The Contradictions of Mentoring and African American Parenting

• In Event: Getting Over Being Racialized: Critical Perspectives on Mentoring

Abstract

Larose and Tarabulsy (2005) define mentoring as when an individual with experience provides an individual with less experience different types of support. In the case of mentoring K-12 students, this support can be academic, social, or emotional in nature. Often, mentees are those students who are labeled academically at-risk for low academic achievement. Although mentoring programs are proven to be successful, little research exists that explores the effect of mentoring programs on the parents (Spencer et al., 2011). Indeed, especially in the case of at-risk kids, mentoring occurs when kids are not receiving some type of needed support from the home. Further, as stated in the definition, the very act of mentoring can imply that the kids who need mentoring require valued things not available to them in the home. This means that there could be negative effects on the parents of the mentees. To this end, the purpose of this paper will be to share findings from a qualitative study conducted with mothers of African American children enrolled in the Blue Ribbon Mentoring Program, a program designed to provide children of color opportunities for educational success.
The Study
The study uses Black Feminist Thought (Collins, 2000). This theoretical framework is historically situated in the oppressive experiences of Black women and using collective identity and action to produce opposition bodies of knowledge.
African American parents were interviewed about the mentoring relationship with their child and also about the forms of Capital (Yosso, 2005) the home provided. They were asked to contrast this with what the mentor was providing. In the process parents identified a set of contradictions worthy of consideration:
1. White versus Black social and cultural capital
2. Assimilation versus resistance
3. Aspirations versus realities
4. Color-blindness versus color-consciousness

Conclusion
While parental involvement has been lauded in the literature as an essential component for instilling academic success in children, African American parents are still labeled as uninvolved in their children’s education. This study provides insight into expanding the role of mentoring to include the mentee and the parent as a way to 1) learn how to best develop and implement effective parental involvement strategies with African American parents and 2) empower parents to be able to provide the supports and expertise their children require to be academically, emotionally, and socially successful.
References
Collins, P. (2000). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness and the politics of
empowerment (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge.
Larose, S., & Trabulsy, G. M. (2005). Academically at-risk students. In D. L. DuBois & M. J.
Karcher (Eds.), Handbook of youth mentoring (pp. 440-453). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Spencer, R., Basualdo-Delmonico, A., & Lewis, T.O. (2011). Working to make it work: The role of parents in the youth mentoring process. Journal of Community Psychology, 39(1), 51-59.
Yosso, T. J. (2005). Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth. Race, Ethnicity, and Education, 8(1), 69-91.

Author

• Dana C. Griffin, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill