Policing Boundaries, Protecting Status: White Parenting Practices in Diverse Neighborhoods

• In Event: 1554 - Parenthood

Abstract

For most of US history, white privilege has been maintained via processes of social distance and exclusion from the poor and people of color. We know a great deal about the pursuit of exclusionary practices by state and community actors but are less knowledgeable about such practices among financially privileged white parents – specifically those who reside in neighborhoods with racial and class diversity. To fill this gap, I examine how 40 middle-class, white parents attempt to protect or enhance their children’s racial and class privileges while residing in neighborhoods with poor residents. Drawing upon ethnographic research and interviews with middle-class parents in two neighborhoods, one in which the poor residents are white and the other black, I examine how and when parents expose or isolate their children from the poor neighborhood “other”. I also assess how parents’ practices vary depending upon the race of the neighborhood other. I find parents adopt more contact-avoidant parenting practices towards their poor white neighbors, rather than their poor black neighbors. Among study participants, poor whites uniformly conjure feelings of disgust and are actively avoided, while poor black residents provoke feelings of ambivalence -- contact with them is judged to be both valuable and threatening.

Author

• Megan R. Underhill, University of North Carolina Asheville