A Hand Up, Not a Handout: 1960s Racial Capitalism, Black Motherhood, and the Origins of Head Start

• In Event: Politics of Race and Indigeneity in Education

Abstract

By analyzing government and newspaper records, the paper demonstrates that Head Start’s appeal among 1960s policymakers and Black activists alike was to support poor Black parents, not educate their children as is traditionally imagined, though through differing discourses. In particular, Head Start allowed policymakers to provide concessions to Black mothers’ economic aspirations while promoting an ideology that stigmatized Black parents and suppressed the potential for collective organizing between struggling poor and middle-class families. This finding is significant as Head Start’s origins is emblematic of the continued focus on education-based policies to respond to more radical demands for uplift and channel unrest towards individual and cultural reforms, rather than accepting responsibility how un- and under-employment is fundamentally structured by racial capitalism.

Author

• Kenzo K. Sung, Rowan University