Strategic Mothering PDF

Riche J. Daniel Barnes SHE WAS A TWIN: BLACK STRATEGIC MOTHERING, RACE-WORK, AND THE POLITICS OF SURVIVAL Abstract activities, which often required them to make important shi...

Riche J. Daniel Barnes SHE WAS A TWIN: BLACK STRATEGIC MOTHERING, RACE-WORK, AND THE POLITICS OF SURVIVAL Abstract activities, which often required them to make important shifts in their commitments to their This article, a part of the “Sorrow as Artifact: Rad- careers (Barnes 2016). ical Black Mothering in Times of Terror,” session The 23 women participants talked about their given at the American Anthropological Association dedication to their children’s concerted cultivation Meetings, 2014, grew out of ethnographic interviews (Lareau 2003) as not only important to their indi- conducted with African American upper-middle-class vidual and familial success but also to the success women living in Atlanta, Georgia and navigating of what they viewed as “the Black community.”2 decisions regarding career, marriage and family. Over the course of the ethnographic interviews, Conversations that originally bore out Black elite however, it became clear that there were some women’s turn to the “neo-politics of respectability” women whose concerns about their children’s well- as a strategy for mothering in the 21st century were being had begun long before their children were of further supported following the media coverage of school age, often beginning while their children the deaths of Black, primarily young people, at the were in the womb or just after they had given hands of White male assailants. In this article, I birth. In particular, three of the women in the ini- explore the conundrum many elite African American tial study, whose experiences I highlight in this women experience when trying to raise and protect article, believed that their commitment to racial their children. On one hand, African American uplift as Black professional women resulted in women implement a strategy I call race-work to their miscarriages, still births, and other pregnancy protect their children. African American mothers and childbirth complications. While they did not talk to their children, implement and enforce rules have a name for the extra time and attention they of decorum, and extend their mothering practices to gave to their careers and volunteer service in Black other members of the Black community in an effort communities, nor how that time and effort affected to uplift the race. On the other hand, their race- them and their unborn children, they discussed work strategies may be resulting in unintended their pregnancy and childbirth complications as health consequences to their pregnant bodies that in the result of stress incurred because of their com- some cases result in illness or even death of their mitment to what they referred to as “the Black unborn children. [Black mothers, health, survival] community.” In this essay, I develop the term “race-work,” to define the experiences of these three women and When 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was killed in to add to the growing body of literature on gen- 2012 for essentially walking down the street while dered and raced health disparities. I build on the Black, and his assailant, George Zimmerman, was early 20th century race-man/race-woman frame- acquitted, many of the 23 moms I interviewed and work that suggested Black people had a responsi- observed in my multi-year ethnographic study of bility to uplift the Black race. I couple this Black professional women in Atlanta, Georgia, framework with the understanding articulated by who were married with children, were reminded of the women in my study who, on the one hand, why they have to be concerned with the way Black choose professions and outreach initiatives where people, especially their children, are viewed by they can directly help members of Black communi- White society.1 Attention to their children’s pre- ties and, on the other hand, experience raced and sentation of self consumed a good deal of these gendered stress loads that have a negative effect women’s time as they shuffled their children to on their families, and their unborn children in and from academic, athletic, and extra-curricular particular. Transforming Anthropology, Vol. 24, Number 1, pp. 49–60, ISSN 1051-0559, electronic ISSN 1548-7466. © 2016 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/traa.12060. 49  15487466, 2016, 1, Downloaded from https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/traa.12060 by University Of Texas Libraries, Wiley Online Library on [19/08/2024]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License While the sample size is notably small, I draw children are born. As I interviewed each of the 23 attention to these women’s narratives for two pri- women who participated in my study about how mary reasons: (1) to expose the fact that these they navigated their work and family lives, 11 of experiences would not have been found without the 23 women who participated revealed that they ethnographic research on Black women’s everyday had experienced miscarriages. Of those 11, two lived experiences, and (2) to develop “race-work” were first time pregnancies, four had more than as a theoretical perspective that deserves further one miscarriage, one had a stillbirth, and one was exploration within race, health, and gender related unable to conceive at all. research, not just for Black women in their child- bearing years but especially within the context of RACE, CLASS, AND MOTHERHOOD the growing anti-racist movements of the early As Arlie Hochschild discussed in The Second Shift 21st century. I suggest it will be increasingly (1989), while women have made considerable incumbent upon ethnographers to find ways