Playing to Win: Baseball as a Racialized Parenting Strategy
A thesis submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Cincinnati in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Department of Sociology of the College of Arts and Sciences
by Curtis L Webb III B.A., Morehouse College May 2013
November 12, 2017
Committee: Littisha A. Bates, Ph.D. (Chair) and Erynn Masi De Casanova, Ph.D.
Playing to Win: Baseball as a Racialized Parenting Strategy
Abstract
What do recreational teams, Cub Scouts, and ballet recitals all have in common? Each of these activities are examples of extracurricular activities (ECA) that parents often enroll their children; one parenting strategy that is important for parents across racial and class lines. This study draws on twenty-five in-depth interviews with parents whose children are in the Cincinnati
Urban Youth Academy (CUYA), an extracurricular program centered on developing baseball and softball skills. This study explores if and how parents' racial and class backgrounds, and the gender of the child affect the ways parents perceive children's involvement in ECAs, with a focus on their experiences in CUYA. All of the parents in this study practiced some form of concerted cultivation, a parenting style where parents have their children constantly involved in organized activities to help their development. The findings suggest that parents of different racial backgrounds all sought out racial socialization opportunities through ECAs, but the actual racialization processes varied across racial lines. I also found that a child’s gender affected parents’ thoughts on potential program benefits and involvement in ECAs. Parents of girls stressed the importance of character development and being involved in a diverse set of ECAs, while parents of boys stressed physical development and involvement in fewer similar ECAs. As child involvement in ECAs continues to increase, understanding the role of ECAs as a parenting strategy is important because it is commonly associated with good parenting. This project provides evidence that parents see ECAs, and more specifically CUYA, as more than a simple baseball or softball program, but a racial socialization tool, network builder, skill booster, and an organization to set up their children for future success.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank my committee chair Dr. Littisha Bates, and co-chair Dr. Erynn Casanova sincerely for their guidance through this arduous process. Their commitment to providing valuable and timely feedback, intertwined with their patience and unwavering encouragement helped me reach the end of this journey. I would like to thank my committee member Dr. Erynn
Casanova whose methodological expertise helped teach me valuable skills for this project. The knowledge and experience of interviewing and research recruitment will aid me in my future endeavors. I would also like to thank her for providing the class space and class time that helped brainstorm ideas for this project, and put the project into motion. I cannot thank Dr. Littisha
Bates enough for helping me to turn this from a class paper into a Master’s Thesis. Dr. Bates sat through many meetings providing me with exceptional mentorship, and more importantly encouraging me to finish! Further, I would like to the Cincinnati Urban Youth Academy for welcoming me into their organizational space, as well as the parents who gave their time to help me pursue this research. I must also thank my friends in my graduate program, and others who sent me words of encouragement from afar. They all reassured me that I could complete this project and gave me boosts when I needed a push. Finally, I am blessed to have a family who is the ultimate support system, and my constant cheerleaders. Specifically, I would like to thank my parents and sister, and other family members who always believe in me, and motivate me to dream big because of their constant encouragement to pursue my goals. Although, I completed the writing of this project, it would not have reached this point of completion without many who had my best interest at heart. For this I am deeply grateful and blessed.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………………..….... 1
BACKGROUND…………………………………………………………………………….5
Parenting …………………………………………………………………………………… 5
Extracurricular Programming……………………………………………………………… 12
Youth and Sports…………….…………………………………………………………..… 14
Overscheduling……………………………………………………………….……………. 16
METHODS….……………………………………………………………………….…….. 18
The Site……………………………………………………………………….……………. 20
The Population……………………………………………………………….……………. 23
The Interviews……………………………………………………………….……………. 26
A Note on Positionality…………………………………………………..….……………. 27
FINDINGS………………………………………………………………………………… 29
An Idle Mind is the Devil’s Playground……...………………………………………….…31
I Found Out From a Friend……….…………………………………………………...…... 35
The CUYA As A Space For Racial Socialization. ………………………………………... 42
More Mo’Nes, Serenas, and a Few Athletic Guys Too…………….……………………… 57
DISCUSSION………………………………………………………..…………………….. 65
FUTURE RESEARCH. ……………………………………………………………………73
REFERENCES……………………………………………………………………………… 76
APPENDIX….……………………………………………………………………………… 82 1
Introduction One of my most vivid childhood memories is my time in Chicago’s Common Ground for
Youth and Community Prevention Program, a community extracurricular organization in my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. My Black parents saw my involvement in this organization, and others like it as preparation for success in white America. I believe my parents thought they were being “good parents”, and viewed extracurricular activities (ECA) as a resistance strategy to combat racial hostility and discrimination faced by young Black men in America. Researchers suggest that involvement in ECAs is commonly associated with practices of good middle-class parenting (Mose 2016). ECAs like Chicago’s Common Ground for Youth and Community
Prevention Program often center their lessons on respect, integrity, and creating holistic and
“productive” citizens. This informed my current research question, as years later, I wondered what extracurricular organizations were actually preparing children of color like me for. Perhaps, to respectfully, occupy a (white) middle-class space? This study draws on theories of race and family to examine if and how parents’ racial and class backgrounds, affected the ways they interpreted their children’s involvement in extracurricular activities.
My personal biography speaks to strategies employed by parents of color to prepare their children to succeed despite the persistent racial inequalities and discrimination that still profoundly impact the lives of marginalized populations throughout the United States, particularly in Cincinnati where my research was conducted. The Greater Cincinnati Urban
League’s recent report, "The State of Black Cincinnati 2015: Two Cities", details a grim picture for Black residents who live in the city compared to their white counterparts. These glaring differences in lived experiences between Black and white Cincinnatians becomes further troubling when considering that the two populations are quite similar in terms of the percentage of the population. Although the percentages of the Black and white residents of the city are close 2
(42 and 52 percentage respectively) (ACS 1010), the Urban League’s report suggests that their lives could not be more different, as institutional racism is still prevalent in the lives of Black
Cincinnatians.
The report discussed the differences in education, income, criminal justice involvement, employment, and housing between Black and white natives (Curnutte 2015). One of the reports' significant findings was that three out of four Black children, six years and younger, were growing up in poverty. These children often experience poor quality education, poor health outcomes, high crime rates, and substandard housing conditions (Curnutte 2015). The report also illuminates disparities in disciplinary actions in schools, as Black male students were four times more likely to be disciplined than white males, and Black females were more than twice as likely to be disciplined as white males (Curnutte 2015). In both cases, these disciplinary actions caused students to miss valuable school time and fall behind their peers. Additionally, in the city of
Cincinnati, which is located in Hamilton County, African-Americans represent about 25% of the
Hamilton County population, but form nearly 60% of Hamilton County Justice Center’s population (Curnutte 2015).
The racial inequalities highlighted in the Greater Cincinnati Urban League’s report are not unique to Cincinnati but rather an indication of how the current racial landscape in the United
States continues to create drastically different lived experiences for people based on their positions in the socially constructed racial hierarchy. White individuals receive numerous benefits from this hierarchy while people of color experience different levels of oppression based on their proximity to whiteness, both physically and based on their performance of race (Harris 3
2006). The theory of Whiteness1 describes, "a constantly shifting boundary separating those who are entitled to have certain privileges (white people) from those whose exploitation and vulnerability to violence is justified by their not being white“ (Kivel 1996:19). Non-white families are expected to move through society achieving similar outcomes as their white counterparts without the benefits of Whiteness (Kivel 1996).
The consequences for people of color who do not and cannot practice Whiteness manifests from birth. Researchers have documented these manifestations in education, the supposed "equalizer" (Downey et. al 2008; Entwisle and Alexander 1992), although there are drastic differences in resources allocated to schools based on racial compositions. There are consequences in the labor force, where rhetoric based in abstract liberalism racism (Bonilla-
Silva 2006), suggests Black people should "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" to close employment gaps. This framing ignores factors such as the existence of unsupportive work environments and hiring networks that are only available to white employees (Herring 2013;
Pager 2003). This research rooted in an understanding of systemic racism highlights society’s unrealistic faith in meritocracy despite evidence of disparate outcomes and opportunities based on proximity to whiteness.
Based on the earlier research, which indicated the failure of American society to be an actual meritocracy, there is a continued need to study how people of color navigate through life despite the vast number of inequalities they experience. Du Bois’ (1965) concept of double consciousness is useful here, although intended to describe the experiences of Black people generally, the concept is helpful to understand how the racial landscape forces parents of different racial backgrounds, including multiracial families, to consider different factors when
1 The word is capitalized to differentiate it as a sociological phenomenon of global white supremacy 4 making every day decisions, including the decisions around parenting. Parents of color must teach their children that they are not simply children, but children of color, a very critical distinction because of the existing racial hierarchy. Additionally, the practices commonly associated with good parenting are better suited for white parents, and alone cannot provide non- white children with the necessary tools to have analogous lives to white children.
Although Cincinnati is typical in some ways, it also provides a distinctive opportunity for an ideal natural experiment in race relations since its population is roughly half Black and half white. The current project was informed by an ethnographic study I conducted of the Major
League Baseball’s (MLB) Cincinnati Urban Youth Academy (CUYA), and its role in assisting marginalized communities. CUYA, like similar MLB associated facilities, was designed to increase the involvement of racial minorities and low-income families in baseball. This program attempts to eliminate barriers that are associated with the entry costs to participate in baseball, by offering free skill development sessions called clinics. The MLB believes the costs associated with baseball create significant obstacles for racial minorities and low-income people to become active in the sport (Zahneis 2015). Initially, I wanted to investigate the experiences of the organization’s targeted populations, low income and minority children. However, I noticed through ethnographic observations of the space, that there were more than children from the targeted minority and low-income populations at CUYA. Children from various class and racial backgrounds utilized the CUYA.
The availability of families from various social backgrounds at the CUYA created an opportunity to explore parenting experiences across demographic markers. This research project was designed to examine the impact parents from different positions in the racial hierarchy and potentially different class backgrounds believed extracurricular organizations had on their 5 children’s lives. Multiracial individuals in this study create new opportunities for theory development as we learn how the racial hierarchy adapts to people who defy the limited definitions of race. I interviewed parents from a number of racial backgrounds, examining how they use this community organization and other extracurricular programs as a parenting strategy.
Additionally, I explore what programs parents have their kids involved in, and if their views of involvement differ based on the parent-identified gender of the child. Finally, I explore how people from different backgrounds end up in the same ECA program. Do these parents have different expectations of what their children will gain from the program? Moreover, how does their social location affect their justifications for their parenting strategies at large, but specifically at CUYA?
Background Historically, people of color have experienced disenfranchisement because of their inability to meet the purposefully unattainable standards of Whiteness (Bonilla-Silva 2006;
Roediger 1999). Strategic parenting, which Thrall (2010) suggests involves parents from all racial backgrounds, acting and thinking strategically about how to create advantages for their children’s futures, is important to consider in the discussion of inequalities. I suggest that people of color use racially centered strategic parenting to counteract the sometimes-detrimental effects of race in their children’s lives (Brunsma 2005; Anderson 2000; Stack 1975). Personal experiences and historical precedents of racism inform parents who hope to limit the negative consequences of their children’s racial position. Here I discuss the literature on racially specific parenting done by Black Americans and individuals from multiracial families, and the utilization 6 of extracurricular programs like youth sports as a parenting strategy for social, cultural, and economic capital accumulation2, which I will discuss later in this section.
Parenting
Parenting is a sociologically relevant process that looks different for people across different social backgrounds. Parents are often the first agents of socialization for their children.
Parents teach children vital lessons and social cues to become functional citizens (Manza et. al
2016). The socialization process differs for children based on parents' class, race, and family composition (Manza et. al 2016). It is important to study these variations in the socialization process because it influences children's future health, educational attainment, and overall success in American society (Young 2006).
One of the most significant parenting theories used to understand the socialization processes comes from Lareau’s (2011) study describing class-based parental involvement.
Lareau suggests that race is not as significant as class when she describes the parental involvement of Black and white parents. She found that working-class and low-income parents enacted the “accomplishment of natural growth”; a style of parenting in which parents believe love, care, and setting boundaries are the best parenting practices (Lareau 2011). Parents seldom enroll their children in structured activities outside of school, instead allowing them to have independent unstructured free time. This strategy is often the only option for working-class and low-income parents because of financial and time constraints.
Lareau (2011) suggested that middle-class and elite parents from all racial backgrounds enacted "concerted cultivation"; a style of parenting that is marked by parents' attempts to exert greater control over their children’s lives to develop their social, educational, and cultural
2 Definitions can be found on page 8. 7 competencies. This strategy is feasible because of parents’ access to a wealth of financial and time resources. One of the ways parents achieve this goal is through organized activities (Lareau
2011). Lareau’s work is important because it helps researchers further understand how class shapes the experiences of parents and the experiences they provide for their children.
Lareau’s theoretical contributions are useful to think about parenting but incomplete when considering the impact race has on these parenting strategies. Although Lareau mentioned that racial discrimination affected the lives of all Black parents, she still suggested that class is more predictive of parental strategies than race. Lareau argued that the lifestyles of the Black middle class were more similar to the white middle class, than the Black working class. I suggest that neither race nor class is more important to consider when understanding parenting.
Examining the ways these two classifications work together gives us a more accurate picture of variants in parenting. Although Black middle-class parents practice concerted cultivation like white middle-class parents, racism and Whiteness shapes their ability to practice this method in the same ways and with the same ease as their white counterparts. Parents of color have to enact additional strategies to parent their children despite desiring similar outcomes. Parents of color do not just practice class-based parenting strategies, but racialized class-based parenting strategies because of the different lived experiences informing and determining their parenting practices.
Although people from diverse racial backgrounds experiences of parenting differ, parents all seek opportunities to develop their children’s skills and talents (Chin and Phillips 2004).
Similarly, parents from different class backgrounds also have similar ideologies about best parenting practices. Parents attempt to use their social, cultural, and economic capital to leverage opportunities that help maintain or improve their children’s social class positions, sometimes at 8 the expense of others. Bourdieu describes social capital as connections or networks one gains from group membership, which can be converted to economic capital (1984). Cultural capital accumulation is essential for parents because it is the accrual of non-economic resources such as tastes, credentials, and clothing that indicate a class position, in turn impacting the ability to be socially mobile or maintain one’s class status (Bourdieu 1984). Economic capital is important because it is money and resources used to gain access to networks and skills closed to certain classed groups (Bourdieu 1984). Although everyone seeks to acquire different forms of capital, parents’ ability to perform the necessary practices to gain capital varies because of limitations based on economic inequalities and the structural limits of racism (Rosier and Corsaro 1993;
Votruba-Drzal 2003).
Entwisle and Alexander (1992) provide evidence that parents from both advantaged and disadvantaged backgrounds have high educational expectations for their children and try to actively nurture their children. All parents, despite economic and racial background, are interested in cultivating their children's talents; refuting the narrative, that this is only a white middle-class practice (Drummond and Stipek 2004; Lareau 2002). Parents who rely on fewer resources are forced to make strategic adjustments. Instead of utilizing practices commonly associated with successful parenting according to Lareau’s (2011) theory of concerted cultivation, less advantaged parents must use the best practices that their economic, racial, and gendered position allows them to enact.
