I think for black boys, if you ask too many questions in a curious way, then people are like, “You must be a faggot, or shut up, or like what’s wrong with you.” And that’s not okay [that] there is this very narrow black [option]. . . . Particularly in Oakland, I feel like [compared to other places where I lived with larger African American middle-class populations] there was a lot more room for black boys; like you could be like the nerd or you could be the student-athlete or the jock or the artist. . . . [I] don’t feel like that here in the Bay Area.
Nia also expressed support of gay rights and progressive attitudes toward gay and lesbian people. However, through her use of the “fag” discourse here, Nia was pointing to how academic achievement is often used to emasculate African American boys as well as challenge their racial authenticity.30
Mothers also worried about the toll these messages might have on their sons’ self-perception as they transitioned into manhood. Sharon, mentioned earlier, captured a sentiment shared by many mothers:
Each time a black boy has a racially charged interaction with a police officer, a teacher, or a shop owner, those experiences will gradually start to eat at his self-worth and damage his spirit. He might become so damaged that he starts to believe and enact the person he is expected to be rather than who he truly is as a person.
Mothers wanted their sons to be aware of racism and prejudice, but they did not want them to internalize how some members of mainstream society might view them. Sarah, a mother of one son with another child on the way, said, “How do we give them the history without the pain? Educat[e] our kids without giving them the baggage?” These mothers walked a tightrope between providing their children with the skills to navigate negative images of African Americans while not validating those images. Their children would need to recognize both explicit and implicit forms of racism while not allowing it to justify not working hard or succeeding in life.
BUILDING SELF-ESTEEM AND FOSTERING SELF-RELIANCE
Mothers in my study were also concerned about the gendered racism their daughters might confront, but they believed their daughters were less likely to face situations in which their responses could mean the difference between life and death. The apprehension mothers had for their daughters seemed more “manageable” to them. For example, after describing her concerns for her sons’ safety, I asked Karlyn if she had as many worries for her daughter. She replied,
Not as many, I think that . . . Not as many. I don’t know; it just feels as though it is a little easier for her to do what she needs to do and be who she needs to be because she is perceived as less of a threat than he will be.
Karlyn, like the other mothers, believed her daughter’s challenges would be less onerous than her son’s because her daughter would be perceived as less of a physical threat requiring containment. Mothers’ concerns for their daughters focused on ensuring they were well educated, had strong self-esteem in terms of their beauty, bodies, and sense of self-worth, and could take care of themselves. For the mothers in my study, raising daughters involved a different quality and intensity of concerns than raising sons.31
The racialized and gendered context for daughters was somewhat different from that of sons during the period I conducted interviews (from 2009 to 2011). At the onset of this research, Michelle Obama had become the first African American First Lady, and the much debated and awaited The Princess and the Frog32 had been released, which was Disney’s first animated film with an African American princess. Over the course of the interviews for this research, Sesame Street’s music video “I Love My Hair” went viral, showing positive images of African American hair that encouraged black girls to “love their hair” in all of its natural forms.33 Malia Obama, one of former President Obama’s daughters, sported cornrows and twists, which appeared to decrease the stigma of those hairstyles and encouraged mothers in my research to be more willing to allow their daughters to wear them. Although mothers believed their daughters were barraged with messages that they were unworthy and unattractive because they did not have the “right” skin color, facial features, or hair texture, many also noted the increased availability of positive depictions of African American women. Indeed, they often contrasted the absence of these positive images in their own youth to the relative abundance and availability of them for their daughters.
Mary shifted her focus when she described the concerns she and her mothers’ group members discussed about raising daughters:
Whether it is, “I’m the only black girl in the school,” or “Someone is wondering why my hair is curly, or is telling me I look like a monkey because it doesn’t straighten like theirs.” How can we prepare them? How can we instill in them a sense of beauty and sense of pride in who they are?
Mary’s comments illustrate the desire for daughters to see their own value as African American women and to have strong self-esteem. This was something Mary said she did not believe was reflected in the messages her daughter received from the broader white society or from her daughter’s non-black peers. Mary believed the friendships her children were forming with other African American kids would help them navigate prospective assaults on their self-esteem. Toward the end of our interview, Mary said that it was indeed a white classmate who had told her daughter that she had hair like a monkey. This experience reinforced Mary’s belief that her daughter needed African American peers, and she found solace in the fact that her daughter had a group of girlfriends that she interacted with regularly and whose hair looked like hers.
Although hair and beauty regimens might be thought of as superficial and inconsequential, African American women have confronted a surprising amount of scrutiny over their beauty and hair. This has ranged from the findings of pseudoscientific research appearing in Psychology Today on why African American women are less attractive than other women34 to governmental policies in the military restricting natural hairstyles such as braids and dreadlocks and school codes of conduct that prohibit certain natural hairstyles for girls and women. This scrutiny has also come from people like syndicated radio talk show host Don Imus, who referred to African American female basketball champions as “nappy-headed hoes” and expounded upon the bodies and hair textures of other athletes.35
Mary and other mothers engaged their daughters in a version of what Patricia Hill Collins calls black feminist thought, which involves a process of “self-definition and valuation” that is sensitive to the “interlocking nature of oppression” and emphasizes the “importance of redefining culture” by clarifying the contributions of African American men and women.36 This process of uncovering one’s value was meant to protect daughters from challenges to their self-worth that they would likely encounter throughout their lives. Mothers also viewed this process as connected to building strong self-esteem in their daughters, developing a sense of self-sufficiency and helping them to refrain from early sexual encounters.
STRATEGIES TO MANAGE GENDERED RACISM
To address challenges related to gendered racism, mothers drew from an arsenal of strategies that often differed for their sons and their daughters. They discussed using two strategies—experience management and environment management—to ensure that their sons’ regular social interactions included or avoided certain kinds of exposures. Mothers used a different strategy—peer group management—to address concerns related to their daughters’ self-esteem. This strategy focused on creating supportive peer groups for their daughters that would affirm their beauty, value, and identity.
Experience management focuses on seeking out opportunities for sons to engage in activities to gain fluency in different situations—both empowering and challenging—that mothers viewed as integral to African American boyhood and manhood. Environment management focused on monitoring their sons’ regular social environment, such as their school or neighborhood, with the aim of excluding sources of discrimination.
Participants used experience management to try to help their sons acquire what they viewed as an essential life skill: the ability to seamlessly shift among communities that differed by race, class, and gender. They shuttled sons