Preemptive Parenting: Examining the Role of Children's Literature in the Development of Racial Literacy

• In Event: 47.067 - On Tiptoe and Tightrope: Motherscholars Recalibrating Evidence of Truth and Reimaging Hope in Educational Research

Abstract

We are critical researchers and departmental colleagues who centralize race in our professional work; yet, it is our first-person experiences as mothers raising children who either attend school or who will soon that illuminate the impossibility/hope to promote racial literacy at in homes and communities as a counterstory (Delgado & Stefancic, 2001) to the silences and distortions they will likely be taught about race and racialized histories in schools (Zinn, 2016; Loewen, 2008; King & Swartz, 2016; Boutte, 2016).
We owe our conception of racial literacy to Lani Guinier (2003) and Sonya Horsford (2014) who teach us that racial literacy is the ability to analyze "race in conjunction with both contemporary institutional and democratic hierarchies and their historical antecedents” (Guinier, 2004, p. 118). Extrapolating Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz’s (2013) lessons of teaching racial literacy in classrooms in part through dialogue, reading and listening to critical texts we recognize that homes and communities are also indispensable sites for such hopeful practices as well (Boutte, 2016; Miller, 2017). Our work builds upon and contributes to the growing body of research from critical race parenting (Matias, 2016; DePouw and Matias 2016) that legitimizes and centralizes the importance of establishing dialogue around race and racism in familial spaces.
We share findings from a mixed methods study designed to examine how children’s literature works as a conduit to spark conversations about race and racism between children and their caregivers (we define caregivers as adults who are legal permanent or temporary guardians of children aged 2-12). We draw from semi-structured interviews and survey data to ask: a) How is children’s literature leveraged as a resource by caregivers to discuss race and racism with children? b) What specific literacy strategies are utilized around children’s books to teach race as a social and historical construct? Participants included 130 African American, White, and bi-racial caregivers across the country. We analyzed the interview data analyzed thematically (Clark & Braun, 2014) and used SPSS descriptive statistical analysis to analyze the survey data.
Our findings indicate that the participants in the study were having conversations about race and racism in the context of literacy events; however, these conversations were not always critical, probing or in-depth enough to develop sophisticated understandings of the historical antecedents of race. For many White families, these conversations were thwarted by a difficulty to discuss race at all and it was only when key pivotal incidents that led to racial awareness occurred that these conversations were initiated (i.e., transracial adoptions). We found that a key factor in whether and the ways in which caregivers initiated discussions about race was accessibility to high quality literature centralizing issues of race and racism.
The role of caregivers as educators of truth and justice has never been more important as curricula becomes more controlled, distorted and dictated by high-stakes assessments (Au, 2010). The development of racial literacy in homes and communities is one way to confront both the impossibility and refusal to relinquish hope through counterstorying (Delgado & Stefancic, 2001) in homes and communities.

Authors

• Erin Till Miller, University of North Carolina - Charlotte

• Tehia Starker Glass, University of North Carolina - Charlotte