Seen, Not Heard: A Meta-Ethnography of Scholar and Youth Perspectives on Childhood in Jim Crow

• In Event: 67.067 - MTCC Roundtable Session 31
  In Roundtable Session: 67.067-13 - "Because They Said So...": Challenging Singular Narratives by Centering Truths From Black Youth in Context

Abstract

Historians have asserted that across eras of slavery, Reconstruction and Jim Crow, black children’s lived experiences have rarely been recorded or archived (Field et al., 2016; King, 2011, 2011). The absence of black children’s voices from historical record has denied black children’s individual and collective “personhood” and limited what we know about black children’s lived experiences from their perspectives (Simmons, 2009). In this review of literature, I used a historic study on Negro youth, to compare and contrast black children’s perspectives about their lives in and around school, with the analysis of researchers who studied the children.
Given the absence of black children’s voices in historical research, I employed a critical childhood studies (CCS) framework as a theoretical lens. CCS asserts that in order for children to be heard we must “evaluate” what they have said which begins with the basic assumption that children possess knowledge about their lives. We must also evaluate with the purpose of empowerment and social justice for children (Wyness, Harrison, & Buchanan, 2004).
To locate the historical perspectives of black children, historians must engage in the “creative use of sources” to access “new veins of material” which entails piecing together fragments of childhoods via various historical documents and artifacts (2016, p. 392). Data for this analysis was drawn from children’s life histories included in a unique historical source; the 1938 “Study of Negro Youth” (Davis & Dollard, 1940; Frazier, 1940; Johnson, 1941; Warner, Junker, & Adams, 1941). The Study, which is comprised of four books, was commissioned by the American Council on Education to study the personality development of Negro youth as affected by their minority status in various parts of America. I used meta-ethnographic methods, to “synthesize understanding from multiple ethnographic accounts” of children and scholars within the text (Noblit & Hare, 1988, p. 10). The aim of the synthesis “[g]oes beyond a single account to reveal analogies between accounts” (p. 13).
Results show that while scholar’s and black children shared similar perspectives and analysis related to the structure of racial oppression (i.e. norms, systems, etc.), they differed on what they foregrounded about children’s experiences with racial oppression in and around school. While scholar’s analysis foregrounded children’s behavioral responses to racial oppression, black children’s vantages and perspectives foregrounded how the children felt as they experienced racial oppression. I argue, black children’s feelings, as voiced by them, illustrates their childhood innocence. Also, the forced constraint of black children’s feelings associated with racial abuses illustrates the denial of their innocence. The denial of black children’s innocence aligns with contemporary research which argues black children have been denied childhood status in America (Bernstein, 2011; Epstein, Blake, & González, 2017; Goff, Eberhardt, Williams, & Jackson, 2008; Goff, Jackson, Di Leone, Culotta, & DiTomasso, 2014). In research concerning black childhood, school culture, and discipline, it is significant to consider how the acknowledgement of black children’s childhood status could shape policies, reforms, school culture and practices that respect black children’s right to be protected and supported in and around school.

Author

• Kimberly Charis Ransom, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor