Black Mothering: A Study of Anti-Black Racism and a Theory and Practice for Educational Futurity
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This study examined Black mothers’ conceptualizations of systemic racism in schooling, the impacts of anti-Black racism, and resistance strategies employed to combat anti-Black racism. The study offers a praxis of Black mothering that in turn provides lessons on the complexity of anti-Black racism and engages the idea of educational futurity. Racial injustices faced by Black students in Kindergarten to Grade 12 (K12) has been well-documented; in the Canadian context, scholars have researched barriers faced by Black students, such as: higher rates of suspensions and expulsions (James & Turner, 2017); a shortage of Black teachers (Ontario Alliance of Black School Educators, 2015); a lack of Black history and curriculum (Henry, 1968); educational streaming into lower and limited pathways (Curtis, 2014; James, 2012); and overall lower expectations (James, 2012) and the “push out” (Dei et al., 1997) of Black student learners. This study engages the idea of parenting for survival and looks specifically at the role and intervention strategies of Black mothers who navigate these complex anti-Black systems. Through Black feminism (Collins, 1990, 2000; Crenshaw, 1989; Giddings, 1986; hooks, 1995, 2015; Rodgers, 2017), Black Canadian feminism (Wane, 2004, 2009, 2013; Wane et al., 2002), and African feminisms (Ogundipe, 1987; Steady, 1981; Tamale, 2008; Wane et al., 2002), the study examined how Black women’s social-political identities can help mobilize Black student learners. Findings revealed the ongoing forms of anti-Black racism faced by Black student learners; the negotiations of the raced, gendered, classed, and other forms of oppression faced by their mothers; and a continuation of historical injustices faced by Black families in the lived realities of Black mothers. Findings also revealed a theory and practice of Black mothering that engages principles of othermothering (Rodriguez, 2016; Wane et al., 2002), survival parenting (Davis, 1981), principles of African mothering (Dove, 2002), understanding and navigating complex systems through community rights, and strategies to bolster community-oriented change. The study offers a new orientation to understanding the nuances and complexity of Black mothering from a community-oriented and strength-based approach.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.012 | 0.010 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.022 | 0.015 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.006 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.007 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.006 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".