Black Mothering in Action: The Racial-Class Socialization Practices of Low-Income Black Single Mothers

Abstract

African Americans have long dealt with racism, discrimination, and racialized state and vigilante violence. As such, African American parents must educate their children about the realities of racism in the United States and how to cope with racism and discrimination. This practice, known as racial socialization, is a key aspect of Black parents’ parenting practices. Much of this labor tends to fall on the shoulders of Black mothers. To date, most of the scholarship on Black mothers’ racial socialization practices focuses on Black middle-class mothers. In this study, the author uses in-depth interviews with low-income African American single mothers in Virginia to examine how low-income Black single mothers racially socialize their children, what major concerns they express regarding raising Black children, and how their racial socialization practices and the concerns they express compare with those of Black middle-class mothers. Paralleling previous studies, the findings show that low-income Black single mothers generally fear for their children’s, especially their sons’, safety. They also invoke respectability politics when racially socializing their children, encouraging them not to dress or behave in ways that will reinforce stereotypes of Black boys as thugs or criminals. Diverging from previous research, however, the author argues that low-income Black single mothers’ employment of respectability politics is largely aspirational, as, unlike middle-class mothers, they are not able to assert their class status in an effort to prevent their children from experiencing discrimination.

Keywords

Black single mothers mothering racial socialization race class and gender

Tamara, a 26-year-old mother of a two-year-old son, cried as she described writing in a diary to her son before he was born:

And I wrote in cursive, and it’s like a diary, every day . . . I’m scared for you, I love you, I’m gonna teach you how to be a gentleman, I’m gonna teach you how not to be a statistic, I’m gonna teach you the skills that I know to make you successful in this world. The world already has three fingers against you, you already supposed to be in jail, you supposed to be dead, and you supposed to be a deadbeat and not take care of your kids, and I don’t want that for you. I want you to be able to go to college, I want you to succeed, I want you to have a family, I want you to love people, I want you to—be able to show love, I want you to be able to cry, I want you to enjoy this world, but the world would never enjoy you because they scared of you. . .

For Tamara, the fear that her son would be stereotyped, be criminalized, and/or become a target of racist state (or vigilante) violence manifested itself before her son was even born. The above passage illustrates the significance that race, class, and gender play in shaping the anxieties of low-income Black single mothers. Tamara recognizes that because her son is disadvantaged because of his race, class (low-income), and gender (because of the hypercriminalization of Black boys and men), she will have to work hard to protect him from the racialized, classed, and gendered discrimination he will likely face in his lifetime. Data on police killings of Black people demonstrate that Blacks are disproportionately killed by the police. For instance, although Blacks constitute only 13 percent of the U.S. population, in 2017, they accounted for 23 percent of those who were killed by the police (Beer 2018; The Washington Post 2018). Recent incidents of racist state and vigilante violence against Black boys, such as the killings of Trayvon Martin and Tamir Rice (Botelho 2012; Izadi and Holley 2014; Simon 2017), illustrate that Black children are not seen as children in the same way that white children are. Unlike white children, who are presumed innocent, Black children are presumed to be “bad” or to be criminals at a very young age (Cacho 2012). Although Black mothers of all social classes grapple with how to protect their children from discrimination, low-income Black single mothers likely have fewer social, political, and economic resources to help them do so.

A significant component of Black parenthood is preparing their children to navigate racism and discrimination (Dow 2016; Edwards and Few-Demo 2016; Hughes and Chen 1997; Hughes et al. 2006; Lewis-McCoy 2016; Thomas and King 2007). Often, beginning at a very young age, Black parents have conversations with their children about how to dress, interact with police, and carry themselves, in general, to avoid being stereotyped, seen as a threat, and becoming targets of racist violence (Dow 2016; Edwards and Few-Demo 2016; Hughes et al. 2006). Researchers developed the term racial socialization to describe this phenomenon (Hughes et al. 2006). Much of this labor falls on Black mothers, who spend a lot of time talking to their children about how to interact with police, educators, and other authority figures, in hopes that their children will not be subject to racist stereotypes and/or violence (Dow 2016; Edwards and Few-Demo 2016; McHale et al. 2006).

Studies have also shown that class (and gender) intersects with race in shaping how Black mothers socialize their children (Banks 2012; Dow 2016; Lewis-McCoy 2016). Nevertheless, previous research has tended to focus on Black middle-class mothers and families (e.g., Banks 2012; Dow 2016; Lewis-McCoy 2016). Although this research has been instrumental for showing us how race, class, and gender intersect in shaping the parenting concerns of Black mothers, it does not help us understand how having a low socioeconomic status may inform Black mothers’ racial socialization practices. In this article, I draw on in-depth interviews with 21 low-income Black single mothers in Virginia to examine the following questions: How do low-income Black single mothers racially socialize their children? What major concerns do they express regarding raising Black children? How do their racial socialization practices and the concerns they express compare with those of Black middle-class mothers?

