Mothering While Black. Dawn Marie Dow
of African American students, to determine the existence and size of any gap between the academic achievement of African American students and that of white students, and to investigate how the school was addressing any such gap. This work involved finding schools with teachers and administrators who were willing and able to talk about issues related to race and racism. It also involved talking to other African American parents about their children’s experiences at these schools.
Chandra, a married mother with two children, described being happy with her son’s private school, but she was considering changing her daughter’s education at a public school because she believed the teachers and administrators lacked racial intelligence. Chandra and her husband had sold their previous house and relocated to their current neighborhood specifically so that their daughter could attend the local public school, which scored among the highest in the school district in terms of academic achievement. Nonetheless, Chandra was dissatisfied with the lack of community in the new school and in her new neighborhood, so she was considering transferring her daughter to another school:
Academically it is great, but I hate the fact that there is just no diversity there. I don’t feel like they are conscious about it either, so I don’t know if she will stay. . . . My main focus now is that I really just want her to get really strong reading and writing skills down and then we will have to take it from there, but I am not happy with it.
Chandra’s comments underscore the compromise she was making between a diverse student body and strong academic ratings.
Contrasting her daughter’s experience with her son’s experience at an elite private school, Chandra said,
[My son has] gone to [a private religious school] since kindergarten. . . . [That school’s administration and students’ parents] know that their community is privileged, but they have made a statement and mission to be inclusive and to be sensitive to that. I was able to start a parent diversity group there. I was on the board of directors. I was really active. And a lot of the work there was really hard. . . . You have to ruffle some feathers. . . . I wasn’t interested in my daughter being there. . . . But I am finding it a struggle because I am not as involved as I would like to be at my daughter’s school because (a) I just started a new job, and (b) I feel like I don’t really want to be that involved in that community.
Chandra’s account describes how her son’s school became racially intelligent through her efforts. She spent substantial time “ruffling some feathers” and making it a safe space for him, but the work she had engaged in at her son’s school would have to be repeated at her daughter’s school. She lacked the time, energy, and desire to start from scratch in an environment that she felt would be less receptive to her efforts. Chandra’s current decision privileged academics over her daughter’s racial comfort and her being in an environment with teachers and administrators she believed were racially sensitive or intelligent. In the interim, she focused on the reading and writing skills that her five-year-old daughter was acquiring and tried to balance that with teaching her racial intelligence at home and building her racial self-esteem.
Karlyn, mentioned above, underscored the importance of her son attending a school in which the teachers and administrators did not ignore racism. She described an interaction she had with her son’s principal regarding discriminatory treatment she felt her son experienced from his teacher:
[A teacher] pulled my son out of class over a stupid Four Square game and was yelling at him based upon these girls saying he cheated when he didn’t cheat, he just hit the ball hard and they couldn’t hit it back. So, I had to let her know, “Don’t ever pull my son out of class for a Four Square game again. It is a game.” . . . I had to talk to the principal, and I was really upset because he was pulled out of class and she was yelling at him and he was crying. And I told the principal, you know, she may not think she is racist, but what would make her yell at a little black boy over a stupid Four Square game? . . . [H]e said, “Oh my God, I am just so glad that you have the amount of restraint that you did because I would have been really upset.” And I said . . . “As the mother of a black son, I am always concerned about how he is treated by people.” . . . but, you know, I don’t care. “I’m going to tell you how I feel, and it is something that you as a principal need to take into consideration if you are going to have a school that claims to be inclusive and caring of all types of families and all people.”
Karlyn did not frame this issue in a more generic manner, such as focusing on how teachers in general ought to discipline children. Some mothers in this research would have addressed this issue more indirectly because of the educational contexts in which their children were situated and their assessment of teachers’ and administrators’ ability to talk openly about issues of race and racism.6 However, Karlyn sought out a school in which she could have such direct conversations with administrators and teachers. She attributed her son’s treatment to the conscious or unconscious racism of the teacher and demanded the principal address the problem. Like other mothers in my study, Karlyn was actively engaged in issues related to diversity in her son’s school and the school administration’s ability to create racially safe environments. Her comments reflect the specific concerns mothers had regarding their sons’ treatment by teachers and educational administrators. The topic of gendered racism is discussed in more detail in the next section.
MOTHERS’ RESPONSES TO GENDERED RACISM
African American mothers and their families confront social contexts and receptions that differ from those that white mothers and their families encounter, based not just on race and class but also on the gender of their children. Research examining intersections of race and gender provide ample evidence that African American boys and girls experience racially disparate treatment that varies according to their gender, also known as gendered racism.7 They experience gendered racism from societal institutions including schools8 and law enforcement.9 And, as adults, it con-tinues in employment.10 African American boys and girls also experience different levels of social integration in suburban school systems.11 The boys are viewed as “cool” and “athletic” by fellow classmates, so they are provided more opportunities to participate in high-value institutional activities than are the girls.12 Despite having relatively positive experiences with peers, however, African American boys’ encounters with teachers and administrators are more negative.13 As noted in the introduction, African American boys face harsher discipline in school, and teachers and administrators label them aggressive and violent more often and more quickly than they do white boys or white and African American girls.14 African American girls must navigate a different set of negative stereotypes, as teachers and administrators more often view them as sassy or sexualized as compared with their white female counterparts.15
In addition to this distinct treatment within the school system, African American children, overall, are more likely to have interactions with the justice system than are their white counterparts.16 Additionally, African American boys’ encounters with law enforcement are more likely to have negative outcomes and become violent.17 African American men face heightened scrutiny from police officers and citizens in public and quasi-public spaces. A cursory review of the contemporary news provides many examples of fatal shootings of unarmed African American boys, teenagers, and men by white police officers and private citizens.18
This collection of experiences in schools, law enforcement, and public arenas reflects the impact of gendered racism and controlling images on African Americans’ lives, and how these forces work to constrain African American boys and girls to narrow categories that often work to their detriment. Patricia Hill Collins theorizes how controlling images function as racialized and gendered stereotypes that justify the oppression of certain groups and force those populations to police their own behavior.19 Controlling images also naturalize existing power relations. With respect to African American men and boys, controlling images often depict them as hypermasculine, either elevating them as superhuman or demonizing them as villains.20 Masculinity scholars suggest that African American men and boys enact the thug, a version of subordinate masculinity, because they are not permitted to attain hegemonic masculinity.21 When they do enact alternative versions of manhood, they often confront challenges to their masculinity and racial authenticity.22