to strides in their careers, their overwhelming respon- explore, identify, and explain the experiences of sibility for the care of the home and its related sec- Black women and others whose lived experiences tors produces invisible work that maintains gender remain largely invisible, and of people doing inequalities. Studies have shown that this invisible “race-work” (often one and the same), and the work also produces invisible health effects for effects, which are often silent and/or chronic, on women and their children (Luke et al. 1999). And their health. In the case of Black women in their coping in a racist society is another form of invisi- child-bearing years, not only does this have an ble work with potentially more pernicious health effect on their lives but also on the lives of their effects (Jackson et al. 2001; Mullings 2005; Mul- unborn and newborn children. lings and Wali 2001). Most of the studies investigating race and RACED AND GENDERED EFFECTS OF health disparities have focused on low-birth weight RACISM and high mortality and morbidity rates among the In Raising the Race: Black Career Women Redefine lower class, underclass, and working class (Braith- Marriage, Motherhood and Community, I engage waite and Taylor 1992; Clark et al. 1999; Mullings the lessons taught by mothers and passed down to and Wali 2001). Finding that these populations daughters as it relates to marriage and mother- experience adverse pregnancy outcomes due to hood. In this study I first conducted in-depth unequal access to prenatal healthcare, recent stud- interviews with 23 married women in a three-year ies have shown African-American women are more intensive ethnographic study in Atlanta, GA, likely to experience gestational diabetes, preg- including contextualized life histories and partici- nancy-induced hypertension or preeclampsia, and pant observation of their families. I subsequently low-birth-weight babies than other groups, even re-interviewed the women over a year-long period when controlling for class (McGrady et al 1992). with the understanding that families are constantly Finding that Black middle-class women continue responding to planned and unforeseen changes. I to face high rates of miscarriage and increased conclude that Black women make career and fam- instances of infertility (Jackson et al. 2001; Pais- ily decisions in accordance with a long history of ley-Cleveland 2013), scholars have turned to an strategic mothering by Black women for the bet- examination of the lived experience of race and terment of Black people. Strategic mothering is a gender to explain higher rates of infant mortality framework I develop to account for the myriad and other pregnancy complications. ways in which Black mothers continuously navi- Additionally, scholars have repeatedly noted gate and redefine their relationship with work to the terror Black people feel when they have to best fit the needs of their families and their com- explain to their children and protect their children munities.3 Because Black women’s roles as labor- from the violent deaths of young Black people ers (both as workers and their capacity to under the age of 18, by authorities both official reproduce laborers) has been foundational to the and unofficial.4 But according to public health development of the U.S. nation-state, I define scholars, the fear of losing a child begins long strategic mothering as a way to discuss African- before young Black people like Trayvon Martin, American women’s roles as mothers and workers Michael Brown, or Renisha McBride’s mothers as multifold and multipurpose, often changing receive the news that their children are dead. over the life course (Barnes 2016:2–3). Accord- Scholars are increasingly turning their attention to ingly, strategic Black mothering begins before our the ways in which racism may be negatively affecting 50 TRANSFORMING ANTHROPOLOGY VOL. 24(1)  15487466, 2016, 1, Downloaded from https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/traa.12060 by University Of Texas Libraries, Wiley Online Library on [19/08/2024]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License pregnancy outcomes for African-American women Higginbotham, at the turn of the 20th century, (Jackson et al. 2001; Mullings 2005; Roberts 1997). race signified for African Americans a cultural These negative effects are not only due to the often- identity that “defined and connected them as a limited access to prenatal care as a result of struc- people, even as a nation. [Accordingly] [i]n this tural racism but may also be due to internalized context, to be called a ‘race leader’, ‘race-man’, or stress. Indeed a study conducted by a team of a ‘race-woman’ by the Black community was not a anthropologists, sociologists, and public health sign of insult or disapproval, nor did such titles scholars cited college educated Black women’s fears refer to any and every black person. Quite the of bringing a child into the world, especially a boy contrary, they were conferred on...the men and child, as a primary concern when evaluating nega- women who devoted their lives to the advance- tive pregnancy and birth outcomes (Jackson et al. ment of their people.” Higginbotham continues, 2001:95). A response to this fear is often a desire to “When the National Association of Colored change society and/or protect against racism. Women referred to its activities as “race-work,” it Correspondingly, scholars found that Black expressed both allegiance and commitment to the women were often employed in professions where concerns of black people” (Higginbotham they could help change society or they participated 1992:267). in community initiatives designed to protect Noting the importance of this framework for against racism (Jackson et al. 2001). Many of the