Race Lessons: The Role of Place in Shaping Black Parents’ Racial Learning and Educational Engagement in a Predominantly White Suburb

Abstract

While a large body of literature examines Black parents’ racial socialization, few studies have employed a sociological lens to explore parents’ own racial learning and how it relates to the implicit and explicit messages they send their children. Based on an ethnographic study of Black parents’ experiences and educational engagement in a predominantly white Midwestern suburb, this article uses a racial learning framework to examine how Black parents’ own racialized, place-based experiences relate to the lessons they attempt to teach their children about race and racism. The research reveals that parents’ racial socialization practices were influenced by their own racial learning and experiences in the predominantly white suburban context, their children’s experiences in the local schools, and for some parents, the things they learned with and from other Black families in school and community organizational spaces. The research findings illustrate the importance of understanding Black parents’ own place-based racial learning and how it shapes and informs their efforts to support their children’s wellbeing and academic success, particularly in predominantly white school districts and communities.

Keywords

Blacks race education parents racial socialization suburb

Introduction

A large body of literature explores parents’ racial socialization, or the specific lessons they send their children about race, racism, and identity. Dominant themes in the extant literature commonly focus on cultural socialization (e.g., pride, traditions, history), preparation for bias, promotion of mistrust of other ethnic-racial groups, and egalitarianism (D. Hughes et al. 2006; Huguley et al. 2019; Umaña-Taylor and Hill 2020). Much of the literature on racial socialization—situated primarily in the field of psychology—focuses on families of color and Black parents, in particular, finding that they play an influential role in the development of their children’s self-esteem and racial identity (Hughes et al. 2006; Huguley et al. 2019; Neblett et al. 2009). As the Movement for Black Lives reminds us, Black people have and continue to face and push back against anti-Black racism in their communities, schools, and society at large. Many Black parents and caregivers seek to instill a positive sense of self in their children while also giving them tools and strategies to navigate the racialized terrains they encounter.

Yet few studies have employed a sociological lens to explore parents’ own racial learning and how it relates to their racial socialization. Racial learning (drawing from Winkler 2012) is used in reference to the active, dynamic, relational, and context-specific ways individuals negotiate and make meaning of the messages they receive about race and racism. Understanding Black parents’ own racial learning and how it relates to their racial socialization in predominantly white communities and institutional settings is particularly important given the anti-Black racism they often face from educators and residents who have limited experience with people of color and may hold deficit-based views of Blackness and Black people (Carter Andrews 2012; Gordon 2012). Black parents in these settings are also more likely than their counterparts residing in Black communities to work proactively to expose their children to Black spaces and Black people, given that their neighborhoods and schools are less likely to teach children about Black cultural norms, practices, and identities (Lacy 2007; Tatum 2000; Winkler 2012). In addition, while the racial microaggressions and exclusion Black youth and their families often face in white-dominated suburban contexts have been well documented (Carter Andrews 2012; Gordon 2012; Lewis and Diamond 2015; Lewis-McCoy 2014; Posey-Maddox 2017; Tatum 2000), we know relatively little about how parents’ own racial experiences and learning in these contexts inform their socialization efforts and engagement in their children’s education. With the dramatic out-migration of Black people from many U.S. cities coupled with increased racial diversity and disparities in suburban districts (Diamond, Posey-Maddox, and Velazquez 2021; Frey 2015), studies of how Black parents work to support their children’s positive sense of self and academic achievement in suburban contexts are both important and timely.

Based on a year-long ethnographic study of Black parents’ experiences and family-school relationships in a predominantly white U.S. Midwestern suburb, this article demonstrates how Black parents’ own experiences with racialization and everyday racism can inform the lessons they teach their children about race and racism. The research reveals how parents’ socialization practices were influenced by their own racial learning and experiences in the predominantly white suburban context, their children’s experiences in the local schools, and for some parents, their learning from and with other Black families in school and community organizational spaces. The research findings illustrate the importance of understanding parents’ own place-based racial learning and how it shapes and informs their efforts to support their children’s wellbeing and academic success, particularly in predominantly white school districts and communities.

Racial Socialization, Racial Learning

This article builds on scholarship that argues that Black parents’ racial socialization can be viewed as a form of their engagement in their children’s education (Delale-O’Connor et al. 2020), even if not centrally recognized as such by teachers and schools. Racial socialization, drawing from Chase L. Lesane-Brown (2006:403), is defined as

. . . specific verbal and non-verbal messages transmitted to younger generations for the development of values, attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs regarding the meaning and significance of race and racial stratification, intergroup and intragroup interactions, and personal and group identity.

For Black parents, common racial socialization messages are those focused on racial pride and culture and those related to Black people’s social position in a racially stratified society (Lesane-Brown 2006; Lewis-McCoy 2014; Umaña-Taylor and Hill 2020). Black parents’ racial socialization may also include messages of egalitarianism that emphasize equality and similarities between ethnic-racial groups (Umaña-Taylor and Hill 2020).

Parents’ beliefs and values, as well as their own ethnic-racial identity and experiences, influence the messages they send their children about race and racism (Dow 2019; Umaña-Taylor and Hill 2020; Winkler 2012). Research also finds that Black parents with more years of education are more likely to transmit messages about race, racism, and Black culture to their children than their working-class and low-income counterparts (Hughes et al. 2006; Lacy and Harris 2008). Parents’ racial socialization is also shaped by their gender (Brown, Linver, and Evans 2010; Dow 2019; McNeil Smith et al., 2016) as well as the age and gender of their children (Dow 2019; McHale et al. 2006). Black middle-class mothers in Dow’s (2019) study, for example, engaged in a number of strategies to both shield their children from gendered racism and help them navigate it. To address their concerns about their daughter’s self-esteem, they created supportive and affirming peer groups and sought to protect their daughters from negative images of Black girlhood, whereas with their sons they used a number of strategies to help their sons acquire “the ability to shift among communities that differed by race, class, and gender” (p. 46), shield them from discrimination through careful monitoring of their environment, and help their sons “manage the expression of their feelings and their physical demeanor” (p. 47).