Paralleling previous research (e.g., Banks 2012; Dow 2016; Edwards and Few-Demo 2016; Lewis-McCoy 2016), my findings suggest that the racial socialization practices of low-income Black single mothers are heavily informed by social class. As in previous studies, the mothers in this study often invoked respectability politics when racially socializing their children (Dow 2016; Edwards and Few-Demo 2016). Specifically, as previous research on Black motherhood demonstrates (Barnes 2016; Dow 2016; Edwards and Few-Demo 2016), the mothers in my study feared for their children’s safety (specifically that of their sons) and often discussed encouraging their children to behave in certain ways in an effort to prevent them from facing discrimination on the basis of their race, class, and gender. Unlike Black middle-class mothers, however, low-income Black single mothers are unable to assert their class status to avoid racism and discrimination. For these mothers, their employment of respectability politics seemed to be more about helping their children surpass their current class status to achieve a level of respectability that may help them avoid being targets of racism, specifically racist state violence. Although the sample in this study includes only low-income Black single mothers, I draw on literature on Black middle-class mothers throughout to illustrate similarities and differences in racial socialization practices. This work enhances our understanding of racial socialization by illuminating the interconnectedness of race, class, and gender in influencing low-income Black single mothers’ racial socialization practices.

Literature Review

Racial Socialization

Scholars have been studying how Black parents socialize their children around race for decades (e.g., Dow 2016; Edwards and Few-Demo 2016; Hill 1999; Hughes et al. 2006; Lewis-McCoy 2016; Taylor et al. 1990). Racial socialization (also referred to as ethnic socialization) involves “mechanisms through which parents transmit information, values, and perspectives about ethnicity and race to their children” (Hughes et al. 2006:747). Through racial socialization, which often occurs via conversations with their children, Black parents educate their children about “the realities of being Black in America” (Taylor et al. 1990:994) and assist their children in developing their racial identities (Hughes et al. 2006, 2009; Hughes and Chen 1997; Neblett et al. 2009; Sanders and Bradley 2005; Thomas, Hoxha, and Hacker 2013; Thomas and King 2007).

The intersection of race, class, and gender plays a key role in how Black families racially socialize their children (Dow 2016; Hill 2001). In Black families, mothers are primarily responsible for racially socializing children, spending a great deal of time thinking about how they will intercede when their children encounter negative racialized and gendered messages and preparing them to deal with discrimination, generally (Dow 2016; Edwards and Few-Demo 2016; McHale et al. 2006; Saleem et al. 2016; Thomas and King 2007). A major concern that Black mothers have expressed is how to help their sons avoid being perceived as criminals or “thugs” (Dow 2016; Edwards and Few-Demo 2016).

For Black families, socializing their children around race and gender also often includes socializing them around class (Banks 2012; Dow 2016). Unfortunately, most of the research demonstrating this intersection focuses on Black middle-class families (Banks 2012; Dow 2016; Lewis-McCoy 2016). Although one might assume that middle-class status would provide a buffer for Black families against racial discrimination, Black middle-class families experience racial discrimination despite their class status (Dow 2016; Lewis-McCoy 2016). These families report concerns that their children (particularly their sons) will be mistreated by their white teachers in school and targeted in their predominantly white neighborhoods, causing parents to be hypervigilant about their children’s social interactions and fear for their safety (Dow 2016; Lewis-McCoy 2016) In addition, Black middle-class families are often assumed to be poor because of racist stereotypes correlating Blackness with poverty, such as the “welfare queen” stereotype (Collins 2000; Dow 2016). Studies such as these illustrate that race and gender often undermine the impacts of social class, as Blacks across class lines experience gendered racism (Dow 2016).

