The Role of Counter-narratives in Resisting the Deficit Model of Families for BIPOC Families

Abstract

Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) face discrimination institutionally and interpersonally in the United States. BIPOC parents and family members are placed in a position wherein they have to prepare children and other family members to face these issues while countering a deficit model of family that characterizes BIPOC families as inherently problematic and inferior to White families. This study uses Critical Race Theory to explore how BIPOC families use counternarratives to resist dominant narratives about ethnicity and race. Results indicate that BIPOC families engage in storying to create counternarratives. These counternarratives serve three functions: (1) creating narrative inheritance, (2) co-laboring moments of racial difficulty and discrimination, and (3) situating race and ethnicity historically and ancestrally.

Keywords

Counternarratives critical race theory deficit model of family critical interpersonal and family communication master narrative of family

Introduction

Racism and discrimination remain a frequent experience for Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC), at micro and macro societal levels, diminishing physical and mental health (Geronimus, 2013; Calvin et al., 2003; Ong et al., 2013). However, for centuries, BIPOC families have not only survived negative racial experiences but thrived despite them. Family conversations about race and ethnicity have been shown to buffer the effects of racism (Dotterer & James, 2018), as well as increase overall well-being and academic success (Wang et al., 2020a; Wang et al., 2020b). The link between conversations about ethnicity and race within a family, also known as ethnic-racial socialization, has been long documented. However, these conversations and the stories about race and ethnicity can also challenge notions about the family writ large.

Critical Race Theory highlights the role of counternarratives or stories that push back against long-held racialized beliefs and can challenge assumptions we have about race in the social world. I use Critical Race Theory (CRT) as a framework to highlight the role of counternarratives in illustrating the history of racism in the United States and creating discourses that challenge the master narratives of BIPOC families. This study aims to understand how counternarratives function in BIPOC families and how they serve to resist master narratives of ethnicity and race, as well as dismantle White supremacy. To understand the importance of counternarratives, I first highlight which master narratives of families exist in North America and how these master narratives impact how we view non-white families.

Master narratives of family

Master narratives are culturally shared stories that individuals internalize and use to see themselves and their experiences (McLean et al., 2018). They are characterized by their ubiquity (their knowledge by individuals in the society), invisibility (individuals are socialized unconsciously by them and are often not aware they are enacting them), rigidity (master narratives hold power in society and are difficult to change), and compulsory nature (when one’s narrative does not match the master narrative, they are deemed as less than). Master narratives wipe out cultural complexity while maintaining White privilege (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002). These narratives become so ingrained in our value system we often do not see how these narratives exacerbate existing racism. Master narratives often serve the purpose of maintaining systems and hierarchies. For example, the “American Dream,” or the belief that the United States operates under a meritocracy rather than an aristocracy, was formally introduced as a term in 1931 by James Truslow Adams (Samuel, 2012). Adams, however, borrowed from philosophers such as Emerson and Thoreau. The myth of the American Dream was perpetuated through popular novels, The Grapes of Wrath and Death of a Salesman. The American dream myth became so ingrained as the cultural norm that it was often used to counter-argue legislative changes. Politicians used the American Dream to vote against government programs aimed at decreasing poverty, which would have worked to disrupt financial hierarchies in the United States (Peck & Gershon, 2006). Today, there are examples of the American Dream in popular movies, novels, and television shows. Politicians still herald the American Dream as the ideal, using it as a way to maintain power structures. As such, the belief in this master narrative is so strong that it is hard to identify where it begins and ends, as is often the case with master narratives. Each action that maintains that master narrative also works to perpetuate it, creating a cycle that reifies the narrative as a standard part of life.

There are master narratives for all social institutions in the United States. For example, in education, master narratives center on White children as the norm, manifesting in the biological or cultural deficiency model, which assumes that students of color lack the biological traits necessary for success within the education system (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002). This viewpoint is often called a deficit model of education because this master narrative assumes that BIPOC students are operating from a deficit compared to White children and lack the skills to succeed (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002). This view also pervades assumptions about families, creating a deficit model of families. First, the master narrative is reflected by the myth of the Standard North American family. The Standard North American Family (SNAF) is expected to look a certain way and consist of a White, heterosexual monogamous marriage that reflects traditional gender roles, involves raising biological children and is characterized by middle-class income and home ownership (Letiecq, 2019). The SNAF became normalized and assumed to be the default or “normal” family in the latter half of the 20^th century. As a result, families not living up to the SNAF ideal are often framed as problematic, needing fixing, or inherently at a deficit (Letiecq, 2019).