(Black) Middle-Class Concerted Cultivation
A common critique of Lareau’s (2011) work is her suggestion that class is more important for understanding parenting practices than race. Her work minimizes the unequal resources and opportunities Black and white parents have because of their position in the racial 9 hierarchy, despite holding similar class statuses. Montgomery (2006) writes that the Black families Lareau studies are not typical of most middle-class Black families. Montgomery (2006) argues that “the cultural affinities and residential contexts” of Black families complicate the concerted cultivation theory, as Black parents are unable to perform the same socialization practices as white parents. Black parents are different because as Massey and Denton (1993) write, “Black middle-class families are more disadvantaged than their white counterparts on residential location”, and as Shapiro (2004) finds, Blacks are disadvantaged when it comes to accumulated wealth as well. In Black Picket Fences, Pattillo-McCoy (2000) described the experiences of middle-class Black families, who despite their achieved middle-class status often reside near the poor, forcing these parents to deal with the same issues as working-class Black parents including poor quality schools, higher crime rates, and limited social networks. These external conditions constrain Black middle-class parenting. The realities from the intersection of race and class suggest the lived experiences of middle-class Blacks are noticeably different than middle-class whites. Both economics and race play a role in parent's activation of the strategies most commonly associated with “good parenting” (Mose 2016), or as Lareau (2011) refers to it, concerted cultivation (Gershoff et. al 2007).
Annette Lareau’s (2011) theory does not account for the complexity of the Black experience. Black middle-class parents have to both transfer middle-class social, cultural, and economic capital (Bourdieu 1984), and serve as teachers of, and protection from, racism in society. Parents must equip their children with the appropriate tools to survive the privileging of
Whiteness. Hill (1999) and Lacy (2004) illustrate the meticulous strategies different middle-class
Black American parents implement to prepare their children for success in a white-dominated society, while still attempting to embrace Black communities, cultures, and histories. Hill (1999) 10 described this process as “dual socialization”, where Black families try to give their children a combination of both African and American based values. Lacy (2004) describes another strategy middle-class Black parents practice called “strategic assimilation”, where these parents
"privilege the Black world as a site for socializing even if they choose to live in a white suburban community."
Montgomery (2006) also examined the constant negotiations Black parents do, calling it
“selective distancing”, where Black middle-class parents in Los Angeles lived in majority Black urban areas, but counteracted the perceived negative structural effects of Black schools by enrolling their children in schools in more affluent white areas. Barnes (2016) also explored the strategies used by African American women following the prominent coverage of the deaths of young Black people during 2016. Barnes called the parenting strategy these women used to raise and protect their children as “race work”. “Race work” occurs when Black mothers “talk to their children, implement and enforce rules of decorum, and extend their mothering practices to other members of the Black community to uplift the Black race” (Barnes 2016). Although these parents had different experiences than those described in Pattillo-McCoy’s (2000) work, this research still highlights the ways race and class impacts parenting strategies. The existing research on Black families should force scholars to consider race and class as equally important when describing parenting experiences of individuals across racial lines. Scholarship on the
Black family should feature critical analyses that expose the complex realities of Blackness and the ways these realities shape parenting.
Parenting across racial lines
Parents from multiracial families also have different experiences than white families; experiences that are largely glossed over in our understanding of parenting and the parenting 11 strategies as described by Annette Lareau (2011). Research suggests that the experiences of parents from multiracial backgrounds vary, as these families have more discussions about culture, race, and ethnicity than most white families (Romo 2011). Researchers have also shown that the strategies parents from multiracial families use often depend on the race of the parents.
The phenotype of the child also plays a role in the parenting style, regardless of economic status
(Romo 2011; Brunsma 2006).
Multiracial families’ constant negotiations force them to do additional parental labor in comparison to their white counterparts (Romo 2011). Snyder (2011) found that multiracial families that included a parent that was Black, with a child that was of African descent, were more likely to teach their children about race and racism. All members of these families, even the non-Black parent, participated in lessons about race and racism. Some of these parents spoke overtly about race and the realities of racism, but all intentionally put their children in spaces where race was a topic of discussion or in diverse settings where they would be exposed to other
Black people (Snyder 2011). In comparison to multiracial children with a Black parent, Snyder
(2011) found that children from multiracial families with only white parents noted that their parents did not really discuss race and racism. In fact, these multiracial children suggested that their parents practiced colorblind or egalitarian approaches to race and racism (Snyder 2011).
Family composition often determines the parenting and socialization strategies, a finding that complicates Lareau’s theoretical claims on parenting.
The various racial and ethnic identities of multiracial families shape their parenting practices. However, parents’ choices on which parts of their children’s identities to embrace often varied because ethnic identity is optional for most Americans of European background
(Waters 1999). Romo's (2011) study supported this claim, as “Blaxicans” (Mexican and Black) 12 did not get to choose their ethnicity as it is constrained by social and historical circumstances.
Romo (2011) stated that phenotype and linguistic features limit most Blaxicans, in similar ways to the marginalized Mexican and Black groups. However, Jimenez (2003) found that White
Mexicans could hide their ethnicity, and choose to be white. Romo’s (2011) study described how these identifications affected practices parents used to raise their children. Parents in Romo’s
(2011) study often tried to give their children experiences, including ECAs that represented both of their backgrounds. These multiracial families go through complicated decisions to find the best set of parenting practices in an extremely racially stratified world.
The lived experiences of multiracial families are changing the world and racial landscape.
People are no longer as constrained by things like the ‘one drop rule’, where a person with any
Black lineage is automatically considered only Black. There are a growing number of new and fluid identifications for people, in what Rockquemore (2002) describes as hybrid categories, and in other cases multiracial people are choosing to identify with neither of their identities. Parents in multiracial families must do meticulous work in their strategies to make sure that they are raising their children to manage a racially stratified society. I investigate if multiracial families have specific ideologies around parenting, and why they believe ECAs are important for their children. Multiracial families often cannot simply enroll their children in any ECA, but must also consider what cultural benefits these programs will provide.
Extracurricular programming
Racial identity, awareness, and experiences of racism in society inform all aspects of child rearing for parents with children of color. Sociologists suggest that extracurricular programming is one way to counteract the inequalities that exist for parents from marginalized communities (Morris 2015). Extracurricular activities for children are “part of an assumed, 13 taken-for-granted, aspect of ‘good’ (middle-class) parenting” (Vincent et. al 2012). ECA opportunities are a few clicks away for parents who have constant access to the Internet, as they appear in places like community centers, places of worships, and libraries. Parents can find extracurricular activities including athletics programs, art classes such as ceramics, dance, or piano, and programs centered on character development and life skills like the Boy Scouts and
Girl Scouts.
Extracurricular activities provide advantages for children in numerous ways including: access to selective and private schools (Vincent and Ball 2007), access and preparation for entry into secondary education, and the potential to gain skills necessary for future gainful employment (Stevenson and Clegg 2011; Brooks 2007). This is evident in Kort-Butler and
Martin’s study (2013), as they found that extracurricular participation in high school was linked to positive effects on student achievement, including positive indicators of adjustment and well- being. Their results suggest that the more activities in which students had positive experiences, the less likely they were to engage in risky substance use (Kort-Butler and Martin 2013). Parents use extracurricular programs to provide their children with a range of experiences and competencies in areas ranging from music, art, sports, and academics. The justification for this strategy is that extracurricular programming is necessary for social and cultural capital accumulation to maintain middle-class status (Vincent and Ball 2007). This capital accumulation is important because it can help or hinder a child’s social mobility, or the “the extent to which parents and their children have similar or different social and economic positions in adulthood”
(Manza et. al. 2016: 228).
Extracurricular activities help bridge gaps between advantaged and disadvantaged groups. Morris (2015) found that participation in ECAs helped provide gains for disadvantaged 14 students, supporting the resource compensation perspective (Morris 2015). Black centered community-based organizations also served important roles as they provided Black youth with critical cultural capital to help challenge negative concepts about Black youth (Ginwright 2007).
Both of these studies provide support for the resource compensative perspective, which suggests
ECAs benefit marginalized youth more than children from more economically secure families.
Black and multiracial families must do additional work to make sure ECAs meets more than their child’s basic needs, but activities must be chosen “in order to strengthen their position as they navigate a racially unequal society" (Vincent et. al 2012).
Youth and Sports
Sports programming offers a very distinctive experience because as Brooks (2007) writes, sports are not simply extracurricular activities for children, but are vital opportunities for growth in identity, development, and relationships. The rise in youth sports involvement can be traced back to the 1950s when constant adult supervision was linked to the most effective way to socialize children into productive citizens (Adler and Adler 1998). Many believed that involvement in sports is an overwhelmingly positive experience for children because sports at their core represent everything good and pure (Coakley 2011). Giulianotti (2004) describes this as the “sports evangelists” perspective, where people believe involvement in sports has unquestionable developmental benefits including “reformative socialization and revitalization for communities perceived to need an infusion of civic awareness and engagement.” Although sports evangelists view sports as a savior, it saves people differently based on their racial and class backgrounds. For at-risk populations, sports programs are believed to keep them off the streets and reduce their character deficits (Coakley 2011). Conversely, for children from more economically secure backgrounds, sports are meant to emphasize the unattractiveness of the 15 streets, reminding these children to make important choices that help them avoid what are thought to be problematic, lower-classed, lifestyles away from their middle class bubbles and in the “streets” (Coakley 2011).
Sports also have political and social impacts. Scholars frequently debate whether youth sports promote social integration, or reflect the social inequalities in the larger society
(Grasmuck 2005). Sports are neither of these options, rather a more complex phenomenon where both racial integration and societal inequality are present. Brooke et al. (2017) suggests that sports were never a form of leisure for African Americans but a “liberatory and revolutionary tool” that functions as a mechanism to assist Black people in their fight against oppression.
Furthermore, there are also injustices within the actual games. One example is “stacking”, where
Blacks are segregated into specific player positions on the field, those thought to require athleticism instead of intelligence (Grasmuck 2005). This stems from eugenic stereotypes on the biological differences between Black and white people, which state that Black people are naturally athletic and white people are naturally intelligent. Despite this, sports also bring people from different backgrounds together, and provide positive experiences for often-segregated populations (Grasmuck 2005).
Baseball, as an extracurricular program for children is distinctive, as it features a
"suspension of time" because it is a patient game (Grasmuck 2005). It is not action-packed like basketball or football, but the activities in baseball happen at a slow and often methodical pace.
This provides an interesting dynamic for youth, especially technology-age youth, as the slow nature of play allows for plenty of down time between plays for both the participants and audience of the games to connect and socialize (Grasmuck 2005). Baseball as a slow, patient, team sport serves as an unmatched sociological phenomenon to study in the information age as 16 an extracurricular activity. In addition, Fine (1987) writes that organized sports such as baseball teach boys to the importance of work, and how to be “men.” Baseball is also seen as less flashy, as even the players police those who play the game with too much ‘flair’, such as elaborate bat flips after a homerun. However, in an age that features the quick spread of information, and flashy sports highlights that are readily available via the Internet, where does baseball, America’s pastime, fit in all of this (Sutera 2013)? This research project adds to the literature on the role of involvement in extracurricular sports as a parenting strategy by exploring the impact the use of baseball as an extracurricular program.
Overscheduling?
The theory of concerted cultivation emphasizes constant engagement and minimal unstructured time for middle-class children (Bourdieu 1984). Although research suggests that this is what society characterizes as “good parenting” (Mose 2016), how effective and necessary for the development, and future success of children is this parenting strategy?
Despite concerns about the modernization of society by parents during the information age, and parents’ fears of the limits that constant engagement in scheduled activities places on the imaginations of children (Furedi 2001; Nelson 2010), extracurricular involvement is broadly considered a good thing (Vincent et. al 2012). Mahoney et al. (2006) suggest that despite some critics who believe over-involvement undermines family functioning and youth well-being, current research provides support for the positive youth perspective, which states that participating in ECAs facilitate positive development for youth. Fredrick’s (2011) study also supports this claim as she demonstrates that heavy extracurricular involvement often leads to higher test scores and grades for students. Further, Darling (2005) found that students that spend high amounts of time in highly structured ECAs were provided with stress relief, and these 17 programs served as alternatives to negative substance use to counteract stress. Finally, Zill et al.
(1995) found that students who were involved in ECAs five to nineteen hours per week, considered high involvement children, were less likely to engage in risky behaviors like drug use, compared to students who were only involved in ECAs one to four hours per week. The literature overwhelmingly suggests that it is beneficial for parents to keep their children constantly involved in extracurricular activities.
Parents also value heavy involvement in ECAs for their children because it assists them in their efforts to differentiate their kids from stereotypical versions of working-class populations. This phenomenon exists across racial lines, as middle-class people must distinguish themselves from what they believe to be the undesirable working and lower-income classes
(Hartigan 2005; Anderson 2000; Higginbotham 1992). The desire for separation is present in both Whiteness literature, and race literature on people of color. This desire is shown in Vincent et al.’s research (2012) where one affluent middle-class Black man suggested that “living in a middle-class area allowed him to use his class resources to protect his boys from ‘others’ “– those who are unsupervised, and from those on ‘the streets’. The streets here is used as a racialized coded phrase to describe urban areas where lower-income people, often people of color, are seen gathering outside in public spaces. This is also described in Code of the Street
(2000), where Anderson describes the class-based socialization Black families do with their children. Middle-class parents’ enrollment of their children in extracurricular involvement is as much about providing benefits to their children as it is about differentiating their families from those in lower classes.
This research emphasizes the importance of examining the experiences of parents who enroll their children in ECAs. This study examines why parents from different racial 18 backgrounds enroll their children in the Cincinnati Urban Youth Academy. I present my research questions again here to consider. How do people from different backgrounds end up in the same space? Do these parents have different expectations of what their children will gain from the program? Finally, how does their social location affect their justifications for their parenting strategies at large, but specifically at CUYA?
Methods
I chose The Cincinnati Urban Youth Academy as a site to study because of who I initially believed to be the participants of the organization, primarily lower-income individuals and Black youth from the city of Cincinnati. This initial assumption was based on the way the services were advertised on television and through the sports media. I wanted to learn if Black marginalized communities learned any tools from extracurricular activities like CUYA to resist the daily oppression they live through. The potential role of community organizations in the lives of Black people led me to conduct an ethnography at CUYA to study the people, and activities that occurred.
I gained access to the facilities and participants in the CUYA through the director of
CUYA, the gatekeeper, who would determine if I could recruit parents from CUYA. He allowed me to participate in the nightly programming as a student mentor during the fundamentals training sessions. The fundamental training sessions occurred on weekday nights, where the staff taught boys and girls the basic skills to be proficient in baseball and softball. My time as a student mentor provided opportunities to become familiar with the space and the populations that utilized the resources. I assumed Black parents might be attracted to CUYA because it was marketed as an organization to close the gaps between racial and economic groups’ baseball participation, but to my surprise lower-income and Black children were two groups of a much 19 larger populace of individuals that used the space. This heterogeneous population of participants made the CUYA an ideal research site because of the potential of various socialization practices that could occur.
On any given night of fundamentals training sessions, approximately 35-45 children participated in the clinics. All of the services took place at night (except weekends), so some of the parents stayed to watch their children, while others dropped their children off and later picked them up once the program was completed for the night. During my ethnographic observations and recruitment for this project’s interviews, I had time to immerse myself in the
CUYA environment, learning who used CUYA services and how frequently. It was during this time when I noticed the racial makeup of the fundamentals sessions. Out of the 35-45 children who attended the boys’ clinics, around 25-30 of the children came from Black families, 15-20 from white families, and 5-10 came from multiracial families. These numbers varied during the course of my time there, and were based on how I identified families’ phenotypes and family make-up. My description of the class composition of the boys is based on my ethnographic observations, and time spent recruiting people for this study. I spent time observing the cars families drove, clothes they wore, and the way they spoke and interacted with others to make my class assessments. Based on observations, on a typical night about 20-25 of the participants came from working-class families, while the other half (20-25 as well) came from middle-class families.