Although their class status does not prevent Black middle-class mothers from experiencing racism, they are able to draw on it in an effort to avoid discrimination (Dow 2016). In her study of Black middle- and upper-middle-class mothers in the San Francisco Bay area, Dow (2016) found that these women engaged in “experience management,” or pursuing various opportunities for their sons to gain a variety of different experiences and “environment management,” or scrutinizing their sons’ everyday social environments (i.e., school and neighborhood) in an effort to eliminate discriminatory sources. Experience management involved encouraging their sons to develop skills in athletics and performing arts that would allow them to traverse various racialized, classed, and gendered communities and exposing them to aspects of Black history and culture (and Black male role models) that affirm positive messages regarding Black masculinity (Dow 2016). They also enacted “image and emotion management,” which involved helping their sons manage their emotional expressions and physical appearance. Specifically, they encouraged them to contain their “anger, frustration, or excitement lest others view them as aggressive or violent” and urged them to “strictly monitor their dress and appearance so they would not be viewed as criminals but as middle-class kids” (Dow 2016:179). This practice invokes respectability politics, or an attempt to counter negative stereotypes of Black people as poor, lazy, and uneducated by emphasizing middle-class values of hard work, education, dressing tidily, using proper English, and respecting authority figures (Cousins 1999; Gaines 1996; Higginbotham 1993). Middle-class values stand in contrast to those stereotypically associated with lower income Blacks, such as dressing untidily, using improper English, engaging in violent or criminal acts, and being uneducated (Cousins 1999). Notably, values associated with middle-class status have long been associated with whiteness; thus, obtaining and portraying a middle-class status for Blacks is also in some ways about achieving proximity to whiteness (Lacy 2007). Respectability politics originated as a practice of “uplift ideology” in the early twentieth century, as middle- and upper-class Blacks attempted to resist stereotypes of Black people as lazy, uneducated, and sexually immoral (Gaines 1996; Higginbotham 1993).

Racial socialization processes are also gendered (Allen 2016; Dow 2016; Edwards and Few-Demo 2016; Sanders and Bradley 2005; Taylor et al. 1990; Thomas et al. 2013; Thomas and King 2007). When socializing boys, Black families tend to emphasize racial barriers, whereas when socializing girls, they tend to focus on instilling message of racial pride and self-esteem (Taylor et al. 1990; Thomas and King 2007). This difference in socialization practices makes sense, considering the gendered racism both Black boys (and men) and Black girls (and women) experience (Dow 2016). As Black boys (and men) have been hypersexualized, hypermasculinized, and hypercriminalized throughout U.S. history, it is understandable that Black mothers spend such a great amount of time teaching their sons how to dress and behave in a certain way in an effort to prevent them from being targeted as criminals or “thugs” (Dow 2016; Edwards and Few-Demo 2016; Harris 2006; hooks 2003). Black girls (and women) have also been hypersexualized and deemed less feminine and less beautiful than white women, which contributes to their mothers’ emphasis on combatting the negative messages their daughters receive regarding beauty from the larger culture (Edwards and Few-Demo 2016). Additionally, father-son relationships reveal how racial socialization is gendered (Allen 2016). With their sons, Black fathers tend to emphasize that their sons will have to work harder than their white counterparts to receive the same level of respect and that they will have to learn to navigate two different worlds (e.g., the Black world and the White world), which evokes W.E.B. DuBois’ notion of “double consciousness” (Allen 2016). Although the mothers in the present study demonstrated differences in how they racially socialized their daughters and sons, because of limited space, in this article, I focus primarily on how they socialize their sons around race.

Building on this previous scholarship, I examine the racial socialization practices of low-income Black single mothers, the major concerns they express regarding raising Black children, and how those practices and concerns compare with those of Black middle-class mothers. Previous studies focusing on low-income Black single mothers have not examined their parenting concerns but have focused primarily on problems these women experience, how they view and navigate motherhood, generally, and/or the resources upon which they draw to mother their children (e.g., Edin and Kefalas 2005; Stack 1974). My study adds to that previous research by examining low-income Black single mothers’ parenting concerns and the practices they engage in to address those concerns. Building on Hill’s (1999) research on the socialization of African American children, my study illuminates how low-income Black single mothers negotiate the challenges of low-income Black single motherhood, teach their children values they deem important, and imagine a greater life for them.

Unlike Black middle-class mothers, low-income Black single mothers are not able to assert their class status in an effort to prevent their children from experiencing discrimination. They also lack the necessary resources to alter their children’s social environments, as their limited resources mean they often live in overpoliced, dilapidated neighborhoods, and their children attend underresourced schools. I argue, however, that race undermines social class, as low-income Black single mothers and Black middle-class mothers share similar parenting concerns. Specifically, Black mothers of all social classes share a fear for their children’s safety (especially their sons) and engage in respectability politics, as they encourage their children not to dress or behave in ways that will cause them to be discriminated against (Dow 2016; Edwards and Few-Demo 2016). Nevertheless, the significance of social class is not lost, as low-income Black single mothers who face increased scrutiny under the neoliberal social welfare system in the United States must struggle to parent their children with few resources to help them navigate the racism, sexism, and classism that their children will inevitably face.