A growing body of literature has also begun to examine the role of neighborhood contexts in relation to ethnic-racial socialization, finding an association between parents’ reports of experiences with discrimination and the types of ethnic-racial socialization messages they report sending their children (Saleem et al. 2016; Witherspoon et al. 2022). Yet as Adriana J. Umaña-Taylor and Nancy E. Hill (2020) point out, most of the extant studies on neighborhoods “are only scratching the surface” based on their use of parent and youth perceptions data and census tract demographic data and fail to fully capture processes and nuances. As they note, more research is needed on “the tradeoffs and compensations that families make as they choose neighborhoods, choose to join cultural clubs and organizations, and choose schools” and how this relates to their ethnic-racial socialization goals (p. 262).

In one of few studies with an explicit focus on the relationship between racial socialization and parents’ engagement in their children’s education, Mary McKernan McKay et al. (2003) found that Black parents’ perceptions of racism were positively correlated with their at-home involvement, but negatively correlated with their involvement in their children’s schools. The authors interpret these findings to suggest that Black parents focus their educational engagement efforts in the home to shield and protect their children from negative influences, and yet this engagement may not be visible or replicated in their relations with schools. Based on questionnaires completed by Black parents in one urban elementary school, however, the research does not permit an in-depth exploration of parents’ meaning-making, experiences, or engagement in context.

Lori Delale-O’Connor et al.’s (2020) research and concept of “racialized compensatory cultivation” in education are also informed by the racial socialization literature. Their qualitative study of how and why a socioeconomically mixed sample of Black families select, manage, and engage with schools and educational activities—and how their racialized realities inform their engagement approaches—revealed that race played a central role in parents’ engagement efforts (and this was true across class lines). Focusing on the educational engagement of Black parents with children enrolled in the middle schools of a large urban school district in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, the authors found that Black parents “made it clear that they knew racial socialization was critical to the self-esteem, efficacy development, and coping strategies that they deemed necessary for their Black children’s positive development” (Delale-O’Connor et al. 2020:1943). Parents thus engaged in a number of socialization efforts to support their children’s overall development and to ensure they had positive academic experiences and outcomes.

While the extant literature on racial socialization offers important insights into the types of messages Black parents send and the correlation between these messages and children’s outcomes, several scholars have rightly critiqued the extant literature—commonly based on parents’ self-reports via questionnaires in the field of social psychology—for treating children’s racial learning as a passive transmission of messages from parents (the assumed primary socializing agents) to child and instead argue that children learn about race in dynamic and interdependent ways (Hagerman 2014, 2018; Holman 2012; Hughes, Watford, and Del Toro 2016; Winkler 2012). Erin Winkler (2012:7), for example, outlines a framework of “comprehensive racial learning” that includes the multiple influences (e.g., peers, neighborhood, media, schools, neighborhoods) on children’s learning about race and that refers to “the process through which children negotiate, interpret, and make meaning of the various and conflicting messages they receive about race, ultimately forming their own understandings of how race works in society and in their lives.” In her in-depth interviews with African American mothers and their daughters, Winkler found that almost all of the mothers in her study engaged in some form of racial socialization regardless of the income, household structure, marital status, education, or neighborhood, with most mothers engaging in what the author refers to as “responsive racial socialization messages” or those that seek to counter the negative conceptions of Blackness existing in society. Their daughters learned about race from multiple sources beyond the family, however, and actively made meaning of and negotiated racial messages in ways that did not reflect a simple transmission of messages from parent to child.

While Winkler’s focus was on children’s comprehensive racial learning, her research and that of other scholars highlights the significant role of place in shaping if, how, and when Black parents—and particularly Black mothers—engage in racial socialization. Winkler (2012:179) found that place (in this case, Detroit) was a “primary and overarching factor” in children’s comprehensive racial learning “directly through their own experiences with it and indirectly through its impact on their mothers’ messages and sometimes those of their peers, teachers, and others.” Drawing from sociological perspectives utilizing qualitative inquiry, both Karyn Lacy (2007) and Erin Winkler (2008, 2012) found that parents residing in Black neighborhoods and communities did not feel a need to teach their children actively and explicitly about Black culture. As Winkler (2012:79) found, for the children living in predominantly Black, Detroit neighborhoods, “place simply takes care of the procultural messages for them.” Winkler (2012) and Lacy (2007) found that Black parents who resided in predominantly white communities, however, sought to actively expose their children to Black people and institutions and nurture their racial identity in proactive and overt ways.

This article extends Winkler’s concept of comprehensive racial learning by focusing on Black parents’ own racial learning within place and how it shapes and informs their racial socialization, or the implicit and explicit messages about race and racial inequality they may communicate to their children (and other children). While an in-depth understanding of how young people receive, interpret, and respond to their parents’ messages is beyond the scope of the study, understanding parents’ own racial learning in place is important because it likely influences how and if they talk about race, racism, and racial identity with their children (Dow 2019; Umaña-Taylor and Hill 2020; Winkler 2008, 2012). As Winkler (2012:146) notes, racial socialization can “create a critical point of intervention in which parents are empowered to insert themselves into their children’s comprehensive racial learning and help them negotiate racialized messages from the larger society.” This article thus engages in an exploration of the ways Black parents make sense of and negotiate their own racial learning in a predominantly white suburban district and community. It also examines how parents’ racial learning relates to both the implicit and explicit messages they communicate to their children about race and the ways they advocate for their well-being and academic success.

