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African American Parents Talk to Their Adolescent Sons About Racism

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African American Parents Talk to Their Adolescent Sons About Racism Colorblind and Colorlined: African American Parents Talk to Their Adolescent Sons About Racism The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Diaquoi, Raygine C. 2015. Colorblind and Colorlined: African American Parents Talk to Their Adolescent Sons About Racism. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard Graduate School of Education. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:16461058 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Colorblind and colorlined: African American parents talk to their adolescent sons about racism Raygine Coutard DiAquoi Dr. Daren Graves Dr. Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot Dr. Janie Ward A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Education of Harvard University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Education 2015 ©2015 Raygine DiAquoi All Rights Reserved A love letter to Black families i Acknowledgements To everyone who has supported me along this journey iv Table of Contents Introduction 1 Background and context 6 Problem statement 15 Statement of purpose and research questions 16 Research approach 16 Assumptions 18 The researcher 19 Terms and definitions used throughout this study 27 Literature review 28 What we think we know about Black boys 29 What we fail to consider when thinking about Black 31 boys Demographic correlates 38 Messages 40 The Relationship between racial socialization messages 42 and time Life Course Perspective 44 Critical Race Theory 49 Conceptual framework: A new theory 55 Methodology 58 Rationale for qualitative research design 58 Participant selection 59 Participants 62 Data collection; In-depth interviews 63 Data collection; Photo elicitiation 65 Data analysis 67 Memoing 67 Coding 67 Data Management 69 Conclusion 69 Parents recall learning about racism 74 Adolescence and encounters with police 79 Finding counternarratives 83 The soundtrack to a racialized adolescence 84 From Yusuf Hawkins to Trayvon Martin 88 Discussion 92 Parents prepare their sons for discrimination 102 Findings 104 You’re already targeted 105 Survivial Skills 115 Police Interaction 120 They’re growing up differently 131 Discussion 135 Reading between the rings 142 Appendices 152 Appendix a: Lyrics to ‘My President’ 152 Appendix b: Lyrics to ‘My President (Remix)’ 154 Appendic c: Abel Meeropol’s ‘Strangefruit’ 155 Appendix d: Interview protocol 156 Appendix e: Photos & questions for visual elicitaition 159 interviews Appendix f: Letter drafted and sent to parents 186 Appendix g: Description of study and consent from 187 Appendix h: Summary memo 189 Appendix i: Second memo 190 References 191 v Abstract Racial socialization, particularly preparation for bias and discrimination, is a long documented strategy employed by African American families to prepare their children for racist encounters. During the last fifteen years a new line of inquiry, theorizing the relationship between particular socio-historical periods and the content of messages communicated to children about race, has emerged. Scholars have started exploring African Americans’ narratives about the messaging they received about racism against the backdrop of the social and historical period in which they came of age. In the period before the Brown v. Board decision many recalled hearing messages of the importance of deferring to whites. After the landmark decision and into the post-protest era, many reported hearing messages that were less focused on fearing whites and more focused on feeling pride as a Black person and in the Black race. Overall, messages have accurately reflected the then current state of racism and the particular etiquette required of African Americans to navigate a racially structured society. Furthermore, a look at changes in messaging over time suggests progress made on issues of racism. The experiences of the hip-hop generation, those born between 1965 and 1984, have not been documented. This study explored the messages that they received about racism along with the messages that they are currently sharing with their sons in a period equally marked by colorblind rhetoric and virulent anti-black racism. Using the theoretical frameworks of Critical Race Theory and the Life Course Perspective, I conducted 51 interviews with 17 families. Today’s African American parents vi continue to convey many of the messages that their families shared with them, about the importance of individual and group pride, but there has been a distinct and unexpected addition to the content of the talks that they are having with their sons. Eerily similar to the messages conveyed to children pre Brown v. Board, parents’ messaging about race largely urged compliance, fear of whites, and fear of figures of authority. vii Chapter 1 Introduction “You know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot I said that this could have been my son. Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me thirty-five years ago. And when you think about why, in the African American community at least, there’s a lot of pain around what happened here, I think it’s important to recognize that the African American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that doesn’t go away.” - Barack Obama on The Trayvon Martin Verdict Emmett Till could’ve been my uncle. He died the year that my mother was born. Despite his death, he played a significant role in my upbringing, sitting with me long after my mother’s conversations about racism, a symbol of a history of injury that would never, as President Obama explained after the acquittal of George Zimmerman1, remain in the past. Emmett’s story was a reminder that I was never too far from meeting a similar end. The physical threat of racism was a common theme in my mother’s discussions with me about race. These kinds of talks are emblematic of a long existing private practice of socialization that occurs in many Black families (Hughes et. al., 2006; Hughes et. al., 2008). Following the death of Trayvon Martin these conversations, or “the talk” as they came to be known suddenly became of great interest to the general public. 1 See Remarks by the President on Trayvon Martin (2013) for the full transcript of the press release. https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/07/19/remarks-president-trayvon-martin 1 On blogs, television, and radio, parents of young and adult Black children shared their experiences receiving “the talk” at some point in their own youth and now preparing to discuss racism with their own children. As I had grown up in the shadow of Emmett Till’s death, an entire generation of Black children would now grow up under the pall of horror cast by the death of Trayvon Martin. Trayvon Martin would now be a cautionary tale about the dangers of Blackness. Common to all descriptions of the “the talk” was a sense of the need to prepare one’s child for discrimination. Specifically, parents expressed the importance of prepping their African American child for encounters with officers of the law. For a moment, a national conversation about the strategies used by Black parents to raise their children, and by extension the continued impact of racism, seemed imminent. Unfortunately, “the talk” was reduced to ready-for-TV and radio sound bites and came to have a singular and simplistic meaning, which betrayed the complexity and nuance of the larger practice of socialization of which these conversations are a part. This dissertation study continues the conversation opened up to the general public by Trayvon Martin’s death by exploring “the talk” beyond the single themed conversation that has been popularized in the media. Prior research makes clear that the messages communicated to children about race— and the significance of being Black in a racial hierarchy that devalues Blackness—by their parents are the product of three factors: the fit and applicability of the messages conveyed to parents as children to their current experiences with racism, the treatment of racism and the headway made towards tackling racial inequality in the parents’ life time, and parents’ assessment of the racial etiquette demands of the period in which their children are becoming adolescents (Brown & Lesane, 2006). Thus, in order to 2 understand how parents are speaking with their teenaged sons about racial discrimination, and the form and content of those conversations, I first explored and analyzed the messages that they themselves received as adolescents. The importance of adolescence as a life stage and a developmental period has long been established (Hall, 1904; Marcia, 1980; Phinney, 1980). Adolescence is understood to be a period of “generational imprinting” or time when individuals are marked by and begin remembering social and political events (Shuman & Scott, 1989, p.377). Early memories of these events begin to impact their outlook and the way that they relate to the world around them. For these reasons, in this study, I focused on what parents remembered about the messaging that they received in their adolescent years, parents’ descriptions of the social and cultural events that marked that period and perceived and actual progress made on issues of racial equality during their life-time. Additionally, given the importance of the developmental stage of adolescence, I also explored with parents the messages that they were now sharing with their adolescent sons. Brown & Lesane-Brown (2006) explored the kinds of racial socialization messages adults remembered receiving as adolescents in an attempt to understand the origins of their current attitudes towards race and racism. The researchers’ sample fell into one of three periods: pre-Brown v.
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