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1 Creating Racial Safety and Comfort

CLASS-, RACE-, AND GENDER-BASED PARENTING CONCERNS

I interviewed Maya in the living room of her home, which was located in an upper-middle-class enclave in a city noted for its high crime rate. Now an academic, Maya was raised in a two-income household by working-class parents. Her own family is blended, comprising a child from her spouse’s previous relationship, children from her own previous relationships, and one child she and her current spouse had together. Describing how her approach to parenting compared to her parents’ approach, she said,

[We do a lot] more middle-class parenting in a lot of ways. We do the shuttling, you know, soccer and [this and that], and who has to be where when, and we both do some of it, in a way that my parents didn’t. . . . [Growing up working class, my parents told us] go play, go outside and play, whereas our kids are much more sheltered and shuttled, but they do have chores. . . . It is not coddling, but in many moments, it is child centered in a way that . . . for my parents, it wasn’t a child centered life. . . . [Our parenting] is much more nurturing and looking at their talents and thinking about what to put them in [activity-wise].

Like Maya, the vast majority of the African American middle- and upper-middle-class mothers in my research enrolled their children in a range of extracurricular and academic enrichment programs, including Little League, soccer, swim class, ballet, karate, and music lessons that lower-income mothers often do not have the same economic resources to do.

Conforming to the images of other middle-class families portrayed in mainstream media and academic sources, the mothers in my research and their families led busy and highly scheduled lives.¹ Their family lives were often child centered and their routines were often tied to weekly calendars. Indeed, during my interview with Maya, she retrieved a weekly calendar posted in her kitchen to use as a visual aid while she described her children’s weekly activities and the parental division of labor in the drop-off and pick-up schedules.

FINDING THE BALANCE

On the surface, Maya’s account sounds similar to many popular depictions of middle-class parenting. Compared to her own upbringing, she described her children’s lives as “sheltered and shuttled.” Nevertheless, Maya’s description of how she made decisions about the schools her children attended and their extracurricular activities revealed additional layers of concerns. Her decisions were motivated by her desire for her children to acquire additional skills to address challenges related to intersections of race, class, and gender. These concerns recurred not just in her account but also in the accounts of the other mothers in my research. The concerns and the skills these mothers underscored are generally not the focus of discussions of middle-class mothers, who are often presumed to be white and, thus, have the luxury of not needing to prepare their children for the distinct and explicitly racialized and gendered societal reception they will encounter throughout their lives. Although African American middle-class mothers have more resources than their lower-income counterparts, they also continuously navigate parenting challenges that are of a different character and consequence than white middle-class mothers.

Existing research on middle-class families typically does not account for mothers who deliberately and, at times, necessarily, weave themselves and their children in and out of communities marked by different configurations of race, class, and gender, and how that weaving requires different types of social and cultural capital. This research often ignores the class diversity within African American middle-class families’ social and community networks, which demands this weaving and the skill sets that accompany it. This scholarship also tends to focus on the experiences of race and/or racial stigma as it intersects with lower economic status.²

The accounts of the African American middle-class mothers in my research suggest how racial stigma continues to influence their experiences, regardless of having more resources at their disposal. Despite having similarities to white middle-class families, the accounts of these African American mothers show how considerations of race, class, and gender have continuously influenced their parenting. Their accounts connect experiences within the family with structures outside of the family and describe how their families experience those structures.³ Maya explained,

I think about balance in their lives as a whole. Because there’s always this compromise about schools, right? There are not schools that exist in the Bay Area . . . where you can send your African American kids and know they will have African American teachers and . . . be treated with that kind of community love and be well educated. You just can’t do both. You have to choose. . . . When I think about the outside activities, I want to balance out what I see as an imbalance in their school experience. So, my other child is in a preschool, but there’s only one other black child in his class, but the teachers are black and that’s why I still have him there. My other child is at a school where it is maybe 20 percent black, but it is culturally very white. . . . There’s maybe one black teacher. . . . And, so, when I think about activities, I want them to be around other black people.

For Maya and the other mothers in this study, ensuring a balance in the racial and economic composition in their children’s peer groups in educational and social contexts was a recurrent consideration in their parenting. A mother might believe that her child’s school did not have the ideal level of diversity, so in response she would work to balance that through extracurricular activities. Unlike lower-income mothers, these mothers had additional resources that enabled them to have more control over their children’s neighborhood context and peer groups.⁴

The definition of the “ideal balance” was not the same for all mothers, but racial, gender, and class identity played key parts in determining that ideal. This balance related to creating racially comfortable environments for their children, and, as I will detail in Chapters 2, 3, and 4, it also informed these mothers’ approaches to the development of their children’s racial identity. Mothers varied in whether they were raised in families that were solidly middle class for more than one generation, became middle-class through upward mobility and had substantial economic diversity in their families, and the racial diversity in their families and social networks. These factors also informed their definition of the ideal balance.

