Colorblind and Colorlined: African American Parents Talk to Their Adolescent Sons About Racism ...

241 Pages·2015·4.79 MB·English

Colorblind and Colorlined: African American
Parents Talk to Their Adolescent Sons About
Racism
Citation
Diaquoi, Raygine C. 2015. Colorblind and Colorlined: African American Parents Talk to Their
Adolescent Sons About Racism. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard Graduate School of Education.
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http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:16461058
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Colorblind and colorlined: African American parents talk to their adolescent sons about
racism

Raygine Coutard DiAquoi

Dr. Daren Graves
Dr. Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot
Dr. Janie Ward

A Thesis Presented to the Faculty
of the Graduate School of Education of Harvard University
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
for the Degree of Doctor of Education

2015
©2015
Raygine DiAquoi
All Rights Reserved
A
 love
 letter
 to
 Black
 families

  i
Acknowledgements

To everyone who has supported me along this journey

  iv
Table of Contents

Introduction
  1

Background
 and
 context
  6

Problem
 statement
  15

Statement
 of
 purpose
 and
 research
 questions
  16

Research
 approach
  16

Assumptions
  18

The
 researcher

  19

Terms
 and
 definitions
 used
 throughout
 this
 study
  27

Literature
 review
  28

What
 we
 think
 we
 know
 about
 Black
 boys
  29

What
 we
 fail
 to
 consider
 when
 thinking
 about
 Black
  31

boys

Demographic
 correlates

  38

Messages

  40

The
 Relationship
 between
 racial
 socialization
 messages
  42

and
 time

Life
 Course
 Perspective

  44

Critical
 Race
 Theory

  49

Conceptual
 framework:
 A
 new
 theory
  55

Methodology
  58

Rationale
 for
 qualitative
 research
 design

  58

Participant
 selection

  59

Participants

  62

Data
 collection;
 In-­‐depth
 interviews
  63

Data
 collection;
 Photo
 elicitiation
  65

Data
 analysis
  67

Memoing
  67

Coding
  67

Data
 Management

  69

Conclusion

  69

Parents
 recall
 learning
 about
 racism
  74

Adolescence
 and
 encounters
 with
 police
  79

Finding
 counternarratives
  83

The
 soundtrack
 to
 a
 racialized
 adolescence
  84

From
 Yusuf
 Hawkins
 to
 Trayvon
 Martin
  88

Discussion
  92

Parents
 prepare
 their
 sons
 for
 discrimination
  102

Findings
  104

You’re
 already
 targeted

  105

Survivial
 Skills
  115

Police
 Interaction

  120

They’re
 growing
 up
 differently
  131

Discussion
  135

Reading
 between
 the
 rings
  142

Appendices
  152

Appendix
 a:
 Lyrics
 to
 ‘My
 President’
  152

Appendix
 b:
 Lyrics
 to
 ‘My
 President
 (Remix)’
  154

Appendic
 c:
 Abel
 Meeropol’s
 ‘Strangefruit’
  155

Appendix
 d:
 Interview
 protocol
  156

Appendix
 e:
 Photos
 &
 questions
 for
 visual
 elicitaition
  159

interviews

Appendix
 f:
 Letter
 drafted
 and
 sent
 to
 parents

  186

Appendix
 g:
 Description
 of
 study
 and
 consent
 from
  187

Appendix
 h:
 Summary
 memo
  189

Appendix
 i:
 Second
 memo
  190

References

  191

  v
Abstract

 Racial
 socialization,
 particularly
 preparation
 for
 bias
 and
 discrimination,
 is
 a
 long

documented
 strategy
 employed
 by
 African
 American
 families
 to
 prepare
 their

children
 for
 racist
 encounters.

 During
 the
 last
 fifteen
 years
 a
 new
 line
 of
 inquiry,

theorizing
 the
 relationship
 between
 particular
 socio-­‐historical
 periods
 and
 the

content
 of
 messages
 communicated
 to
 children
 about
 race,
 has
 emerged.

 Scholars

have
 started
 exploring
 African
 Americans’
 narratives
 about
 the
 messaging
 they

received
 about
 racism
 against
 the
 backdrop
 of
 the
 social
 and
 historical
 period
 in

which
 they
 came
 of
 age.
 In
 the
 period
 before
 the
 Brown
 v.
 Board
 decision
 many

recalled
 hearing
 messages
 of
 the
 importance
 of
 deferring
 to
 whites.
 After
 the

landmark
 decision
 and
 into
 the
 post-­‐protest
 era,
 many
 reported
 hearing
 messages

that
 were
 less
 focused
 on
 fearing
 whites
 and
 more
 focused
 on
 feeling
 pride
 as
 a

Black
 person
 and
 in
 the
 Black
 race.