In reality, SNAF families are given family privilege or often invisible and unacknowledged benefits that one receives by belonging to a family system upheld in society as superior to all other family forms (Letiecq, 2019). Political systems, discourses, and laws aim to make the SNAF family ideal and give non-SNAF families less access to resources (Letiecq, 2019). The ideal family is not only upheld legally but also through discourses and master narratives. Storytelling is “racialized, gendered and classed, and these stories affect racialized, gendered and classed communities” (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002, p. 31). In this way, the SNAF family is cemented as a master narrative of “all” families. Families that do not meet this standard are characterized by negative appraisals and evaluations, leading to the deficit model of families, particularly for BIPOC families.

The deficit model of families

The way we understand BIPOC families reflects a deficit model of families. The idea of the “right” family is highly racialized (Collins, 1998; Hunter, 2019), and White families have been used as the “norm” for research, even though the lived experiences of BIPOC families vary greatly and these families face stressors that White families do not (Houston, 2002). BIPOC families are often compared to SNAF families, creating master narratives of how BIPOC families should act. For example, Black families are often seen as fatherless, impoverished, and prone to violence (Coles & Green, 2010; Hunter, 2019). Asian and Asian American families often have to combat the “Tiger Mom” stereotypes and master narratives that position these families as model minorities, more intelligent than others, or “all the same” (Hubert, 2006; Liu, 2019; Shih et al., 2019).

These master narratives of BIPOC families have been used to justify unfair treatment or ignore social problems. For example, the 1965 Moynihan Report framed the Black family as inherently problematic and ignored the role of Jim Crow, slavery, redlining, and other forms of segregation in creating barriers for Black families (U.S. Department of Labor, 1965). Likewise, the Chinese Exclusion Act prohibited Chinese men from bringing over family members to the United States and allowed for unfair labor practices (Calavita, 2000). For each family type, ethnicity and race were used as guiding factors that made them inherently “worse than” White families and, therefore, not deserving of the same policies and guidance.

While the master narrative of the SNAF has been used to support White supremacy, Critical Race Theory posits that counternarratives can dismantle these beliefs. Therefore, to push against the master narrative of what families should look like, it is critical to understand counternarratives’ role in rewriting racial discourses and master narratives for BIPOC families.

Counter narratives through critical race theory

Critical Race Theory (CRT) focuses on how systems are built to stabilize a society that diminishes Black, Indigenous, and People of color (BIPOC) while maintaining White supremacy (Delgado & Stefancic, 2017). White supremacy is defined as “a political, economic, and cultural system in which Whites overwhelmingly control power and material resources, conscious and unconscious ideas of White superiority and entitlement are widespread, and relations of White dominance and non-White subordination are daily reenacted across a broad array of institutions and social settings” (Ansley, 1988-1989, p. 1024). Critical Race Theory is not only a prescriptive theory but an activist theory. Critical Race Theory is used by legal scholars (Delgado & Stefancic, 2017), rhetoricians (Denzin, 2004), educational scholars (Taylor et al., 2009), and activists to highlight the role of race in the social world, as well as challenge and make a fundamental change in our understanding of race to create a fairer and more just society (Delgado & Stefancic, 2017). The utility of CRT in communication studies highlights the ability to identify how language functions to sustain and dismantle problematic racial beliefs, particularly in families.

There are several central tenets of Critical Race Theory. First, race is a socially constructed concept. However, racism predates race and is a standard, ingrained part of society, not an aberration. Meaningful change in racial disparities and systemic racism occurs when White elites see racism as a product that affects them. Additionally, conversations about race and ethnicity must center on intersectionality and anti-essentialism. Lastly, storytelling is a crucial experience and action that BIPOC individuals can utilize to make change (Delgado & Stefancic, 2017).

This article centers on the storytelling, or counternarrative, tenet of CRT. Storytelling enables individuals to break the silence around the experience of BIPOC and create new realities. By challenging the master narrative of race ingrained in the United States, new realities, laws, and ideologies can spread. Storytelling is also referred to as counternarratives and counter-storytelling in the literature, as they serve to counter master narratives of race (Delgado & Stefancic, 2017; Solórzano & Yosso, 2002). Utilizing counternarratives through a critical race approach allows us to view how families resist the deficit model of families by centering the voices of BIPOC rather than approaching it through a White lens.