A parent’s decision to take a child to singing practice at a church choir comprised of children from a range of racial and economic backgrounds is influenced by different concerns and motivations than a parent’s decision to take a child to a high-priced violin lesson in a predominately elite, white neighborhood. Similarly, enrolling a child in an athletic league in his or her middle-class neighborhood rather than one across town in a more economically and racially diverse or low-income community served different purposes. Opting to live in a more racially and economically diverse neighborhood rather than in a less diverse one (either white or nonwhite) is also connected with different concerns and motivations. Mothers’ specific concerns related to race, class, and gender, and to fostering specific kinds of identities in their children influence how they use their economic and social resources, time, and involvement in organizations within African American and mainstream communities. Although the African American middle-class mothers I interviewed used strategies that scholars describe white middle-class mothers as using in raising their children,⁵ they also used additional strategies and modified others to address challenges related to race, class, and gender that they believed their children would face.

Maya described having an ad hoc community of African American parents with whom she talked about school and childcare choices and whom she described as sharing her experiences and outlook:

[We are in a network with several families that] are all navigating these spaces at the same time and we are able to be a resource to each other. [The network is comprised of] people that I went to college with who are all professionals in the Bay Area [and with whom] I can have those conversations. . . . “What are you thinking about for your child for middle school?” And we can talk about the choices.

These mothers collected and shared a valuable body of knowledge to help each other find and make choices about the best settings for their children. When I asked Maya if she ever talked about her choices with white mothers, she said,

Oh no, because you can’t have those conversations; . . . there is a way that it is a different space that I navigate. . . . I do have white colleagues that I talk to about childcare and whatnot, but it is very different; their position is very different in the space. And their sets of concerns are not the same ones. . . . There is not that worry about race.

Maya believed the white middle-class mothers in her network did not share her concerns about race, so she did not raise these topics with them. She gave a concrete example of this dynamic of talking about parenting concerns but excluding anything related to race when she explained a conversation she had with a white colleague while visiting a prospective preschool for her daughter. During her visit, she had observed that the student body was all white, save for one Asian American student. On the tour, she ran into her colleague, who was very enthusiastic about the school. Maya stopped short of revealing her concerns about diversity, instead simply agreeing that it did look like a great school. Explaining her decision not to broach the topic, Maya said, “For her kid, it is great! That is the thing about it, because race is so salient in this country and because our kids are going to have to wrestle with these things, we need much more from a school space.” Maya’s words are telling when she says that “race is so salient,” yet she simultaneously acknowledges that, in her view, this is not the case for white parents.

For Maya and the other mothers in my study, it was clear that they had distinct worries related to race, gender, and class that they did not believe overlapped with those of white parents in their professional or social circles. Maya was not looking only for a school that was known for high academic achievement but also wanted a space that would be racially supportive of her children. Ultimately, a high rating in terms of academic excellence could not overcome Maya’s concerns over her daughter being the only African American child in the classroom. She enrolled her daughter in a more diverse preschool that had a lower rating for academic achievement; this was similar to compromises many mothers in my study made. She feared her daughter would feel isolated instead of experiencing school as a racially comfortable, if not empowering, environment in her early foundational years. Maya’s four children were currently in four different schools that she selected based on each child’s perceived individual talents and on each school’s level of academic achievement and diversity. Her account suggests how race and gender complicate class status and the ability of mothers and families to successfully deploy their middle-class resources when parenting their children. Although African American middle- and upper-middle-class mothers have higher incomes, those resources cannot change the demographic characteristics of the current landscape of public and private schools, extracurricular activities, and other parenting settings and their respective racial climates.

In the remainder of this chapter, I unpack the “more” that Maya and the mothers in this research believed their children needed. I examine the strategies these mothers used to meet those needs as they navigated spaces that often primarily catered to white middle-class children and their families, and in which these mothers, at times, experienced various degrees of stigma and exclusion. Mothers’ concerns over their children’s racial comfort were not activated only occasionally—instead, they were a constant part of the backdrop that informed their parental decision-making. Some of these mothers’ concerns and experiences related to race and racial stigma likely overlap with those of lower-income African American mothers, but as members of the middle-class, they had more resources to address these issues. The final part of this chapter examines how these concerns and strategies were further complicated by fears of the gendered racism that their children would confront in the future and, at times, were already navigating.

CREATING RACIAL COMFORT

For the mothers in this study, addressing race and racism and ensuring racial comfort started when their children were very young, and it was woven into their searches for places to live, childcare, schools, parks, extracurricular activities, and everyday parenting. Mothers worked to create environments for their children that sheltered them from early experiences of racism and that they hoped would protect and strengthen their racial self-esteem.