Methods

In this article, I draw on data from a larger study examining how low-income Black single mothers interpret motherhood and mothering, which consists of in-depth interviews with 21 low-income Black single mothers who have participated in social services benefits programs, such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Medicaid, and Head Start, in Virginia. Participants ranged in age from 20 to 57 years. I determined low-income status by asking each participant if she was receiving or had previously received social services benefits programs, such as the ones just listed (each of them confirmed that she had) and by confirming participants’ current incomes (see Table 1 for participants’ demographic information). Incomes ranged from less than $10,000 to $35,000 to $45,000. Most participants had never been married (only seven stated that they had been married before). The number of children each participant had ranged from one to five. Fifty-seven percent of participants were employed at the time of the interview.

Table 1.

Characteristics of the Sample.

Participant^a	Age (Years)	Marital History	Number of Children	Employed	Income	Social Services Benefits
Tamara	26	Married before	1	Yes	<$10,000	TANF,^b SNAP^b
Kara	32	Never married	5	Yes	<$10,000	TANF,^b SNAP,^b Medicaid^b
Sasha	20	Never married	2	No	<$10,000	TANF,^b SNAP,^b Medicaid^b
Kenya	29	Never married	3	Yes	$10,000–$15,000	TANF,^c SNAP,^c Medicaid^b
Pamela	38	Never married	2	Yes	$25,000–$30,000	SNAP,^c Medicaid^b
Jenise	28	Never married	3	No	$10,000–$15,000	TANF,^c SNAP,^b Medicaid^b
Kayla	29	Never married	3	Yes	$20,000–$25,000	TANF,^c SNAP,^b Medicaid,^b childcare^b
Katrina	36	Never married	1	Yes	<$10,000	SNAP,^b Medicaid^b
Lexi	24	Never married	1	Yes	<$10,000	SNAP,^b Medicaid^b
Ashley	26	Married before	1	No	<$10,000	TANF,^c SNAP,^b Medicaid^b
Leslie	27	Married before	4	No	$35,000–$45,000	TANF,^c SNAP,^b Medicaid,^b childcare^b
Shay	38	Never married	3	No	<$10,000	TANF,^c SNAP,^b Medicaid^b
Sonya	41	Never married	1	No	<$10,000	SNAP^b
Briana	36	Never married	2	No	<$10,000	TANF,^c SNAP,^b Medicaid^b
Asia	29	Never married	2	Yes	$25,000–$30,000	SNAP,^c Head Start^b
Erin	47	Married before	1	Yes	$15,000–$20,000	TANF,^c SNAP^c
Paula	49	Never married	5	Yes	$20,000–$25,000	SNAP,^c Medicaid^b
Jackie	56	Married before	2	Yes	<$10,000	SNAP,^c AFDC,^c Medicaid^c
Tonya	43	Married before	4	No	$10,000–$15,000	SNAP,^b Medicaid^c
Michelle	38	Never married	2	No	<$10,000	TANF,^b SNAP,^b Medicaid^b
Christie	57	Married before	1	Yes	<$10,000	SNAP,^c Medicaid^b

Note: AFDC = Aid to Families with Dependent Children; childcare = childcare assistance; SNAP = Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program; TANF = Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.

Participants’ names are pseudonyms.

Participant was receiving this benefit during the study.

Participant received this benefit in the past.

I recruited participants primarily through hanging flyers at social services agencies in southwest and central Virginia. I also contacted the directors of social services agencies and organizations that work with low-income African American single mothers to ask if they would be willing to share my recruitment flyer with their clients. This recruitment method turned out to be successful, as most participants were women who saw my flyer at social services agencies, at a public housing agency, or at organizations in which they were involved. Several participants called me to inquire about participating in the study, while others e-mailed. In this sense, most participants were self-selected, as they reached out to me to participate in the study on their own. I recruited two participants through personal networks, meaning that because I was aware that they qualified to participate in the study and that we shared mutual contacts, I asked our mutual contacts to reach out to them and ask if they would be willing to participate in the study. My initial goal for recruitment was to use snowball sampling, especially as I anticipated having more difficulty recruiting participants than I did, so I asked each participant if she knew someone who may be interested in participating. A few of them said that they did and that they would share (or had already shared) my flyer and/or contact information with those individuals. However, only one of my interviews resulted from a participant’s reaching out to another person about the study. Interestingly, two participants were mother and daughter, but I did not realize this until the day of my interview with the mother.

I spoke at two churches about the study (one in southwest and one in central Virginia). Through speaking at churches, I met several people who worked with social service agencies or organizations that serve low-income single mothers, and several of them shared my recruitment flyer with their clients. There are pros and potential cons to recruiting participants through individuals who work with social service agencies or similar organizations. One pro of recruiting participants this way is that it allowed me to gain access to a population with which I do not normally interact. Another pro is that agency workers were able to share my recruitment flyer widely. A potential con is that because most participants learned of the study through representatives of social service agencies or agencies that serve low-income single mothers, participants may have associated me with those agencies. However, I let each participant know before she consented to being interviewed that I was conducting this research as part of my doctoral dissertation. Although recruiting participants through people associated with social service agencies or similar organizations did not seem to have any effect on the interview process, it may have influenced participants’ willingness to be forthcoming in their responses to my interview questions. Nevertheless, participants appeared to be very open with me about their experiences as low-income Black single mothers, including their interactions with social service agencies (unfortunately, I had no way of measuring participants’ candor or openness).