Counter-narratives explicitly challenge dominant narratives while also creating counter-possibilities, or the ability to see oneself outside majoritarian narratives (Martínez, 2017). Counter-narratives (also called counter-storytelling) are “a method of telling the stories of those people whose experiences are not often told” and serve as a “tool for exposing, analyzing, and challenging majoritarian stories of racial privilege” (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002, p. 32). Storytelling helps oppressed and marginalized individuals create their shared memory and history, which serves as a source of strength that challenges dominant ideologies (Castro-Salazar & Bagley, 2010Castro‐Salazar & Bagley, 2010). Family support systems can be essential to creating counternarratives (Castro-Salazar and Bagley, 2010). Because of the history of oppression, BIPOC can use storytelling in two ways—to break the silence about racism and to create counternarratives to problematic master narratives. Counter-narratives aim to provide an alternative story to the dominant discourses about race and racism while simultaneously questioning the validity of these master discourses (Castro-Salazar & Bagley, 2010Castro‐Salazar & Bagley, 2010). Additionally, counternarratives contribute to cultural stories (Castro-Salazar &Bagley, 2010). Overall, counternarratives are a necessary process for BIPOC families in countering the deficit model of families.

Counternarratives offer people within families and people who study families the tools to deconstruct dominant narratives. Re-visiting the myth of the missing Black father, Hunter (2019) highlighted how during chattel slavery, Black families were reconfigured at the whims of white enslavers. Therefore, extended kin networks, including biological and voluntary family members, worked together to protect and rear children. Fatherhood, in this way, was defined by social bonds rather than biological bonds. Post-Emancipation laws dictated that one man and one woman must head families to receive familial and marital benefits, with rights over shared children, undermining the extended kin networks. Despite these laws and myths, extended kinship networks remain a vital part of Black families, often serving as social and economic support (Gerstel, 2011). Race scholars can use counternarratives to highlight the origins of missing family member myths and connect the history of chattel slavery to modern misconceptions of families, challenging the dominant assumptions of Black families. This counternarrative serves to “challenge, displace, or mock these pernicious narratives and beliefs” (Delgado & Stefancic, 2017, p. 50) of Black families as problematic and dysfunctional. Those within Black families can use these counternarratives to highlight the role of extended kin families and re-define family beyond the SNAF.

Family storytelling is essential to establishing family identity and creating expectations for functioning in society (Stone, 2004). Counternarratives in Critical Race Theory primarily operate in the legal and educational space (Baxley, 2014; Harper, 2015; Martínez, 2017). The experience of counter-storytelling within academic areas can create new possibilities and discourse about race and ethnicity in the United States. However, there is limited research on how counternarratives function within the family and how these counternarratives work to dismantle White supremacy.

This leads to the following research question:

RQ: How do BIPOC families use counternarratives to resist dominant cultural narratives of the deficit model of the family?

Methods

Participants and procedure

Participants were recruited through email listservs from a Midwestern University, department recruitment, flyers, and personal networks. Participants had to self-identify as ethnic-racial minorities between the ages of 18 and 40, as was required by the more extensive data collection process (see Minniear, 2020 for more information). Interviewees participated in a semi-structured interview after participating in a drawing activity (see Minniear, 2020, for a complete description of the drawing activity). The interview focused on how participants learned about ethnicity and race throughout their life and how their families talked about ethnicity and race. Interviews were conducted by the Author and an undergraduate research assistant, both of whom are BIPOC women.

A total of 21 participants are included in this data set. Table 1 presents an overview of their pseudonym, self-identified gender, age, and self-identified ethnicity-race. Participants ranged from 19 to 40, with an average age of 23.62 years (SD = 5.34). The majority of participants identified as cis-gender female (N = 18, 85.7%), followed by cisgender male (N = 2,9.52%) and trans male (N = 1, 4.76%). Most participants identified as Black or African American (N = 9), followed by Hispanic (N = 5) and Asian (N = 2, 9.52%). One participant identified as Mexican-American (4.76%), and one participant identified as Biracial, Mexican-American, and White (4.76%). One participant identified as Asian and White (4.76%), and one participant identified as Middle Eastern (4.76%). Lastly, one participant identified as Black and White (4.76%).

Table 1.

Participant demographics.

Pseudonym	Gender	Age	Ethnicity-race
Alicia	Female	24	Black/African American
Amy	Cis-gender woman	20	Black/African American
Anna	Female	21	Hispanic
Billie	Female, cis	28	Biracial-Mexican American and white
Breezy	Female	24	Black
Brian	Trans male	21	Mexican-American
Canela	Female	21	Hispanic/Latino
Claire	Woman	31	Mixed, Asian/White
Derek	Male	19	Black/African American
Esmerelda	Female	20	Latina
Farrah	Female	22	Middle eastern
Janessa	Female	21	Asian
Lola	Female	21	Latina
Maddie	Female	19	Hispanic
Mando	Male	26	Black/White
Melyssa	Female	20	Black
Motivator	Female	40	Black
Nola	Female	23	African American
Peyton	Female	20	Asian
Serena	Female	22	African American
Tanya	Female	33	African American

Analysis

I began by conducting a thematic analysis of the interviews. There were 21 interviews, ranging from 9 minutes to 35 minutes (M = 23 minutes and 58 seconds, SD = 17 seconds). These interviews yielded 158 pages of single-spaced transcripts. A computer-assisted transcription service was used, and I subsequently listened to each interview recording to verify the transcripts. While I listened and reviewed the transcripts, I made notes and impressions as I worked through the material. After finishing the transcripts, I went through the process of primary cycle coding (Tracy, 2013), wherein I assigned initial codes to the data. During this primacy cycle coding, counternarratives emerged as a sensitizing theme. For example, although participants were not asked about stories, most spoke of stories when discussing their families and how they learned about race and ethnicity.