Context and Methods

The research was conducted in a predominantly white suburb of a mid-size city in Wisconsin, a state that has experienced a growth in its Black population since 1990 while also being ranked as one of the worst states in the nation for Black children and families based on alarming racial disparities between white and Black people using health, education, and neighborhood poverty indicators (Wisconsin Council on Children & Families [WCCF] 2014). During the period of data collection (September 2013 to June 2014), Black people represented 6 percent of the total population in Forest Glen (a pseudonym) and close to 10 percent of the school district’s population (compared with roughly 6 percent Asian, 8 percent Hispanic, 69 percent white, 7 percent two or more races, and less than 1 percent Indigenous and Native Hawaiian). While the school district had two Black principals at the time, most teachers were white and the vast majority of district administrators and elected officials were white. Like many predominantly white school districts across the United States, the school district was challenged to address racial and socioeconomic disparities in student achievement and outcomes, with media attention paid to the disproportionate number of Black students referred for special education and racial disproportionality in student discipline. In response, the district held educator trainings on social justice and culturally responsive pedagogy and stated a commitment to recruiting a more racially diverse workforce. Black district staff members and Black parents also formed a group—supported by the school district—that aimed to both connect Black families across the suburb and advise school district leaders in their efforts to address opportunity gaps and racial disparities in the schools. During the period of research, the African American Parent Organization (AAPO) was one of two predominantly Black organizations in the suburb (the other being a Black church).¹

The research described here is part of a larger ethnographic project that examines the experiences and engagement of a socioeconomically mixed group of Black parents/caregivers with Black children enrolled in grades K–7 in the suburb. The data include semi-structured interviews with 56 Black parents/caregivers (16 male-identifying, 40 female-identifying), as well as interviews with 2 Black long-time residents whose children attended district schools.² The broader project also includes interviews with seven principals and three district administrators (whose work centers on curriculum, instruction, and equity), and observations in bimonthly School Board meetings. While most participants self-identified as Black or African American and were U.S.-born, six parents identified as multiracial (Black and one or more races) and five identified as African-born (all residing in the United States for at least six years). This article draws on the semi-structured interviews with Black parents/caregivers as well as detailed field notes taken in monthly district-wide AAPO meetings. Participants were recruited by the research team (comprising the author, a mixed-race, Black/white mother in the district, and a Black woman research assistant) through AAPO and other district and community meetings, as well as via flyers sent home to all parents of Black/African American children in grades K–7 (see Posey-Maddox 2017 for a detailed description of research methods and positionality).

Data analysis occurred throughout the period of data collection and beyond. Interview transcripts and field notes were read to get a preliminary sense of the data and any emergent themes. Next, a more detailed coding process was used that included the creation of etic codes based on the extant literature on Black parents’ racial socialization and educational engagement, as well as emic codes reflective of emerging themes in the data and participants’ own language (Miles and Huberman 1994). Analysis also included the writing of analytic memos about emergent themes, and when possible, the triangulation of multiple sources of data (parent interviews, field notes of their participation in AAPO meetings, AAPO documents) to better illuminate parents’ experiences across multiple contexts and enhance the reliability of the findings (Miles and Huberman 1994).

Findings

The research revealed three main findings. First, parents’ own racial learning was shaped by their experiences in the predominantly white suburb and its schools, as well as the experiences of their children. Second, many parents’ racial socialization was a central component of their efforts to support their children’s education and ensure they had positive academic experiences and outcomes. Finally, for some parents both their racial learning and socialization practices were influenced by other parents, as the AAPO served as a space in which group members negotiated and debated how best to navigate the racialized suburban terrain and advocate for their children (and other Black children) in district schools.

Learning about Race, in Place

Parents’ own experiences with race, belonging, and place—both historically and as part of their present realities in the predominantly white suburb—informed their racial socialization and broader engagement in their children’s education. In both interviews and AAPO meetings, parents often compared their own racial experiences and learning with their children’s experiences in the predominantly white suburb. Many parents who had grown up in predominantly Black neighborhoods and schools spoke of the different racial and economic context within which they were currently operating. Most of the low-income and working-class parents who had left predominantly Black and urban neighborhoods, for example, shared that they moved to the suburb in search of better opportunities for themselves and their children, as well as a “quieter” and safer environment. Yet many parents experienced microaggressions in both school and community contexts, and forms of everyday racism that were in many cases different from what they had experienced in Black communities. These microaggressions took the form of both hypervisibility and invisibility as one of few Black people in numerous school and community contexts, the presumption of their and/or their children’s criminality, presumed homogeneity of Black families, and the rebuffing of Black parents’ efforts to support their children’s education (see Posey-Maddox 2017).

Coretta, a low-income parent, had been living in the suburb for six years and was working as a staff member in one of the local schools. In an interview, she explained that she left the large city and predominantly Black neighborhood where she had grown up and moved to the suburb in search of better opportunities and a safer environment for herself and her children. Yet she spoke about the challenges she faced in keeping a “sense of culture” for her and her children given the microaggressions both she and her children faced in and outside of schools:

. . . you know when I first got here it was just like oh, everybody’s so nice . . . And I felt blessed actually to be in this community. . .But then I mean like I said, as time went along . . . You know you get used to people smiling at you and you smile back . . . but then when I start to look like this [with a head wrap] or talk in a certain way or act in a certain way you know they looked at me as if I’m foreign.

Coretta shared multiple instances in which she experienced implicit—and sometimes explicit—snubs and slights from white neighbors, community residents, and educational personnel based on her hairstyle and/or use of Black Vernacular English. Echoing findings from other studies of Black mothering (Barnes 2016; Dow 2019), Coretta also shared how her efforts to raise healthy children were shaped by her children’s race-gendered experiences in the suburb. She shared her concern about her daughter’s desire to have straight hair like her white classmates, for example, and her work to foster a positive sense of self for her daughter through modeling her own love of her hair and skin and purchasing Black dolls with hair similar to her daughter’s hair. She also expressed her sadness that she will likely have to teach her son about how to interact with police when he gets older. As she explained,

So one day my son is gonna get older and I have to teach him . . .When he’s driving, to know what he has to do when police pulls him over . . . It makes my heart sad . . . Like I said, the first thing I wanted to do was to go back to what was familiar. To keep my children in a box of well let’s go back to [large midwestern city] and this area ’cause we all look the same . . . But then my father said if I did that I would teach them to run away from the world that’s around ‘em because everybody’s not Black. Everybody’s white. You know just teaching ‘em how to deal with and embrace different cultures is something that I wanna carry on from my generation but teach them in a way that they’re gonna learn to embrace a love without hatred which I see many of the dominant, you know people that are in a dominant race display you know when they see me.

Coretta’s efforts to maintain what she described as a “sense of pride” were not simply for her own survival in the suburb, but for her children and other Black children as well. As she stated, it was important:

. . . not only for myself but for my children and for other Black children and for people that are in my community that may not be the majority, that they are the minority whether they African-American, Hmong or African or whatever color that they are, just having the sense of pride and I feel that now.

