Hidden Stories of Black Families and Learning Amid COVID-19

• In Event: Dancing in the Rain and Weathering the Storm: Stories of Black Family Agency and Resistance

Abstract

In this paper, I explore how Black families refuse schooling options they oppose and/or create new ways to educate their children in spite of the disparate and disproportionate impact of coronavirus. Social policies and school systems marginalize Black families (Khalifa et al., 2016; Watson & Bogotch, 2015; Wun, 2014). COVID-19 has made the pervasive marginalization of Black families apparent by bringing health disparities, wealth gaps, and food and housing insecurity to the fore. These staggering statistics expose systemic anti-black racism. Yet Black families are often blamed, disregarded, and described using a deficit-based lens (Cooper, 2009; Diamond & Gomez, 2004; Ishimaru, 2019; Loder-Jackson et al, 2015). Still, Black families have long fought for education that affirms and prepares Black children to thrive in the face of racism (Anderson, 1988; Fairclough, 2009).

To theoretically ground this study, I embrace Sharpe’s (2016) concept of Black annotation and redaction to “imagine otherwise,” look with care, and see beyond to make “Black life visible” (pp. 123,124). Sharpe (2016) describes annotations and redaction as new ways to write and make sense of Black survival. These are tools to resist and disrupt erasure. Therefore, I pose questions to reveal and elevate Black family imagination. Methodologically, I use a critical qualitative approach (Denzin, 2017) and rely on critical race methodology (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002) to gather stories that showcase the hopes, dreams, and intentional actions that Black families take to defy anti-blackness. I rely on open-ended interviews to explore how seven Black families interact with schools and school systems to educate their children. Interviews are complemented by verbal or written reflections and photo journals crafted by each family. Each family articulates their struggle to literally and figuratively keep breath in the Black body (Sharpe, 2016, p.113), whilst revealing the depth of their goodness. I capture and retell family stories; I ask what’s hidden, distorted, or erased in the broader narrative about Black families amid COVID-19.

I found that looking beyond the violence that Black families experience in their quest to educate their children provides an alternate point of view that reveals Black families’ approaches to create humanizing learning experiences for their children amid the COVID-19 disaster. In the full paper, I elaborate on these approaches. For instance, I tell the story of how one mother refused to be an “essential worker,” resigned from her job, started braiding hair in her basement, and began to homeschool her children. A father learned how to review numbers and letters with his four year old while simultaneously managing his staff of 30, as his wife reported to her clerical role in a hospital daily. I draw attention to the goodness (Lawrence-Lightfoot & Davis, 1997) of Black families despite the perils of an antiblack society. Ultimately, through presenting these stories I assert that Black families are good and worthy of humanizing methodologies that capture their strengths. Educational researchers need to accept responsibility for their roles in normalizing whiteness and pathologizing Black families for far too long.

Author

• Shannon Paige Clark, University of Illinois at Chicago