Using a constant comparative method (Charmaz, 2014), I compared the initial codes to the CRT and counternarrative codes and changed them accordingly as I worked through the data. I developed hierarchical coding through this process, where specific codes became sub-themes under a more prominent theme. Themes were categorized by Owen’s (1984) criteria of repetition, forcefulness, and recurrence. Repetition was noted by participants repeating specific themes within the interview, such as repeating a word several times in a row. Forcefulness was indicated by participant emphases such as hand clapping or vocal inflection. Recurrence was noted by themes that emerged throughout all interviews. After establishing themes, transcripts were re-read to identify exemplars from the data.

I conducted a data conference with five other scholars to reach saturation and verify themes. Saturation was established by identifying recurring themes throughout the transcripts and the data conference, in which scholars agreed that no new themes appeared in the data. A data conference aims to share results with other scholars, refine exemplars, and define themes in ways that reflect the participants’ experience (Braithwaite et al., 2017). I shared a brief description of each theme, along with several exemplars of each theme, with data conference members. As a group, members evaluated each theme and asked for more clarification and exemplars if the theme itself was not clear. Members discussed which themes made sense and which needed more explanation or should be viewed as sub-themes. After conducting the data conferences and receiving feedback from other scholars, I finally reviewed the themes and subthemes to ensure they represented the participants’ stories and experiences.

Results

Families engaged in the process of counter-storytelling to rewrite master narratives of family. Participants focused on the act of storytelling, which I refer to as storying, to discuss how they learned what ethnicity and race meant, to them, their families, and the wider United States society. Storying produced counternarratives as well as reflected the tenets of Critical Race Theory. In this way, BIPOC families laid the seeds to end White supremacy within their familial relationships. These counternarratives served three crucial functions—creating narrative inheritance, co-laboring moments of racial difficulty and discrimination, and situating race and ethnicity in a historical and ancestral context. In addition to the functions of counternarratives, the process of storying itself emerged as a crucial part of the familial experience. Figure 1 provides a visual depiction of how storying operates and leads to the three themes I identified. First, I explore the importance of storying, or the process of taking experiences and making them into stories to tell family members, which surfaced as vital to the family identity. I then explore the three functions of storying.

Figure 1.

The function of storying in creating counternarratives.

Storying

I refer to the process of storytelling as “storying” rather than only storytelling or counter-storytelling for several reasons. Storytelling often invokes an image of an event that happened that is retold in a story-like manner. Storying, however, reflects a more transactional process of taking experiences and turning them into stories that are meant to be shared. This process became cyclical. Stories were shared, and then participants took these stories and incorporated their own stories into them, and passed them down. The stories continued to live on, and listeners and tellers were actively drawing and creating meaning. Thus, storying encapsulates a more active definition and description of how counternarratives are created and sustained.

While storying creates counternarratives, for many participants storying their experiences was not merely a response to a master narrative. Instead, it was a family experience built wholly on its own. Participants were making a deliberate choice to turn their experiences into stories. Often, participants’ stories preceded their realization that master narratives of family exist. For example, Canela spoke of the storybook way her parents and siblings discussed Colombia ever since she was born. “Just hearing it just, it’s like a storybook almost. And there’s always new stuff from it,” she said. Canela explained that later in life, she often faced stereotypes of Colombia from peers, focusing on exoticizing her or asking if she had drugs. The stories from her family served to inoculate her to some of the racism she experienced as she got older.

When asked about their favorite moments within their family or what types of conversations they enjoyed, storying was a central feature they mentioned. Billie said she enjoyed “hearing stories about my mom and her siblings growing up ’cause things were crazy in Mexico.” For Billie, hearing her mother’s and aunts’ stories of Mexico helped connect her to a place where she had never lived. Mando also liked learning about “the family stories, that kind of stuff.” It was not only that these stories were enjoyable but also that they created significant meaning for participants. Tanya said of her family, “I learn when I hear other people’s stories.” Her grandmother “had a long life. And just hearing her experiences and hearing her stories about how she navigated through society really taught me.” Storying not only brought Tanya closer to her family but helped her to learn what being Black in the United States means.