Through the teaching and affirmation of Black history and Ebonics in both her conversations with her own children and those she worked with as a district employee, Coretta sought to transmit positive, affirming messages about Blackness and Black people in both her home and work life.

Miranda, a middle-class parent who had spent a large portion of her life in Wisconsin, described the ways her racial socialization was informed by her experiences in place. She spoke about the everyday racism and sense of isolation she experienced as a Black professional in a predominantly white workplace. She also expressed her frustration with white people in Wisconsin who assumed all Black people in the area were poor and from Chicago and who held deficit-based assumptions about Blackness and urbanicity that failed to capture the heterogeneity in the local Black community. Miranda spoke at length about the differences she noticed between life in the predominantly white Midwestern suburb and in the predominantly Black neighborhoods [in another state] where her relatives lived, as well as the pressure she felt to “have her stuff together” and be a positive role model based on the limited number of Black families in the suburb and the stereotypes they had to navigate. She stated,

And like I said, because I’ve grown up in this environment, I am not sure I am able to provide my children with a better sense or foundation of who they are because I haven’t been affirmed . . . I guess at the end of the day, for me it’s been hard to produce that positive to my children because I am struggling in it myself.

Here, Miranda describes how her efforts to affirm her children and provide “a sense of who they are” were shaped by her own experiences in Wisconsin, both historically and in present day. When visiting relatives out of state, Miranda and her children encountered a socioeconomic mix of Black people and vibrant Black institutions, whereas in the predominantly white Wisconsin suburb place did not “do the work” of racial socialization in the same way. Miranda thus worked to proactively expose her children to affirming spaces and opportunities to connect with Black families from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds through Black organizations and events in the broader region and the school district’s AAPO. She also described volunteering in her children’s school to challenge stereotypes about Black parents and their involvement in their children’s education.

Like Coretta and Miranda, many parents felt it was important to challenge stereotypes about Black people in the school district and suburb based on their own racialized experiences and learning in place. While their racialized childhood experiences informed their racial socialization, so too did their contemporary racial learning. Like Coretta, many parents spoke of the racial microaggressions they and their children encountered in the suburb and how this spurred their desire to affirm their child’s sense of self and identity and protect them from racial harm. Place—and parents’ particular racialized experiences within it—was an influential factor in their efforts to foster a positive sense of self for their own children, as well as other Black children in the local schools and community.

Race Lessons as a Form of Parental Engagement

In addition to the broader community context, parents’ relations with the local schools also shaped (and were shaped by) their racial learning in the suburb. While racial socialization was not a central focus of the larger research project, parents’ own racial learning and their racial socialization efforts emerged as a dominant theme in their responses to how they engaged in their children’s education. While teaching children about Black culture and how to cope with racial barriers is commonly talked about in the literature on racial socialization (Lesane-Brown 2006; Umaña-Taylor and Hill 2020), rarely are they explicitly characterized as forms of parental engagement in children’s education. Similarly, discussions of parent advocacy and intervention are rarely investigated or described as a form of racial socialization in the extant literature on Black parents’ educational engagement (Holman 2012). The research findings suggest, however, that parents’ procultural messages and responsive racial socialization (Winkler 2012) were key components of their efforts to ensure their children’s academic success in the predominantly white suburb.

Parents spoke of their efforts to supplement (and sometimes counter) the lessons about Black history and Blackness that their children were learning in district schools. Cherene, a parent who grew up in predominantly Black neighborhoods and schools in a large Midwestern city, spoke about the extra research she and her husband did each February to teach their children about important Black historical figures. As she explained,

We tell ’em about a lot of stuff because when they come home you know it’s like Black History Month basically don’t even exist here. That’s how I feel and a lot more other parents feel the same way too . . . They don’t really teach Black History Month there you know. So we sometimes, us as parents, we have to do it.

Comparing her children’s schooling experiences to her own, she shared how she grew up in an area that was “nothing but Blacks,” where schools were named after famous people in Black history and she and her classmates had to write reports about them. Cherene believed that Black history is important for all kids, noting “everybody should know something about it.”

Shawn, a working-class parent and school district staff member who spent most of his life in a predominantly Black neighborhood in the same large Midwestern city as Cherene, also spoke about the lack of opportunities for Black children to learn about Black history. Shawn spoke about how he and another Black male staff member were talking about the need for African American Studies in the school where they were employed, and the staff member lamented that “We don’t have a single teacher, okay, that’s African American. That would go a long way to help people to understand.” Shawn went on to compare his own education with the one his children were receiving in the suburb, explaining that the schools of his childhood were named after famous people in Black History and that knowing their contributions was “required knowledge” for him. He expressed his frustrations with recent moves to make lessons “more diverse” and in the process the “things that matter” were absent. As he explained,

Like you say you wanna have a more diverse lesson but then you take all the African-Americans out of the history book except for Martin Luther King. That really more diverse? . . . Wouldn’t it be a potential source of pride to know that Crispus Attucks was the first African-American man that died in the Revolutionary War? Wouldn’t that be a potential source of pride? Wouldn’t it be a potential source of pride to know that Daniel Hale Williams was the first African-American to do a open-heart surgery or that a Black man created the traffic light?

Both Shawn and Cherene worked to supplement their children’s education to instill a sense of racial pride and deeper knowledge of Black history given their concerns that it was not a part of their children’s schooling experiences.

Keisha, a low-income parent also from a large city in the Midwest, was not only concerned about if the schools were teaching Black history, but also how they were teaching it. In an interview, she described her positive interactions with school personnel, but expressed a need for both herself and other Black parents to get involved in the local schools. As she explained, the fact that her son was going to “an all Caucasian school” encouraged her to “want to actually see what they doing and what they teaching him.” She explained that she felt the need to counter the racial messages her son said he was learning from his teacher, who told him that although the persecution of Black people was wrong “back then,” that “we live in another world now.” Keisha stated that she had not taught her son about Black history before that moment but felt the need to start talking to him about racism as not simply a historical phenomenon. As she stated,

So you still have to tell him that there are still some people like that . . . But you just got to learn how to remove yourself away from them people, go around it a different way—especially with him growing up in you know [Forest Glen].

