Reimagining Support: How Black Families Create Academic Resilience

• In Event: Thirty years later: Education in a (still) Divided South Africa

Proposal

What if the psychological scaffolding for academic success among marginalized students lies not only in institutional mentorship or formal readiness programs, but in the remarkable emotional labour and quiet resilience of families deemed unqualified to help?
This study questions the dominant discourse surrounding first-generation students, particularly black women, by drawing on narrative inquiry. This research reimagines parental involvement not as a measurable behavioural construct but as a form of emotional infrastructure. Parental presence is not only necessary but also crucial for sustaining academic survival in the face of epistemic violence.
Through the lens of Yosso’s (2005) Community Cultural Wealth framework, this study examines the experiences of three first-generation Black, female graduate students at a historically white South African university. Despite their parents’ lack of formal higher education experience, the participants not only recognized but also harnessed the emotional, aspirational, and resistant capital that they had cultivated at home, which they found essential to their academic resilience. Their parents not only guided them toward the path of higher education, but also taught them how to persevere.
This work extends the psychology of education by foregrounding the often-invisible affective landscapes of Black families, which Eurocentric models of support frequently overlook. It argues for a radical re-evaluation of what constitutes psychological preparedness, support, and success. The findings challenge both global deficit discourses and narrow developmental paradigms, offering a counter-narrative grounded in intergenerational care, Blackness, and the refusal to be unseen.

Author

• Le-Anne Lezhaan Goliath, Sussex University