RESEARCH
Wealth, Education, and Culture: Sketching a 21st Century Black Elite
My dissertation examines the sociocultural worlds of well-resourced Black families across the United States, using interviews and participant observation in New York City and on Martha’s Vineyard. This project has been recognized with the Eastern Sociological Society’s Rose L. Coser Dissertation Proposal Award and the Charles V. Willie Graduate Student Award.
Broadly, my research examines how race, class, and culture shape institutional life and the reproduction of social advantage in the United States. I study the social worlds of well-resourced Black families, exploring how they build networks, transmit knowledge, and strategize for their children’s futures. Across projects, I aim to understand how institutions and social structures organize opportunity, belonging, and cultural recognition.
What happens when Black families achieve significant wealth and professional success in a society that still marginalizes them racially? I examine how Black elite parents navigate the expectation that they — and their children — operate in two worlds at once: the predominantly white institutions where professional power is built, and the Black communities where cultural identity and authenticity are grounded. I call this structural condition the dual requirement, and my work traces how families manage it through schooling, community choices, and the social worlds they build for the next generation.
Black Elite Formation & The Dual Requirement
Educational institutions don’t just teach — they sort, credential, and reproduce social advantage. I study how schools and universities transmit advantage across generations, how elite institutions shape the dispositions and networks of students, and what happens when race disrupts the reproduction process that scholars like Bourdieu and Lareau have primarily documented in white contexts.
Education and Social Reproduction
What counts as valuable knowledge, and who decides? I examine how cultural capital — taste, aesthetic sensibility, and embodied knowledge — functions as a currency that opens or closes doors. I’m particularly interested in moments when dominant cultural hierarchies are contested, and in how historically excluded communities create, maintain, and transmit their own forms of value.
Cultural Capital & Taste
PUBLICATIONS
Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles
2023 Odim, Chinyere and Prudence Carter. ““Acting white’ and oppositional culture in Education.” In Oxford Bibliographies in African American Studies. Ed. Gene Jarrett. New York: Oxford University Press. doi.org/10.1093/OBO/9780190280024-0123
2023 Odim, Chinyere. “Hiding in Plain Sight: The Invisibilized Challenges of Black Girlhood in Elite Independent Schools,” Teachers College Record, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/01614681231197278
Invited Commentaries
2025 Diamond, John and Chinyere Odim. Toward black educational freedom: A commentary on Karida Brown's The Battle for the Black Mind. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 48(1). https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2025.2581848
Book Reviews
2023 Odim, Chinyere. Review of “Transforming the elite: Black students and the desegregation of elite schools,” Teachers College Record, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/01614681231194405
2023 Odim, Chinyere. Review of “COMPUGIRLS: How girls of color find and define themselves in the digital age,” Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, 9(3), 411-412. https://doi.org/10.1177/23326492221141913
In Preparation
Odim, Chinyere. “Black elite communities” Women’s Lived Experience as Researchers: Situating the Personal in Qualitative Inquiry. (Eds. M. Khatwa & J. Belur). Routledge.
Odim, Chinyere. “Then to Now: Who are the Contemporary Black Elites in America?”