The population during the girls’ fundamental clinics looked a little different. The girls’ clinics featured more white and multiracial parents than the boys’ clinics. Of the 35-45 children who attended the girls’ clinics, around 15-20 were from Black families, 20-25 from white families, and about 10-15 participants came from multiracial families. These numbers also varied 20 by night. A large, mostly Black, girls’ softball team attended the clinic, which affected the number of Black participants present on these nights. Based on ethnographic observations, using the same identifiers as I did for the boys’ clinics, I noticed that there was also a mixed class composition. During softball nights, about 25- 30 girls came from working-class families, and about 15-20 came from middle-class families.
Without speaking directly with each parent who attended CUYA during these clinics, my hypothesis on why the demographics varied is based on the types of activities children tend to participate in. Historically, Black boys/men have used sports as a liberation tool to gain important resources and alleviate the oppressive conditions they live (Brooks et. al. 2016). In contrast, Black women face constraints that are influenced by both their gender and race. Sexism and racism penalizes these women, as sports normally associated with Black people are seen as too masculine for them, and sports that are normally associated with women are seen as too white for them, leading fewer Black women to be involved in sports, in this case organized softball (Elling and Annelies 2005). I am not sure why there is a variation in the multiracial populations, but this is something important for future researchers to consider. The study of multiple racial groups here highlights how a space that offers the same resources and opportunities to all of its constituents can have different justifications for involvement based on people’s social locations.
This research was designed to examine the impact parents from different racial and class backgrounds believed extracurricular organizations had on their children’s lives. Cincinnati is an ideal city for this type of program because of the demographics of the city. Cincinnati as shown in earlier reports, has a high Black and poor population, two of the targeted groups for CUYA. 21
One-on-one interviews with parents whose children utilized the services at The Cincinnati Urban
Youth Academy (CUYA) were conducted to capture parents’ opinions.
The Site
As I arrived in the Roselawn community of Cincinnati, I was able to behold the spectacle that was the Cincinnati Reds Urban Youth Academy. I wondered, “Wow, who could be in charge of all of this?” I pulled into the parking lot and witnessed the very large and well-kept baseball fields, including an enormous stadium, played on by the now-famous Little League player Mo’ne
Davis. Upon pulling into the parking lot, I noticed another vehicle, a white convertible BMW. I could not help but feel as though it was out of place.
These were my initial thoughts as I arrived to CUYA for the first time. The halls in the facilities are branded with names like Cincinnati Bell and Tri-Health, among other donors to the academy. A lot of what takes place during normal business hours involves meetings to coordinate the upcoming baseball clinics for kids. The employees at CUYA and those who participate in their nightly and weekend programs are balanced in terms of racial background.
The assistant director is a typical example of the people in the environment, as he is a young
Black man, who looks to be physically fit, and often sports Cincinnati Reds gear with his signature Black jogging pants. I have been to quite a few organizational events, from weight training on weekdays to tee-ball on Sunday afternoons. The most populated event for reoccurring members and interactions was the fundamental clinics.
The CUYA is located to the north and slightly east of Downtown Cincinnati in the
Roselawn community (Choose Cincy 2017). According to the latest Census data (2010),
Roselawn is a predominately African American community. The next largest racial group is white, but the total number of whites is 1/7 of the Black population. More than half of the 22 constituents in this area is 55 years and younger (U.S. Census 2010). Most housing units are renter-occupied and the number of renters is double the amount of owners in Roselawn. The main occupational categories for people in Roselawn are: management, business, science, arts occupations, sales, and office occupations. The median household income is 28,535 (U.S. Census
2010). The bulk of those who are below the poverty level in this community are female headed- households with children under 18 years of age and no husband present. Most people in this area also have a high school diploma or the equivalency (U.S. Census 2010).
The Major League Baseball Association has eight urban youth academies across the country and its territories: Compton, CA; Houston, TX; Philadelphia, PA; Puerto Rico; New
Orleans, LA; Kansas City, MI; Hialeah, FL; and Cincinnati, OH. The CUYA, the seventh of its kind, opened in 2014 because of Major League Baseball‘s diversity initiative. These academies were created across the United States to reenergize inner city minorities’ interest in baseball
(Zahneis 2015). As recently as September 2016, only 8.3 percent of the players on Major League
Baseball’s Opening day rosters identified as African American, less than half of the all-time high of 19 percent in 1975 (Ryan 2016). Orioles’ center fielder Adam Jones, an African American man, suggested that the low percentage of African Americans was because “baseball is a white man’s sport” (Ryan 2016). However, the Latino participation, which trails that of whites at
28.5% as of opening day 2016 (Ryan 2016), is growing. Baseball may not be a “white man’s sport”, but it most certainly is not an African American man’s sport according to the numbers.
Still, CUYA and their Major League affiliate Cincinnati Reds’ focus on the inclusion of more
Black participants in professional baseball seems to be appropriately placed.
The baseball academies were designed to give urban children the opportunity to play baseball or softball free of charge (Zahneis 2015). CUYA offers hitting instruction, pitching 23 instruction, and baseball or softball fundamentals’ training free. During the clinics, kids learn the basics of baseball and softball, such as hitting, pitching, fielding, and base running. The price to keep fields maintained, the equipment to play the game, and being a member of baseball leagues is expensive. Major League Baseball noticed the dwindling number of African Americans in their game, and eliminating costs for Academy participants is one of the steps to change this phenomenon (Zahneis 2015). The hope is that removing some of the financial barriers will make the path to participation in baseball and softball easier for marginalized communities. The commissioner of the Major League Baseball Association stated that their mission is not only to give opportunities to play baseball and softball, but also to give tools to succeed in the classroom and life (Zahneis 2015). In a recent profile of the Cincinnati RBI (Reviving Baseball in Inner
Cities) elite team, the academy was described as “more than just baseball and softball, it’s about creating world class citizens” (MLB 2017). Their interest is, as stated by a coach, not just baseball development, but also academic and character development (MLB 2017). The staff truly believed this, as one staff member told me, “I am just really happy to be here, I feel privileged to serve these kids, and you know… just help in anyway I can.”
On a typical fundamental clinics night you can see kids doing sprints, while others carry members of their group on their back. Kids are falling and laughing uncontrollably. Parents joyously watch their kids and laugh at the exhibition. And once the dust settles, and the children finish their almost Three Stooges-like behavior, the coach gathers them to end with a pep talk like the following: “Everybody should carry somebody in their life because that is how life is lived. Everybody goes through rough patches and you gonna need someone to carry you on their back.” The night ends with all the students clapping and a loud chant. This is a typical night at this site. 24
The Population
The analyses presented here are from twenty-five in-depth interviews of parents and guardians, whose children participated in CUYA. As with most qualitative work, the small sample size in this study made drawing broad conclusions and generalizing difficult. A larger sample size would have allowed for clearer and more defined results. However, the data gathered from the interviews provide important contributions to the literature on race and family. The interviews took place in the spring and early summer of 2016. Participants have been given pseudonyms to provide confidentiality.
I recruited participants during the baseball and softball fundamentals training sessions.
Based on my earlier ethnographic observations, the training sessions were the most well attended programs the facility offered. My main recruitment approach was to attend the fundamental training sessions for both boys and girls. During those meetings, I was able to speak with parents about my research. I discussed the details of the project with parents, and inquired about the strategies they used to position their children to become successful adults. Once I gauged parents’ interest in being interviewed for the study, I acquired their contact information. After the initial encounter, I called or emailed parents to schedule interviews. Scheduling interviews after the initial encounter sometimes proved unsuccessful, so I altered this strategy mid-way through my recruitment period to schedule interviews during the initial meetings. This was an effective strategy adjustment.
Parents’ and guardians’ ages ranged from 27-73. However, most of the parents in this study were 35- 50. The marital status of the respondents varied, but more than half of my sample were in heterosexual marriages. The self-identified race of the parents varied: twelve Black parents, nine white parents, three biracial parents, and one self-identified Moor, which the 25 respondent described as her attempt to resist the “Black” label created by white people. The parent identified race of the children was balanced with ten Black children, seven white children, seven multiracial children, and one Moor child. Twenty-two of the twenty-five respondents had at least some college education. Finally, I had a relatively even distribution between mothers (13) and fathers (10), with three guardians. This distribution of both mothers and fathers provides great insight as most studies are skewed towards mothers. The children of the participants ranged from five years old to fifteen years old. The average age of the children was ten years old. The average age of girls in my study was nine years old. The average age of the boys in my study was eleven years old. This information is also available in more detail in the appendix of this paper.
Unfortunately, at the times of interviews, I did not have a more specific measure of middle class, which would have made middle-class distinctions clearer in this study. However, based on interview data, I can describe why the people in this study were all characterized as middle class, and note a few patterns in their middle-class status. The middle class is a very large field, which includes individuals from various occupations and backgrounds. To define who was in the middle class I used a combination of the occupational data from interviews and their educational attainment. A majority of my respondents had more than a high school diploma or the equivalent (22 out of 25), suggesting that this was a more educated population. Higher education is normally associated with higher-class statuses. I also used their adult occupations to categorize my respondents into the middle class using the Erikson-Goldthorpe scheme (Erikson and Goldthorpe 1992). This approach divides different occupational groups into small distinct classes with similar life expectations, worldviews, and outside involvement. Based on this scheme, my participants fell into the upper categories of this scheme as most were in categories 26 such as salariat/ service class (n=14), routine non-manual (n=7) workers, and the petty bourgeoisie (n=4). The parents in my study are teachers, bankers, entrepreneurs, nurses, ecologists, and others are in management positions. According to interviews, most of these parents were upwardly mobile in comparison to their parents, and tried to utilize every tool at their disposable to make sure that their children continued this upward mobility. Despite parents various position in the middle-class spectrum, it did not have a noticeable impact on their interview responses.
The Interviews
The interview questions focused on parents’ reasons for becoming involved in CUYA, how parents found out about the organization, what they expected from CUYA, and how their social location (family background, education, race) affected their parenting strategies.
The time I spent amongst parents during ethnographic observations was important to develop a level of comfort to speak with them frankly and discuss candid subjects during interviews. This helped the interviews flow better and made the respondents comfortable instead of potentially awkward robotic conversations. On average, the interviews were between forty- five minutes and an hour, and took place in a location of the parent's choice, such as a library or a restaurant.
The interviews were recorded after the consent forms were explained and signed. I then transferred the interviews to NVivo, a textual and coding software, for coding and analysis. After an initial read of the interviews, I used an open coding strategy (Strauss and Corbin 1994) to become familiar with the data. I used the codes gathered from my initial open coding to guide a more focused coding session, such as mentions of attempts to transfer and acquire social and cultural capital (indirectly), mentions of racialized strategies, and mentions of middle-class 27 strategies. In fact, I introduce here the concept of “referring in”, which was a code that was found through this focused coding. Finally, during the discussion of the interviews in my findings section, I use pseudonyms throughout to describe the neighborhoods, street names, team names, and other organizations the parents discuss in their interview comments to further provide confidentiality. However, I used the real name of the neighborhood that the Cincinnati Urban
Youth Academy is located, as I did not feel it necessary to provide confidentiality to a public organization.
A Note on Positionality
It is important to address my positionality as a researcher, both during the recruitment phase, and during the actual interviews. It is my belief that my presentation may have affected my recruitment of respondents, as my sample does not include the voices of working-class and lower-income individuals. During the recruitment phase, I omitted my student status to most of the respondents, instead simply stating that I worked at the University of Cincinnati. I hoped this would provide me with a level of professional authority and authenticate me when describing the research project to parents. However, if the parents had alumni ties or other positive connections to the University of Cincinnati, I was sure to mention my student status to utilize the loyalty they had as a former student or fan of the school for recruitment purposes.
I presented my best middle-class appearance during both the recruitment and interview phases. From my perspective, this was an appropriate presentation of a seasoned professor, with my tucked button up, khakis or jeans, and casual shoes, in my case Sperry Top-Siders. My dress was a very purposeful strategy for authentication and to avoid intimidating the interviewee.
However, this performance may have limited my sample, potentially dissuading working-class or lower-income people from becoming involved. The history of exploitation between lower- 28 income peoples and researchers is an extended one, and my attempts at authentication could have suggested I was another untrustworthy researcher looking to exploit parents from different marginalized classed backgrounds. I was unable to study class distinctions among the parents who used CUYA because I did not recruit any working-class people. Their views would have been beneficial for an expanded view of parents who use extracurricular programs for the betterment of their children across class lines. The number of parents in this study that were middle-class parents may have been higher than the actual representation at CUYA. Studying working-class and low-income parents is just as important to understand how they find out about these ECAs, and why they choose to utilize certain programs in their children’s lives.
Additionally, I used my racial background as a Black man to recruit people of color. It seemed to be advantageous when forging trust in brief encounters with the people of color who would go on to be in my sample. These parents candidly discussed race, and our shared identities as Black caused them to provide comments that could be described as insider discussions, as I will discuss in more detail later. In comparison, because of my position as a Black man, white parents often talked in coded ways about race. Their complex discussions required more unpacking, but I quickly noticed these discussions to be a mixture of classed and raced narratives.
My presentation did not always give the intended results, as the very first woman I asked to participate in my study thought I was asking her for money. I approached the woman, gave her my name, and stated that I worked at the University of Cincinnati. Before I could give any additional information, she immediately stopped me and told me that she did not have any extra money or change. I was flabbergasted and frankly offended. I quickly responded, while my mind raced to figure out how she could have thought I wanted money from her, that I did not want any 29 money. Instead, I told her I wanted some of her time and then went on to describe the research project. After this, she agreed to participate, and actually tried to tell me her full story during that first encounter. However, like several other working-class and lower-income people, I was unable to actually confirm an interview with her during my follow-ups.
In the interviews, both my middle-class presentation and my racial background had an impact. I noticed during the interviews that parents often cited working-class and lower-income parents as the negative examples that they wanted to avoid in their own practices. They seemed to feel comfortable because of my perceived class status and because of my college student status. They were less guarded in their discussions. During several interviews, parents felt completely comfortable discussing what they perceived to be poor parenting strategies, which were often class-based. These parents would look to me for affirmation, "you know how those people are", or "you know how that is." Parents assumed I shared their classed experiences and opinions on the negative class-based perceptions they had. Overall, I do not believe that my unique position as a cis-gendered Black heterosexual man impeded my research project, but instead added extra dimensions to the project for evaluation.
Findings
Based on the analysis of twenty-five one-on-one interviews with parents, my findings contribute to our scholarly understanding of the intersections of race and family. This project studied the parents whose children were participants in an organization designed to reenergize inner-city children’s interest in baseball (Zahneis 2015). Through the interviews, I found that this space was also highly attractive to parents outside of this targeted demographic. The interviews provide a more nuanced discussion of the middle-class parenting strategies described by Annette
Lareau (2011). Parents who used CUYA expressed a desire to keep their children busy, and a 30 fear of too much unstructured time for their children. Parents wanted their children's time outside of school to be filled with extracurricular programming that protected their children from the dangers of urban life and being consumed by what they perceived to be modern anti-social technology. The data suggested that parents still held ideological views commonly associated with concerted cultivation, but their interviews also suggested that class was not the only factor to consider when describing parenting strategies. I found that CUYA was more than a sports clinic, but a space where parents from different class and racial backgrounds prepared their children to deal with the various realities in a changing world.