I also recruited several participants through the food pantry at a church in southwest Virginia, as the director allowed me to talk to his eligible clients about the study and ask them if they were interested in participating. Each participant received a $25 gift card to a local grocery store, which proved to be a useful incentive for recruitment. The entire recruitment and interviewing process took place between September and December 2017. I conducted all but one of the interviews in person, either at the participant’s home or at another location of her choosing, such as a library, bookstore, or fast food restaurant, and one interview via Skype. Interviews ranged from 28 minutes to 1 hour, 45 minutes.

Interviews covered a range of topics, including questions about the context of the neighborhoods and communities in which participants lived, questions surrounding the meaning they ascribe to motherhood generally and Black motherhood specifically, and questions focusing on their daily activities and lives. It seemed that my identity as a Black woman (albeit not a mother) helped me build rapport with participants. Like the participants in Dow’s (2016) research, participants would sometimes suggest that I understood where they were coming from because I am a Black woman. Some participants asked me if I had children (in which case I told them no). Although participants may have felt that they could relate to me because of our shared race and gender, I was not able to relate to them as low-income single mothers, which may have caused them to go into greater detail in their responses to questions surrounding motherhood and mothering, as they may have presumed (rightfully so) that I did not understand their experiences as mothers. In cases in which I wanted participants to elaborate more on their responses, I followed up my initial question with probes.

After I transcribed the interviews, I “precoded” each transcript by reading through it, highlighting excerpts that struck me, and writing analytic memos about why those excerpts struck me, some of which included tentative codes (Saldaña 2016). I then developed a set of codes on the basis of my research questions, which is known as structural coding (Saldaña 2016). Next, I read through my transcripts again and applied codes where they were applicable. Finally, I examined the frequency of each of my codes to determine which ones I could collapse or delete, collapsing codes that were similar and/or redundant and deleting codes that were not significant (i.e., I used them only a couple of times and they were not relevant to my research questions). This process enabled me to identify recurring themes and categories. The most significant code that applies to my analysis here is “race and motherhood,” which is a subcode falling under the code “motherhood identity.” During interviews, I would ask participants what being a Black mother meant to them, and they would often describe the work they had to do to teach their children what it means to be Black in the United States and how to avoid becoming targets of racism, particularly racist state violence. As previous research documents, they spent most of the time discussing teaching their sons how to do this (Dow 2016; Lewis-McCoy 2016), but they also discussed the racial gendered socialization they engage in with their daughters (for the purposes of this article, however, I focus primarily on the racial socialization practices they engage in with their sons). Through analyzing participants’ accounts, I found that their responses often invoke respectability politics in an effort to educate their children about being Black in America and hopefully prevent them from becoming targets of racism and racist violence. Their use of respectability politics differed from middle-class mothers in that their current class status does not allow them to avert racism by asserting their class status; rather, they can only aspire to achieve the level of respectability afforded those of higher class statuses and hope that their children will someday as well.

Findings

Racial-Class Socialization

Similar to previous literature (Banks 2012; Dow 2016; Lewis-McCoy 2016), I found that low-income African American single mothers socialize their children around race and class simultaneously. Specifically, I found that participants were not only concerned with teaching their children how to avoid racial discrimination and racist violence but that they also were concerned with teaching their children how to act middle class or at least to embrace middle-class values, such as working hard and acting “respectable” (Cousins 1999; Dow 2016; Gaines 1996; Higginbotham 1993). Briana, a 36-year-old mother of two (a daughter and a son), recognized that her children’s race and class status placed them at a societal disadvantage and thus they would have several barriers to overcome:

I tell my kids, “You don’t want to be a statistic,” or “You don’t . . . want them to label you as something ’cause you already labeled ’cause you raised in a single home, you in low-income, your school is not . . . you know, ’cause they rate schools . . . so, you already got that stamp on you, so you don’t need to add nothing else to that, you feel me? Right now, all of these things is out of your control is because of your parent or parents, but you don’t have to be labeled as that.”

