Mothering While Black. Dawn Marie Dow
on the popular 1980s sitcom Gimme a Break. Karin realized that this girl was trying to demean her, but because she was not familiar with the show or the actress, the insult did not resonate with her. She often wondered what damage that insult might have inflicted on her self-esteem had she known about the show. Based on her own experiences, Karin believed that limiting screen time would help to insulate her daughter from such potential stings to her confidence, self-esteem, and thought processes.
Chandra described how she approached media exposure for her daughter:
I really tried to encourage and push Dora [the Explorer] as much as possible. . . . She is traveling around. She is cool. She speaks Spanish. She is a kid of color. But the whole Disney thing. I mean (a) from seeing the cartoons, there are a lot of racist innuendos in them. They were made during a very racist time during our history. And (b) they are so white. I think about working with kids and learning how they suffer from low self–esteem around those issues of identity and race and what they look like, and I just think it is really harmful. And this notion that a prince is going to come and save you and whisk you away and your life is going to be perfect is just against everything I’ve learned in my life. . . . We talk about it and I tell her why I don’t like them. . . . [W]e talk about why she doesn’t see images like herself, or darker—because she is pretty light—on the news or on TV. And people might think that it is too much to talk about with a five-year-old, but if she is getting these messages already, I feel like it is my responsibility as a parent to begin to deconstruct them.
Chandra believed her daughter, at five years old, was already being inundated with messages that she was less valuable as an African American girl. She had started these conversations about the lack of people of color in the media even before her daughter was five. She could not prevent the exposure, but she could challenge the implicit messages and counter those messages.
Mary described the strategies she and other members in her mothers’ group used to build strong self-esteem in their daughters:
[We work hard to ensure] they see beauty in books and they see themselves represented in books and movies. To make them understand that beauty is not about race or color. You know, I think it has improved a lot in the last twenty years since I was a kid. . . . I make an effort to go out and if I see a book with a brown girl, I buy it. . . . I think that is one of the struggles of black women. The definition of beauty in society has nothing to do with what is black.
The mothers in this research thus deliberately and proactively exposed their daughters to positive examples of African American girls and women in media and toys to build a strong sense of value and worth in their daughters and to counter the negative images they believed they were being exposed to regularly in their lives.
Heather, a divorced mother of two sons and a daughter, captured the end product of building her daughter’s self-esteem when she described her proudest moment as a mother. Heather and her daughter were visiting a predominantly white private school when her daughter was given the opportunity to play with current female students, who were all white and playing with baby dolls. None of the children were playing with the lone black doll. Her daughter entered the room, saw the black baby doll, ran to it, and scooped it up, exclaiming, “Oh my goodness! Look at this beautiful black baby and her beautiful black skin.” Within moments, the seemingly uninteresting black baby doll became the center of attention, and all of the white girls wanted to play with that doll. In the ensuing weeks, Heather said the school had to order additional black baby dolls to quell disputes among the students who, she opined, now saw the value and beauty in the black doll because of her daughter’s actions. Heather commented that her daughter could have responded by similarly rejecting the black doll, but she did not. Instead, her daughter picked up the doll and extolled its virtues. Heather believed that her daughter not only saw the value in the doll but also asserted its value publicly because of the effort she had put into building her daughter’s self-esteem by exposing her to empowering media images and toys featuring African American girls and females of color more generally. Overall, the mothers in my study sought to shield their daughters from experiences of self-loathing or self-doubt so that they would not question whether they were smart and attractive, and they would know they were worthy of the same happiness as others.
CONCLUSION
It is important to reiterate that these participants were middle- and upper-middle-class mothers and that most were married. Thus, in many respects, they conformed to the sort of households that, at least on paper, would exemplify middle-class resources and privileges, families that typically view educators and law enforcement as resources.39 But these participants viewed these groups as threats and sources of gendered racism.
Many would assume that these mothers and their children would have access to good schools, dedicated teachers, and safe neighborhoods. Nonetheless, these participants saw educators and law enforcement as potential threats to their children’s development and safety. Sending their children out into the world to get educated; navigate their neighborhoods; and interact with peers, teachers, police officers, and community members was a source of stress. The societal institutions that are often viewed as resources for middle- and upper-middle-class white families were instead viewed with some level of circumspection and fear by the mothers in this research.
The labor these mothers engaged in for their sons and daughters to feel confident, safe, and valued is largely rendered invisible to the broader white society (see figure 1).
Figure 1. General and gender-specific parenting concerns.
These mothers’ accounts demonstrate the way controlling images operate in society and how their sons’ and daughters’ range of acceptable emotions, self-expression, and appearance was constrained by the fear of affirming negative stereotypes. Indeed, mothers encouraged their children to engage in strategic sacrifices in self-expression to successfully and safely navigate their social worlds.
Through engaging in versions of black feminist thought, mothers encouraged their children to understand how to develop an independent sense of their own self-worth.40 For both sons and daughters, these processes required that they develop a double consciousness. They saw themselves not only through the eyes of the broader society but also through their own empowering self-image. The findings for sons are particularly interesting, given that research suggests that masculinity and male bodies confer privileges and protections that serve as symbolic assets in social interactions. These mothers’ accounts tell a different story: depending on its racialization, the male body can be a “symbolic liability.” The strength that is usually associated with masculinity put these mothers’ sons at risk and necessitated that they adjust how they express their manhood to manage their vulnerability in different contexts.
Ironically, by feeling compelled to engage in strategies that encouraged their sons and daughters to conform to stricter standards and engage in acts of deference, participants contributed to reproducing a social structure that subordinated their children. These mothers were caught in a lose-lose predicament. The seemingly continuous stream of videos of unarmed African American boys and men being shot by police officers and members of the general public might compel the US government to take a closer look at law enforcement’s and the broader society’s treatment of African American boys, girls, and men, but these mothers need solutions that protect their children now.
These parental concerns over safety, vulnerability, and self-esteem transcend class. The societal forces that produce them are largely outside of the control of individual families. In response, the mothers in this research tried to fortify their daughters against assaults on their self-esteem, tried to protect their sons from attacks on their bodies, and tried to ensure their children received some version of the “more” they believed their children needed to survive and thrive in a society that was not always supportive of their development.
In the next three chapters, I describe three different groups of mothers that I term “border crossers,” “border policers,” and “border transcenders.” Each group of mothers sought to foster different orientations