Mera, married and the stay-at-home mother of two, said she believed African American and white mothers used different decision-making criteria to raise their children. She developed this belief through her experiences attending two different mothers’ groups; one was comprised primarily of white middle-class mothers, and the other was entirely of African American middle-class mothers:

I attended [a white mothers’ group] and I would just sit there and feel like their world was completely different. There were a lot of things that they wouldn’t talk about. It was a class issue or a race issue. . . . I wouldn’t want to get super-personal with that group, whereas with the [mothers in my] black moms’ group, we could talk about anything. From sex to, you know, anything, you know, like what is going on now, and the differences in our bodies, money, and education. We talked a lot about education and preschools and stuff. . . . [The white mothers’ group] would have different priorities when it came to education. Talking about places that I would never send my kids or neighborhoods I would never live in . . . like Montclair or places like Piedmont. And, I would think, I am not going to send my children through a school in Piedmont that is all white or something.

For Mera, the racial comfort of her children was an important factor that influenced her decisions related to their educational, social, and residential environments. This was a factor she neither believed was explicitly considered by white mothers nor one she felt she could raise in the predominately white mothers’ group that she regularly attended when her children were younger. Piedmont and Montclair are both affluent and predominately white neighborhoods. Piedmont, a tiny city with its own school district, is geographically surrounded by Oakland, but its public schools have records of high academic performance and better resources than neighboring school districts. Montclair is an affluent neighborhood located in the Oakland Hills, and its schools are partially subsidized by the substantial donations from parents in the form of contributions of time and money to the parent-teacher association. Despite these favorable characteristics, Mera was not willing to enroll her children in these schools. Like Maya, Mera did not think the white mothers with whom she interacted would understand her concerns. She sought advice from other African American middle-class mothers who were navigating the same spaces and were thus facing the same issues.

Similarly, Jordana, a married mother of two, whose husband was white, described why she was not willing to live in certain neighborhoods because of concerns over how it would impact the racial makeup of her children’s peer groups. She said,

Where [my husband grew up] sounds like it was really idyllic . . . but there are not enough black people for my taste. . . . [W]hen we first got together and we were talking about where we wanted to live, he kind of was talking about that, and I was like, “Look, dude, I can’t do this, I can’t. I don’t want my children to be the only black kids at school.”

Although Jordana said she did not necessarily select her children’s school because of its level of diversity, she referred to diversity in the student body and among the teachers as “a plus.” She added, “I would never put [my children] into a situation where they were the ‘only’—where it was all or heavily one race.” Overall, mothers were less than enthusiastic about the prospect of their children attending a school or living in a neighborhood in which they would be racially isolated. The fact that their children would be one of only a few African American students in a predominately white school often outweighed a school’s record for high academic achievement. Jordana’s account also suggests how the legacy of residential segregation influences the choices of African American middle-class parents. Despite having the option to move to an area with better schools and more resources, Jordana perceived it as coming with the cost of her children, and herself, being racially isolated.

Part of these mothers’ hesitation and resistance to incurring this cost was based on their own personal experiences with racial isolation as children. Many had been the only African American (or one of the few) in school settings and neighborhoods; replicating that experience raised concerns that their children would develop unhealthy racial identities and low self-esteem. A lack of African Americans in teaching and administrative positions was also a red flag. As noted previously, when enrolling their children in schools, mothers often balanced a school’s academic rankings with its racial demographics. These decisions to pri-oritize racially and economically diverse schools and neighborhoods over those that are predominately white and have more resources challenge assumptions about the push-and-pull factors that influence middle-class African American families’ decision-making regarding schools and neighborhoods.

Karlyn, a single working mother of a son and daughter, described the time-consuming process through which she picked her son’s current school, which both of her children now attend. She said,

Most of the schools in San Francisco that have great test scores are 50 percent white, 50 percent Asian—probably more Asian now—and 1 percent black, 1 percent Latino. So, I did a lot of research before I chose this school. Their school is maybe 30 percent white, 30 percent Asian, 10 percent black, 9 percent Latino. So, you know, instead of like never seeing another black kid in their school, they will probably have at least another one in their classroom. . . . But, you know, they don’t see any black teachers there.

To find the school that would work best for her son, Karlyn did a careful study of public schools, weighing academic ratings; the size of the racial achievement gap between white and African American students; and the racial diversity of the student body, teachers, and school administrators. Ultimately, she did not get everything on her wish list but felt that the school her son attended was the best choice among the existing options. As Karlyn’s account reveals, parents’ endeavors often required them to engage in hours of invisible labor and then make compromises in each category.

Relative to lower-income African American mothers, these mothers likely had more school options from which to choose for their children and could make choices that weighed racial diversity against school performance. Despite often having the option to send their children to private schools or move to neighborhoods with high-achieving public schools, these mothers’ accounts reveal the constraints they faced when looking for racially diverse and welcoming educational and residential spaces for themselves and their children.

EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES

Racial comfort was also a factor when selecting extracurricular activities. For example, after Maya discovered that her son’s soccer league was all white and Asian American, with no other African American boys, she stopped taking him to practice. She noted that she was concerned about both her son’s and her own level of ease in interacting with, for the most part, only white children and parents. The mothers in this research described having access to a range of elite extracurricular activities that were often predominately white and included little other diversity. Although mothers responded in different ways to the racial composition of their children’s activities, they all noted that it influenced their parenting decisions.

