Understanding Black Family Knowing in the Midst of Racism

• In Event: Engagement of Black Youth and Families in Emergent Social and Educational Spaces

Abstract

Purpose
This paper seeks to contribute to racial equity efforts within a Pacific Northwest large public school system. The study focuses on understanding how Black families (African-American and East African) engage collectively through Family Learning Circles (an adaptation of design circles) to share experiences and surface solutions to challenges they identify. FLCs leverage the expertise and relational networks of community leaders to cultivate culturally-specific community-centered spaces byond school-centric, white-dominant agendas, framings, and expectations. We ask, What do Black families/youth name as essential and priority experiences during the dual pandemics of racism and COVID-19? What community learning and practices do Black families identify to counter racism?

Theoretical Framework
We draw from Critical Race Theories (CRT) (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995; Solórzano & Yosso, 2002) to recognize the knowledge and expertise of Black families to name inequities in schools and in society. We draw on Black families’ counternarratives, knowledge and solutions to interpret and name racialized challenges and solutions that attend to Black lived experience.

Methodology
We take up FLCs to directly engage with Black families in relationship with Black Community-based organizations. This approach involves deliberate negotiation and co-construction of the purpose and structure of the circle in a minimum of two sessions. The first circle engages families in open-ended dialogue around a specific set of topics (listening). A second circle is organized for accountability purposes so that families have opportunities to hear about what was done with the data, offer new insights or feedback and explore future participation. Finally, the FLC approach departs from conventional focus group orientations of gathering family/youth voice towards a humanizing methodology that embeds an aswerability component to the sharing process.

Data sources
For this study, we will conduct 6 FLCs over the course of Fall 2020, 2 of which have been completed. An average of 3-4 families (and youth) will participate in each of the FLCs.

Findings
Preliminary findings suggest families narrate ways of taking action outside of boundaries of school-based efforts in the face of school closures and a summer of protests and organizing for Black Lives. Our preliminary findings elucidate ways in which Black families have been enacting their own forms of educational leadership.

-Multigenerational African American families were already fostering their children’s teaching and learning to compensate for the lack of support they received at school; they expanded those efforts during COVID and the BLM racial reckonings.

-Because families prioritized their children’s “whole well-rounded” learning, they facilitated child-directed learning at home driven by their unique interests and strengths, including participation in protests and activism that continued generational family traditions.

-Families had experiences of remote learning that varied by teachers, school, and child within the context of longstanding and ongoing racialized tensions with schools. They expressed concern about schools’ ability to meet their children’s needs through “rigid” approaches and inadequate support for children with disabilities.


Scholarly Significance
This work adds to the growing research base that documents the forms of Black family brilliance, knowledge and expertise in times of crisis.

Authors

• Filiberto Barajas-Lopez, University of Washington

• Ann M. Ishimaru, University of Washington