Accessing Whiteness: The Process Through Which Black-White Multiracial Youth and Their Parents Navigate the Education System

From school choice and tracking to school discipline and push out, there are a vast array of racialized differences in how White and Black families experience the education system. Alongside this existing scholarship, we must contend with the rise in multiraciality, a demographic shift that threatens to obscure the processes of racism due to the lack of tools and language to adequately name and address it. This dissertation project utilizes extended case method (ECM) to address this theoretical gap and explore the within-family interaction between anti-Blackness and White privilege. This research project examines how parents leverage White privilege and combat anti-Blackness on behalf of their mixed-race children—and how these efforts may inadvertently perpetuate White supremacy. The study sampled 13 families, across the United States, pulling on three major data sources: 90 minute individual youth interviews, 90 minute individual parent interviews, and 30 minute family debriefs. In alignment with the extended case method, my dissertation research extends traditional criminal justice and education theories on racial inequality (e.g. school-prison nexus, opportunity hoarding, differential selection and processing) to draw attention to how racism is adapting to an increasingly multiracial society.

The first paper is entitled “For Them to See Us”: The School Advocacy Strategies of Black-White Multiracial Families This paper focuses solely on parent interview data to explore how parents advocate for and access school-based resources on behalf of their children. All parents attempted to be seen by school staff as "involved parents” which involved countering negative stereotypes associated with their race and gender. Black mothers asserted their marital status, professional roles, and strategically deployed the presence of White fathers to gain credibility with school staff and counter stereotypes like the ‘angry Black woman’ or the ‘single Black mom’. In contrast, White moms downplayed their professional roles to avoid labels such as ‘helicopter parent’ and leveraged their social connections to lawyers and state actors in order to be seen and heard. Both Black and White fathers sought to challenge stereotypes of the “absent father” through their visible presence in schools. However, school-based advocacy was generally viewed as a maternal responsibility, with fathers more often engaging in at-home academic socialization than in-school advocacy. While many parents actively leveraged (proximity to) White privilege to advocate for their children, differing levels of racial consciousness and willingness to advocate within the family limited the effectiveness of utilizing White privilege for anti-racism.

The second paper is entitled, “They Try to Fix Something and They Make it Worse” Monoracism and Anti-Blackness within Liberal Anti-Racist School Policies. Drawing on Critical Race Theory and Multiracial Critical Race Theory, this family study examines how Black-White multiracial youth and their families experience school efforts toward diversity, equity, and anti-racism. Findings revealed that schools often reproduced anti-Blackness and monoracism through (1) anti-bias school policies which acted as a mechanism for punishment rather than protection for Black-White multiracial youth (2) school curriculum which erased multiraciality and reduced Blackness to narrow representations centered on slavery and hip-hop, and (3) school climates which limited perceived access to cultural clubs and affinity spaces. Overall, the study demonstrates the ways in which well-intentioned efforts to “fix things” or promote equity often made things worse due to their lack of attention to intersectionality, monoracism, and the unique experiences of Black-White multiracial youth.

The third paper is entitled The Police Talk, The White Friends Talk, and Other Conversation about Racism in Black-White Multiracial Families. This paper examines how parents use racial socialization strategies to prepare their children for racism. Due to the fact that many families were navigating predominantly White contexts, parents engaged in a promotion of mistrust socialization technique in which they cautioned teens against engaging in risky behaviors that their White friends take part in, like shoplifting. Parents often summarized this message as the 'you can't do what your White friends do', which served as a precursor to 'the police talk'. During the police talk, parents socialize their children to anticipate anti-Black bias and to expect treatment similar to that experienced by their monoracial Black peers. Although parents and youth generally viewed proximity to White privilege as offering little protection during police encounters themselves, some believed it could be leveraged afterward—for example, when a White parent arrived at a police station or during legal proceedings before a judge. Lastly,  parents often skipped the police talk with daughters, assuming they faced less physical manifestations of racism. Instead, their preparation for bias centered around puberty, physical appearance, dealing with 'mean girls', and academic/career success. The study extends literature on racial socialization within Black-White multiracial families by demonstrating how a predominantly White context and access to a White parent leads to unique strategies.