Some mothers responded proactively to what they thought could be racially isolating environments for their children. For example, to ensure their children were not the only African American boys and girls in activities, some mothers coordinated with other African American mothers in their networks to enroll their children in the same class or activity group. Mary, married and the mother of a son and daughter, emphasized how the members of her mothers’ group very intentionally protected their daughters from feeling racially insecure:

We want them to feel good about being black. That is one of the key things we all talk about. You know, we work very hard to make sure . . . that they are in activities together so when they go to ballet they are not the only brown girl in the ballet class.

Similarly, to ensure her daughter was not the only African American girl in an elite dance school, Sharon, married with a son and daughter, also coordinated with three African American mothers to enroll their daughters at the same time.

Joining or creating a mothers’ group was another way mothers tried to ensure their children participated in activities with other African American children and families. For example, one reason Karlyn created a mothers’ group was to empower herself and other mothers to participate in activities that they might otherwise be reticent to do on their own. She explained,

A lot of mothers were in the same situation as me, and a lot of us don’t work near our homes, so we are commuting a lot. . . . Sometimes you are a little more hesitant to step out and do [an activity] on your own, but if you are doing it as a group, it makes it fun and inviting, and the kids get to socialize and they look forward to it.

This largely invisible work of creating peer groups of other African American middle-class mothers and their children is not a new phenomenon. One long-standing example is Jack and Jill of America, Incorporated, founded in 1938 by Marion Stubbs Thomas; the organization aims to expose African American children to socially and culturally enriching activities through their mothers’ membership. Since Jack and Jill’s creation, other affiliated and non-affiliated African American mothers’ groups have emerged at both local and national levels to help African American mothers create connections for themselves and their children. These organizations offer opportunities for African American children to participate in activities in racially empowering environments.

Another organization that plays an important role in connecting children to other African Americans is the church. In addition to instilling faith and providing religious instruction, attending an African American church serves as an important positive touchstone for interacting with other African Americans and it is an institution many mothers used for this purpose. Churches were also a source of extracurricular activities for their children in a racially empowering setting.

In addition to creating or joining African American mothers’ groups, some mothers also enrolled their children in extracurricular activities in specific neighborhoods characterized by varying degrees of economic privilege and racial diversity to balance their lack of exposure to African Americans in other contexts. As I will examine in more detail in Chapters 2, 3, and 4, mothers had differing views of these organizations and activities, and some used them as jumping-off points to create their own peer groups based on the kinds of identities they wanted to foster in their children.

Finally, for some mothers, the fact that their children would be the only African Americans participating in an activity did not deter them. These mothers did not want their children to miss out on learning an important skill because they would be the only African American participating in that activity. For example, Reagan, a divorced mother with one daughter, said,

[T]here is one other black—African American—family that takes swimming at the same time. And, in fact, one day when I was there I ran into this African American lady and she said, “It is very good to see you.” And I said, “It is good to see you, too!” I didn’t know her and she didn’t know me either, but I knew exactly what she was talking about. There were no other black kids swimming in the pool. They’re all non-black, but I don’t want hair—that is, your typical African American woman’s deal, which is why we don’t swim—I don’t want that to be something that keeps [my daughter] from excelling. . . . Do I want her to be the female equivalent to Michael Phelps? No. I want her to be able to save herself if there was a situation.

Notably, although Reagan did not let the fact that her daughter was one of only two African American children in swimming lessons prevent her from participating, she was still very aware of this isolation. She also did not let the damaging impact of chlorinated pools on African American textured hair prevent her daughter from learning how to swim. Reagan became visibly excited when telling of the above encounter with another African American mother at a swimming lesson. Generally, she focused on the fact that while there were normally no other African American children in swimming, she believed learning to swim was a necessary life skill that was worth the temporary isolation. Reagan believed that her daughter was exposed to other African American children and families, although often not middle class, through her regular church attendance.

SCREENING FOR RACIAL INTELLIGENCE

As noted above, to escape early attacks on their children’s spirit, mothers carefully screened childcare providers, educational settings, and extracurricular activities for racism. This included investigating educational settings as it related to the racial diversity in a school’s student body, faculty, and administration. This invisible labor went beyond examining a specific school’s level of academic achievement. Mothers dug deeper to learn specifics on the academic achievement 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 Scholars have also examined how African American women are impacted by negotiating controlling images of themselves as angry black women; welfare queens; or hypersexualized and/or emasculating figures in the workplace, in educational institutions, and in other settings.²³

Although mothers expressed worries that cut across gender, this section explores the specific concerns they described in raising African American boys versus girls and the strategies they used to address those concerns. Mothers primarily spoke of ensuring their sons’ physical safety in interactions with police officers, educators, and members of the general public, and preventing their sons from being criminalized by these same groups as “thugs.” They were negotiating a racial empathy gap in which their children’s, but specifically their sons’ actions, would be interpreted more negatively than those of their white peers.

