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

Abstract

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