Brian noted that family stories were a defining feature of his family. When asked what types of conversations stood out to him, he said

My grandmother will tell stories about my mom or my uncles and my aunts that like I didn’t know about and enjoy them because we just have a good laugh about it. And same with my dad’s side, …. I didn’t know [my family member] she has nine siblings, and I didn’t know she had a 10^th one. And she finally told me that over the summer. And it was like, it was a really interesting story. So I like conversations where we just talk about different stories.

By taking their experiences and storying them, families could explain what ethnicity and race meant and situate ethnicity and race as social constructions while still building historical context. This process of storying within BIPOC families is ongoing, co-constructed, and produces counternarratives that serve the three functions of (1) creating narrative inheritance), (2) co-laboring moments of racial difficulty and discrimination, and (3) situating race and ethnicity historically and ancestrally.

Creating narrative inheritance

Narrative inheritance refers to the process by which familial identities are passed down through families, as individuals collect and inherit the narratives that define their family members (Goodall, 2005). Participants spoke of how family members found ways to package their stories and experiences and hand them down to the next generation, almost as a discursive inheritance of experiences. By doing so, families created a tapestry of ethnic-racial experiences that helped them navigate the world around them. For example, Claire spoke of how her grandparents and mother’s own experiences helped shape her understanding of her Japanese ancestry, saying:

So my grandparents were both Japanese Americans, and they were interned during World War Two, and they were teenagers at the time. […] my mom growing up, she also experienced a lot of racism … being specifically Japanese.

Claire’s grandparents and mother shared these stories, which, Claire said, were fundamental in shaping her view of the world around her. She inherited her grandparents’ struggles and experiences in a Japanese internment camp, and these experiences became part of her own story. Similarly, Tanya spoke of how her grandmother’s life experiences guided her, saying:

I’ve learned because of my grandmother’s, her experiences […] I remember sitting down next to her. She’s like, ‘I’ve seen so many,’ [but] she was able to finally see a black president. [She] lived through the whole Martin Luther King…just thinking about everything that she’s been through.

By storying her experiences, Tanya’s grandmother could pass down lessons and experiences to Tanya that defined how Tanya held on to her Black identity. Participants also spoke of passing down these discursive heirlooms to future generations, whether that be their children or nieces and nephews. Motivator spoke of being called the N-word as a salient incident in her adolescence. When discussing racism with her children, she storied this experience to share with her children. While the event itself was traumatizing, this story served as a jumping-off point to discuss racism in Motivator’s family and the different ways it has manifested throughout her life. Additionally, it helped to remind her children of the racism people face and how these experiences were not merely part of the past but intertwined with the experiences of those around them.

Anna explored how as her family found more stories about their past, she learned more about her past. She spoke of how new family stories she had recently had surprised her but also started more conversations in her family

Apparently, I have a German grandma, and she was married to my grandpa, who was from Mexico. And I’m like, how did they talk? Because apparently, she only spoke German, and I’m like, you only spoke Spanish. How did you get together, and how did you interact? … This is during World War One, World War Two …so we’ll just talk about… our heritage, how they came to the United States, why they decided to come, and stuff like that.

For Anna, hearing her family’s stories spurred her own interest in her family history, and these stories were what she looked forward to when interacting with family members. In addition, this narrative inheritance illustrates her family’s immigration story and how family members negotiated interracial relationships.

In these ways, narrative inheritance illuminates several tenets of Critical Race Theory. Participants could explain that racism, though it may have changed form, is a standard and ingrained part of society. Narrative inheritance also centers on the social construction of race and how that has functioned in participants’ experiences.

Co-laboring moments of racial difficulty and discrimination

Co-laboring refers to taking experiences of difficulty caused by racial discrimination or oppression and working through them together rather than treating experiences of racism or hardship alone. Storying their experiences allowed family members to express and share their difficulties together. Participants spoke of their families, shared their struggles, and were able to co-labor their experiences with ethnic-racial trauma. For example, Billie spoke of accepting a job in a mid-sized Midwestern city. As she spoke Spanish with her mom and aunt in her new city, someone told them they were the reason Trump should build a wall. Billie was shocked, but this opened up a dialogue with her aunt and mother:

There was surprise that they said it for me cause I’m so White looking that usually doesn’t happen. But she just said maybe it’s going to be more common in the Midwest than it is in California because it’s more diverse there. But then they kind of told me it’s happened to them a lot, especially like my tìa, who has a thicker accent. They kind of talk to her like she’s dumb or slow or something she has to deal with all the time.