For their daughters, the mothers in this study were primarily focused on ensuring that they developed strong self-esteem, along with independence and self-worth. Despite being middle- and upper-middle class, and thus having more resources than their lower-income counterparts, these mothers felt limited in their abilities to protect their sons and daughters from the challenges associated with being African American boys (and future men) and girls (and future women).

NAVIGATING THE CONTROLLING IMAGE OF THE THUG

I interviewed Karin, a married mother, while she nursed her only child, a daughter, in her apartment. Karin let out a deep sigh before describing how she felt when she learned her baby’s gender:

I was thrilled [the baby] wasn’t a boy. I think it is hard to be a black girl and a black woman in America, but I think it is dangerous and sometimes deadly to be a black boy and black man. Oscar Grant and beyond, there are lots of dangerous interactions with police in urban areas for black men . . . so I was very nervous because we thought she was a boy. . . . I was relieved when she wasn’t. It is terrible, but it is true.

Karin’s relief at learning her child was not a boy underscores how intersections of racial identity, class, and gender influence the concerns that African American middle- and upper-middle-class mothers had for their daughters versus their sons.

It is important to note that the interviews for this research took place in the aftermath of Oscar Grant’s fatal shooting in Oakland, California. Grant, an unarmed African American man, was shot in the back by Johanness Mehserle, a white Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) police officer. Grant was lying face down on a BART train platform and was being subdued by several other officers when Mehserle shot him. On July 8, 2010, Mehserle was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter—not the higher charges of second-degree murder or voluntary manslaughter.²⁴ The incident was dramatically depicted in the full-length movie Fruitvale Station.²⁵

For many of the mothers I interviewed, Grant’s death served as another reminder of the distinct experiences that their sons, brothers, nephews, and husbands would have as African American boys, teenagers, and men when interacting with law enforcement and other members of the general public. It also underscored that they would have to teach their sons how to interact with law enforcement and, importantly, how to navigate those interactions so that they would be left unscathed. These mothers questioned whether their sons would be received by law enforcement as good kids from middle-class families or as threats to public safety.

Mary, introduced earlier, described a conversation that regularly occurred in her mothers’ group that revealed her worries over adequately preparing her son for the gendered racism she believed he would encounter:

With our sons, we talk about how can we prepare them or teach them about how to deal with a society, especially in a community like Oakland, where black men are held to a different standard than others, and not necessarily a better one. . . . When you are a black man and you get stopped by the policeman, you can’t do the same things a white person would do. . . . We talk about our sons who are a little younger and starting kindergarten. What do we have to do to make sure teachers don’t have preconceived ideas that stop our sons from learning because they believe little brown boys are rambunctious or little brown boys are hitting more than Caucasian boys?

Charlotte, a married mother of four sons, who lived in an elite and predominately white neighborhood, held back tears as she described her fears about how others would respond to her children:

I look at [then] President Obama. I see how he is treated and it scares me. I want people to look at my sons and see them for the beautiful, intelligent, gifted, wonderful creatures that they are and nothing else. I do not want them to look at my sons and say, “There goes that black guy,” or hold onto their purse.

As these mothers’ accounts demonstrate, concerns regarding African American boys’ treatment—particularly their criminalization—emerge early in their sons’ lives, and not just in school settings but also on the playground and during other childhood activities.

Nia, a married working mother of two sons, described interactions with other families at local children’s activities. She called it “baby racism.” She recalled,

From the time our first son was a baby and we would go [to different children’s activities], our son would go and hug a kid and a parent would grab their child and be like, “Oh, he’s going to attack him!” And, it was just, like, “Really? Are you serious?” He was actually going to hug him. You see, like little “baby racism.” . . . I have even written to local parents’ listservs to ask, “Am I imagining this?” . . . Almost all the black mothers wrote in, “You’re not imagining this; this is real. You’re going to have to spend the rest of your life fighting for your child.”

Nia, like the other mothers in this study, believed that when African American boys participated in activities comprised of primarily white middle-class families, their behavior faced greater scrutiny, and innocuous behaviors were quickly criminalized.

Participants believed the process of criminalizing their sons’ behavior began at an early age, and it was pervasive, not confined only to educational settings. Although mothers had no way of knowing how others were actually thinking about their sons, numerous studies support their beliefs that society at large interprets the behavior of African American boys differently, as opposed to white boys, in a range of settings.²⁶ In other words, race and gender trump class. These mothers believed their sons’ racial identity, despite their middle-class status, marked them as “thugs” who were poor, uneducated, violent, and criminal. They recognized they would have to actively and continuously challenge that marking, assert their middle-class status in mainstream white society, and engage in a continuous cycle of respectability politics.²⁷

Although most mothers in my study believed their sons would face challenges related to the image of the thug, a few did not. These mothers attributed their lack of concern to their sons’ racially ambiguous appearance. Kera, a married mother, said of her two sons, “They could be damn near anything depending on how they put their hair. . . . I don’t think they’ll have the full repercussions of being a black man like my brothers or my husband.” Kera’s comments echo research that suggests that skin color differences impact African Americans’ experiences in employment, school, and relationships.²⁸ Her sons were protected because they did not fit the stereotypical image of what an African American looks like. But this protective racial ambiguity represents the exception that reaffirms the rule.