Although Briana recognizes that her children will likely already be “labeled” or stereotyped because they were raised in a low-income area by a single mother, she also suggests that the likelihood of their not becoming “statistics” rests largely on their life choices, which is symptomatic of respectability politics. Her statement that her children’s low-income status is currently out of their control, but they “don’t have to be labeled as that” shows that she wants her children to someday achieve a higher social class status, so they will not be labeled “statistics” for being Black and low income.

Kenya, a 29-year-old mother of three sons, explained that she has to teach her sons to be “respectable” because they are “targeted as Black men”:

[Being a mother means] taking care of your kids, loving your kids, keeping them safe. You know, just being there for them. Helping them to grow up and be adults, responsible adults. . . . It’s so important, and . . . being that they’re boys and they’re targeted as Black men already, you know, I have to teach them that being respectable is important. Staying in school is important. You know, so. And working . . . I’m gonna make sure they know to work. They see me work all the time. They know, you know, mommy getting up to go to work, she gotta work, but they’re gonna know that nothing is handed to you. Nothing.

Like several participants, Kenya implies that teaching her sons to be “responsible” and “respectable” may prevent them from becoming targets of racism. One of the ways that she believes she can do this is by emphasizing the importance of education and working hard, essentially, teaching them to be productive members of society. Like the participants in Dow’s (2016) study, Kenya recognizes that her sons confront unique challenges as Black boys growing up in the United States; thus, she engages in image management to reduce the likelihood of them being “associated with the thug image” as Black boys (p. 179). The mothers in Dow’s study, however, also used image management to “prevent [their sons] from being associated with poor urban African Americans” (p. 179). Because Kenya is a low-income African American single mother, she cannot distance herself from other low-income African Americans. She can only hope that her sons will someday achieve a class status that will allow them to achieve the level of respectability that may help them avert being stereotyped as a thug or a criminal.

Similarly, Kayla, a 29-year-old mother of two daughters and one son, discussed having to be “harder” on her children because they are Black:

[Being a mother to Black children] . . . means I have to, again, try harder. Be harder on them, that they can succeed. Especially towards a black son. I feel like, for one, him being a boy and Black, he’s already got two strikes against him. And it’s sad that society makes me feel that way, but it’s just so much harder for Black males. Because they are smart, and they can be smart. She’s in third grade and she’s reading on a fifth-grade level. So, it’s like, you only get out what you put in.

When asked in what ways she feels she must be harder on her children, she explained,

Just as far as being disciplined. Because if they don’t respect me, they’re not gonna learn to respect everybody else. And they have to learn to respect authority—their teachers or . . . adults that are in charge—they have to be able to listen and know rules and know that they can’t just do what they want to do.

Kayla’s quotation suggests that Black children require more discipline because they are Black; the outside world is not going to go easy on them, so their parents should not either. As her son already has “two strikes against him” because he is Black and male, she explains that it is imperative that he learn to respect authority at an early age to avoid being stereotyped and becoming a target of racism. Her statement that her children have to “learn to respect authority” and be “disciplined” evokes sentiments of “racial uplift” similar to those used by middle-class Blacks in the early twentieth century (Gaines 1996). However, because Kayla is not middle class and thus cannot provide her children the benefits associated with a middle-class lifestyle, she is limited in the tools she can use to help her children avoid being discriminated against.

Katrina, a 36-year-old mother of one son, suggested that if she can convince her son not to dress in a way that will make him a “target,” perhaps he will avoid becoming one:

I was scared and terrified when they told me I had a son. That’s when the Trayvon Martin stuff came out. I was just like, oh my goodness. I can’t have no kid that could look like he’s going to be a terror. I’m like, I want a preppy son. I want a preppy son. A jacket or a hoodie on your child can make them a target, and that’s what blew me. I was scared and terrified. So, I was like, I gotta raise my child to be preppy. My son is so hood . . . he’s just like, he walks like a man, and he talks real deep. But he’s just a baby, he’s just trying to figure out his way, but . . . I’m like, I just want you to wear button up shirts and khakis. That’s all you can wear, and that’s it, and you just go home. And that’s all you gotta do. Well, my son’s going to be something else.

Like Kayla and Kenya, Katrina alludes to respectability politics in this passage, implying that the way her son dresses may have an impact on whether he becomes a target of racism. Namely, her statement about wanting a “preppy son” suggests that if her son dresses more like a white, middle-class boy, he may be able to avoid becoming a target of racism. In this way, she is engaging in image management (Dow 2016). Katrina’s comments also illuminate the political context in which low-income Black single mothers are raising their children. Her reference to the Trayvon Martin case illustrates that incidents of racialized violence shape how these women socialize their children around race (and class, as this quotation indicates).