 Overall,
 messages
 have
 accurately
 reflected
 the

then
 current
 state
 of
 racism
 and
 the
 particular
 etiquette
 required
 of
 African

Americans
 to
 navigate
 a
 racially
 structured
 society.
 Furthermore,
 a
 look
 at
 changes

in
 messaging
 over
 time
 suggests
 progress
 made
 on
 issues
 of
 racism.
 The
 experiences

of
 the
 hip-­‐hop
 generation,
 those
 born
 between
 1965
 and
 1984,
 have
 not
 been

documented.

 This
 study
 explored
 the
 messages
 that
 they
 received
 about
 racism

along
 with
 the
 messages
 that
 they
 are
 currently
 sharing
 with
 their
 sons
 in
 a
 period

equally
 marked
 by
 colorblind
 rhetoric
 and
 virulent
 anti-­‐black
 racism.
 Using
 the

theoretical
 frameworks
 of
 Critical
 Race
 Theory
 and
 the
 Life
 Course
 Perspective,
 I

conducted
 51
 interviews
 with
 17
 families.
 Today’s
 African
 American
 parents

  vi
continue
 to
 convey
 many
 of
 the
 messages
 that
 their
 families
 shared
 with
 them,

about
 the
 importance
 of
 individual
 and
 group
 pride,
 but
 there
 has
 been
 a
 distinct

and
 unexpected
 addition
 to
 the
 content
 of
 the
 talks
 that
 they
 are
 having
 with
 their

sons.
 Eerily
 similar
 to
 the
 messages
 conveyed
 to
 children
 pre
 Brown
 v.
 Board,

parents’
 messaging
 about
 race
 largely
 urged
 compliance,
 fear
 of
 whites,
 and
 fear
 of

figures
 of
 authority.

  vii
Chapter 1
Introduction
“You know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot I said that this could have been my son.
Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me thirty-five years ago.
And when you think about why, in the African American community at least, there’s a lot
of pain around what happened here, I think it’s important to recognize that the African
American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history
that doesn’t go away.”
- Barack Obama on The Trayvon Martin Verdict
Emmett Till could’ve been my uncle. He died the year that my mother was born.
Despite his death, he played a significant role in my upbringing, sitting with me long
after my mother’s conversations about racism, a symbol of a history of injury that would
never, as President Obama explained after the acquittal of George Zimmerman1, remain
in the past. Emmett’s story was a reminder that I was never too far from meeting a
similar end. The physical threat of racism was a common theme in my mother’s
discussions with me about race. These kinds of talks are emblematic of a long existing
private practice of socialization that occurs in many Black families (Hughes et. al., 2006;
Hughes et. al., 2008). Following the death of Trayvon Martin these conversations, or “the
talk” as they came to be known suddenly became of great interest to the general public.

1 See Remarks by the President on Trayvon Martin (2013) for the full transcript of the press release.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/07/19/remarks-president-trayvon-martin

  1
On blogs, television, and radio, parents of young and adult Black children shared
their experiences receiving “the talk” at some point in their own youth and now preparing
to discuss racism with their own children. As I had grown up in the shadow of Emmett
Till’s death, an entire generation of Black children would now grow up under the pall of
horror cast by the death of Trayvon Martin. Trayvon Martin would now be a cautionary
tale about the dangers of Blackness. Common to all descriptions of the “the talk” was a
sense of the need to prepare one’s child for discrimination. Specifically, parents
expressed the importance of prepping their African American child for encounters with
officers of the law. For a moment, a national conversation about the strategies used by
Black parents to raise their children, and by extension the continued impact of racism,
seemed imminent. Unfortunately, “the talk” was reduced to ready-for-TV and radio
sound bites and came to have a singular and simplistic meaning, which betrayed the
complexity and nuance of the larger practice of socialization of which these
conversations are a part. This dissertation study continues the conversation opened up to
the general public by Trayvon Martin’s death by exploring “the talk” beyond the single
themed conversation that has been popularized in the media.
Prior research makes clear that the messages communicated to children about
race— and the significance of being Black in a racial hierarchy that devalues
Blackness—by their parents are the product of three factors: the fit and applicability of
the messages conveyed to parents as children to their current experiences with racism, the
treatment of racism and the headway made towards tackling racial inequality in the
parents’ life time, and parents’ assessment of the racial etiquette demands of the period in
which their children are becoming adolescents (Brown & Lesane, 2006). Thus, in order to

  2