Although the CUYA's main objective was to provide opportunities for underprivileged children, my findings suggest CUYA was also used as a middle-class parenting strategy. This section has several themes, which will be addressed throughout the paper. How did parents find out about CUYA? Many middle-class parents used their middle-class networks, such as their connections with middle-class parents in other extracurricular programs, to learn about CUYA and provide better opportunities to their children. Why did parents get their children involved in
CUYA? Parents believed that CUYA would prepare their children to deal with a changing, racialized world, where race was becoming more salient and important to consider. The perceived benefit of racialized class experiences discussed by parents is arguably the most important contribution to the literature, as parents did not transfer middle-class capital to their children but racialized middle-class capital. What were parents’ expectations of CUYA and level of involvement in their children’s lives? Findings suggest that both the level of parental involvement and expectations of CUYA were dependent on the gender of children. This phenomenon carried over to other ECAs, as girls were involved in both more programs and a more diverse set of programs than boys. The free sports programming at the CUYA served many 31 functions for parents, but the most important was social and cultural capital accumulation for their children.
An Idle Mind is the Devil’s Playground
Why do parents enroll their children in extracurricular programs? The interview data supports Lareau’s theoretical claims (2011) on middle-class parents’ beliefs on the importance of extracurricular programming for children. Lareau's (2011) concerted cultivation theory was present in the ideologies of middle-class parents in this study, as they stressed the importance of keeping their children's schedules full of obligations. These parents believed that the constant commitments would teach children how to thrive in middle-class lifestyles and provided opportunities for exposure to middle-class practices.
Most parents saw their childhood as the golden age of parenting and longed for a time when raising kids was simpler. Parents yearned for what they described as the “old days", where children were imaginative and played outdoors largely unsupervised for countless hours. Parents loathed the constant consumption of technology that characterizes the lives of modern children.
Tondra had a specific concern, as she believed some programming for children is now “too adult like.” Tondra, a Black 33-year-old mother, who is single, with a nine-year-old Black daughter had this to say about the programming on the Disney Channel Television Network:
I try to pay attention to what she is watching on TV. Like, she's been banned off Disney Channel about three times, which is a surprise… Oh yeah Disney Channel is awful now… Yea I think so, from a mother's point of view. Uhh, they make the kids too adult- like. The children characters are too adult-like now, for me they are. They put the kids and the adults all on the same level and I don't like that. Cuz sometimes my daughter thinks that me and her are on the same level.
Oscar, a Black 53-year-old father, who is divorced, with a thirteen-year-old Black son discussed the same phenomena as Tondra in very similar words when asked about his expectations at
CUYA: 32
But I just love having kids being kids. Just go out, just do ya thing, rip and run, learn, and just enjoy being a kid. Enjoy being with each other, because too many times people keep kids all in adults’ affairs.
Tondra and Oscar were two of three Black parents to speak specifically about children being too involved in adult affairs. Their concerns, like the other Black parent were because they believed children are maturing too quickly. Although only three parents indicated their specific distastes with the fast maturation of children, their commentary fit with a larger narrative from all parents who suggested that they were in a fight against technological advancements in society. Specifically, parents wanted to resist how immersed modern children are in television, iPads, and other electronics. Parents believed the obsession with technology contributed to the development of anti-social behaviors and attributes. Based on interviews, I learned parents believed technology was counteracting the middle-class cultural capital these parents were attempting to bestow on their children. Technology tainted their kid's innocence. Parents counteracted the effects of constant immersion in technology that characterizes modern society with heavy involvement in extracurricular programs that restricted free time to indulge in technology. The Cincinnati Urban Youth Academy was a space where “kids could be kids”, as put by Oscar. Parents saw CUYA as one of few safe and structured spaces remaining where kids could run freely and play what is perceived as an innocent and pure sport, baseball. These findings are consistent with Mose’s (2016) book where she writes that children no longer simply go out and play, but play is arranged, scheduled, and parentally approved and supervised.
Although CUYA is not a playdate, as Mose (2016) describes, CUYA fits with the hallmarks of the good parenting Mose suggests currently characterizes the behaviors of modern parents.
Scholars have written on parents’ emphasis on heavy scheduling for their children (Kort-
Butler and Martin 2013). Constant involvement is seen as good middle-class parenting (Mose 33
2016). Parents use these programs to differentiate themselves from lower-classed groups. I asked
Jacob, “Why is it important to keep her (the interviewees daughter) busy in your opinion?”
Jacob, a white 47-year-old father, married to a white partner, with a ten-year-old white daughter responded:
Uhm. I just believe if she has too much extra time, it is just the opportunity to get herself in trouble.
Jacob’s comments on the role of the program were not exceptional, as other parents had similar thoughts. I asked respondents the following question: “So what do you think it is about sports that makes it a good experience for children in general?” To which Oscar, mentioned earlier, responded:
Well it teach them how to be responsible, it gives them a sense of direction, and if they got something that they can do to occupy they mind, that would keep them out of trouble.
Topanga, a white 36-year-old mother, married to a white partner, with a ten-year-old white daughter replying to the same question:
My philosophy is that if they are busy and being involved in their sports, they are not on the street causing problems.
These quotes fit the narrative of the “overinvolved youth” (Mahoney et. al. 2006).
Programs like CUYA are key for these parents, as they believe these programs help keep their children away from troubled behaviors and situations. Parents defined trouble as drugs, alcohol, gangs, and violence, or behaviors and activities parents believe represented a street lifestyle.
Kort-Butler and Martin’s (2013) study supports this narrative as they suggest that there is a relationship between high levels of involvement in extracurricular activities and lower rates of risky behavior. However, the obsession with the streets here is indicative of the fear of urban areas. Parents do not allow much unstructured time for their kids because they believe idle time in the urban environments where many parents in the study live may lead to negative 34 consequences for their children. However, many of these parents did not live in the lower- income neighborhoods where urban issues often occur. Their expectations were more in line with the lower-income neighborhoods found in texts such as Anderson’s Code of the Streets (2000).
Anderson (2000) notably contributes the concepts of “decent culture” which is middle-class values and ideas, and “street culture” which is associated with lower-income families, and the anti-establishment behaviors that normalize and glorify violence, drugs, and crime that are commonly associated with them. For the parents in this study, they perceived only one side of working and lower-class individuals, the “street” side. They understood lower-class people’s lives in very incomplete ways and made sure their families were nothing like what they believed were lower-income lifestyles.
Parents viewed idle time in their children’s lives negatively. Their statements suggested that if their children were not constantly involved in programs like CUYA that they would be lost in the chaos of the most negative parts of urban environments. This was demonstrated in
Faith, a white 37-year-old mother, who is single, with a eight and seven-year-old multiracial
(Black and white) daughters in the academy, echoed the earlier sentiments of other parents when asked if she shares similar parenting practices as the people in her neighborhood:
Ummm. Well. I don’t, just this day and age and the spot where I live, you can go one block, one and a half, two blocks north, and see million dollar homes. Or you can go a half block west, and buy a dime bag of crack. So it’s just, I will not let them out of my sight. They do not walk to school, and we were a block, we are within four blocks of both of their schools… And I just see kids all the time roaming the streets…I don’t know what happens behind the scenes but, maybe I’m a little bit more strict. I don’t want to say strict, cuz I’m not. Maybe I’m a hovering mother, clinger. I don’t know. [laughs].
Faith’s comments are representative of 18 of the 25 parents. They feared what awaited their children in the world; especially the urban world, so constant supervision was the best parenting practice. These remarks from parents are a crucial component to a larger conversation on class 35 that happened during these interviews. Parents hoped to distinguish themselves and their children from what they commonly referred to as “those people.” The people these parents referred to were working-class and lower-income individuals, based on the descriptions given in interviews about certain classed behaviors. For these middle-class parents, idle time was unbecoming of middle-class children.
Parents expressed desires to protect kids from the dangers of the “streets” regardless of the parent’s race. There were both explicit and implicit moments during interviews where parents suggested it was important to distance themselves from the less productive members of their communities. For white middle-class parents, this desire for scheduling and fear of the “streets”, as evidenced earlier by Topanga’s representative comments, fits with our understanding of
Whiteness. Similarly, Black middle-class parents tried to distinguish themselves from their working-class and lower-income counterparts. Black parents expressed a desire to be better than the stereotypical images of Black people. Parents from multiracial families practiced a combination of these ideologies depending on the race of the parents, as evidenced by Faith’s comments. People from every racial background actively distanced themselves from members of their racial group who were in lower-class backgrounds.
The activities that took place at CUYA were more than children running around chasing balls, but children were gaining skills to leverage better futures. All of these middle-class parents believed sports were important because it helped them practice teamwork and communication skills. The CUYA also offered the opportunity to develop larger networks as parents hoped the social capital their children gained at CUYA could be used to leverage better futures.
I Found Out From a Friend 36
A diverse makeup of families attended the programming offered by the Cincinnati Urban
Youth Academy. The demographics of the Cincinnati Urban Youth Academy participants reflected the composition of the city of Cincinnati. Based on my ethnographic notes, On average, of the 35-45 children that appeared on any given night about 40- 50 % were Black, 40- 50 % were white, and about 10- 20% from multiracial families. Although not identical, the racial landscape of CUYA was close enough to represent the heterogeneous populations of the city of
Cincinnati. There were many middle-class people in the space, more middle-class parents than was expected for an organization designed to encourage minority and lower-income youth’s involvement in baseball. The racial and class composition of CUYA participants and their families presented an important question. How did parents find out about CUYA? Moreover, how did people from different racialized backgrounds all come to use this space? I asked parents how they found out about CUYA, to answer this research question. This information gives insight into the ways parents from different racial backgrounds create opportunities for their children.
White Families
Frequently, white parents communicated that they learned about the services offered at
CUYA from what many referred to as “word of mouth.” Parents also spoke of being referred to
CUYA by parents and coaches that were a part of their child’s other extracurricular programs. In both situations, friends, families or coaches introduced and encouraged parents to enroll their children in CUYA. This is important because the academy did not do public advertising, even in schools. Lizzie, a white 38-year-old mother, married, with an eleven-year-old white daughter, discussed this when talking about how she found out about CUYA:
I wanted to provide the kids [her softball team] with something prior to the season to get used to the fundamentals, and to educate myself on the best ways to coach an 8-year old, 37
and a 10-year old eventually. So I sought out, I think I just did a search online for like clinics. The other ones are like charging $90.00 for each child to go to a softball clinic for a day. I was like that’s not going to work. The kids in my community can’t afford that. I mean we could afford that for our kids. But, I was looking for something more. [deep sigh] I don’t know [long pause], for everybody kind of thing. So, I actually sought out the Gotham [pseudonym] high school coach, and asked would her girls [softball team] be interested in putting on a clinic for these younger kids. And, she said yes. She didn’t end up doing it but, she passed the word on about the Cincinnati Reds Urban Youth Academy and gave me Jessie Owen’s [pseudonym] name. And then I contacted him, and he was wonderful. I cannot say enough wonderful things about him. He welcomed us, and I said you know all of the kids wouldn’t qualify socioeconomically, and we aren’t necessarily an urban school. We are not suburbs. We are kind of in the middle. But, we didn’t want to take a spot from kids who really need it. We have more support than some urban kids might. But he’s like no, bring them, bring them, bring them.
Mitchell, a white 49-year-old father, married, with a fifteen-year-old white son had a similar experience. He found out about CUYA because his son was involved in another extracurricular program:
We were at a baseball lesson with my son, and I just so happen to be talking. The kids were doing their thing, and I was talking to a parent and he was like, “hey they do this through the Reds.” And it took a little bit of digging. It was hard to find. We started going when it was down at Manchester Place [pseudonym]. When it was down at Marvel high school [pseudonym] over there. So we started going down there, and like I said its nothing like it is now. And that’s how we heard about it through word of mouth.
Lizzie and Mitchell’s sentiments were typical of the nine white parents. They all found out about
CUYA through their networks, not public advertising. Patty, a white 30-year-old mother, single, with a seven-year-old multiracial (Black and white) son, suggested that not doing public advertising was a strategic measure taken by CUYA when she described her conversations with
Kel [pseudonym], one of the directors of CUYA:
I’m like this is an awesome place. Their goals and what they do is wonderful. I talk to Kel like, “how can this not be publicized more, this is such a great opportunity for kids.” And, what he said made sense. Ya know, if we advertise it for everyone, then it’s gonna fill up, and people who don’t necessarily need to use it, who have the money that don’t really need to send their kids there will send their kids there, and it might take opportunities away from kids that really should benefit from it. 38
Parents gained entry into the program simply by being in the right networks, by using their social capital to leverage more opportunities for their middle-class white children.
Despite middle-class parents in these interviews admitting that they used their middle- class status to accrue more opportunities for them and their children, some parents had reservations about joining CUYA. These conflicted parents discussed their qualms with their children potentially taking a roster spot away from a kid who needed the space, or someone who the parents believed to be more "urban”. These parents displayed reticence to join the organization, but in all of their cases, the individuals who worked there, such as Kel and Jessie, quickly reassured them that it was okay to use the facility and services. Once parents’ worries were calmed and children became official members of CUYA, they took full advantage of this valuable organization.
This process of referring in is sure to continue as Stacey a white 38-year-old mother, married, with an eight-year-old white daughter suggests:
And to be honest I didn’t know much about it but I kind of got the feeling that ok it’s like for lower socioeconomic, ya know, kids, who don’t have as much in the neighborhood or whatever. I was kind of like I don’t know, are we allowed to go especially since it was free. And so the first session, she [her daughter’s friend’s mom who referred her in] said no they don’t have enough kids to fill it. That kind of helped me like, feel, as long as I’m not taking someone else’ s spot, that like really needs to be here. So I am, I’m blown away. Like the whole complex. And, I’ve been telling anybody and everybody about it. Like just see if they have the openings.
Stacey summed up how white parents found out about CUYA perfectly, through their close-knit networks. Once they learned about the facilities, they often passed the information on to other people in their networks. The interviews above are typical examples of why white parents’ networks were invaluable for them to provide their children with various opportunities, like
CUYA. 39
Black and Multiracial Families
Responses from non-white interviewees suggested that non-white children learned about
CUYA through other means. Several of these parents’ involvement was coincidental. Black and multiracial families learned about CUYA during chance encounters, like driving past the neighborhood where the site was built, or finding CUYA through an intense internet search for sensibly priced extracurricular programs for their children. Some parents did learn about CUYA through speaking with other people, but only after they did toilsome labor to find ECAs for their children. This differed from white parents whose networks provided opportunities easier. As described above, CUYA is located in a predominantly Black neighborhood. In fact, the park next to the large and impeccable facility is constantly populated with Black people congregating and enjoying the public space. The CUYA is even located close to a bus line. These amenities make sense when considering the intended target population. However, do the people who live in close proximity to the facilities, believe CUYA was created for them (Black people)? Oscar, a Black
53-year-old father, divorced, with a thirteen-year-old Black son spoke about this in his interview:
Oscar: I saw them building it cuz I live right there in Richmond [pseudonym], and then the advertisement about what it was. And then by going up there, I went to the open house.
Curtis: You saw the advertisement on TV or?
Oscar: Just when they were talking about building it. Of course, I seen it when I was going by, but just the advertising of what it is exactly. And I was like oh man! They still trying to get whites to move over in this area. Ya know, cuz they love… That’s an ACADEMY [emphasis added]… FREE [emphasis added]… ya know they [white people] pay much money for that.