Mothers also believed boys faced more pressure to prove their “blackness” than girls did, in part, because they believed their sons had a more limited range of identities they could express while still being viewed as authentically African American by their peers. Indeed, when African American boys do not conform to the subordinate versions of masculinity assigned to them by the broader society, they often face challenges to their racial authenticity and their masculinity.²⁹ Nora, a married mother with a son and a daughter, said,

There is a lot of pressure for black boys to assume a more “thuggish” identity. There aren’t enough different identity spaces for black boys in schools . . . and so I want my kids to have choices. And if that’s the choice, I might cringe . . . but I would want it to be among a menu of choices. . . . I don’t think there is the same pressure for girls in terms of performing their womanhood.

Similarly, Nia believed her sons would be vulnerable to challenges to their racial authenticity and masculinity because they were smart and voracious readers, characteristics that she believed were not often associated with African American boys. She explained,

I think for black boys, if you ask too many questions in a curious way, then people are like, “You must be a faggot, or shut up, or like what’s wrong with you.” And that’s not okay [that] there is this very narrow black [option]. . . . Particularly in Oakland, I feel like [compared to other places where I lived with larger African American middle-class populations] there was a lot more room for black boys; like you could be like the nerd or you could be the student-athlete or the jock or the artist. . . . [I] don’t feel like that here in the Bay Area.

Nia also expressed support of gay rights and progressive attitudes toward gay and lesbian people. However, through her use of the “fag” discourse here, Nia was pointing to how academic achievement is often used to emasculate African American boys as well as challenge their racial authenticity.³⁰

Mothers also worried about the toll these messages might have on their sons’ self-perception as they transitioned into manhood. Sharon, mentioned earlier, captured a sentiment shared by many mothers:

Each time a black boy has a racially charged interaction with a police officer, a teacher, or a shop owner, those experiences will gradually start to eat at his self-worth and damage his spirit. He might become so damaged that he starts to believe and enact the person he is expected to be rather than who he truly is as a person.

Mothers wanted their sons to be aware of racism and prejudice, but they did not want them to internalize how some members of mainstream society might view them. Sarah, a mother of one son with another child on the way, said, “How do we give them the history without the pain? Educat[e] our kids without giving them the baggage?” These mothers walked a tightrope between providing their children with the skills to navigate negative images of African Americans while not validating those images. Their children would need to recognize both explicit and implicit forms of racism while not allowing it to justify not working hard or succeeding in life.

BUILDING SELF-ESTEEM AND FOSTERING SELF-RELIANCE

Mothers in my study were also concerned about the gendered racism their daughters might confront, but they believed their daughters were less likely to face situations in which their responses could mean the difference between life and death. The apprehension mothers had for their daughters seemed more “manageable” to them. For example, after describing her concerns for her sons’ safety, I asked Karlyn if she had as many worries for her daughter. She replied,

Not as many, I think that . . . Not as many. I don’t know; it just feels as though it is a little easier for her to do what she needs to do and be who she needs to be because she is perceived as less of a threat than he will be.

Karlyn, like the other mothers, believed her daughter’s challenges would be less onerous than her son’s because her daughter would be perceived as less of a physical threat requiring containment. Mothers’ concerns for their daughters focused on ensuring they were well educated, had strong self-esteem in terms of their beauty, bodies, and sense of self-worth, and could take care of themselves. For the mothers in my study, raising daughters involved a different quality and intensity of concerns than raising sons.³¹

The racialized and gendered context for daughters was somewhat different from that of sons during the period I conducted interviews (from 2009 to 2011). At the onset of this research, Michelle Obama had become the first African American First Lady, and the much debated and awaited The Princess and the Frog³² had been released, which was Disney’s first animated film with an African American princess. Over the course of the interviews for this research, Sesame Street’s music video “I Love My Hair” went viral, showing positive images of African American hair that encouraged black girls to “love their hair” in all of its natural forms.³³ Malia Obama, one of former President Obama’s daughters, sported cornrows and twists, which appeared to decrease the stigma of those hairstyles and encouraged mothers in my research to be more willing to allow their daughters to wear them. Although mothers believed their daughters were barraged with messages that they were unworthy and unattractive because they did not have the “right” skin color, facial features, or hair texture, many also noted the increased availability of positive depictions of African American women. Indeed, they often contrasted the absence of these positive images in their own youth to the relative abundance and availability of them for their daughters.