For Billie, her experience allowed her to connect with her tìa and mother in a new way and hear more of their stories about similar discrimination. Billie and her family members could offset some of this trauma by realizing that they all had experiences that they did not have to bear alone. This process allowed them to frame racism as a system they all struggled with rather than as an isolated incident.

Brian also mentioned sharing with his aunt about the hardships they both experience being Hispanic and members of the LGBT community:

[Being] Hispanic and also part of the LGBT community is like kind of 10 times harder for us. … we had a big conversation about that and just how like to be safe and like don’t, don’t let like people’s words like affect you because it doesn’t matter how much hate is in the world, there’s like people who love you.

Brian and his aunt were able to take their coming out stories, as well as their experiences, and story them together to co-labor the difficulties they faced as Hispanic and members of the LGBTQ+ community, reflecting the importance of intersectionality when discussing racism.

While many participants noted that they could share stories and experiences with family members in a way that reflected each other’s life, this process did not fix the problems of racism and discrimination. Claire illustrated this, saying:

In those kinds of instances, there isn’t much. You don’t have much power to do anything, especially if you’re like lowest on the totem pole and somebody says something that’s problematic. Or even just like microaggressions, like you can’t, I guess I felt like…there was nothing I could do so more, I think, just like venting and talking about my feelings.

While co-laboring was indicative of growing closer with families, understanding their experiences, and offering temporary relief, it could not fix or solve racism and discrimination. Co-laboring shows family members the importance and pervasiveness of racism and how difficult it is to resolve these issues.

Situating race and ethnicity historically and ancestrally

Lastly, families used stories to position ethnicity and race as historically located and created to reify differences. Counter-narratives highlight the social construction of race or ethnicity while still explaining how to move forward in the world around them. Motivator stated that in her family, “we talk a lot about history. Our upcoming(s), especially me because I’m older and I grew up in the south and so the difference on how I grew up and what world they’re growing up in.” Claire also said that speaking with her grandparents about their experience in Japanese internment camps showed the importance of understanding history:

They talked about it. Like my grandma kind of had this, I think […] she was also the youngest of 12, so yeah, […] she definitely got babied. So, her experience of the [Japanese internment] camps was more lighthearted. Like it’s not that bad. […] I don’t think it was until after that she realized how unjust all of it was. Um, so her memories were more of like, ‘Oh, we played baseball,’ and you know, we ate at the mess hall and those kinds of things.

Counternarratives serve as a way to tie specific experiences to a historical context that, at times, was only discussed in history classes or, other times, not brought up at all. Additionally, participants could connect history with issues and events in current sociohistorical contexts. When asked about family conversations about current issues, Claire said

There’s been a lot of conversation about like, what’s happening now with like Muslims especially, and at the border and refugees, like all that kind of stuff. How it’s kind of crazy that things haven’t changed.

For Claire, discrimination and border debates were not unprecedented. Instead, they indicated how little things had changed since her grandparent’s experiences. Claire tied her grandparents’ experience to the coverage of detention camps on the Mexican border under the Trump administration, noting the parallels she saw and how it inspired her family to campaign for change.

Derrick also talked about how learning about Black history helped him realize how resilient he could be in the face of adversity. Derrick’s parents taught him to “just be proud of like our race. Be proud of, like, what that comes with. So like why people are like really resilient and like strong people.” For Derrick, resiliency comes from a historical setting: “I’ve always been proud of like, my history and like what my people have done for this country and all that stuff.” Derrick’s racial identity was directly tied to history and how his people have been resilient in the face of historical atrocities.

Learning history and how their families were incorporated into said histories allowed participants to understand discrimination and racism and change their future. Motivator encapsulated this, saying, “if you’re working on your future… wanting to be a better you, knowing your history will never stop you, shouldn’t stop you from being that. But it should ignite you.” In this way, Motivator framed Black history’s importance and passed on stories as critical in igniting her sons and daughters to fight for change.

Discussion

This study aims to understand how BIPOC families use counternarratives to address issues of race and ethnicity in the family. BIPOC families are challenged to explain race and ethnicity to their children and other family members to prepare them for discrimination and prejudice. Using the tenets of Critical Race Theory, the study finds that BIPOC families use counternarratives in three specific ways. Counternarratives serve as a form of narrative inheritance, a form of co-laboring, and a way to situate race and ethnicity in history and ancestry. These results demonstrate that conversations about race and ethnicity within families can dismantle main ideas about the function of ethnicity and race in Western Society.

By taking their experiences and storying them, families explained what ethnicity and race mean and situated ethnicity and race as social constructions while building historical context. This process of storying creates counternarratives. In this discussion, I address the implications of this research. First, I address how these findings center race in family communication scholarship. Second, I discuss how these findings demonstrate families’ political and personal nature. Third, I draw connections between these findings and previous work on ethnic-racial socialization. Finally, I summarize by addressing the limitations of this study and ways to extend future research.