Like Keisha, many parents expressed their desire to monitor, supplement, and/or counter the racialized lessons that their children were receiving in schools. Racial socialization was a part of parents’ engagement in their children’s education, prompted by place (a predominantly white community and its schools), and teacher practices (e.g., if and how they taught Black history).

Whereas many parents monitored their children’s education for signs of discrimination and teacher bias, college-educated parents were more likely to monitor and intervene around curricular issues and teacher expectations (e.g., for gifted and talented education). College-educated parents were also more likely to utilize their various forms of capital to connect their children to Black cultural and social experiences and resources (via Black fraternities or sororities, churches, and groups), whereas parents without this social and economic capital and access tended to impart messages individually (via books, advice-giving, or the modeling of behavior) (see also Posey-Maddox 2017).

Several parents sought to transmit egalitarian messages to their children, in which they emphasized the importance of personal responsibility and hard work and treating everyone as equals. These parents did not want their children to immediately blame things on race or immediately interpret an incident as racialized, and yet almost all mentioned racial bias as a plausible explanation. Susan, an upper-middle-class mother, stated that her children needed to understand that “they’re gonna’ be treated differently from time to time . . . but they need to understand that and don’t use that as an excuse.” When Susan’s daughter expressed her frustration with one of her teachers, Susan and her husband intervened, met with the teacher, and asked questions about why the teacher was not calling on her daughter. They were ultimately satisfied with the teacher’s explanation and did not see it as racial bias, although they did not rule out this possibility initially. They expressed desire for their children to not use race “as an excuse” and instead strive for academic excellence. Through this form of intervention in their children’s education, Susan and her husband were sending messages to their daughter about how to interpret and respond to schooling conflicts (although the influence this had on their daughter’s racial learning is beyond the scope of the study).

Tianna, a working-class mother, had moved from Illinois and sought out “just clean, suburban living” for herself and her family. She had researched the suburban school district and thought it would “be a good system” for her kids. Yet when asked whether the suburban district had met her expectations, she said that “there are areas that need to be addressed as far as African American children.” She went on to speak at length about her frustrations with how the school was dealing with the discipline of her 10-year-old son. Although she initially sought to give school personnel the benefit of the doubt and encouraged her son not to, as she stated, “play the race card,” she explained that he was noticing racialized disciplinary practices:

Tianna:

I just think there is a difference in how the Black students are being reprimanded . . . Cause you may have a white kid that started the fight, but the Black kid gets sent home because the Black kid may have hit him harder . . . You know, how do I explain to my kid that he defended himself, but he got in trouble and the other kid didn’t? There is no explanation for that. And here I am trying to teach him diversity, but then I have to say—“Well was that kid white? Was he Black?” You know. I shouldn’t have to do that. . .It now becomes a Black and white thing. That’s not why—that’s not my goal . . . And I have seen a huge imbalance there. Just a lack of fairness.

Interviewer:

And does your son pick up on that? And does he talk about that?

Tianna:

Sure, and I am sure that any kid can see that. And that’s not going to make the kid act any better. In fact, you are isolating them and making them feel even worse.

Tianna became increasingly concerned about the school’s treatment of her child and sought to monitor both her son’s behavior and teachers’ responses to it via classroom observations and requests for regular updates. Her “responsive racial socialization” (Winkler 2008, 2012) was thus a part of her engagement, as she sought to carefully monitor for racial bias and intervene so that school personnel would not, as she said, “break his spirit.”

Like Tianna, several parents expressed their desire to transmit messages of egalitarianism and yet spoke of the challenges in doing so when their children were in fact experiencing anti-Black racism. Indeed, all but two parents in the interview sample (one U.S.-born and one African-born) mentioned some form of racial inequality or racism in their interviews. For many parents, their own racialized experiences in the suburb and/or their children’s experiences served as a form of racial learning for both them and their children, and often prompted parents’ intervention and advocacy in their children’s education, reflecting the ecological/transactional nature of racial learning (Hughes et al. 2016).

While some parents intervened without their children present, others—mostly low-income or working-class parents—described how they intentionally brought their children with them so that they could both show their child they supported them and model how to intervene with authority figures. Monique, a low-income parent who expressed at the beginning of the interview that she was very satisfied with life in the suburb, later described her frustration with school personnel’s refusal to let her daughter call her after an incident in which she accidentally ripped her shirt at school. As she explained, the office staff had her daughter wear a donated shirt for the rest of the day that was too small, rather than calling her to bring a change of clothes. When she picked her daughter up from school and learned about the incident and how it was handled, Monique brought her daughter with her to the front office. She told the school staff,

If she wants to call me, let her call me. I don’t care what it’s for, what it’s about. I mean of course you’re not gonna’ let her call me for something petty or whatever, but if she feels like she needs to call me, she can. And I told them that we will have a serious problem if I feel like they’re discriminating against my child.

Whereas Susan and Tianna’s children prompted them to investigate for racial bias, in this case Monique herself viewed the incident as racialized and communicated this to not only her child but to school personnel as well. These mothers were learning about race and racism in the suburb through their children’s experiences, and their children were learning from them as well in their observations of how they interpreted and responded to these incidents (as well as how parents’ engagement efforts were received by school staff). While other things beyond the family (e.g., school personnel, peers, the media) were also likely influential in their children’s racial learning, these examples illustrate that the lessons parents sought to teach their children about navigating racialized terrains and maintaining a positive sense of self were a key component of their efforts to support their children’s education.