Mary shifted her focus when she described the concerns she and her mothers’ group members discussed about raising daughters:

Whether it is, “I’m the only black girl in the school,” or “Someone is wondering why my hair is curly, or is telling me I look like a monkey because it doesn’t straighten like theirs.” How can we prepare them? How can we instill in them a sense of beauty and sense of pride in who they are?

Mary’s comments illustrate the desire for daughters to see their own value as African American women and to have strong self-esteem. This was something Mary said she did not believe was reflected in the messages her daughter received from the broader white society or from her daughter’s non-black peers. Mary believed the friendships her children were forming with other African American kids would help them navigate prospective assaults on their self-esteem. Toward the end of our interview, Mary said that it was indeed a white classmate who had told her daughter that she had hair like a monkey. This experience reinforced Mary’s belief that her daughter needed African American peers, and she found solace in the fact that her daughter had a group of girlfriends that she interacted with regularly and whose hair looked like hers.

Although hair and beauty regimens might be thought of as superficial and inconsequential, African American women have confronted a surprising amount of scrutiny over their beauty and hair. This has ranged from the findings of pseudoscientific research appearing in Psychology Today on why African American women are less attractive than other women³⁴ to governmental policies in the military restricting natural hairstyles such as braids and dreadlocks and school codes of conduct that prohibit certain natural hairstyles for girls and women. This scrutiny has also come from people like syndicated radio talk show host Don Imus, who referred to African American female basketball champions as “nappy-headed hoes” and expounded upon the bodies and hair textures of other athletes.³⁵

Mary and other mothers engaged their daughters in a version of what Patricia Hill Collins calls black feminist thought, which involves a process of “self-definition and valuation” that is sensitive to the “interlocking nature of oppression” and emphasizes the “importance of redefining culture” by clarifying the contributions of African American men and women.³⁶ This process of uncovering one’s value was meant to protect daughters from challenges to their self-worth that they would likely encounter throughout their lives. Mothers also viewed this process as connected to building strong self-esteem in their daughters, developing a sense of self-sufficiency and helping them to refrain from early sexual encounters.

STRATEGIES TO MANAGE GENDERED RACISM

To address challenges related to gendered racism, mothers drew from an arsenal of strategies that often differed for their sons and their daughters. They discussed using two strategies—experience management and environment management—to ensure that their sons’ regular social interactions included or avoided certain kinds of exposures. Mothers used a different strategy—peer group management—to address concerns related to their daughters’ self-esteem. This strategy focused on creating supportive peer groups for their daughters that would affirm their beauty, value, and identity.

Experience management focuses on seeking out opportunities for sons to engage in activities to gain fluency in different situations—both empowering and challenging—that mothers viewed as integral to African American boyhood and manhood. Environment management focused on monitoring their sons’ regular social environment, such as their school or neighborhood, with the aim of excluding sources of discrimination.

Participants used experience management to try to help their sons acquire what they viewed as an essential life skill: the ability to seamlessly shift among communities that differed by race, class, and gender. They shuttled sons to activities such as baseball, basketball, or music lessons in a variety of neighborhoods comprised of African Americans from different economic backgrounds; and they exposed their sons to African American men, including fathers, uncles, cousins, coaches, or friends, who expressed what they believed were healthy versions of masculinity. Mothers provided this exposure because they believed their sons would have to understand how they were being interpreted in various settings and how to deploy different racialized versions of their masculinity to successfully negotiate those settings.

Maya, introduced at the start of this chapter, described how she and her husband used experience management to expose their son to alternative and, in her view, more positive ideals of masculinity:

With our son, we definitely have a heightened level of concern, especially around public schools, about what it means to be a black male in this society. . . . [I]t is worrisome to think about sending him into the world where he is such a potential target. . . . I know how to make a kid that does well in school and can navigate academic environments. My husband knows how to help young people—black young people—understand their position, how the world sees them, and how they might see themselves in a different and much more positive way.

Maya and her husband did this by teaching their son how others might perceive him while rejecting prevailing images of African American masculinity and crafting alternatives, a version of what W. E. B. Du Bois referred to as double consciousness.³⁷

Mothers who used environment management organized their sons’ social interactions to exclude exposures to racism. Rachel, a married mother of a son and daughter, said,

My son thinks he is street-smart, but he is used to being in an environment in which he is known. No one thinks of my son as a black boy, they think of him as my son, but when he goes out into the real world, people will make assumptions about him.

Rachel lived in a predominately white neighborhood with few other African American families. She believed her neighbors did not view her family as “the African American family” but simply as a family, and this protected her son from challenges associated with being an African American male in the broader society, where he might be assumed to be part of the urban underclass and treated poorly.