Oscar, in many ways saw the CUYA as one of the steps to replace the Black populations that lived in the area surrounding CUYA. He suggested that CUYA was built with a specific audience in mind, a white audience. In many ways, he saw this as a gentrification tool. Oscar 40 described his first and subsequent encounters with CUYA before enrolling his son in the organization. CUYA was built in his neighborhood, and he stumbled upon it. Raymond, a Black
33-year-old father, married, with a thirteen-year-old Black son, too found out about CUYA by chance when he was driving through his old neighborhood and saw the park (which is now next to the facility) was gone. He says:
Well I used to live over here, matter fact; I used to live in the back of the railroad tracks over there. I was driving back and seen that they had closed the park down and I couldn’t figure out for why, and I just seen the Cincinnati Reds sign came up. And so, I asked Kel [pseudonym], because he knows a lot about what’s going on with the Reds due to his dad and him. And, he was like yea they are building a complex over there and they are trying to do something for the youth and I’m like, “Ahh that’s wasup!” So once they got it built I didn’t know it was open for a while then I ended up driving by like oh it’s open and started hearing about the programs they were doing. And it was like well if that’s something my son wants to do, and when he asks me I will see about getting him in.
Here Raymond finds CUYA in a neighborhood he grew up in only by happenstance. He was fortunate to see the construction of CUYA and its neighboring park in progress. The interesting part of these comments is that Raymond apparently had a clear link to someone within the organization, Kel, but still was not privy to this new opportunity until after the facility was fully functioning. Contradicting Lareau’s (2011) understanding of middle-class behavior, Raymond desires to provide opportunities for his son, but only after his son expresses interest. His son here has to take the initiative rather than Raymond practicing concerted cultivation and enrolling his son into an ECA. Oscar and Raymond’s sentiments are representative of how many Black and multiracial families learned of CUYA. For these parents, networks were less important, but personal exploration and happenstance were critical for finding CUYA. Destiny, a Black 58- year-old guardian, single, with a twelve and thirteen-year-old Black niece and nephew typified this personal exploration: 41
You don’t know how lucky you are to have a facility like this. Everything is very nice, the instructions, the number of people that are helping with instruction. The coaches, just the feel, the batting cages and having all of that in one place. I just hate that I didn’t learn about it sooner. And I just happen to say summer is coming up and I want to get them into something, to do something, and actually I think I was just uh I don’t know if I was looking for Reds’ tickets just looking at that, and this camp popped up. Or I was looking at Cincinnati Recreation Commission, and getting them to join that because I also looked there. I probably will eventually get them memberships there, yeah but this is an phenomenal facility, this is awesome.
To which I asked for clarification: “You said you were just looking for something for them to do for the summer and then you found this?” Destiny again:
Well I was hoping to find a sport or something that they would enjoy to see and try out and see if they would enjoy it. Because again, I think team sports is important in molding you.
Destiny wanted to find a way to get her niece and nephew involved. She completed extensive searches until she finally stumbled upon CUYA. Destiny was not plugged into any networks but found out about CUYA because she was determined to get her children involved.
The other source of entry for Black and multiracial families in my interviews was through a girl’s softball team who utilized the services as a team. Faith, a white 37-year-old mother, single, with eight and seven-year-old multiracial (Black and white) daughters spoke about this:
Uhm… so there was a flyer that came home with the girls from school that was talking about Cincinnati Static [pseudonym]. Umm… and so I just called up and she said, “hey we are doing a little bit of spring conditioning now, and it’s at the Urban League.” So mind you I grew up in Northdale [pseudonym], So being right next to that area, I was kinda like EEEE… I mean I knew the new building went up but… So I’m like ok, I’ll check it out. I’m absolutely amazed. I think it’s a wonderful, wonderful thing. I think that… ummm… the intentions are well, and I am sure it is doing good things for the community. I was still a little shocked being outside with the park and seeing red solo cups in peoples’ hands, and things being passed around the circle. I mean I guess that is their stumping ground, and maybe… But I did say something. I don’t know if there is like a line between the youth academy and the park, but they seem to be like on this one side, like they weren’t moving over towards the ball parks, but ya know it was right there so. But other than that, I think it is fantastic. And I’m trying to find more ways to get my other kids in there and take advantage of that, because that’s just amazing. Good thing for the community.
42
Faith discusses how she found about CUYA. She too was a former resident in the area CUYA now resides. She worried about the area because of her past history, quickly referencing the
“street culture” (Anderson 2000), which she now wanted to keep from the “decent culture” she taught her children. Faith started utilizing the services because a coach came to her children’s school and posted a flyer looking for girls to join a local softball team. Five of the twelve parents of girls I interviewed learned about CUYA because their daughters were on the Cincinnati Static softball team. The Cincinnati Static is a girls’ softball team with a roster of mostly Black and multiracial girls, led by two Black women. This team was responsible for many of the girl participants who attended the fundamental training sessions at CUYA. This team was a principal referring mechanism for girls of color to CUYA.
Middle-class parents actively recruited other middle-class parents to a facility that was designed to connect with marginalized communities. This process of referring in helped to get many of my white interviewees to the CUYA. Multiracial families and Black families came to learn about CUYA through personal exploration, with a notable exception for those involved in the Cincinnati Static girls’ softball team. However, because my interviewees were middle class, as defined by the earlier typology, I am unable to make conclusions about how parents from different class backgrounds got involved. Still, the population here demonstrates middle-class parents’ active roles in their children’s lives.
The CUYA As a Space For Racial Socialization
The next section explores parents perceived benefits of CUYA based on both parents’ and their children’s self-identified racial identity. The opportunity for children to get racial socialization was an important benefit of CUYA involvement. Racial socialization is the
“process of preparing children to understand their unique heritage, culture, and the meaning of 43 membership in their societal-given racial group” (Lesane-Brown 2006). Black families used
CUYA to de-stigmatize their children’s Blackness; they hoped their children would gain necessary experiences to learn to thrive despite racism. White parents commodify the diversity at
CUYA, to add to their children’s already privileged positions. Multiracial families viewed
CUYA as a necessary space to teach their children about the complexities of their racial background.
De-stigmatizing Blackness
My discussion of racial socialization strategies begins with the self-identified Black parents who had Black children. Black parents had illuminating thoughts about the academy, the services they offer, and “good parenting”. There was a very specific message from Black parents. They felt this program would help de-stigmatize their children’s Blackness. These parents did not personally hold negative views about Blackness but realized the consequences related to the social realities of being Black in America. These parents explicitly and implicitly stated that Blackness is stigmatized. Because of this reality, parents used this program as a tool to teach their children to embrace their Blackness while embracing middle-class (white) skills that will help them succeed in a world that often punishes those with darker-hued skin. These parents hoped the CUYA would assist their children by allowing them to acquire skills to both advance their children’s futures and to negotiate the consequences of being Black in white spaces. Corey, a Black 44-year-old father, married, with a ten-year-old Black son illustrated this dynamic when asked if he had explicit conversations with his children about being Black:
Actually, we have with the boy. My daughter, maybe a little bit, but not as much as with the boy. I think I tend to push my son harder because of the perception of the Black males in society, as opposed to the perception of the Black females in society. I have had the talk about with him about you are going to have to work twice as hard for half as much, or twice as hard for less than. But ya know I always tell them, you are being judged primarily, first off, by the color of your skin and you are going to have to work harder 44
because of that. Sad reality, sad unfortunateness. But I’d rather him be prepared, than go blindly.
RJ, a Black 73-year-old grandfather, married, with a twelve-year-old Black grandson also had similar comments when asked about the conversations he had with his grandson about race:
I have had to talk to them [his children and grandchildren] about it. And ya know they know what’s going on. Ya know, I just tell them you gone have to work twice as hard to get what you want than the other race of people, because they look at us as a different set of peoples. But in God’s mind we all the same. If we weren’t they wouldn’t be using blood from one person to another. They don’t know what color that blood is right.
Here Corey and RJ described their explicitly racially focused parenting practices in almost identical words. Corey provided additional experiences for his Black son, hoping that this would lead his son to achieve success comparable to his white counterparts. Additionally, Corey taught his son about racism and how to deal with the consequences that came from this system of oppression for Black people. RJ discussed how he taught his children that as Black people, they have to do more than their white counterparts to succeed in American society. Although RJ provided these lessons to his children, he also acknowledged the hypocrisy of the extra work his children must do. He states that it is unfair because “we are all humans”, and that “they [white people] don’t think we are less when they need our blood.” Interviews with Black parents like
Corey and RJ often featured common clichés like “having to work twice as hard”. The “twice as hard” commentary is a common colloquial phrase used in Black communities to describe how historically Black people have had to work harder to get the same rewards and accolades as their white counterparts. Corey also points out that sometimes even working harder is not enough, as
Black people often still do not receive comparable rewards despite doing double the work as their white counterparts.
Comments from Chaunte, a Black 40-year-old mother, single, with an eight-year-old
Black daughter is an example of how CUYA fits into this racially focused parenting: 45
I want them to know how to work on a team. Ya know. Little things like that, cuz even there, our babies, if they have never been exposed to… let’s say Europeans for instance, ya know that may be hard for them to do because sometimes the teammates don’t clash, sometimes they clash, sometimes they don’t get along. But you still have to know how to work together ya know. Sometimes ya know it’s not a lot of communication with the players. But they still have to play together. So, you know. So to an extent it teaches them, because I’m sure the teams that get a long and have more in common and ya know have a better winning season than the teams that don’t know each other so… I think that working as a team is important.
Chaunte’s comments details why these parents felt they had to enroll their children in programs like CUYA. Chaunte suggested it was important to give her children experiences with
Europeans, or white people, because it made them more adept at living in the world. Comments like Chaunte’s were common and sums up Corey and RJ’s comments. These parents wanted to give their Black children access to networks, skills, and more importantly, the middle-class training white children are privy to simply because of their white privilege.
Some Black parents saw the middle-class training available at CUYA as an opportunity to differentiate their children from “stereotypical” versions of Blackness. One interviewee explicitly stated this view when she indicated that she wanted to immerse her daughter into things not commonly associated with African Americans. Her interview was filled with comments about making sure her daughter was different, in this case, a class-based difference, because she desired to be noticeably different from what she perceived to be the undesirable members of lower socio-economic classes. Tondra, a Black 33-year-old mother, single, with a nine-year-old Black daughter, when asked, “why enroll your daughter in CUYA”, responded:
Well, I wanted to expose my daughter to everything except what I considered the norm, like basketball and everything like that for African American families.
When asked this same question Craig, a Black 50-year-old father, married, with an eight-year- old Black son responded: 46
It helps him to get outside of the norm. It helps him to get outside of seeing certain kids all of the time.
And when prompted to speak more about these “certain kids” Craig said:
Well I guess the normal kids are the ones I guess that don’t want to really play baseball, or don’t want to really play basketball or soccer. The ones that the community has to take in, the academy does not because it asks them to try out [referring to the Reds youth baseball team]. Some of the kids are, how can you put it? I’m not going to say they are lazy. They just haven’t found it yet. There might be some great ones in there. I think they all are great, they just need the avenues to find it, and RBI academy is that.
Moreover, Chaunte, a Black 40-year-old mother, single, with an eight-year-old Black daughter discussed how she views parenting, a slight departure from her earlier concerns about CUYA becoming a mostly white space:
I’m one of the serious ones that’s really… I feel like in today’s society it’s really no excuse for our children to fail at these systematic systems that might be set up against us. But I feel like we still have ways to get around all those things that might be trying to hold us back. So but one of the things is making sure I drill into my girls how important it is to just be a productive citizen, and really try to give them an understanding of what productive means, ya know? So part of being productive means… you have to, not just be educated but have a focus of what that education looks like.
Here, three parents shared typical sentiments of all of the Black parents in this study about class separation and making sure that their children were “different”. Tondra desired experiences like
CUYA because it presented the opportunity to make her child more palatable to the larger social white world. Craig thought CUYA offered his kids a chance to interact with other kids who were more active in different sports and activities, and not those who still needed to find their
“avenues”. Chaunte saw CUYA as an opportunity to prove how she was a good parent and teach her daughter how to be a productive citizen.
As stated in Chaunte’s earlier comments on “Europeans”, and in interviews by parents like Oscar, RJ and Craig, parents thought it was more important to show their kids examples of racism in everyday contexts, as opposed to in-depth discussions about America’s checkered 47 racial history. This was evident when Craig, a Black 50-year-old father, married, with an eight- year-old Black son commented, which were typical of five of the ten Black parents who had
Black children:
The more that you talk about the racial divide the bigger it’ll get. The more that you work on doing the right things for the right reasons, the further it’ll get away from you. And it’s not to hide it, a fact is still a fact.
Some parents preferred to avoid explicit conversations about racism and oppression, instead opting to teach their children how to deal with issues as they arose. The parents here chose to teach resilience, prevention, and how to interact in a society that has negative stereotypes about
Black people. Parents viewed their time at CUYA as a valuable tool to gain access to spaces and networks that would have otherwise been unavailable to them and their children. According to parents, this was also a great space for Black children to learn how to navigate Whiteness and learn the social cues to deal with racism in everyday encounters.
The Commodification of Diversity
White parents used the Cincinnati Urban Youth Academy to racially socialize their children. Parents of white children believed the Cincinnati Urban Youth Academy presented an opportunity for their children to experience the diversity these parents longed for, but in a very safe and controlled space. White parents’ racial socialization strategy was what I call the commodification of diversity. Diversity was viewed as a product or service made available to white families that could be bought or experienced. Underhill (2016) explains why acquiring diversity was important for white parents in this excerpt, “parents hoped that by exposing their children to people of color, their child would develop a sense of racial comfort and would learn there was nothing to fear or revile about people of color.” Parents of white children frequently cited a desire to acquire diversity, something many revealed to be lacking in the communities 48 they currently resided in, or frequented. Jake, a white 49-year-old father, married, with a fifteen- year-old white son illustrated this point:
It’s [CUYA] been great for us… And for us, a lot of the reason that we do it is that it’s so… it’s diversified. Uhh, because where they go to school and stuff like that, they are in a very small ya know group of kids, all the kids are very similar I think. And it’s [CUYA] helped them deal with different kinds of people, different backgrounds. I’m sure you’ve been through there. You meet people at this end of the scale and that end of the scale. Economically and socially, it’s nice to do that and to just expose them to different people and different things. And ya know just being a parent we are suppose to, part of our parenting is to expose our children to the most we can to help make them a better- rounded person.
Lizzie, a white 38-year-old mother, married, with an eleven-year-old white daughter commented on what she expected her child to gain from CUYA:
Well I think she gets to meet kids that she would probably would never meet. She is exposed to a more diverse population of kids, not only racially, but age wise. I mean a lot of mixed age groups so she’s got older girls to learn from. And then, she’s got some of the younger coaches who have been through the program and have played RBI softball. Ya know, they are kind of mentors to them, they kind of look up to them. Especially coming from the school they [her kids] go to which is sooooo white. It is nice to have exposure to different races and cultures and things.
Rachel, a white 36-year-old mother, married, with a ten-year-old white daughter added to this sentiment when asked about her thoughts on CUYA:
And I think the program is phenomenal. It’s given her so many opportunities that she wouldn’t have had before with the interactions with different kids. The interactions with different adults that can teach her things that I can’t. And everything that she has learned there has just been so beneficial to her.
When I asked her why interacting with “different” kids was a benefit she had this to say:
I think…It just gives her an idea of, ya know different people, cuz she is in a predominantly white school. I grew up; I was in a predominantly Black school. And I want her to be able to have that mix of people in her life.
Jake, Rachel, and Lizzie’s comments are representative of five of the seven white parents with white children who described how they actively sought out diversity in ECAs like CUYA.
They wanted a space where their kids could experience people from different backgrounds. 49
Although, there were class variations in who attended CUYA, the parents were most excited about the opportunity to meet people of color. These experiences would help make their children well rounded individuals (Underhill 2016). Although, both Black and white parents spoke of the perceived benefits of children being around a diverse group of kids, the justifications for these reasons differed. White parents saw these interactions as a way for their children to become
‘good’ people who were comfortable interacting with people of color. This ability would just add to the privileges they already had because of their whiteness.