The data suggest, however, that these efforts were not recognized, affirmed, or built upon by teachers and school staff. Although several district administrators praised the work of AAPO members, most principals’ descriptions of parent engagement were commonly framed in relation to parents’ attendance at school-initiated events and meetings, reflecting dominant educator conceptions of “involved” parents (Baquedano-Lopez, Alexander, and Hernandez 2013). While teacher interviews and observations were beyond the scope of the project, interviews with parents suggest that their efforts to ensure their child’s academic success and fair treatment were not always favorably received by teachers or school staff. One low-income mother, for example, described an incident at her son’s school in which both his own efforts (and her own) to address the racial bias of school staff were rebuffed. As she recounted, her son shared with her that he was accused of passing drugs to two white boys in school, when in fact it was a piece of gum (that was not allowed in the room). Both she and her son met with the aide and school resource officer who accused him and she asked the officer why he was singled out and questioned although the other two boys were involved. She explained,

And so I got down to the school and . . . the young lady who initially called the officer said, “Oh we’re having a problem with drugs.” And I said like, “Before you go any further, tell me why you made an assumption that you thought that was drugs? Why did you assume that? . . . why did you not go to [the other two boys] and ask them what was going on or you know, go about it a different way?” And so my [son] got up and walked out the room. I said, “No, you come back in here and you talk and you let them know the situation” . . . . He was very upset. He felt singled out. And the officer was saying, “Well this is what we have to do, standard procedures.” I said, “Okay you go get the handbook for the district office and tell me and show me where is this in the handbook.” He couldn’t do that.

She explained that they never apologized and the situation “was never resolved.” Earlier in the interview, she also shared her own experiences with hypervisibility and presumed criminality as a Black mother in the broader predominantly white suburb. As part of her efforts to support her child’s education, she sought to teach him strategies for how to navigate racialized incidents (e.g. “write everything down and document it,” “check the handbook”) and had her son and his siblings learn about famous Black leaders and their many accomplishments.

The Collective Dimensions of Racial Learning

For some parents, their relationships with other Black families in the suburb—via the district-wide AAPO—informed the ways they understood and engaged in racialized educational contexts. The organization—funded primarily by the school district and comprising a socioeconomically mixed group of Black parents with children in grades K–12—sought to connect the community with schools and advocate for the academic success of African American children. In the two years since its founding, the organization had successfully secured the access of district students to a pre-college program in a nearby city, organized annual Black History Month events, and advised district and civic leaders in their efforts to address racial disparities. In their monthly meetings, parents (a number of whom were also district employees) shared with each other their experiences in the local schools and broader community, “lessons learned” and strategies for effectively engaging with school personnel, and information about community resources and opportunities.

For some parents, AAPO meetings and events catalyzed their discussions about race and racism with their children. Joyce, for example, explained that she spoke with her daughter about achievement gaps in the local schools after hearing the statistics presented at the organization’s annual Black History Month event:

She like couldn’t believe the [achievement gap] statistics . . . She is like, “This is not cool.” And I am like, ‘I know’ . . .We talked about it. She [said] ‘everyone talks about it, but really in [name of suburb]?’. . .And it’s like “Wake up, what do you think I have been trying to tell you?” And that drove me crazy, but it made me feel happy in this sick way that ooh- she is getting it. You know—things are not equal.

Earlier in the interview Joyce had shared her concerns about whether her daughter, who she described as having a light complexion and mostly white friends, “acknowledges her roots.” For Joyce, the information presented at the AAPO event provided her with another opportunity to talk to her children about race and racism—both historically and in their daily lives.

The organization also served as a “construction site” (Cornell and Hartmann 1998; Lacy 2007) in which parents collectively learned about, (re)created, and contested the boundaries of Blackness in the predominantly white suburban context. In AAPO meetings, parents discussed (and sometimes debated) the messages about Blackness and Black people they hoped to transmit to their own children, to other Black families, and to the broader community. At one meeting, AAPO members discussed whether to change the group’s original name to make it more inclusive, for example, as a few African immigrant parents and white parents of Black or multiracial children attended events. In several meetings, parents also engaged in lengthy discussions about whether and/or when AAPO events should be promoted to non-Black families in the district. At one meeting, for example, members discussed whether they should actively promote the annual Black History Month event to white teachers and families in the district. Some members expressed a desire for the organization to be widely inclusive and play a strong role in the education of white teachers and families, with one parent stating that white people in the suburb needed to see more of Black people than what they see in the news. Others, however, relished the fact that the organization was primarily Black, with an AAPO member expressing her desire for the Black History Month event to be primarily for African Americans. Another parent responded by saying that Black history was American history and expressed her concern that the group might seem standoffish and reinforce existing negative perceptions of Black people in the community. AAPO members held a vote and decided not to promote the event beyond what they had already done (posted details on the district Web site, notified principals). The event was attended by a majority of Black families, and also included the district superintendent and several white administrators, teachers, and white families (with most white students in attendance participating in the choir’s performance of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” and a few who were on the step team that performed at the event).

As Veronica, an active member of the AAPO, explained,

It just came up in an [AAPO] meeting because when we do things together there’s this image that, ‘can we just have our own thing?’ And then there’s, ‘But we don’t want to exclude anybody.’ Yet nobody invites us to come to certain things. We have to push our way into most things . . . Like even with my son’s sports team . . . there’s a group of the parents who are not of color who, they have their own little group. And when I come, I’m usually the only. The other African-American parents on that team, they don’t come . . . They don’t feel they belong there. So . . . that’s why I think it’s important for us to be able to have a balance of what we do on our own and what we mingle in.

For Veronica, the AAPO and her church community were one of few places where she did not have to “conform or code switch.” Veronica and many of the regular attendees of AAPO meetings who were interviewed expressed their appreciation that it was a space in which they could interact with other Black people. Similar to other studies of African American parents who seek out Black organizational, physical, and social spaces (Barnes 2016; Dow 2019; Lacy 2007; Pattillo 2007), this was not simply a response to the anti-Black racism they were experiencing in the broader community, but also about simply enjoying participation in a Black space.

In addition, the AAPO served as a space in which parents discussed the anti-Black racism they were encountering in the broader community and its schools and debated how best to respond. Throughout the year of data collection, parents discussed and deliberated about how to best push for change in the district, given the persistent opportunity gaps and racial disparities that existed between Black and white students in the areas of academic course-taking (e.g. Advanced Placement, Gifted and Talented), test scores, discipline, and special education. Meetings commonly included announcements about opportunities and issues in the school district, sometimes presented by AAPO parents and sometimes presented by district staff. School district administrators expressed a desire to work in collaboration with the AAPO in addressing racial inequities and attended several AAPO meetings as well as sought out AAPO members to give their input in district meetings and planning sessions focused on equity and diversity. Yet in interviews and in meetings some AAPO members expressed their frustrations with the slow pace of change, and some members expressed a desire to be a parent organization that was independent from the school district. Others were concerned that working independently would mean not receiving the district’s meeting space and funding support for AAPO meetings and programs. As one regular attendee stated, she wanted the AAPO to “have a great relationship with the district” and build upon what she saw as district administrators having “an open ear for our group.”