Concerns about Raising Black Children

As previous studies have documented (Dow 2016; Edwards and Few-Demo 2016; Lewis-McCoy 2016), the mothers in this study generally feared for their children’s safety (especially their sons) and worried about their becoming targets of racism and racist state violence. Asia, a 29-year-old mother of a daughter and a son, discussed some of the burdens Black mothers experience when raising their children and not wanting her children, especially her son, to become one of the many Black men in the United States who have fallen victim to state violence:

Being a mother, period, but a Black mother, I feel like it’s a bit harder because you’re raising young Black children, especially young Black men, and that’s a struggle in itself because you don’t want to see them on the news. You don’t want to be one of the statistics that you see every day. You feel like you’ve got a whole bunch on your shoulders now to make sure they’re raised right, but even if they do the right things, that they don’t get hurt still.

Although all mothers may fear for their children’s safety generally, Black mothers often experience a unique fear: that their children will become victims of racist state violence and may even die at the hands of the state. As Asia suggests, one of the most troublesome aspects of this fear is that no matter how much Black mothers do to ensure that their children are “raised right,” they may still unfortunately become targets of state violence at some point in their lives.

When describing how her responsibilities as a mother to a Black child are different from the responsibilities of mothers of white children, Tamara explained:

We have to prep our kids before we go outside, we have to tell them what not to say, we have to tell them what not to do, even though we ’posed to be free, you gotta give them rules and regulations, especially being—I have a Black son, I tell him don’t run from the cops, automatically put your hands up, get on the ground, they—I shouldn’t have to tell him that because a white kid is not gonna go outside and be like, “You know what, when a cop pull you over, get on the ground, listen to him . . . [mumbles].” They don’t have that conversation ’cause white—cops is not killing white kids. They not on the chopping block, they’re not on the hunting, like, we deer to them and they just picking us off out here, no. And I don’t like that, but I have to prep my son because, “Listen, you Black.” I tell him that all the time . . . like when he do something like, “No, you Black, you not white.” Your name might be white, but you Black . . . act accordingly.

In the above quotation, Tamara describes one of the many burdens that Black mothers face: having to educate her two-year-old son about how to interact with the police so that he does not become a victim of racist state violence. Black mothers must have conversations with their children about how to interact with others in public spaces in hopes that their children will not be perceived as a threat and subsequently become the target of racist violence. Similar to the mothers in Dow’s (2016) and Edwards and Few-Demo’s (2016) studies, Tamara is engaging in image management in teaching her son how to properly interact with authority figures (in this case, the police) in hopes that he will not be perceived as a thug or criminal.

Leslie, a 27-year-old mother of three sons and a daughter, also discussed having to have different conversations with her children because they are Black:

I do think that I have to raise my kids a little different sometimes. Especially my sons, you know, the way that the world is right now, I think there’s some different conversations we have to have with our kids than maybe other races do. And it’s unfortunate, but I feel like we do have to teach them to be a little different, because that’s the way the world treats them . . . and unfortunately, there are gonna be some things that they encounter differently than other kids. There’s gonna be some things—like, I was just having this debate with one of my friends. They have Black children, but, well, you see [her friend’s son], he’s got blonde hair and blue eyes, but he’s Black. And we were talking about how I felt like I was gonna have to teach my son some things differently than her son, because you know, [her friend’s son] could walk through a white neighborhood and nobody would feel alarmed, because he looks—he could pass as Caucasian, whereas my son, he might be seen as a threat, you know? So, I have to teach him some things that he may not be doing nothing wrong, but on how to live his life to be safe. . .and that’s kind of irritating. That’s very irritating that you have to teach your kid that they can’t have basic rights as a person, but because of the way that they look, that there’s potential their life could be in danger. And I think part of it has to do [with] where you live too, though, because I don’t think every area is like that. I feel like this area I live in right now is a nice mix and you don’t really get that too much, but there are some areas, even in [city that she lives in] that are . . . I mean I’ve gone to [a different area in the city] and walked past a mom and her child and she clutched her purse and I’m just like, “It’s nothing serious.”

Like Tamara, Leslie describes having to have different conversations with her son than a white mother would (and even perhaps different than her friend who has a Black son who can pass for white) because her son may be perceived as a threat because he is Black. She recognizes that her children, particularly her sons, will be treated differently because they are Black, even if they are not doing anything wrong. Her statement about having to teach her children that they “can’t have basic rights as a person . . . because of the way that they look” illustrates how Black children (and Black people, in general) are denied personhood and subjectivity. Black people do not have the luxury of going about their lives freely, without fear that their lives are in danger simply because they are Black.

Lexi, a 24-year-old mother of one son, also discussed having to raise her son differently because he is Black. When asked what it means to her to be a Black mother, Lexi explained,

You got a little bit more responsibility. You gotta pay attention to more things and you gotta make sure that you raise them a certain way because you don’t want him to be out here because they got a target on their back, so you just gotta make sure that he knows certain things, especially since he’s a boy.

