Black Women Principals and the Undoing of the Othermother

• In Event: They “Specialize in the Wholly Impossible”: Black Women’s Contributions to Black Education

Abstract

Patricia Hill-Collins (2002) argues that “controlling images are designed to make racism, sexism, and poverty appear to be natural, normal, and inevitable part of everyday life” (p. 68). Black Feminist scholars have offered extensive analysis on the impact of controlling images like the mammy. In an attempt to extend this analysis, we offer the Black female principal as ‘othermother’ as another insidious controlling image. By labeling Black female school leaders as othermothers, the term both separates the labor of Black women from the institutions that necessitate their impossible tasks, and simultaneously renders the extensive care/work of Black women school leaders as justifiably exploitable.

Using a Wynterian analytic, this paper attempts to trace the origin story of the Black educational mother or othermother and its broad application to the labor and work conducted in the pursuit of survival, liberation, and freedom of Black children in schools. The evolution of the concept of Black mothering is specifically employed to categorize work beyond the biological labor of birthing children, and uniquely in reference to the domestic labor by Black womxn’s bodies. Wynter, Bennett & Givens (2020) discuss the necessity of re-establishing an understanding of Black life where it began, not where colonialism intervened. Thus, this project unsettles colonialism’s intervention into the gendered and sexed work that is oft called motherwork but in actuality has its origins in community responsibility and ethics of care that predate colonialism’s categorization. This, in effect, contends with the challenge from Wynter et al. (2020), which is “our analysis has to focus on the order of things, the order of knowledge” (p. 130).

We see our paper building with Collins (1991), Cooper-Wilson (2009), O'Reilly (2004) and Bernard et al. (2012), and a host of other scholars who have done extensive work to provide analysis of othermothering. Rather than disposing of the title, we seek to expand (other)mothering to include womxn who are not biological mothers, wives, or cisgender women. As Black Studies in Education evolves, we believe this is an important contribution to the field as we seek to graft together Black queer and feminist theories within the U.S. educational context. First, through queer and gender theory, we decouple mothering from biological, cisgender women. Next we reconstruct the traditional carework of mothering, into an action/activity that womxn have long participated in, not only as a survival mechanism, but also as an affront to antiBlackness. Finally, we contend that the othermothering care/work expected of Black school leaders is a direct byproduct of antiBlack and patriarchal institutions.

Because this conceptualization of care/work intersects with Black gender studies and education, we can offer scholarly contributions to both fields. Through this paper, we want to encourage researchers to consider how Eurocentric gender paradigms impact our understanding of teacher/teaching and school leaders. It is our hope that through decoupling gender from othermothering, we can also be more inclusive of “who” is embodying/ can embody care/work in our schools.

Authors

• Kristen Jackson, Stanford University

• Renée Wilmot, Michigan State University