fashioning race into a cultural identity that African-American women in my study experienced resisted White hegemonic discourses, Higgin- perinatal complications with one or more of their botham nevertheless recognizes the paradoxical pregnancies, and these complications often effects this “race-work” performed by “race affected (although not always directly) their deci- women” had and continues to have on Black sions to modify their relationships with work. As women. By subscribing to the notion that present- stated previously, they often explained these com- ing Victorian virtues would protect Black women plications as a result of their work on behalf of from, and garner the respect of, the White gaze, the race. This self-described attention to the bet- and by exploding negative stereotypes of Black terment of Black people is what I call “race- women, the resistance measure employed through work” and is rooted in activist strategies “racial uplift” simply locked Black women and employed by the Black women’s club movement Black people as a whole within hegemonic notions developed at the turn of the 20th century wherein of gender, class, and sexuality that only “pro- Black women were called upon to utilize their tected” the Black elite and those who were willing comportment, education, and skills to uplift the and able to conform. Black race. The convergence of Black women’s Nevertheless, the race-work of these 20th cen- concerns about their pregnancy and childbirth tury women, many of whom were mothers them- outcomes alongside the potential for harm that selves or were women who chose to focus their may come to their children through state- energies on mothering the race, was radical and sanctioned violence deserves increased attention modeled how to bring about change when few as we seek ways to analyze and change these strategies were working. These women combined conditions (Mwaria 2001). their public engagement with racial uplift with their mothering practices in their own homes, THE HISTORY OF RACE-WORK viewing their importance to the race as one in the Black women have been strategizing for the sur- same. For example, Ida B. Wells was drawn to her vival of their families and communities since slav- anti-lynching campaign long before she was a ery. At the turn of the 21st century their strategies mother when she was notified that a dear friend, harken back to a former era in which Black Thomas Moss, had been lynched in 1889 because women were organized and active in a fight his grocery store was in competition with a White- against their continued devaluation. In “African owned store across the street. This incident radi- American Women’s History and the Metalanguage calized her already activist spirit and she continued of Race” (1992), Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham her political activism on behalf of her race and draws our attention to the ways in which “race,” gender. Wells married an attorney named Ferdi- originally used to denigrate Blacks in a White nand Barnett who had similar activist goals and supremacist system, was reclaimed to empower interests; Wells-Barnett, at the then ripe age of African Americans by imbuing it (race) with its thirty, decided that she would not let her activism own valuable meaning and intent. According to prevent her from being a mother nor allow being Riche J. Daniel Barnes 51  15487466, 2016, 1, Downloaded from https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/traa.12060 by University Of Texas Libraries, Wiley Online Library on [19/08/2024]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License a mother to prevent her from her work (Giddings canceled a missionary engagement to join her 2008). She combined her activism with her role as sick daughter Selena, who died a few days a mother and wife. after her mother’s return home. She never Wells-Barnett’s first child, a son, was born in again canceled a missionary engagement, for March, 1896; soon after, the Plessy v. Ferguson her daughter’s death had taught her that “she Supreme Court decision of May 1896 declared could stay home and sit by the bedside of her that state laws that provided separate but equal children and have all the assistance that medi- accommodations were constitutional. She learned cal skill could render, and yet God could take that the Tennessee Supreme Court ruling against her children to himself if he so willed it.” her in her court case against the segregated seating (Higginbotham 1993:130). aboard the Memphis and Charleston Railway in 1887 was used to establish precedent in Plessy, While Broughton’s decision to leave an ailing child and she became even more focused on her work. at home while she completed her work on behalf She continued her political activism, giving of the race seems much harsher on its surface than speeches against lynching and for women’s suf- Wells-Barnett’s decision to take a nursing child frage (Giddings 2008:371), all with her baby in along with her while she completed her work on tow. She reportedly wrote in her journal, “I hon- behalf of the race, both were engaged in what I estly believe that I am the only woman in the Uni- call race-work. In each case, Wells-Barnett and ted States who ever travelled throughout the Broughton blurred the line between biological country with a nursing baby to make political mothering, community mothering, and political speeches” (Giddings 2008:377). Well-Barnett and activism (McDonald 1997). other women of the Black women’s club move- The race-work established by Wells-Barnett, ment developed an ethic of care that had been Broughton, and others as the turn of the 20th cen- passed down since slavery and was different from tury was radical but often in contradictory ways, White women’s and Black men’s forms of acti- and