When mothers discussed addressing concerns related to their daughters’ self-esteem, they often focused on the peer group management strategy. For Sharon, one of her reasons for joining a mothers’ group was to give her daughter a peer group. She explained that “part of [joining] was wanting her to have a strong sense of self and being prideful of who she was, but at the same time really being comfortable, being in really any environment. But feeling grounded or centered with people that were like her.” Sharon and other members of her mothers’ group also made efforts to enroll their daughters in activities together to ensure they were not the only black girls participating. Sharon believed that by providing her daughter with this race-, class-, and gender-specific peer group early in her life, she would have the emotional support to avoid insecurities over her self-worth and beauty. Indeed, she had been prompted to seek out such a group when her daughter was the only African American student in her preschool and began expressing a desire to have hair like the other girls. These mothers hoped that having a supportive group of peers from the same racial background would shield their daughters from the self-doubt and social isolation they often experienced during their own childhoods.

Mothers also described using two additional strategies—emotion management and image management—to help their sons manage the expression of their feelings and their physical demeanor. Although mothers primarily discussed using these strategies in relation to their sons, image management was, at times, discussed in relation to their daughters to ensure they were treated well. However, different stakes were implicated in the successful deployment of these strategies for their daughters versus their sons. For example, Karlyn engaged in something she called “prepping for life” with her son. She said,

I talk to [my son] constantly. We do scenarios and we talk about stuff. I’ll pose a situation, like, say, if you are ever kidnapped, what do you do? If the police ever pull you over, how do you need to react? So, we do scenarios for all of that; it’s just prepping for life.

It would not be unreasonable for a parent to instruct their child to view police officers as sources of help. What is striking about Karlyn’s examples is that she viewed child predators and police officers as equally dangerous to her son. She hoped that preparing her son for these scenarios would give him some agency in his response when he was confronted with these situations. Mothers enrolled their sons in activities such as yoga and karate, hoping they would learn to restrain their emotions and that this ability would translate to their interactions with teachers, police officers, peers, and the public.

Rebecca, a widow with one son, who also raised her nephew in his teenage years, described using image management when counseling her nephew about his clothing:

I tried to explain that to him because he didn’t understand. He said, “I am just wearing my hoodie.” “But baby, I understand what you are doing, and there is nothing wrong with that, but if you walk through the [poor, primarily African American, and high-crime] neighborhood near my school, we see something different.” You know, just having to protect him and trying to shelter him from unnecessary stress and trauma. . . . Is it fair? No. Is it reality? Yes.

Rebecca’s comments illustrate a parenting paradox experienced by the mothers in this research. Even as she challenged the double standards that she believed were used to evaluate her nephew’s behavior and appearance, as a practical matter, she felt compelled to educate him and her son on these different standards and encourage them to adhere to them for their own safety. Participants could not prevent negative interactions from happening, but they wanted to increase their sons’ chances of surviving them.

Mothers also recounted concerns over managing their daughters’ physical appearance. Kristen, married and the mother of one daughter, described the racial stigma her daughter might encounter based on her hairstyle:

I was trying to decide if I wanted to do cornrows, which I don’t have a problem with, but I think sometimes there is a stereotype that comes along, or can come along, with it. It was important to me to make sure that if I did it that it didn’t look [sigh] ghetto. I even discussed it with a few friends and it actually looks really cute. . . . I didn’t want people to assume that she was a certain type of child based on her hairstyle . . . bad . . . with parents that are kind of a little wild.

Kristen and other mothers believed that even a seemingly insignificant decision of styling their daughters’ hair in a way that was both convenient and common in the African American community could have consequences in the broader white mainstream. These mothers felt that cornrows could provoke negative assessments of their daughters’ character by teachers and peers.

Finally, mothers described scrutinizing the media entertainment and toys they exposed their children to, particularly their daughters. Perhaps this should not be surprising, given that most modern childcare experts advise parents to refrain from exposing their children to television until they are two years old and to then limit the amount thereafter. Steven P. Shelov and colleagues described research showing how exposure to television negatively impacts brain development and leads to childhood obesity.³⁸ Absent from the litany of potential negative effects, however, was a worry voiced by many of my participants: How does exposure to televised images of African Americans impact their children’s racial self-esteem? Thus, they monitored and limited screen time for their children using a racial filter. Mothers also used media and toy management to expose their daughters to empowering images of African American women role models and to exclude negative images.

Karin talked about her plans to restrict her daughter’s screen time as a way of preserving her self-esteem as an African American girl. She did not want her daughter to grow up shaped by media images that portray African American women as having the “wrong” hair and skin color and being undesirable to men. She recounted that because her own parents limited her screen time, she never saw Lisa Turtle, the sole black character on the popular 1980s television show Saved by the Bell, go dateless season after season. Karin also believed the blow to her own self-esteem was less severe when a white girl in her summer camp told her that she looked like Nell Carter, the overweight actress who played the black housekeeper 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 to African American middle-class identity in their children. I also describe the shared characteristics of mothers who embraced each orientation to identity, the strategies they used to foster that identity, and the meanings they attached to that identity.