The desire for white children to know how to interact and live effectively with people of color was made clear in interviews when parents like Lizzie, a white 38-year-old mother, married, with an eleven-year-old white daughter replied to a question about the demographics of the school her child attends:
At Macon [pseudonym for children’s school] it is very white. A little too white for my flavor but what do you do? Sometimes you can’t have the best of both worlds, ya know.
I asked Stacey, a white 38-year-old mother, married, with an eight-year-old white daughter to describe her upbringing:
Oh… I was raised [with the] same catholic education. Actually, all throughout, through high school too. Middle class… white… [laughs]. Zero diversity. We were from the west side of Cincinnati. And I don’t know that it’s changed much.
Stacey presented the diversity comment unprompted. Later in the interview I asked her why she mentioned diversity and why did that stand out in her experiences. She responded agreeing with
Lizzie’s previous statement:
Yes, Absolutely. Absolutely and that [diversity] was one of the things when we were looking for a house and where to kind of… we lived in a smaller house in Mills [pseudonym]. And then a couple of years ago, when we had our third daughter we were starting to outgrow it. And so, we had some different neighborhoods that we were looking at. And we both work out in the Richmond [pseudonym] area, so any chance of being further west is just ridiculous for commuting back and forth. So we had a couple different neighborhoods that we were looking at for housing, and it ended up that there 50
was one in Mills and it opened up. Very pleased with the school. And the principal there does like a tremendous deal for recruiting kids. And it is, I think it’s really cool cuz my kids, ya know don’t see any differences. And in fact they will kind of laugh and say like, well we take Spanish class but these kids already speak Spanish and they are so much better. And I said, “but they are learning English, and you speak English a lot better than they do right now.” And so, that’s the give and take of that. Ummm, so I think that’s very important.
At which point I asked, “is it the economic diversity, or racial, that you see as a benefit? “And
Stacey responded:
Umm, I think a little bit of everything. Just to kind of… I don’t know, see the differences in people. And that’s what I tell them all the time, it’s like you wouldn’t want everybody to be the same, same is boring. Like you learn from other people when they are different from different backgrounds of whatever that is. Hmmm, that’s one of the things I try to stress ya know, constantly learning, and educating yourself.
Lizzie explicitly states that her child’s school is “too white”. This recognition was a common theme for white parents. Stacey cited how having all the same, middle-class white people, was boring, and how she teaches her children that this limits their learning potential. These parents often discussed the lack of diversity in their children’s schools or home communities. If they did have diversity in their social settings, they were sure to mention it like Stacey. Parents achieved personal satisfaction from CUYA involvement. These parents viewed diversity as an experience, as opposed to an opportunity for their children to have lifelong friendships.
Two main themes emerged in the interviews with white parents. Parents believed the exposure to people of color was a strategy of good parenting, and were experiences they lacked as children. Parents also believed their white children needed to learn how to having meaningful contact with people of color because it would prepare them to be successful in their futures.
Parents viewed these experiences as a skill, almost as if it could be added to their child’s future resume. Parents commodified diversity and appreciated that CUYA was a very controlled space, one where parents could give their children exposure to diversity (Underhill 2016), but not alter 51 other parts of their everyday lives. White parents preferred their exposure to diverse people in contained settings.
Blood Don’t Got No Color, We All Red
Multiracial families who used CUYA services believed this was an opportunity to teach their children about race in a uniquely diverse space. Some multiracial families had parents who were also from multiracial backgrounds, while the other families had parents who self-identified as a single race in partnership with someone who also identified as a single race from a different racial background. Below are findings that represent the sentiments of the seven parents from multiracial families I interviewed. Two families were Asian and white, and the other five families were Black and white partnerships.
Two themes emerged from interviews with parents of multiracial children. Parents saw
CUYA as a site to help their children negotiate their complex identities as multiracial individuals. Parents also viewed CUYA as a space for their children to learn to appreciate people from different racial backgrounds. Parents wanted their multiracial children to develop an understanding and appreciation of their racialized selves. Parents saw CUYA as one of few places where their children could find balance. CUYA offered an opportunity to have a diverse set of individuals for these kids to interact with and learn about their different racially specific cultural practices. Jefferson, a Black 52-year-old father, married to a white partner, with a nine- year-old multiracial son (Black and white) talked about the difficulties his son dealt with as a multiracial individual trying to find his place in society. When asked about explicit conversations
Jefferson has had with his son on race, and why he feels these conversations are important, he stated:
Cuz they were mixed, he go to school with people, got all Black people and all white people and you in between, and you might hear something, say something, they might 52
say something to you, you got questions, especially when you young you got questions. You got questions when you come from a mixed racial background and the people around you ain’t nothing like you. The white people ain’t nothing like you, Black people ain’t like you either. And they choosing sides and you got questions.
Faith, a white 37-year-old mother, single, with an eight and seven-year-old multiracial daughters
(Black and white), who also has one white child, described her children’s experiences figuring out where they fit in the racialized world when they hear several contradictory messages:
Well… my white daughter going to an all-Black school that was very hard. It actually opened up a few teachers’ eyes that discrimination can happen the other way as well. Like she was… One of them was just like what, what do you mean? So, I’m like yea buddy it happens both ways ya know. It doesn’t matter what color you are, if you put them in an all Black… or all anything they are going to get pointed out so. It’s been hard. Umm… It’s actually been pretty ridiculous. Because now if you say anything, like oh I like his Black shoes, why you being so racist. I’m like whaaaa? [emphasis added] You can say Black and white and not be racist, or say oh she’s Asian. Like oh my gosh! Why you being so racist? If you just say somebody’s color or ethnicity then they are like why are you being so racist? That’s not the case. So it’s been very hard, and then you got the grandma on the dad’s side of the family saying no you guys are Black. And I’m like didn’t I help make you guys? So they are half and half. [grandma] No they are Black, Black is predominant, blah blah blah. So I have my 9 year old, he said something to me the other day and he goes, “I’m kinda Black.” And I said, “yea [laughs], yea you are kinda Black.” That’s just, it’s funny because I feel like it’s taken a bigger toll on them than it did me growing up. I never had a problem with Blacks, whites, it was just that’s what it is, that’s just how it is.
Patty, a white 30-year-old mother, single, with a seven-year-old multiracial son (Black and white) also discussed these types of experiences. She was the first person in her family not to live the “traditional” way, as she got pregnant without being married and dated someone from a different race. When I asked her to reflect on the experiences she stated:
I mean… getting over the initial barriers with my family. Umm. My family’s biggest problem was they were worried about other people being discriminatory towards us. I haven’t really experienced that. Um. So I don’t really, I don’t feel like it’s [race] influenced negatively at all, at this point.
She continues:
Ummm… I mean people just say he’s so cute. People do come out a lot more and say, ya know little mixed children are so beautiful. Ya know which is… I don’t know. All 53
children are beautiful ya know, not being mixed in particular. Some people don’t really know what’s appropriate to say and I just take that as a positive thing. Ok, thank you [she says this to people]. But I mean, race hasn’t really come into play at this point in his age, very much. Not outwardly towards us.
And she closes when asked about conversations she anticipates having on race:
We’ve had… just kind of the concrete color talk. His dad’s Black, his mom’s white. And so he says he’s yellow, in between. I’m like ok. And he said that at like 3 years old. And I was like that’s a GOOD [emphasis added] view. He understood that it was in a way a mixture. But we haven’t really addressed the whole racial tensions history in the United States, and all that. I’ve thought about how it’s gonna come up and how we are going to talk about it. Umm, gosh. I think I [will] just kind of explain the history, and ya know, people are judgmental cuz they don’t understand, because they are ya know by definition ignorant of ummm, other races and you just have to prove them wrong and show them how awesome you are. My current fiancé is Black as well. We… race is in our everyday conversations, especially with everything that’s going on currently. So I think he’ll help me together talk about these issues, I don’t know, I guess I’ll just kind of figure that out as we go along.
Here we have three typical examples of situations parents from multiracial families must tackle while parenting their multiracial children. All three parents are aware of the unique positions their children are in as multiracial individuals. They understand the difficulties children from multiracial backgrounds have negotiating their racial identities, and by extension figuring out their positions in the stratified American racial hierarchy. Parents from multiracial families relished the opportunity for their kids to be immersed in the racially diverse CUYA population.
Like Jefferson, Patty, and Faith, parents from multiracial families acknowledged that people from both within and outside the family caused complications for their children, who were constantly seeking an answer to their position in the American racial landscape.
Parents believed CUYA was one of the very few multiracial spaces in a hyper-segregated city that has authentic integration. Regina, a Black 47-year-old mother, married to a white partner, with a twelve and eleven-year-old multiracial daughter and son (Black and white) talked 54 about the hyper-segregation in Cincinnati when discussing her contrasting experiences in Atlanta and Cincinnati:
That’s another thing that’s different up here than down there, in Georgia, in Atlanta. That to me in Atlanta, it’s a lot more segregated but not in a bad way. Ya know the word is not segregated, it’s not right. It’s a lot more diverse down there. But the diversity is a good thing, not a bad thing like it is up here. It doesn’t have a bad connotation. Ya know you know people who are Caucasian and you have an appreciation for their culture. They have an appreciation for your culture. I had a friend that was Malaysian, so she used to have stuff over her house all the time and we get to eat a lot of different food. But it was a good thing, it wasn’t something that divided us. So, It’s not like that here, but you know why because the economic demographic is different down there. Up here if you’re, ya know… in the upper classes economically as concerned, but chances are, sorry, you are white. You don’t have a lot of diversity. Down there you have rich Blacks, old money too. You have rich whites, you have a lot of the Asian culture down there has money. It’s not new money because a lot of them, ya know, maybe second or third generation being over here. But they’ve made a fortune you know what I mean. So you have the upper, the middle, and the lower classes, and you have it across demographics where you don’t have most in one, and then the other in the other, which is the demographic up here. So, it doesn’t breed the resentment and really the culture clash that you get up here. Because there is success and there is failure across the board. Even in the schools, ya know.
Regina’s comments were representative of six out of seven parents from multiracial families.
Regina notes what she considers deep racial divisions in the city of Cincinnati. She believes
Cincinnati, unlike Atlanta, has deep racial divides because people are divided economically.
According to the parents in this study, there are few locations in the city of Cincinnati for multiracial families to visit comfortably. CUYA gave families and children the opportunity to be in an integrated space. Integrated spaces offered parents the chance to alleviate some of the stressful situations in which their children had to choose a racial identity. This was important because the identity process is much more complicated than choosing one racial identity for multiracial individuals.
Some parents from multiracial families’ socialization strategies included teaching their children to ignore race, or engage with it on surface levels. Parents taught their children to love everyone despite their race, and not to “see” race. Carl, a Black, white and Mexican 51-year-old 55 father, single, with an eleven-year-old multiracial boy (Black and white) exemplifies color-blind rhetoric (Bonilla-Silva 2006) when he was asked if he has strategies specific to being a parent of a multiracial child. Color-Blind ideology is where “whites rationalize minorities’ contemporary status as the product of market dynamics, naturally occurring phenomena, and Blacks’ imputed cultural limitations” (Bonilla-Silva 2006). This new racial practice avoids overt racist behaviors through actions and beliefs that claim whites “don’t see color” (Bonilla-Silva 2006). Carl says:
I told him he got the best, from having a mixed background. Cuz he has all these different backgrounds and we showing him to accept for who you are no matter what color you are. It might have been different [in the past], but still, I would say, ya know, it’s more accepted coming from a mixed background [than in the past], yes it is.
Rikki, a Thai and white 45-year-old mother, married to a white partner, with a twelve-year-old multiracial son (white and Thai) exemplified how many parents practiced surface level discussions of race, if they discussed race at all, when I asked if her Thai heritage influenced her parenting:
Well we like Thai food. My family says that my American husband is more Thai than I am because I can’t handle hot/spicy food. So, they love sushi, which is Japanese, not Thai. I tried some words but they have not retained the language. And I can’t speak it fluently. I can speak on a level of a two or three year old. But, the one thing I noticed and I think again, hopefully it’s just this generation to be just more accepting, accepting of differences. Ya know, when I was their age I tried very hard to fit in and in some cases I was embarrassed to be different. And I don’t see that. I mean I gave my youngest son a Thai Middle name and it’s a long one. And I’m hoping he doesn’t hate me for it. So far he doesn’t hate me for it. It’s actually pretty cool.
Mason, a Japanese and white 42-year-old father, married to a white partner, with a ten-year-old and five-year-old multiracial son and daughter (white and Japanese), had this to say when asked if his Asian heritage plays a role in his children’s lives:
I don’t think it [Asian heritage] affects it [children’s lives] too much. I think if anything they are more likely to eat Asian food for instance because I grew up eating it, and I like it. And because we make it, they have turned to like some of it, uhhh. They have had an opportunity to go to Japan so, they have been able to experience first hand a different culture. Some of that, but it’s not a daily exposure I would say, or a daily way that we 56
incorporate the culture into our lives. They have learned a little bit of Japanese language. Words… ummm. So there are some, some, little bits, but it is not a daily thing.
I responded as a follow-up, “so you don’t anticipate having more explicit conversations about their Asian background as they age? “ Mason:
I mean if they have questions about it and sometimes they do… uhhhh… about Japan. We talk about it, but it’s not something that I would force on them ya know.
Carl, Rikki, and Mason’s comments were common sentiments among parents in multiracial families. Carl tells his son that he has the best of every culture and that not seeing race is the most important way to live. Rikki’s strategies to teach about culture outside of CUYA include allowing her children to eat an assortment of Asian food. Although she had racially explicit experiences as a child, her parenting strategies do not reflect an immersion into her Thai culture.
Mason continues to cite how he will not “force” his Japanese heritage on his children. These parents are clear examples of the optional ethnicities that Mary Waters discussed (1999). These parents embraced the surface level cultural products that their ethnic and racial backgrounds taught them, but critical and real immersion into their cultures seemed to be a task they were not willing to take on. They viewed extracurricular programs as an approach to embrace their children’s multiple racial identities, while still practicing color-blind ideology. This also consistent with Bonilla-Silva’s theory (2004) as he suggests that Asians are often seen as
“honorary whites”, receiving benefits for their close proximity to whiteness. He documents that
Asians often downplay their ethnicity because they can and because it benefits them.
Parents’ discussions with their kids were designed to teach their children to love everyone and not interrogate the inequalities that stem from structural racism. During the interviews, whenever most of these parents mentioned racial oppression they ignored institutional explanations and solutions to oppression, for moralistic arguments that stressed the 57 need for people’s hearts to change. Many parents believed that more love would alleviate the world of its racial issues. Parents from multiracial families wanted to immerse their kids in an environment with various racial backgrounds so their children would learn to appreciate different people, and in the process find their space in the world. Interviews with multiracial families provides researchers with helpful case studies on the complex ways racial socialization occurs in families that contain people who have different racial identifications. The data from multiracial families is also important because it provides valuable insight on the racial socialization processes for racial groups outside of the often-discussed Black-white binary.
More Mo’Nes, Serenas, and a few athletic guys too
The Cincinnati Urban Youth Academy served boys and girls at their facility. In addition to softball fundamentals training for girls and baseball fundamentals training for boys, CUYA also had training clinics for speed and agility development and whiffle-ball for all youth regardless of gender. This section discusses if the gender of the child affected parents’ expectations of CUYA and other extracurricular programs their children were involved.
Interview questions also investigated if parents noticed differences in their children’s experiences based on their genders.