remains so today. Both revealed the notion vism. According to Katrina Bell McDonald who that Black middle-class women should remain con- writes about “Black activist mothering,” “Black nected to the Black community through a cross- women’s community activism [has historically class ethic of care established at the turn of the been] driven by their shared, gendered experience 20th century with the “uplift movement.” Even of slavery and has developed primarily out of their when Black middle-class women reportedly partici- mothering practices... Their unique race/gender pated in what has been called “black flight” (Wil- status has strongly influenced how they define son 1987), moving away from urban centers in the family and community and how they determine 1970s and 1980s, there was a feeling of responsibil- which political strategies are best suited to meet ity and “social debt” in which Black women of the the needs of Black women, their families, and their middle class are to be held “morally culpable” if race as a whole” (McDonald 1997:776). they do not help their less fortunate sisters Similarly, Virginia Broughton, a schooltea- (McDonald 1997:776). cher, missionary with the American National Bap- Until recently, while scholars have challenged tist Convention (forerunner to the National the historic effectiveness and contemporary persis- Baptist Convention), advocate of women’s rights, tence of the 20th century “uplift” movement as and married mother of five, spent little time actu- creating a false notion of a collective Black com- ally mothering her children (Higginbotham munity and illuminating the intra-class conflict 1993:130). She sometimes took them on her mis- within it, most of this contestation has been a the- sion trips, but for the most part believed they were oretical exercise for academics (with the exception in good hands when she left them at home with of Cathy Cohen’s (1999) work on the Black com- older siblings, family members, or “good women munity’s “respectable” response to HIV/AIDS) or secured from time to time” (Higginbotham a jockey for authenticity by the media (i.e., the 1993:130). According to Higginbotham, Jay-Z/Harry Belafonte wars).5 The recent inquiry into what appears to be an Although she wrote lovingly of her children in increase in police brutality against unarmed Black her autobiography, Broughton undoubtedly people has engaged the media, the public, and valued her missionary work above every other scholars in attempts to understand and grab hold responsibility. This is clearly revealed in the of State authorized violence. For many, the case of her daughter’s illness. Broughton killings and subsequent acquittals and/or reduced 52 TRANSFORMING ANTHROPOLOGY VOL. 24(1)  15487466, 2016, 1, Downloaded from https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/traa.12060 by University Of Texas Libraries, Wiley Online Library on [19/08/2024]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License sentences for White assailants feel eerily similar to decorum based on Victorian mores. While many lynchings and other forms of mass violence were cognizant that their efforts should be for the against, and mass incarceration of, Black people benefit of the Black women in the worst condi- at the turn of the 20th century (Alexander 2010; tions, it was often difficult for club women to stave Muhammad 2011). But it is Giddings, who in her off judgmental attitudes toward those less fortu- essay “It’s Time for a Twenty-first Century Anti- nate than themselves, and parameters on member- Lynching Movement,” centers the ways in which ship often fell along class lines (White 1999). Black women like Ida B. Wells-Barnett made con- While this “politics of respectability”7 was indeed nections between their struggles and those of problematic, the strategy reveals the ways in which Black men by connecting race and gender in an Black women’s attempts to reform the American effort to end violence and devaluation of Black system of race-relations swung from radical to men and women. Giddings states, “With the conservative. understanding that racial violence against men was Writing about the women’s movement in the also a women’s issue, and that violence against Black Baptist church, Higginbotham denotes the women was both a race and gender issue, black inherent contradictions Black women embodied as women (of the 20th century club movement) made they reinforced the hegemonic values of White anti-lynching activism a central tenet of their orga- America while simultaneously subverting and nizations long before the NAACP was founded.”6 transforming the logic of race and gender subordi- nation (1993:187–188). In the midst of the plethora RACE-WORK, UPLIFT IDEOLOGY, AND THE of negative stereotypes being embedded in the BLACK CLASS DIVIDE public consciousness about Black women, Black When the elite women of the Black women’s club Baptist women introduced alternative images of movement linked the fate of the Black community Black women. to their own, they were not introducing a novel idea. White Americans had already created the By claiming respectability through their man- parameters that would define and bind what ners and morals, poor black women boldly became the Black community. Through the “one- asserted the will and agency to define them- drop rule,” Jim Crow laws, scientific racism, the selves outside the parameters of prevailing roll-back of the political and economic gains of racist discourses.... [Black women’s] appeals the Reconstruction period, and mobrule, Black to respectable behavior were also explicit people were viewed as the same and were meted rejections of Social Darwinist explanations of out the same treatment regardless of their educa- blacks’ biological inferiority to whites. tion-level or stature