Lexi’s statement that Black mothers have “a little bit more responsibility” is indicative of the burden that Black mothers face raising Black children in a racist society. Later, I asked her what types of things she thought she could teach him that may affect whether he becomes a target, and she replied, “Basically, to just learn that the streets are not your friend and, you know, you can’t be in the streets. Stay in school—the basics, and about God . . . .” Like Kenya, Lexi suggests that raising her son to be respectable by emphasizing the importance of staying in school and staying out of “the streets” may prevent him from becoming a target of racism.

Michelle, a 38-year-old mother of two sons, described how white mothers often react to her when she tells them she has two sons:

I have talked to white women and explained to them that I got boys. When they listen that you got boys, they be like, “Oh. They not bad?” Like, they expect them to be bad. Well, is your boys bad? You know. Because they white, they ain’t gonna be bad? It’s just like, that culture thing. To me, it’s still racism going on, it’s just not talked loud about. But, it’s still going on. White people, it’s like their kids can never do no wrong, and they the ones with [inaudible] and shooting up places, you know?

Michelle’s discussion of how white women often presume that her sons are bad just because they are Black signifies the criminalization of Black boys. Unlike white boys, who are presumed to be victims of bullying or in other respects given the benefit of the doubt even when they commit horrific crimes, like mass shootings, Black boys are seen as inherently bad and thus receive harsher punishments when they commit crimes and are sometimes even blamed for crimes they did not commit. As Rios (2011) argued, they are presumed to be guilty until they can prove their innocence.

Discussion and Conclusion

The purpose of this study was to examine the racial socialization practices of low-income Black single mothers, the concerns they express regarding raising Black children, and how their racial socialization practices and the concerns they express compare with those of Black middle-class mothers. While teaching their children how to avoid racial discrimination, participants also teach their children how to act middle class or embrace middle-class values, such as hard work and acting “respectable.” Previous research demonstrated that preparation for bias is a key theme in the racial socialization practices of Black parents (Edwards and Few-Demo 2016; Hughes et al. 2006). As mothers in Edwards and Few-Demo’s (2016) study discussed teaching their sons how to cope with racism and how to present themselves in such a way as to avoid being stereotyped as a criminal or a “thug,” (p. 64), the participants in this study also prepared their children for bias by teaching them how to interact with the police and to embrace middle-class behaviors and styles of dress. In this way, similar to Dow’s (2016) participants, they engaged in image management to help their sons avoid discrimination; however, unlike the mothers in Dow’s study, as low-income single mothers, the mothers in this study are not able to assert their class status in an effort to protect their sons from racism.

A common theme across the literature documenting the racial socialization practices of Black mothers (which this study reinforces) is a general concern for their children’s safety (e.g., Dow 2016; Edwards and Few-Demo 2016; Lewis-McCoy 2016). In this study, as in previous research, this fear often appeared to be exacerbated by recent incidents of racialized violence, such as the killings of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown (e.g., Thomas and Blackmon 2015; Threlfall 2018). The mothers in this study expressed similar concerns to those expressed by Black mothers in previous research, implying that race may trump class (at least in some cases) when it comes to the experiences of Black mothers. That is, it appears that Black mothers of all social classes are united in their anxieties about raising Black children in a racist society (Dow 2016; Edwards and Few-Demo 2016). Nevertheless, low-income Black single mothers do not have access to the same “toolkit” (Lacy 2007) as middle-class mothers to help them protect their children from racism.

Because this study is based on a small, nonrandom sample, I cannot generalize my findings to all low-income Black single mothers. However, my findings provide key insight into the racial socialization practices of low-income Black single mothers and how those practices are similar to and different from those of Black middle-class mothers. Future research should expand on the findings presented here to further explore the significance of low-income Black single mothers engaging in respectability politics. Because they do not have access to the same resources as middle-class mothers, further exploration into this phenomenon would elucidate their reasons for engaging in respectability politics. Finally, given that the scope of this study did not allow me to do so, future research should investigate how their children’s gender shapes how low-income Black single mothers socialize their children around race.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Barbara Ellen Smith, Shaonta’ Allen, Theresa Rocha Beardall, Maretta McDonald, and the anonymous reviewers at Sociology of Race and Ethnicity for their thoughtful comments on this article. This research was made possible in part by a dissertation grant from the Southeastern Women’s Studies Association. An earlier version of this article was presented at the 2019 Association of Black Sociologists Annual Conference.

Author Biography

Jennifer L. Turner is an assistant professor of sociology at Hollins University. Her research focuses on the intersection of race, class, and gender in the context of the family.

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