Parent Expectations
Both parents of boys and girls wanted their children to gain valuable social skills and beneficial experiences through CUYA that would help them prepare for success not only in school, but also in their futures. However, parents of girls often had less lofty expectations for their daughter’s involvement in CUYA. Their expectations were frequently related to character development. Cyrus, a white 46-year-old father, married, with an eight-year-old white daughter 58 typifies the interviews with parents of girls when he responds to a question about what he expected his daughter would gain from her experiences at CUYA:
Self-confidence. That you know it’s ok not to be a superstar. Her personality is that if she tries something and doesn’t excel at it, right away, she just gets frustrated and walks away, she doesn’t want to do it anymore. And I’m seeing her change a little bit with this softball thing. I think she realizes that she is not a superstar but she’s still sticking with it, so…That’s kind of my expectation that she follows thru, and sticks with it and gets a little bit better even though she knows she’s not the best player out there that will be perfect.
Tondra, a Black 33-year-old mother, single, with a nine-year-old Black girl centered her commentary on confidence when asked why she felt this was an important experience for her daughter:
Well that would be a good question, for softball I think it is pretty good because it is so closely affiliated with baseball that it seems like baseball has always been a man’s sport. I feel like the softball can help her understand that women can be equal at some stance. And just because she is a girl doesn’t mean she can’t do anything.
She went on to say:
Yea because boys usually kind of inherit sports. That’s sometimes moreso in their DNA. I feel like girls have to be exposed to it more.
Chaunte, a Black 40-year-old mother, single, with an eight-year-old Black daughter agreed, as she stated when asked what is the most important lesson for her daughter to learn from CUYA:
I think that they gain a lot. They gain mentors. They gain… self-esteem, confidence. They gain knowledge of the game… softball. They gain new friends. So it is definitely a good experience, especially for little kids who, or young ladies who think they want to play softball but really don’t know. It’s definitely a place for some kids to start off, and become better and grow. Because the Reds, they invest a lot of time into the girls, and the boys too. So…
When prodded further, she had this to say:
Uhmmm. Long pause... I think it’s important for the girls to learn.... that whole confidence thing is for me. Like women being confident, and women accomplishing something. That’s what I think that they learn from there, and is something that they should learn anywhere that they go.
59
Confidence, Confidence, Confidence. Confidence is a clear theme among these parents.
Cyrus wanted his daughter to have the confidence to learn how to be persistent. Tondra and
Chaunte realized that their daughters needed confidence to thrive in what they would consider to be a ‘man’s world’, but what sociologists call a patriarchal society. It is clear that these parents understand what a patriarchal society consists of, even if they do not refer to it as such.
Patriarchy is based on the idea that societies are set up to ensure that women are systematically controlled and devalued (Manza et. al. 2016). These parents did not see sports as a long-term venture for their daughters. Parents were less concerned with their daughters being successful in the program and having proficient skills in softball, but instead focused on the potential of their girls to gain character attributes necessary to deal with difficult challenges as they grow into adult women. Rachel, a white 36-year-old mother, married, with a ten-year-old white daughter illustrated this in her comments:
Ummm. I think she gained… I think it helped her self-esteem a little bit because it taught her what she needed to know for the sport and so it helped her… not feel like she didn’t know what she was doing and so she had that opportunity to advance and be first base or whatever. It taught her the skills she needed to not only in softball, but in general, you work hard you get rewarded. You are no longer in the outfield. You are in the infield.
Regardless of gender, all parents wanted their children to succeed in CUYA, but for many parents of girls, it was more important for their daughters to participate and put forth effort in their training sessions. Rachel was happy that her daughter put forth this effort and tried even when she was put in uncomfortable situations, like being put into new positions on the field.
Parents viewed CUYA as a vehicle to offer opportunities for their daughters, such as college scholarships. Parents hoped this program would teach their girls skills such as confidence, learning to work with teams, and persistence. 60
Narratives from the parents of boys were quite different as they centered on physical skill development, and the hope that their sons could use this program to propel them into long-term baseball careers. As previously stated, parents of boys were also interested in their child learning character skills to become better people, but this was viewed as a secondary goal to their sons potentially turning the skills learned in CUYA into long-term involvement at the highest levels of sports. Parents mentioned their desire for their sons to become the next great baseball player, even if their current skills did not suggest this outlook was possible. Oscar, a Black 53-year-old father, divorced, with a thirteen-year-old Black son discussed his aspirations when asked about his expectations for his child’s involvement in CUYA:
Like I said just a foundation of the fundamentals of baseball. And like I said, the exposure to baseball I believe has been helpful. Cuz we can listen to baseball… Maybe he will get into it, maybe not, but either way ima keep him involved in it in some way shape or form. And I do believe if he wants to get into it, I believe he will do good. He’s a really great catcher; he can throw… alright. [laughs] He’s great at catching; he’s great at hitting.
Corey, a Black 44-year-old father, married, with a ten-year-old Black son had this to say:
Hopefully learn how to listen, learn how to listen and follow directions especially from the coach. Build his team working skills. Build his ability to field, bat, and uh. I would like to see especially with the speed and agility, him to pick up some speed and agility. Things doing that. It will all help him in the long run especially if he sticks with baseball. Ya know, for the most part it was getting him used to being able to be out there on the field and take directions from the coach and work together.
Corey continues when asked the most important lesson for his son to acquire from this program:
MMM. In a program like this… MMMM. Most important. Hmmm. Right now I think for him I think it’s important for him to learn to follow the directions given by him by the coaches on the field. He has a problem at time following orders, following directions, doing what he’s told. And I think that would be good for all kids, being able to follow. This is what we want you to do, here’s your direction, here… to be able to learn and do.
Again we see here another parent, Jefferson, a Black 52-year-old father, married to a white partner, with a nine-year-old multiracial son (Black and white) discuss the benefits of CUYA: 61
Uhh from, the Reds’ program I just think he needs to learn how to be a good teammate first off, of course to learn how to play the game, that’s why he’s doing it.
Finally, Craig, a Black 50-year-old father, married, with an eight-year-old Black son mentions:
Yeah I wanted him to learn, because he has a knack for being a gifted athlete and I’m not just saying that because I’m his dad. He needs to learn how it feels to win. Because he was playing with the community sports, last year his past season in basketball they won all of their games, he’s real geared up about it he loves it. The year before in baseball they lost every last one of their games and he doesn’t like it. It’s the meaning of winning that he needs to experience at all levels of sports, baseball, basketball, and soccer so.
Comments made by parents of boys are an interesting juxtaposition to comments by parents of girls. Oscar, Corey, Craig, and Jefferson cite the importance of their son becoming better players. As Jefferson puts it, the boys are at CUYA to learn how to play the game. The compliments these fathers give their boys are also of note. They mention that their boys are
“gifted athletes”, and very skilled at the sport, or at least have the potential to be. They wanted to see their sons’ physical skills grow. Parents’ interviews featured several mentions of player development and hopes that coaches would help their sons improve their baseball technique.
Parents of boys centered their son’s involvement in CUYA on their son’s ability to become proficient in baseball.
Parent Level of Involvement
The final theme that emerged from the data was the level of parental involvement in extracurricular programs for parents of boys and girls. Warner and Milkie (2013) suggest that parents invest more time and resources in girls compared to boys. The data suggests that the level of parental involvement in the actual activities of the CUYA actually was quite similar despite the gender of the child. However, Chucky, a white 47-year-old father, married, with a ten-year-old white daughter had a different view on this phenomenon when asked if he thinks his daughter has different experiences because of his daughter’s gender in CUYA: 62
Uhm, that’s hard to say. I think it has to do with the parents. This program, I’ve seen to be real honest from my view, because I am here all the time. The parents that are really involved. I will tell you that the girls’ parents are far more involved than the boys’ parents. That’s not to say that there aren’t some good parents here that are pushing boys too, but not as hard. They’ll drop them off, boys come in, they are practicing, and they come back. The girls, their parents are usually right there. And, the coaches for the girls actually encourage the parents of the girls to be there because they want the dads and moms to hear, to know, what they are teaching them. So that way when they are not around they will say “Hey, I need you to do this.” The parents make sure they do it. I would say the parents are more involved with the girls than the boys. I mean the funny thing is when the parents are around and come in, they know what their kids are doing, and their capabilities, so they are not completely ignoring them, they are just sort of less involved. It’s kind of an odd thing. Even the dads, the dads are pretty vocal when they are around on both sides. But the girls’ dads seem to be more focused and into it.
Regina, a Black 40-year-old mother, single, with an eight-year-old Black daughter said this when asked why she stays at the facility while her daughter participates in CUYA:
Because I am their [both her daughters] protector, their guide, no matter how frustrated I get with trying to make sure I find the right thing or even just expose em to different things. It’s what I know that the children needed because If I would have had it. And you see I’m basing this off of my childhood. If I would have had someone to kind of focus in on my passion at an early age. Then I wouldn’t have taken up a college course that had no…Ya know I wouldn’t have taken up IT [Information Technology] because I didn’t have a passion for it. I’m just there trying to nurture my girls so they can pick the right field, so they can thrive. And be productive citizens of ya know my government.
Stacey, a white 38-year-old mother, married, with an eight-year-old white daughter has these thoughts on why she makes time despite her children’s busy schedules:
Every now and then I’m kind of like ahhhhh, I wish I could just sit home instead of sitting here. But it’s fun for me to watch the practices. And it also helps too because we take it home, and we practice with her at home, so it’s not just here on Wednesday nights. Ya know last night I did have a meeting at school, and so they were outside playing. And…working on ya know the right batting stance, and all of that. And my husband is going to be one of the coaches for our other daughter’s team. So he’s kind of been picking up on ways to coach, and some of the drills that they been doing and things like that. So, it’s very educational for us as well.
Parents of boys shared similar sentiments, such as Jake, a white 49-year-old father, married, with a fifteen-year-old white son: 63
Again, I enjoy, you meet people there, and as a general rule, there are the same people there and it is nice to socialize with them and see the people. And plus I like to see what they do. Because it’s just like in school, the teacher presents something but you have to practice it at home to get better. So, if I see em doing whatever drill, then we can do that drill at home. Because like I told you earlier, we were never exposed to all the right techniques and stuff. In there those guys and girls know the right techniques so if you can learn those you can help the kids do better. So we practice that way in the yard and hopefully we are getting it somewhat right.
Rikki, a Thai and White 45-year-old mother, married to a white partner, with a twelve-year-old multiracial son (Thai and white) had similar commentary about her level of involvement when asked if she stays while her son participates:
I fell into team mom role and I love being a team mom. I would say at the younger ages particularly because there are freak accidents that happen it is important that parents are here. I told my coach this, that I want him to focus on coaching and not having to feel like he’s got to do other things. So being able to handle paperwork, or at least start to answer questions, or collect uniforms, those types of things are where I try to help out.
After this comment I inquired about how she became the team mom and she replied:
I think I was born to do it. I love to organize. We compliment each other. He’s a talker, I’m a emailer. I like to fill out forms, he doesn’t like to feel out forms so just, we fell into what is coaching and what do you love and what do you hate and where can I help. He doesn’t hate it, but there are things he would rather do.
These quotes represent the sentiments of the majority of the parents who I interviewed.
Chucky states that parents of girls are deeply invested in the success of their daughters, but the commentary from Rikki, Jake, Stacey, and Regina suggest that all of these middle-class parents were invested regardless of the gender of their child. Regina felt like she had to supervise her children even in a highly supervised space like CUYA. Stacey and Jake felt it was important to be present at CUYA with their children so that they could practice the skills their children learned outside of CUYA. Rikki took on the large role of team mom for her son’s group during the trainings. Parents were concerned with being involved in their children’s success regardless 64 of their gender. It fits with our understanding of the role of middle-class parents and their constant surveillance and control on their children’s lives.
There was a difference in the type of enrollment in ECAs for children based on the child’s gender. Parents of girls cited how CUYA was often just one of several extracurricular programs their daughters were involved. Girls were also involved in a more diverse set of extracurricular programs than boys, including arts organizations, academic clubs, social clubs, and even other sports programs. On average girls were involved in five extracurricular programs.
Tondra, a Black 33-year-old mother, single, with a nine-year-old Black girl demonstrated this heavy commitment as she had her daughter enrolled in at least seven ECAs throughout the year:
She’s in uptown arts, but they have multiple arts classes. They have drawing. They have clay. They have music. They have acting. They have ballet. They have jazz. They have all types of stuff. So every semester we change up her class… It’s twice a school year; it’s only open during the school season. Uhh well, like once a week, she goes once a week. But she does a different class every semester. Sometimes she does one, sometimes she does two.
Chucky, a white 47-year-old father, married, with a ten-year-old white daughter, also listed all the commitments his daughter is involved in:
She plays [softball]. She takes piano lessons. She is in a band and plays the clarinet. She is a part of the choir at school. She’s hit and miss, sometimes she plays soccer, sometimes she doesn’t. She does Activities Girls at church, similar to like cub scouts but for girls.
In contrast, boys were often only involved in CUYA, or CUYA along with other sports-oriented extracurricular programs. On average boys were involved in two extracurricular programs, which tended to be alternating sports based on the season of the year. Leslie, a white 49-year-old mother, married, with a twelve-year-old white son mentioned the difficulty in getting her son involved in other ECAs:
Not really, we tried a couple of other sports, he had a coach that he did not care for, most of the parents didn’t care for him. He doesn’t coach any longer but it was enough to just turn him off to soccer. He never was interested in basketball until he saw the Harlem 65
Globetrotters. So now, I’ve got him shooting hoops in the backyard. I don’t want him doing football just yet; I want him to grow a little bit more before he starts getting into football. He’s a lefty so he has a really good arm so I’m hoping that he has a love for that too.
I followed up and asked about non-sport ECAs and Leslie responded:
I wish he could. I wish he would get involved in that kind of thing. He’s not interested in academics. He’s really not interested in it. It’s not that he doesn’t get it. I hate to say that he’s lazy, but it’s not as important to him.
Rikki, a Thai and White 45-year-old mother, married to a white partner, with a twelve-year-old multiracial son (Thai and white) son was constantly involved in sports, as evidenced by this quote:
Right now he’s in school sports so he does basketball six days a week. Football five days a week. And at the moment, baseball is 1-2 days a week. Umm…I would say outside of the sports the school keeps him quite busy… Not really [involved in any] clubs, but he has a lot of friends through school and sports, so he will tend to do that.
Cyrus, a white 46-year-old father, with an eight-year-old white daughter provides commentary that perfectly typifies the difference between the types of extracurricular involvement parents have their boys and girls involved:
Oh yea they are in a lot of things. So, Jennifer is in American Heritage girls [a character development organization that embraces Christian values]. She takes piano lessons. She does an after school program once a week, at the church across from Mumford Heights [pseudonym]. It’s like a study group session thing. I guess those are the biggest ones. And my son is in, well he’s always playing sports. And he’s in Cub Scouts, uhmm… what else? Seems like more than that because there are usually 2-3 sports going on at once, plus Cubs Scouts. So yea they are doing other things.
Tondra and Chucky discuss the various programs they have their daughters enrolled. Parents of girls stress a diversity of experiences, not just sports and athletic involvement. On the other hand, we see Leslie and Rikki struggle to get their sons involved in non-sports programs. Leslie only has her son involved in CUYA, although she desires more for her son. Cyrus, who has both a son and a daughter, illustrates this theme of difference perfectly. His daughter does extracurricular 66 programs in very different areas, while the bulk of his son’s time is spent in sports programs, with one alternative experience in Cubs Scouts. Parents of girls provided their daughters with a series of experiences that allowed them to acquire different skills and knowledge bases, while parents of boys primarily had their sons dedicated to sports.
