, most Caribbean women are collectivized in nature. Conflicting values make it harder for them to be easily integrated into the American workplace (Wells-Wilbon & Vakalahi, 2015). Collectivism and maintained cultural identity should be regarded as strength when organizations work with Caribbean women in the workplace. Thus, conflicting cultural traditions, values, and beliefs frustrate their efforts to adapt to the American workforce.

Some of the challenges that Caribbean black women face in the American workforce have deep historical origins. Blank (2013) argues that the historical and the modern gender and social class relationships among the British, French, and Spanish in the Caribbean islands mainly emphasized on the Afro-Caribbean people. This includes the negative gender relations during slavery and the gender roles during the periods after emancipation. According to Blank (2013), such relations and experiences have been passed into the modern American workforce. The complexities of gender and slavery in the Caribbean were influenced by the region’s multicultural diversity. Most of the region’s occupants currently descended from the enslaved Africans. Traces of beliefs and customs, coupled with European norms, and family values that were present under slavery, have all resulted in the defining of gender roles in the workplace. Such mixtures have been further strengthened by the heritage of indigenous American Indian populations and the impacts of immigrants from the Middle East and Asia. During slavery, certain roles and job responsibilities were available to either gender on plantations, whereas tasks were sex-specific. Adults of both sexes worked hard in field groups on sugar plantations, in their masters’ houses as domestic slaves and petty traders. This practice disadvantaged Caribbean women since only male slaves could hold elite, and skilled-based job positions as field commanders and artisans. On the other hand, slave women only served as domestic workers, hucksters, petty traders, and unskilled employees. Although slavery ended more than a century ago, this practice of assigning Caribbean workers unskilled jobs persists in the American system.

Blank (2013) observes that white men in some cases often sue female black Caribbean employees as their sexual concubines, a practice that had its historical roots in slavery, where white men used to sexually harass black women. Although they married white women, they continued to engage in extra-marital sexual harassments with their Caribbean employees. In the same way, pregnancy in the workplace is still discouraged by many companies since it reduces the time that women take in the organization to work. According to Blank (2013), this practice had slavery roots. During that time, childbearing was discouraged since it minimized the length of time that a woman would take in the fields. Some pregnant slaves would attempt to abort their fetuses or commit infanticide to avoid bringing up their children as slaves. If slave Caribbean women gave birth, they were assigned older female slaves to provide care for the baby as they worked in the fields.

The workforce participation of Caribbean black women is still dependent on gender roles and power relations in the United States. Despite the increasing trends of high female involvement in family issues, Caribbean cultures and traditions remain male-dominated (Blank, 2013). In such patriarchal societies, even some women continue to quote the Bible to provide rationale that it is men rather than women, who should hold prestigious position in the workplace. This cultural practice has been extended to low representation of women in powerful political and religious seats. However, there is a gradual struggle that is gaining space among the genders as men continue to slowly lose some of their privileged statuses in the Caribbean culture (Blank, 2013). As a result, the overall Caribbean women hold fewer positions at the highest levels of political, economic, and religious decision-making in comparison with their male counterparts. Thus, while many women are employed, they hold less powerful ranks, especially within the formal sector of the economy compared to Caribbean black men. This pattern can be easily observed among Haiti women who live in the United States. The Haiti black women are often less educated than men. For instance, teenage boys of Haiti descent are most likely to attend high school education than girls their age. In the same vein, Haiti working class men are often more educated than Haiti women of the same social status. Consequently, Haiti black women are normally treated as second class citizens with some legal codes that can be traced back o the nineteenth century (Blank, 2013). This trend has increased rates of domestic violence among Caribbean against Caribbean black women, thereby adversely affecting their performance in the workplace.

Reinforcing the findings of Blank (2013), McFarlane (2017) asserts that discrimination of Caribbean black women in the American education sector frustrates their quest for decent income and excellent educational attainment. According to McFarlane (2017), the experiences of women of color within the United States education offers a distinct opportunity to explore the sophisticated influences of interesting identities within the context of changing social situations. To examine how social categories of gender, class, race, and nationality interplay in the Caribbean immigrant women’s experiences of being college students affects their perception of themselves in the general American society (McFarlane, 2017). For most Caribbean women, when they move to the United States, they believe that they come from gendered cultural traditions that determine their social roles within the Caribbean. For most female students, such rules continue to operate in the United States. Thus, the gendered rules and traditions still influence how black Caribbean women view the society in general. Caribbean women’s decisions to migrate of the United States are not often driven by their personal ambitions. Instead, they move to the United States in pursuit of opportunities for their families (McFarlane, 2017). While in America, they still struggle with the uphill task of adapting to the American traditions and cultures. This is particularly true for Caribbean women in the corporate society and those enrolled in higher education. They encounter a complex set of hindrances. A lot of attention has often been placed on race and ethnicity issues more than social class and sexuality for black Caribbean women’s cross-cultural transitions. Therefore, social identity theory stresses on the significance of group memberships for wellbeing.

In the American environment, cultural factors, race, social class and gender are strong bases of affiliation for minorities such as black Caribbean women. Moreover, the social contexts are important for social identification (Flabbi, Piras & Abrahams, 2016). This is especially true when contexts change significantly. In such situations, Caribbean women seek support for identities that shift and individuals who make efforts to maintain their significant identities (Flabbi, Piras & Abrahams, 2016). For instance, Caribbean black women who operate in predominantly Anglo workplaces and have strong ethnic identities, often maintain their attempts to preserve their ethnic identities within new environments by joining cultural groups and establishing friendships with their fellow Caribbean women.

Caribbean black women are an important resource in the American labor market. They are increasingly taking time in large numbers than any specific point in time in history (Flabbi, Piras & Abrahams, 2016).  This is owed to the new and emerging pattern in which Caribbean black women acquire education at higher rates than their male counterparts. This is a widely recognized trend in developed economies. Since 1990s, more and more Caribbean black women than men have been enrolled in school both at the high school and college levels (Flabbi, Piras & Abrahams, 2016).  While the United States is registering a high rate of gender parity in the general working population, Caribbean black women still face the challenge of underrepresentation in leadership positions in organizations.

References Comment by Goldwasser, Robert: You have found some very good sources.

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Blank, S. (2013). An Historical and Contemporary Overview of Gendered Caribbean Relations.

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Boumlik, H., Reem, J., & Alberts, I. (2017). Women in STEM: A Civic Issue with an

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Bridgewater, M. J., & Buzzanell, P. M. (2010). Caribbean immigrants’ discourses: Cultural,

moral, and personal stories about workplace communication in the United States. The

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