In addition to learning about racial inequities across the school district, AAPO parents learned from one another about how they themselves experienced and responded to anti-Black racism in the school and broader community. In one AAPO meeting, for example, two mothers of young children argued with a father of older children about appropriate responses to their children’s experiences of being called names (and in one case spit upon) by white peers based on the color of their skin. Whereas the father counseled them to not confront the perpetrator and instead simply pull their children out of the schools, both mothers spoke of the importance of addressing the incidents directly. One mother, for example, shared that she spoke with the white child’s mother about the comments that were made to her daughter, and the other mother met with her child’s principal to express her concern over her son’s experiences with his peers. While the father’s remarks emphasized the personal responsibility of parents (e.g., not act in anger, seek out another school option, de-emphasize race), the two mothers focused on the responsibility of the white school personnel and the importance of advocating for their children. Through the AAPO, parents were learning about how their own experiences compared to those of other Black parents in the district, as well as how others interpreted and responded to racialized incidents.

Parents’ interactions in the AAPO illustrate that racial learning can be a dynamic, collective, and relational process that is shaped by parents’ and children’s interactions with other families in school and community-based groups (see also Lacy 2007). AAPO events prompted some parents to talk to their children about race in the predominantly white suburb, for example, and parents were learning about racism (and responses to it) from each other through the discussion of their experiences. Through the AAPO, parents were co-constructing the meanings and boundaries of Blackness in the suburb and working to promote positive images of Blackness for both their children and the broader community.

Discussion and Conclusion

The research offers both conceptual and empirical contributions to the existing literature. First, the study highlights the importance of understanding parents’ own racial learning in particular contexts, the influences on this learning, and how it relates to the messages they send their children about race and racism. Parents’ implicit and explicit messages were informed by their own experiences with race and racism in the suburban context, the school and community experiences of their children, and their learning from and with other families. Informed by Erin Winkler’s (2012) comprehensive racial learning framework, the findings suggest that the messages Black parents may send to children are dynamic, relational, and shaped by their own experiences in specific racial contexts. The data do not include young people, however, and thus questions remain as to whether and how parents’ messages shape the racial learning of Black children and youth. While research has demonstrated the influence of place on children’s racial learning (Hagerman 2014, 2018; Lewis 2003; Winkler 2012), there is an opportunity to further explore parents’ own everyday racial learning, the lessons they teach their children about race, and how these messages relate to children’s own racial learning within local and national contexts marked by anti-Black racism. Qualitative inquiry can be particularly useful in doing so. In addition, more than half of all African Americans in large metro areas live in suburbs (Frey 2015), and yet most studies of racial socialization rely upon large national data sets and/or solely focus on urban contexts. Questions remain as to how the racial learning of Black young people and their families is shaped by predominantly white suburban contexts marked by white-dominated civic institutions, schools, and organizational settings.

The findings also contribute to the literature on Black parents’ educational engagement, suggesting that racial socialization is a central component of Black parents’ efforts to support their children’s education. Given the legacy and persistence of anti-Black racism in many schools and communities across the United States, Black parents’ efforts to support their children’s positive sense of self and positive identity as learners—as well as shield them from racial harm—should be recognized by educators as an important form of educational engagement. In places like Wisconsin that are marked by vast racial disparities in education, health, and employment (WCCF 2014), Black parents are navigating and responding to a highly unequal terrain that shapes their own everyday experiences and life outcomes as well those of their children. Recent migration patterns in the United States prompt the need for more sociological research that examines the link between Black parents’ moves to suburbia and their educational desires for their children, as well as the role of place in reinforcing or working against parents’ efforts to raise healthy and academically successful Black children in these settings.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Christin Gates and Rachel Johnson for their research assistance, the anonymous reviewers for their feedback and to the parents/caregivers in the study who shared their insights and experiences.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Support for this research was provided by Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

ORCID iD

Linn Posey-Maddox

Notes

Author Biography

Linn Posey-Maddox is professor of educational policy studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and an Affiliate of the Departments of Afro-American Studies and Sociology. Her research seeks to understand (1) how social inequities linked to race, class, and place shape the school and community experiences of parents, students, and teachers and (2) how individuals and groups contribute to the production, reproduction, or challenging of educational inequities in their choices and everyday actions. She is the author of When Middle-Class Parents Choose Urban Schools: Class, Race, and the Challenge of Equity in Public Education (University of Chicago).

References

Carter Andrews

Dorinda J.

2012. “Black Achievers’ Experiences with Racial Spotlighting and Ignoring in a Predominantly White High School.” Teachers College Record 114(1):1–45.

Baquedano-Lopez

Patricia

Alexander

Rebecca A.

Hernandez

Sara Jean

. 2013. “Equity Issues in Parental and Community Involvement in Schools: What Teacher Educators Need to Know.” Review of Research in Education 37:149–82.

Barnes

Riché J. Daniel

. 2016. Raising the Race: Black Career Women Redefine Marriage, Motherhood, and Community. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Brown

Tiffany L.

Linver

Miriam R.

Evans

Melanie

. 2010. “The Role of Gender in the Racial and Ethnic Socialization of African American Adolescents.” Youth and Society 41(3):357–81.

Cornell

Stephen

Hartmann

Douglass

. 1998. Ethnicity and Race: Making Identities in a Changing World. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press.

Delale-O’Connor

Lori

Huguley

James P.

Parr

Alyssa

Wang

Ming-Te

. 2020. “Racialized Compensatory Cultivation: Centering Race in Parental Educational Engagement and Enrichment.” American Educational Research Journal 57(5):1912–53.

Diamond

John

Posey-Maddox

Linn

Velazquez

Maria

. 2021. “Reframing Suburbs: Race, Place and Opportunity in Suburban Educational Spaces.” Educational Researcher 50(4):249–55.

