XVII Congress of the Brazilian Studies Association

“Watching over” Whiteness: The Racial Logics of Intensive Parenting in a Context of Anti-Black State Violence

• In Event: Brazilian Studies of Whiteness – Part 1: Whiteness and Brazilian Social Thought, Class, Families, and Affect

Abstract

That parents should “watch over” their kids – “ficar em cima” – is one of the most basic tenets of intensive parenting and a core mantra of middle-class parents who seek to distinguish themselves from both poor and working-class parents who are thought to be less present and rich parents who can afford to outsource this labor. In this paper, part of a larger book project, I show how the practices and talk of intensive parenting create two opposing and racialized categories: Children who are watched vs. children who are watched over. Children who are carefully watched over by parents, teachers, and other caregivers must be protected from “unattended” children from “unstructured” families who pose threats to them and society and therefore must be surveilled or watched by the state. This critical distinction relies on and perpetuates anti-black racial logics that restrict humanity only to whiteness and attribute criminality, threat, and danger to blackness. Middle-class parents who dutifully accompany their children to ballet class and track their every movement through the city of Rio de Janeiro seek to protect their children from crime and violence but also to make visible their status as up-and-coming upstanding (white) citizens. Thus, parents who eagerly and innocently engage in the watchful caring of their children through an investment of their time, money, and energy can, through another lens, be understood to be participating in an active defense of whiteness and white supremacy that justifies and makes possible the conditions of anti-black state violence.

Author

• Jennifer Roth-Gordon, Associate Professor, School of Anthropology