Maya believed the white middle-class mothers in her network did not share her concerns about race, so she did not raise these topics with them. She gave a concrete example of this dynamic of talking about parenting concerns but excluding anything related to race when she explained a conversation she had with a white colleague while visiting a prospective preschool for her daughter. During her visit, she had observed that the student body was all white, save for one Asian American student. On the tour, she ran into her colleague, who was very enthusiastic about the school. Maya stopped short of revealing her concerns about diversity, instead simply agreeing that it did look like a great school. Explaining her decision not to broach the topic, Maya said, “For her kid, it is great! That is the thing about it, because race is so salient in this country and because our kids are going to have to wrestle with these things, we need much more from a school space.” Maya’s words are telling when she says that “race is so salient,” yet she simultaneously acknowledges that, in her view, this is not the case for white parents.
For Maya and the other mothers in my study, it was clear that they had distinct worries related to race, gender, and class that they did not believe overlapped with those of white parents in their professional or social circles. Maya was not looking only for a school that was known for high academic achievement but also wanted a space that would be racially supportive of her children. Ultimately, a high rating in terms of academic excellence could not overcome Maya’s concerns over her daughter being the only African American child in the classroom. She enrolled her daughter in a more diverse preschool that had a lower rating for academic achievement; this was similar to compromises many mothers in my study made. She feared her daughter would feel isolated instead of experiencing school as a racially comfortable, if not empowering, environment in her early foundational years. Maya’s four children were currently in four different schools that she selected based on each child’s perceived individual talents and on each school’s level of academic achievement and diversity. Her account suggests how race and gender complicate class status and the ability of mothers and families to successfully deploy their middle-class resources when parenting their children. Although African American middle- and upper-middle-class mothers have higher incomes, those resources cannot change the demographic characteristics of the current landscape of public and private schools, extracurricular activities, and other parenting settings and their respective racial climates.
In the remainder of this chapter, I unpack the “more” that Maya and the mothers in this research believed their children needed. I examine the strategies these mothers used to meet those needs as they navigated spaces that often primarily catered to white middle-class children and their families, and in which these mothers, at times, experienced various degrees of stigma and exclusion. Mothers’ concerns over their children’s racial comfort were not activated only occasionally—instead, they were a constant part of the backdrop that informed their parental decision-making. Some of these mothers’ concerns and experiences related to race and racial stigma likely overlap with those of lower-income African American mothers, but as members of the middle-class, they had more resources to address these issues. The final part of this chapter examines how these concerns and strategies were further complicated by fears of the gendered racism that their children would confront in the future and, at times, were already navigating.
CREATING RACIAL COMFORT
For the mothers in this study, addressing race and racism and ensuring racial comfort started when their children were very young, and it was woven into their searches for places to live, childcare, schools, parks, extracurricular activities, and everyday parenting. Mothers worked to create environments for their children that sheltered them from early experiences of racism and that they hoped would protect and strengthen their racial self-esteem.
Mera, married and the stay-at-home mother of two, said she believed African American and white mothers used different decision-making criteria to raise their children. She developed this belief through her experiences attending two different mothers’ groups; one was comprised primarily of white middle-class mothers, and the other was entirely of African American middle-class mothers:
I attended [a white mothers’ group] and I would just sit there and feel like their world was completely different. There were a lot of things that they wouldn’t talk about. It was a class issue or a race issue. . . . I wouldn’t want to get super-personal with that group, whereas with the [mothers in my] black moms’ group, we could talk about anything. From sex to, you know, anything, you know, like what is going on now, and the differences in our bodies, money, and education. We talked a lot about education and preschools and stuff. . . . [The white mothers’ group] would have different priorities when it came to education. Talking about places that I would never send my kids or neighborhoods I would never live in . . . like Montclair or places like Piedmont. And, I would think, I am not going to send my children through a school in Piedmont that is all white or something.
For Mera, the racial comfort of her children was an important factor that influenced her decisions related to their educational, social, and residential environments. This was a factor she neither believed was explicitly considered by white mothers nor one she felt she could raise in the predominately white mothers’ group that she regularly attended when her children were younger. Piedmont and Montclair are both affluent and predominately white neighborhoods. Piedmont, a tiny city with its own school district, is geographically surrounded by Oakland, but its public schools have records of high academic performance and better resources than neighboring school districts. Montclair is an affluent neighborhood located in the Oakland Hills, and its schools are partially subsidized by the substantial donations from parents in the form of contributions of time and money to the parent-teacher association. Despite these favorable characteristics, Mera was not willing to enroll her children in these schools. Like Maya, Mera did not think the white mothers with whom she interacted would understand her concerns. She sought advice from other African American middle-class mothers who were navigating the same spaces and were thus facing the same issues.
Similarly, Jordana, a married mother of two, whose husband was white, described why she was not willing to live in certain neighborhoods because of concerns over how it would impact the racial makeup of her children’s peer groups. She said,
Where [my husband grew up] sounds like it was really idyllic . . . but there are not enough black people for my taste. . . . [W]hen we first got together and we were talking about where we wanted to live, he kind of was talking about that, and I was like, “Look, dude, I can’t do this, I can’t. I don’t want my children to be the only black kids at school.”
Although Jordana said she did not necessarily select her children’s school because of its level of diversity, she referred to diversity in the student body and among the teachers as “a plus.” She added, “I would never put [my children] into a situation where they were the ‘only’—where it was all or heavily one race.” Overall, mothers were less than enthusiastic about the prospect of their children attending a school or living in a neighborhood in which they would be racially isolated. The fact that their children would be one of only a few African American students in a predominately white school often outweighed a school’s record for high academic achievement. Jordana’s account also suggests how the legacy of residential segregation influences the choices of African American middle-class parents. Despite having the option to move to an area with better schools and more resources, Jordana perceived it as coming with the cost of her children, and herself, being racially isolated.
Part of these mothers’ hesitation and resistance to incurring this cost was based on their own personal experiences with racial isolation as children. Many had been the only African American (or one of the few) in school settings and neighborhoods; replicating that experience raised concerns that their children would develop unhealthy racial identities and low self-esteem. A lack of African Americans in teaching and administrative positions was also a red flag. As noted previously, when enrolling their children in schools, mothers