Parenting While Black: Strategic School Choice as an Act of Parental Racial Protectionism

• In Event: 25.023 - Neoliberal Policies and Family Engagement: New Perspectives, New Contexts

Abstract

Even in studies that has revered class is primary over race (i.e. Laureau, 2011), race/ism has been a salient factor in the involvement of Black parents. For example, Black middle-class parents reported their children experienced “unspoken hostility, [and] received implied negative messages” (Reynolds, 2010, p. 510) from educators. Thompson (2002) reported that parents across class identified racial hostility to be an alienating factor in their involvement in school. Others have claimed race/ism to be of grave concern in other studies focused on parental involvement as well (Lundy & Mazama, 2014; Allen, 2012; Fields-Smith 2005). This evidence presents a consistent insidious counter-narrative challenging the notion that class is primary over race in the peripheral of African American parents. Congruently, it demonstrates an undertheorized racial phenomenon in the purview of parental involvement that remains under theorized.

This empirical study explored the relationship between race, racism, and parental involvement among 16 sets of Black parents across demographics whose children primarily attended public or private school (2001-2015). Using critical race theory and critical qualitative ethnographic methods (Carspecken, 1996), this study focused on “how is one involved as a Black parent in their child’s education?” Each set had a minimum of three semi-structured interviews taken over an 18 month period. Analytical tools, such as meaning fields and a reconstructive horizon analysis (Carspecken, 1996), were used to provide a robust analysis of narratives along with two peer reviewers.

Findings indicate that attending to racism was a salient component of Black parental involvement as it concerned their school choices. Largely, parents considered how the sociocultural meaning of race and conditions associated with race/ism in these contemporary times as it related to those of African descent (Mutegi, 2013), may impact schooling. Considerations were tied to racial dynamics of schools, making school-choice more of a strategic placement to mitigate racism (i.e. structural to individual). In short, racial dynamics played a fundamental role in school selection and subsequently parents prepared for mitigation of any foreseeable concerns that could have birthed out of these racialized context in selected schools (i.e. being the only black child in the classroom at an all white school, thus Black parents planned activities that involved children of color outside of school) . Extending racial protectionism (Lundy & Mazama, 2014), I consider this strategy a function drawn from a larger phenomenon—parental racial protectionism in schools which is any action taken by a parental figure seeking to protect their child/ren from perceived school-related racism (see Lundy & Mazama, 2014). Considering the topic of school-choice, the complex context of parental racial protectionism calls into question present-day efforts to provide school-choice options (e.g. school voucher) without redressing racial equity and attending to what parents perceive to be racial hostility in schools in these contemporary times.

Author

• Jada A Phelps-Moultrie, Portland State Univeristy