Discussion
This study adds to the literature on middle-class parenting, specifically by exploring how the race and gender of children influences middle-class parenting strategies. The parents in this study indicated that they viewed CUYA as an opportunity to gain necessary forms of capital, including but not limited to cultural and social capital (Bourdieu 1984), to help create futures for their children with surplus economic capital. Parents used this program to help their children gain social skills, provide their children with important exposure to different races, and keep their kids involved in activities that limited unstructured time that was commonly associated with the streets and lower-classed individuals. The data provides evidence for the middle-class practices commonly associated with Lareau’s theory of concerted cultivation (2011). These parents constantly cited their fears of too much free time and championed CUYA because it was one more activity to keep their children involved, out of trouble, and under surveillance, all modern day practices of good parenting (Mose 2016).
The interviews with parents made it evident that networks are incredibly important for parents, and these networks provide their children with various opportunities. White parents’ networks exposed them to CUYA. The data suggests that there are a significant number of middle-class white parents being referred in to use the free services offered by CUYA. This is no indictment of the organization, but instead, fits scholars’ understanding of middle-class parents who use their social capital and economic capital to continue to leverage opportunities for their 67 children (Bourdieu 1984). Black and multiracial families’ networks operate differently than white families, not producing similar outcomes for many of these parents. They hoped to alleviate this issue through programs like CUYA. I did not find the race sponsorship that
Grasmuck (2005) mentions in her book. There was no need for white families to invite and facilitate families of color’s inclusion in this space because CUYA targets minority populations, meaning that there are fewer barriers to enrollment.
This study was unable to address variations between classes, as the individuals interviewed were all middle class. Based on Erik-Goldson’s scheme (1992) described earlier, there were not any real differences in the commentary by parents based on their class status.
However, this study’s middle-class population provided data that supports an important critique to Lareau’s work (Montgomery 2006; Lacy 2004; Hill 1999). My data suggests that Lareau’s concerted cultivation theory underestimates the important ways scholars must consider both race and class when evaluating parenting strategies. Racial backgrounds shaped parents’ views on enrollment in CUYA, and extracurricular programs in general. Based on the 25 interviews, I uncovered the racialization process parents expected to occur in this space. Parents from all racial backgrounds saw racial socialization as a potential benefit of CUYA.
The data on Black parents suggested enrollment in this program was not just a tool to pass on their middle-class status, but also functioned as an attempt to teach their children how to live despite racism in white mainstream society. Similar to studies by Hill (1999) and Lacy
(2004), data from Black parents suggests that they used CUYA to alleviate some of the negative impacts of racism that their children deal with daily. Black parents sought to help de-stigmatize their children’s Blackness by enrolling their children in a program that teaches them cultural cues they may not have access to otherwise. These families also received access to white middle-class 68 networks which are frequently created and nurtured in ECAs, those often unavailable to Black people. These networks could potentially connect Black children to important opportunities for social and cultural capital attainment (Bourdieu 1984). For example, some parents thought
CUYA could connect their children to scholarships or other opportunities for more productive lives through associations with the famous baseball players who frequented the academy.
During interviews, some middle-class Black people used rhetoric signaling their ideological leaning towards “respectability politics” (Higginbotham 1992), which is often associated with ascribing to the behaviors and thoughts of middle-class white people.
Respectability politics indicated to white people that Blacks weren’t different from them, and was a practical way for more economically secure Black people to distance themselves from the problematic labels associated with Black people, such as criminality (Higginbotham 1992).
Respectability research suggests that Black people practice middle-class whiteness as a strategy to conform to the prevailing powers of Whiteness and receive some of the benefits of a white
American society (Harris 2003). Black parents that enrolled their children in ECAs would positively affect the public perception of both them and their children. Enrolling their children in
ECAs meant they were better parents than those who allowed their children to hang out on the streets and other public places unsupervised. However, these sentiments ignore the structural constraints that prevent many Black people from having the resources to enroll and benefit from
ECAs. In many Black communities, access to ECAs is limited, which is what makes CUYA such an important site considering the neighborhood it is located.
White parents’ thoughts on CUYA fit with neoliberal discussions on diversity (Berrey
2015). Diversity is a practice that many celebrate and acknowledge the value of, but many refuse to fully commit, as it requires relinquishing privileges (Berrey 2015). White parents saw CUYA 69 as an opportunity for their children to interact with people from different racial backgrounds.
Parents were excited because they believed their children’s new learned ability to thrive in environments with people of color would positively influence their future job opportunities, and future prospects for economic capital accumulation. Parents described the diversity they encountered and interactions experienced as if they were necessary skill boosters. The way they spoke of benefits, suggested they believed experiences with people of color could be added to future resumes. Parents seldom expressed a desire to genuinely appreciate racial integration in this multiracial space. Parents saw diversity as little more than something to try, rather than a series of adjustments to incorporate into their lives. The widespread use of diversity as a buzzword instead of the actual implementation of fair practices for individuals of different racial backgrounds in various sectors of American society is present in the data (Berrey 2015). White parents did not express a desire for “critical diversity” (Herring and Henderson 2011). Herring and Henderson (2011) describe ‘critical diversity’ as, “about more than embracing cultural differences that exist between groups and appreciating those differences. It confronts issues of oppression and stratification that revolve around issues of diversity.” White parents spoke of embracing cultural differences, of being around “different people”, and how boring it is for everybody to be the same. The data suggests that the parents in this study fit more with scholars’ understanding of a neoliberal appreciation for diversity, than the critical diversity that creates real changes in society.
White parents often stated that the schools, programs, and neighborhoods their kids were in were “too white”. CUYA was an opportunity for exposure. Diversity is a good thing because it brings different peoples together. Racial diversity is believed to be important because it enriches white life, and an important part of white parenting (Mayorga-Gallo 2014; Lareau 2011). This 70 was a change for many of the white parents in this study, who did not have a childhood with meaningful relationships with people of color. The desire for diverse environments alone is innocuous, but in the context of interviews, we learn that parents saw these diversity strategies in economic terms. This practice becomes nefarious when it is viewed as little more than a strategy to improve the already dominant racial group’s life outcomes. White parents also viewed CUYA as an opportunity to stress their good parenting Vis-à-vis working-class whites. This fits with scholars’ understanding of Whiteness (Roediger 1999). For middle-class whites, a front stage where they embrace diversity is the most appropriate behavior of peak middle-class whiteness
(Hartigan 2005). They must put on the appearance of embracing diversity even if their backstage actions do not match this performance. Whiteness is conflated with middle-class status, so the parents here must give their children the skills and experiences that reflects this standard, in order to avoid losing resources for their children because they are not living up to the potential given by their privilege.
CUYA provided an opportunity for children from multiracial families to do the necessary identity work to manage the often-changing racial landscape of the country and city. Identity work is defined as “the range of activities individuals engage in to create, present, and sustain personal identities that are congruent with and supportive of one’s ideal self concept” (Snow and
Anderson 1987). Multiracial families were interested in decentering race as a major factor in the lives of their children. They wanted their children to avoid getting bogged down in conversations on race, because for their children they did not fit into these conversations, as most of these conversations were only about being Black or white. All of the parents, except one Black woman, believed that race still was an issue in American society but only because people made it one by continuing to notice differences (in color) between people. This sole Black mother, who 71 was married to a white man, was the only person who centered race in her conversations and when parenting her children. She said in her interview that she tells her children that despite their multiracial race background, the world would still treat and see them as Black people. The data from interviews suggested that many of these parents avoided, or have not yet had extended, explicit conversations with their children about their multiracial backgrounds. Some felt it was not important to point out these differences. These sentiments are examples of the color-blind ideology (Bonilla-Silva 2006), which people of color are not exempt. This ideology ignores the societal realities that people of different racial backgrounds experience because of the American racialized society. Nevertheless, for some of these parents, being “color-blind” was believed to be a practice of good parenting.
Discussions with members of multiracial families helped add to the current body of research on the racialization processes. The racialization process for multiracial families is often a mixture of practices from different racial groups, as parents try to figure out the best way to help their children fit and understand a highly racialized society. This process is different because for some multiracial families, they must help their children learn where they reside in the U.S. racial hierarchy. In the case of Black-white pairings (n=5), these parents have to figure out if their children will face similar consequences as Blacks who are arguably at the bottom of the U.S. racial hierarchy, or will they be awarded privileges like whites that reside at the top of the U.S. racial hierarchy. Unfortunately, there is no clear answer to this question, and the position of these children varies based on time, place, and their physical characteristics (Brunsma
2006). Parents viewed CUYA as one of few places where their children could go to appreciate their complex identities as multiracial individuals. These families often have to choose which race they want to be around in a highly segregated city like Cincinnati. Even amongst their 72 families and in schools, these children are forced to choose a racial identity. The academy offered a unique opportunity for parents to give their multiracial children a space that could affirm their complex identities by not forcing them to choose, as this space was racially diverse and harmonious.
Parents’ expectations of CUYA were gendered. Parents of girls stressed their desire for their daughters to gain character skills from CUYA. Parents of boys stressed their desire for their sons to gain physical skills. Both parents were equally invested in their children’s success in this program, but the reasoning behind these desires varied. Warner and Milkie (2013) suggested that parents invest more time and resources in girls compared to boys. The data here suggests that parents do not differ in the amount of time and resources invested, but the type of time and resources they dedicate to their children. Parents of girls got their daughters involved in a more diverse set of extracurricular activities including: academic clubs, sports clubs, arts clubs, and social and professional clubs like Girl Scouts. Boys’ parents tended to get them involved in fewer activities and primarily sports-based extracurricular programs. Parents here were more interested in giving their daughters a variety of experiences while getting their sons to do anything was seen as a positive.
All of the parents stressed the importance of education for their children’s futures, as many parents saw CUYA as a way to better position their children for long successful educational futures. It was believed CUYA could better prepare their children for scholarships, and the skills learned from sports could be transferred to school and work. Education was the key to success and breaking through barriers, even if parents realized the structural barriers related to racism and classism. Most parents, who were former baseball/softball players and current fans, got their children involved because they had a love for sports. Above all, the CUYA was one tool 73 on the path of sustaining class status for these children. These middle-class parents believed that this ECA would better position their children for college, and give them access to important networks that would lead to more opportunities in the city of Cincinnati, through the Major
League Baseball Reds organization or through the diverse population at CUYA. Although this organization was designed to increase participation and interest in baseball for minority communities, in this community in Cincinnati, it is doing a lot more than just that. This site is expanding the communities and opportunities of several distinct racial groups who reside in the
Cincinnati area.
Future Research
This research study presents implications for the fields of youth sports, parenting, and racial socialization. This informs research on the Black family, as well as on an everyday form of racial resistance Black parents use to alleviate some of the conditions of racism that their children must deal with. Some questions emerged from the research. In order to examine if parents expectations were met, I would like to follow up with the students who attended CUYA, to investigate their long-term trajectories. Just recently, a young Black man was drafted into the
Major League Baseball Association, who was a student at CUYA. This study would have benefitted from interviews with the children during their tenure at CUYA. In addition, it would be interesting to study what long-term effects, if any, CUYA has on the children who attended, and whether or not these effects vary by racial and class backgrounds? Does involvement in
CUYA affect college enrollment and future employment attainment? Additionally, I would be interested in a long-term follow-up with these children to see if the racial socialization and middle-class socialization at CUYA had a noticeable impact on their lives. Are white children more likely to have friends from different racial backgrounds? Are Black children more adept at 74 succeeding in mostly white spaces? Are multiracial children more secure in their identities? All of these are interesting questions for future researchers to consider, as we further study the impacts of extracurricular programs.
Conducting a comparative study at a non-sports organization that targets the same population would strengthen the parental strategy related findings here, by shedding light on how parents whose children are involved in different activities justify their enrollment. What do parents who are involved in arts programs, social clubs, and academic clubs say about the importance of these extracurricular programs in their children’s lives? Does their commentary fall along the same gender, class, and racial lines? Researchers should conduct comparable studies to highlight the increasing importance of extracurricular activities as they have been categorized as a tool of good parenting and provide important opportunities for social and cultural capital accumulation (Mose 2016).
Finally, we need to investigate America’s parental obsession with involving their children into sports ECAs. Why are sports unilaterally seen as a positive by most parents? A study that explores this more deeply will be important for the sociology of youth sports as the field grows.
In addition, researchers should study how beneficial it is for children from working-class and lower-income backgrounds to build diverse communities through ECAs with middle-class and elite people. I believed that I would be studying working-class and lower-income populations through interviews at CUYA. CUYA was advertised as a space for minority and lower-income individuals, but my interviews did not reflect that. Based on ethnographic observations, I do know that this population attended the facilities, but what was it about CUYA that prevented it from being majority lower-income? These are important things to consider because the mixed- class populations here suggest that other extracurricular programs designed for working-class 75 and lower-income populations may have the same conundrums. How do we make sure that these
ECAs reach the populations they were intended to serve?
Results from this study provide insight into parents’ attempts at good parenting by enrolling their children in ECAs, in this case CUYA. Understanding the role of ECAs as a parenting strategy is important given the increased involvement in these organizations, and how these experiences often lead to additional opportunities for children. This project provides evidence that parents saw CUYA as more than a simple baseball or softball program, but a racial socialization tool, a network builder, a skill booster, and a supervised activity fit for modern parents. My hope is that this study will encourage more people to study ECAs, because these programs provide a multitude of benefits for children from various backgrounds. The findings suggest that we should provide more resources like CUYA so that more children from less fortunate backgrounds can benefit from these programs. We often see school as an equalizer, but as the saying goes, “it is not always about what you know, but who you know.” Extracurricular activities can provide the who (social capital), and the what (cultural capital), to alleviate the disparities that less fortunate classed and raced individuals face daily.
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Appendix
Demographics of Interview Participants
Participant Age of Race of Marital Educational Gender, Age, and Name Parent Parent Status* Attainment Race of Child in CUYA Lizzie 38 White Married Masters 11 year old white Degree daughter Jake 49 White Married Bachelors 15 year old white son Degree Rikki 45 Thai and Married to Bachelors 12 year old white and White white man Degree Thai son Chucky 47 White Married Some College 10 year old white daughter Tondra 33 Black Single Masters 9 year old Black Degree daughter Carl 51 Black, Single Some College 11 year old Black and White, white son Mexican Leslie 49 White Married Bachelors 12 year old white son Degree Tasha 29 Black Married Bachelors 6 year old Black Degree daughter Oscar 53 Black Divorced Some College 13 year old Black son Crystal 31 Black Married Masters 9 year old Black Degree daughter Corey 44 Black Married Associates 10 year old Black son Degree Raymond 33 Black Married Trade School 13 year old Black son Cyrus 46 White Married Bachelors 8 year old white Degree daughter Rachel 36 White Married High School 10 year old white Degree daughter Regina 47 Black Married to Some college 12 year old Black and white man white daughter; 11 year old Black and white son Stacey 38 White Married Bachelor’s 8 year old white Degree daughter Chaunte 40 Moor Single Masters 8 year old Black Degree daughter RJ 73 Black Married Eleventh 12 year old Black Grade grandson 83
Demographics of Interview Participants (cont.) Participant Age of Race of Marital Educational Gender, Age, and Name Parent Parent Status * Attainment Race of Child in CUYA Patty 30 White Single Bachelors 7 year old Black and Degree white son Jefferson 52 Black Married to Some College 9 year old Black and white white son woman Craig 50 Black Married Some College 8 year old Black son Faith 37 White Single GED 8 year old Black and white daughter; 7 year old Black and white Mason 42 Japanese Married to Doctoral 10 year old Japanese and White white Degree and white son; 5 year woman old Japanese and white daughter Venise 28 Black Single Bachelors 9 year old Black son Degree
*Parents are married to the same race, unless otherwise indicated.