Conceptualizing Spirituality in Critical Race Mothering Within and Beyond the Academy

• In Event: Black Motherscholarship within and Beyond the Academy: Reconceptualizing Radical Futurity

Abstract

While there is scholarship that uses a critical race lens (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995), examines mothering in student experiences (Huguley et al., 2021; McGee & Spencer, 2015; Robinson & Weblow, 2012, 2013), and explores educators’ faith (Dillard, 2006, 2022; Malone & Lachaud, 2022; Witherspoon Arnold et al., 2014), there is little scholarship that delves into the nexus of these three concepts. The purpose of this research is to explore the spirituality within motherscholarship and its past and potential roles in constructing a new vision for education research.

Critical race mothering is the chosen theoretical framework. It is an emerging perspective that bridges endarkened feminist epistemology (Dillard, 2000) and the politicization of motherism (Nash, 2021; Roebuck Sakho, 2017) with concepts such as racial socialization (Lesane-Brown, 2006; Traske-Tate et al., 2014), critical race theory (Bell, 1992; Delgado & Stefancic, 2001), and critical race parenting (DePouw & Matias, 2016; Matias, 2016; Montoya & Sarcedo, 2017). The framework is designed to further understand the visceral ways mothering is operationalized within the souls of motherscholars (Matias, 2022).

Three self-reflexive counternarratives are the primary source for exploring spirituality within critical race mothering, constructed through memory recollection, writing, and reflection (Connelly & Clandidin, 1990; Evans-Winters, 2019; Johns, 2020). The counternarratives are analyzed through critical content analysis to “locate power in social practices in order to challenge conditions of inequity” (Short, 2017, p. 1). The analysis is approached with a critical lens, a social justice agenda, and works in tandem with a critical theory (Short, 2017).

The first narrative centers on how a church practiced both gender and sexual orientation intolerance. The second narrative grapples with a consideration of attending a faith-based higher learning institution. The third narrative leans into the role of cultural intuition and theoretical sensitivity (Delgado Bernal, 1998; Solórzano & Yosso, 2002) as a credible source of knowledge and strength during interactions in a K-12 schooling context.

The reflections depict spiritual struggles, often manifested in rational, emotional, and physical ways, that were created by racist practices endemic to schooling in America. The narratives also reveal the ability to confront detrimental action through the practice of critical race mothering. Critical race mothering validates spiritual identity as a powerful asset for mothers within and beyond the academy, while also providing a blueprint to construct a new vision for education research that draws on history to imagine a brighter future.

The counternarratives are distinct in their criticality yet are unified in their commitment to highlight the ways spirituality is a part of women' s experiences within and beyond the academy. Implications highlight that the expectation of scholars to quelch their spiritual identity in their research and praxis, deny the power that is located within women scholars who are part of an education system that “regularizes racism” (Bell, 1992, p. 129), thusly advancing the understanding of motherscholarship.

Author

• Larissa Malone, University of North Carolina - Wilmington