Centering race in family communication

Scholars have called for family communication research to reflect the ethnic-racial and global diversity of the world we live in, as well as how race and ethnicity shape the family (Houston, 2002). This study demonstrated the functionality of counternarratives as centering race in families. Race and ethnicity are not simply concepts that can be applied to families. Instead, race and ethnicity are a primary socializing lens by which the idea of family is created, and therefore family communication is also. This work demonstrates the need to de-center SNAF families in the literature and evaluate the capability of our current studies to extend beyond the SNAF. In particular, this work focuses on racial assumptions of the SNAF, or our tendency to view White families as the norm or White families as “without” race.

Family and interpersonal scholars have slowly begun centering race in research.

In addition, interpersonal scholars have begun extending interpersonal communication theory to make more room for race as a defining feature of friendships (Davis, 2018; Davis & Afifi, 2019).

Additionally, budding research has begun centering on the role of intersectionality and race in the family as impacting family functioning and introducing new ways to examine how we understand family (Martínez, 2017). These results add to this movement and present Critical

Race Theory as a relevant theoretical framework for understanding the functionality of race as a guiding social feature in the family. By illustrating the role of race, we can continue to center on race as not simply a feature of certain families but a major social force that impacts all families. Critical Race Theory allows us to see all families as part of racialized groups, rather than focusing on BIPOC families as the only families “with” race. Instead, we can see how the way families talk, construct their family, and use language to either create counternarratives or maintain master narratives.

The family as personal and political

In 1970, Hansic wrote an essay titled “The Personal is Political,” where she stated that “personal problems are political problems…There is only collective action for collective solution” (Hansic, 1970 p. 76). The phrase “The Personal is Political” became a rallying cry for feminism, as scholars and activists used this lens to showcase how politics and power are used in ways that impact women’s personal lives. Scholars have also demonstrated how the family as a social institution is political rather than a private area insulated from sociopolitical contexts (Suter, 2018). Research on how the family is viewed as political is not new. However, since the mid-2000s, critical scholarship on family, particularly in communication studies, has increased (Suter, 2018). Critical scholars have highlighted that family communication does not simply focus on close, personal ties but also “micro-practices that occur among specific family members, meso practices that consider how families (re)organize, macro practices that constitute larger understandings of ‘family,’ or the relations between” (Moore & Manning, 2019, p. 43). Communication scholars have thus used this framework to highlight how macro-level systems, such as media discourses, cultural ideologies, and historical factors, influence the inner workings of family and how these systems are perpetuated by families (Hintz, 2019; Cardwell, 2021; Allen & Allen, 2021).

This work extends critical theorizing on the family by highlighting how micro and meso systems influence families and how families can affect macro and meso systems when addressing racism. While power and politics influence the family, families can also influence power and politics in a larger sense. Conversations that encourage and push back against SNAF norms and misconceptions about family and race are a form of activism that highlights the family as a critical source of power. For example, Claire could connect her counternarrative to contemporary politics in the United States. Claire used the stories of her grandparents’ experience in Japanese internment camps to draw a direct link to detention centers in the United States. She critiqued these structures during her interview and used historical bases and familial experience to advocate for change in her own life. Her ability to critique Trump administration policies while drawing on historical events parallels activist endeavors. An essential part of dismantling White supremacy is identifying and labeling structures that harm certain types of families, which Claire did throughout her interview.

While certain moments highlight and re-awaken the need for social change, such as the shooting of Trayvon Martin, the widespread protests over police brutality in 2020, and the Trump administration policies targeting certain family types, BIPOC in the United States have inherited familial traumas from the structural injustices persisting throughout U.S. history. Since the conceptualization of the United States, race has played a salient role in determining which families should survive. The Trail of Tears and subsequent Native boarding camps separated families, resulting in mass genocide. The Chinese Exclusion Act allowed certain family members to immigrate while keeping others separated. Slaveholders in the United States maintained the ability to separate or force families together for monetary gain. All of these policies hinged on the idea that BIPOC families should not survive unless they could assimilate and imitate the model of the White family.

However, participants’ stories showed that families maintain their cultural traditions and histories through communication. Participants acknowledged the historical trauma members had experienced but did not let that historical trauma define them. Families create messages that each member deserves the American dream, which, despite a history of denying people that dream, is an act of resistance. Counternarratives enable families to educate each other and advocate for social change. Critical Race Theory is an inherently activist theory. These findings demonstrate that activism is woven into the family structure of BIPOC in the United States. By using language and counternarratives, familial activism is making a fundamental shift in Western society’s norms.