Dow

Dawn

. 2019. Mothering While Black: Boundaries and Burdens of Middle-class Parenthood. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Frey

William

. 2015. Diversity Explosion: How New Racial Demographics Are Remaking America. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.

10.

Gordon

Beverley M.

2012. “‘Give a Brotha a Break!’ The Experiences and Dilemmas of Middle-class African American Male Students in White Suburban Schools.” Teachers College Record 114(1):1–26.

11.

Hagerman

Margaret

. 2014. “White Families and Race: Color-blind and Colour-conscious Approaches to White Racial Socialization.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 37(14):2598–614.

12.

Hagerman

Margaret

. 2018. White Kids: Growing Up with Privilege in a Racially Divided America. New York: New York University Press.

13.

Holman

Alea

. 2012. “Gendered Racial Socialization in Black Families: Mothers’ Beliefs, Approaches, & Advocacy.” PhD dissertation, School Psychology Program, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA.

14.

Hughes

Diane

Rodriguez

James

Smith

Emilie P.

Johnson

Deborah J.

Stevenson

Howard C.

Spicer

Paul

. 2006. “Parents’ Ethnic-racial Socialization Practices: A Review of Research and Directions for Future Study.” Developmental Psychology 42:747–70.

15.

Hughes

Diane

Watford

John Alexander

Toro

Juan Del

. 2016. “A Transactional/Ecological Perspective on Ethnic-racial Identity, Socialization, and Discrimination.” Pp. 11–41 in Equity and Justice in Developmental Science: Implications for Young People, Families, and Communities, edited by Horn

S. S.

Ruck

M. D.

Liben

L. S.

Boston, MA: Academic Press.

16.

Huguley

James P.

Wang

Ming-Te

Vasquez

Ariana C.

Guo

Jiesi

. 2019. “Parental Ethnic-racial Socialization Practices and the Construction of Children of Color’s Ethnic-racial Identity: A Research Synthesis and Meta-analysis.” Psychological Bulletin 145(5):437–58.

17.

Lacy

Karyn

. 2007. Blue-chip Black: Race, Class, and Status in the New Black Middle Class. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

18.

Lacy

Karyn

Harris

Angel

. 2008. “Breaking the Class Monolith: Understanding Class Differences in Black Adolescents’ Attachment to Racial Identity.” Pp. 152–78 in Social Class: How Does It Work? edited by Lareau

Annette

Conley

Dalton

. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

19.

Lesane-Brown

Chase L.

2006. “A Review of Racial Socialization within Black Families.” Developmental Review 26:400–26.

20.

Lewis

Amanda

. 2003. Race in the Schoolyard: Negotiating the Color Line in Classrooms and Communities. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

21.

Lewis

Amanda

Diamond

John

. 2015. Despite the Best Intentions: How Racial Inequality Thrives in Good Schools. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

22.

Lewis-McCoy

R. L’Heureux

. 2014. Inequality in the Promised Land: Race, Resources, and Suburban Schooling. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

23.

McHale

Susan M.

Crouter

Ann C.

Kim

Ji-Yeon

Burton

Linda M.

Davis

Kelly D.

Dotterer

Aryn M.

Swanson

Dena P.

2006. “Mothers’ and Fathers’ Racial Socialization in African American Families: Implications for Youth.” Child Development 77:1387–402.

24.

McKay

Mary McKernan

Atkins

Marc S.

Hawkins

Tracie

Brown

Catherine

Lynn

Cynthia J.

2003. “Inner-city African American Parental Involvement in Children’s Schooling: Racial Socialization and Social Support from the Parent Community.” American Journal of Community Psychology 32:107–14.

25.

McNeil

Smith

Shardé Reynolds

Jamila E.

Fincham

Frank D.

Beach

Steven R. H.

2016. Parental Experiences of Racial Discrimination and Youth Racial Socialization in Two-Parent African American Families. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology 22(2): 268–276.

26.

Miles

Matthew A.

Huberman

Michael

. 1994. Qualitative Data Analysis: An Expanded Sourcebook. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

27.

Neblett

Enrique W.

Smalls

Ciara P.

Ford

Khalil R.

Nguyen

Hoa X.

Sellers

Robert M.

2009. “Racial Socialization and Racial Identity: African American Parents’ Messages about Race as Precursors to Identity.” Journal of Youth and Adolescence 38:189–203.

28.

Pattillo

Mary

. 2007. Black on the Block: The Politics of Race and Class in the City. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

29.

Posey-Maddox

Linn

. 2017. “Race in Place: Black Parents, Family-school Relations, and Multi Spatial Microaggressions in a Predominantly White Suburb.” Teachers College Record 119(11):1–42.

30.

Saleem

Farzana T.

English

Devin

Busby

Danielle R.

Lambert

Sharon F.

Harrison

Aubrey

Stock

Michelle L.

Gibbons

Frederick X.

2016. “The Impact of African American Parents’ Racial Discrimination Experiences and Perceived Neighborhood Cohesion on their Racial Socialization Practices.” Journal of Youth and Adolescence 45:1338–49.

31.

Tatum

Beverly

. 2000. Assimilation Blues: Black Families in White Communities, Who Succeeds and Why. New York: Basic Books.

32.

Umaña-Taylor

Adriana J.

Hill

Nancy E.

2020. “Ethnic–racial Socialization in the Family: A Decade’s Advance on Precursors and Outcomes.” Journal of Marriage and Family 82(1):244–71.

33.

Winkler

Erin

. 2008. “It’s Like Arming Them: African American Mothers’ Views on Racial Socialization.” Pp. 211–24 in The Changing Landscape of Work and Family in the American Middle Class: Reports from the Field, edited by Rudd

Descartes

Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

34.

Winkler

Erin

. 2012. Learning Race, Learning Place: Shaping Racial Identities and Ideas in African American Childhoods. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

35.

Wisconsin Council on Children & Families. 2014. Race for Results: Building a Path of Opportunity for All Our Children. Madison, WI: Wisconsin Council on Children & Families.

36.

Witherspoon

Dawn P.

Glover

Ciara Smalls

Wei

Hughes

Diane L.

2022. “Neighborhood Level Predictors of African American and Latinx Parents’ Ethnic-racial Socialization.” American Journal of Community Psychology 69(1–2):183–200.