Critical underpinnings of ethnic-racial socialization

These findings also add depth to the study of ethnic-racial socialization.

BIPOC families do not only have to socialize their children about how to prepare for the world but also how to prepare for racism and discrimination while also providing education about their cultural and political history that the education system often does not offer (Hughes et al., 2006; Umaña Taylor & Hill, 2020). This process is called ethnic-racial socialization and is defined as the implicit and explicit process by which individuals learn about what race and ethnicity mean in the world through family, friends, peer networks, and media. (Hughes et al., 2016). Typically, individuals first learn about the meaning of race and ethnicity through family members and media (Umaña-Taylor et al., 2014).

Ruck et al. (2021) argue for expanding methodological and paradigmatical approaches to ethnic-racial socialization, including critical and intersectional approaches. Furthermore, Scott et al.’s (2021) phenomenological ethnic-racial socialization conceptual model highlights the interconnectedness of individual family systems within major systems of discrimination. These findings speak to both Ruck et al.’s (2021) call and Scott et al.’s (2021) model by highlighting how individual families story race in a way that speaks to the family process while also making meaning in a more extensive system. Counternarratives have utility in highlighting familial processes of ethnic-racial socialization or how families story their experiences and pass them. Additionally, they provide vital context for understanding how the system itself works.

These findings also reflect Kuchirko and Nayfeld’s (2021) assertion that ethnic-racial socialization occurs within a Discourse or a “semiotic processes occurring at multiple layers of cultural, ideological, and social contexts” (p. 1175). These findings showcase how the deficit model of family, much like the achievement gap discourse Kuchirko & Nayfeld (2021) speak to, functions as a master narrative but also offers a vision of how families under-mind and challenge these master discourses. Participant’s storying may also function as resistance rather than resilience (Jones et al., 2021). While resilience focuses on the ability of individuals to “bounce back,” (Jones et al., 2021) assert that “resistance asks what we can do in ourselves, families and the greater community to both avoid environmental weathering and likely exhaustion from constant use” (p. 231). Counter-narratives, as defined through Critical Race Theory and demonstrated through this piece, offer an example of what resistance looks like for families and illuminate how ethnic-racial socialization operates critically.

Limitations and future directions

Several limitations exist in this study, which can be addressed in future studies to build a more robust body of literature. First, this study focused on BIPOC families writ large. Because I recruited anyone who identified as an ethnic-racial minority, I did not focus on specific ethnic or racial groups. While all BIPOCs in the United States face oppression or discrimination, that does not mean every individual group experiences the same stressors. Additionally, the confluence of particular social identities may create different stressors. For example, a person whose family has resided in the United States for years will face various difficulties than a person whose parents immigrated to the United States more recently. Similarly, information about sexual orientation, ability, and class information was not included in this study. These factors also impact racialized experiences and are not absent from conversations about race. Finally, by focusing on BIPOC writ large, there is the chance of missing nuances and individual histories within this data. Future studies can remedy this by focusing on specific populations to see how counternarratives may function in different families.

Additionally, this study primarily focused on one family member’s viewpoint. Multiple viewpoints may allow a more nuanced understanding of how families make sense of these stories. Dyadic interviewing of numerous family members or even collaborative storytelling may offer a more comprehensive understanding of counternarratives.

Future studies can add to this research in several ways. First, this study occurred before the nationwide racial justice protests in the summer of 2020. Since then, conversations in families of all races have most likely changed, particularly regarding race and ethnicity. It would be fruitful to explore ways in which these conversations have changed. Additionally, communication scholars must look at White socialization and understand how White families address/talk about race and ethnicity. Often, scholars view White families as the norm, further perpetuating a deficit model of families. We can address this by making sure we frame racial socialization not just in BIPOC families but in White families as well.

Conclusion

In conclusion, this study demonstrates that families create counternarratives by storying their experiences, which helps members create narrative inheritance, co-labor moments of difficulty, and situate race and ethnicity. These findings highlight the voice-of-color thesis of Critical Race Theory and demonstrate that families create resistance through their family conversations. As such, scholars and practitioners can look at the family not only as subject to politics but as a place wherein Black, Indigenous, and families of color create resistance while also maintaining close familial networks. Therefore, scholars and practitioners may highlight counternarratives’ role as a valuable resource for addressing and changing racial discourses.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Open research statement

As part of IARR’s encouragement of open research practices, the author has provided the following information: This research was not pre-registered. The data used in the research cannot be publicly shared but are available upon request. The data can be obtained by emailing: Mackensie.minniear@uga.edu. The materials used in the research cannot be publicly shared but are available upon request. The materials can be obtained by e-mailing: Mackensie.Minniear@uga.edu.

ORCID iD

Mackensie J Minniear

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