in society. In addition, with Respectability was perceived as a weapon the introduction of childhood as a developmental against such assumptions, since it was used to life stage, women, both Black and White, were expose race-relations as socially constructed viewed as responsible for the proper development rather than derived by evolutionary law or of their children, and correspondingly, the stature divine judgment. (Higginbotham 1993:192) of their families and communities. It was within this context that Black women of the Progressive Today, as the Black community continues to Era developed a response to the harsh conditions be comprised of a majority poor and working class under which Black women lived and raised their population with a relatively small upper-middle children, often without protections from the State class and elite population, the question of uplift or Black men (Roberts 2005). As a result, Black through respectability politics continues to res- club women believed they had to protect their race onate. The paradoxical effects of racial uplift ide- and their gender. Accordingly they developed two ology and it’s vehicle, race-work, among the Black strategies; (1) the development of educational and elite highlight its contradictions. According to Joy communal programs for the Black community, James, writing on the Talented Tenth, and (2) focused efforts on changing the treatment of Black women—and by extension Black commu- As a concept mothering evinces forms of com- nities—by White men and women, and Black men. munity caretaking sometimes supportive of, Because these efforts were led by educated, mid- sometimes antithetical to, radical black intel- dle-class Black women, who were often of mulatto lectualism. Contradictory images of mothering heritage, their plan for racial uplift was deemed in black resistance reflect the larger society’s classist and elitist as they taught and enforced a bipolar stereotypes of the “good mother” and Riche J. Daniel Barnes 53  15487466, 2016, 1, Downloaded from https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/traa.12060 by University Of Texas Libraries, Wiley Online Library on [19/08/2024]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License the “bad mother” (sometimes the latter repre- lant about how they are perceived, particularly in sent the woman who counters violence with light of the recent deaths of unarmed young Black violence.)8 Most mothers, rather than school people. The 23 women I interviewed believed that their children in radical resistance to domi- in addition to their stable marriages, quiet nance, teach them to get along in order to sur- suburbs, and their commitment to strategic assimi- vive, with coping strategies that create new lation (Lacy 2007), they had to control the images forms of covert resistance to subjugation. presented of young Black people, including but (James 1997:120–121) not limited to their own children, in order for them to stand a chance at survival—both figura- James continues, citing Bernice Johnson Reagon, a tively and literally. For instance, following SNCC leader and organizer with the Mississippi Trayvon Martin’s murder and the subsequent Freedom Democratic Party, who said “Black non-indictment of George Zimmerman, Natalie, a women are nationalists in our efforts to form a middle-school teacher and married mom of three, nation that will survive in this society, and we are with one son, said she had to ask her son to stop also the major cultural carriers and passers-on of wearing his hood if it wasn’t raining or cold. the traditions of our people...Such women,” However, after having asked him to make the James continues, “create ‘a black space’ where modification she said, African-American life can grow as “nationalistic, cultural, and also revolutionary” (James 1997:121). But then I remembered the news said it was Reading Black women’s activism from the raining when Trayvon came out of the store. Club movement through the Civil Rights move- Yeah it’s not right that we have to raise our ment, Joy James (1997), agreeing with Angela kids like this, especially our boys, but we have Davis (1972), highlights the importance of Black to show them [Whites] that “thugs” aren’t the women’s strategies for self, children, and commu- only young Black men out there. We have to nity survival and finds the creation of “a black present a different image so the next time a space” to be a form of “revolutionary” radical George Zimmerman sees a Black boy he Black mothering. Black women’s race-work oper- doesn’t automatically think he’s a criminal. ates as the creation of a Black space in that Black Maybe he’ll pause for a minute and think ‘oh women work in particular professions with an eye that Black boy is just walking home from the toward racial uplift, not just for the Black commu- store’. Maybe he’ll think ‘that Black boy is nity but to change the perspectives of Whites as somebody’s son.” well. Black club women saw working within the But Natalie has been afraid for her son in community to educate and promote moral behav- the past. Just after Natalie had her second ior for the betterment of the Black race and to daughter, 3 years before she had her son, she suf- protect Black women from the stereotypical views fered a major complication. She said, “With my of Black women and the Black race by White men second pregnancy... I had a big bleed from my and women, and by Black men as their goal. A uterus after delivery. I fell and I thought that 21st century reading of race-work continues to sit- was what caused it, but I was told it just hap- uate it within a perspective that sees racial uplift pens. I lost a lot of blood and... I was near as important to the welfare of the Black commu- death. When all of that happened, Charles (Nata- nity, but the strategies employed are somewhat lie’s husband) was scared and wanted to feel like different. Today, Black women root their work on I would be safe and be here. He was really afraid behalf of the race in both protective measures for I was going to die.” Natalie and her daughter their own and the community’s children, and in were fine but when she got pregnant with her son working in particular careers for the betterment of she was afraid she might have another perinatal the Black community. In each case, creating what complication. “Even though Chelsea was fine and I conceptualize as strategic mothering. what happened to me had nothing to do with her, I was just scared. It felt like once I had one ETHNOGRAPHIES OF THE HEALTH complication I could have another. Especially EFFECTS OF BLACK WOMEN’S RACE- since they didn’t know what caused it.” Natalie WORK demonstrated considerable ambivalence when dis- The Black women I interviewed assert that young cussing the need to protect her children and she people in particular should be conscious and vigi- is not alone. 54 TRANSFORMING ANTHROPOLOGY VOL. 24(1)  15487466, 2016, 1, Downloaded from https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/traa.12060 by University Of Texas Libraries, Wiley Online Library on [19/08/2024]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License Kalia, a social worker at a nonprofit organiza- unborn children. While these health effects need to tion specializing in youth services, was diagnosed be addressed through individual and communal with preeclampsia during her first pregnancy. action, I am careful to assert real change is rooted Eight months into the pregnancy she was rushed in institutional changes to the American body poli- to the hospital with a persistent nose-bleed. Once tic. Nevertheless, because of the history of struc- she arrived at the hospital, her blood pressure was tural racism, Black mothers have to contend with, so high that her physician induced labor. Her doc- consider, and perform tasks not required of their tors had no idea why she developed preeclampsia. White counterparts. This creates additional stres- She was not in a high-risk category because she sors that impinge on Black mothers. In response, was in her late 20s and was an otherwise healthy Black mothers create myriad strategies and mecha- young woman. According to Linda Burke-Gallo- nisms to protect themselves and their children. way, physician with the Preeclampsia Foundation, Nancy described being eight months pregnant African-American women are three times more with her first child and working 12-hour shifts as likely to die from preeclampsia and other child- an internist in a clinic treating people who were birth-related issues. In fact, Web MD cautions either uninsured or on Medicaid. She knew she pregnant women that one of the risk factors for was doing a lot but she thought she could handle preeclampsia is being African American. Corre- it. “I was coming home exhausted and one night I spondingly, scholars have found discrimination to came home, got something to eat, fell asleep, got be a high stress factor in the work place with up the next day for work, came home again harmful effects. However, studies that have exhausted and realized I had not felt the baby explored “token stress” (defined as numerical rar- move in that entire twenty-four hour period. I ity by race) reveal a different level of harmful started trying to get her to move but there was no stress in which people are not responding to overt response. I called my doctor, went into the hospi- discrimination, but to loss of Black identity, multi- tal and they induced labor. She was stillborn and I ple demands on being Black, a sense of isolation, was devastated.” As we talked it was clear that and having to show greater competence (Jackson Nancy felt a lot of guilt concerning the loss of her et al. 1995). first child. “It was really difficult to try again,” she In Kalia’s case, both token stress and race- relayed. “I was so scared I would lose another work stress might have been operable. Kalia said child.” Nancy cut back her hours for her second she went into social work because she had a pregnancy, determined not to lose it. While Nancy responsibility to what she calls the Black commu- had a successful second pregnancy, there were still nity. Believing that White people get most of their some complications: she had a single birth that understanding of Black people from the media, started as a twin. “We lost one of them,” Nancy which creates huge problems when trying to dis- said. “Akhila (her 3-year-old) would have had a seminate human services, Kalia said, “I work with twin but I lost that one very early in my preg- African American families and I struggle with that nancy and it was basically a situation where the environment that is not always understanding of fetus was unable to thrive.” While Nancy knew African American families. The volunteers are the textbook answer to the loss of one of the mostly Caucasian. Staff and volunteers have to be twins, she could not help but feel that one was her prepared to work with African American families fault too. After Akhila’s birth, Nancy and Aaron and understand family history. They have to (her husband) conceived another child and decided understand that these families are hard-working she should stay home indefinitely. “I just remem- and that they are building on our ancestors. They ber coming home one day, being pregnant, and have to know the history.” Kalia sees it as her running around with a toddler and I thought; I responsibility, as one of few Black women in her cannot do this anymore.” office and in her level of leadership, to not only Nancy and Aaron talked and while it had teach the staff and volunteers but to demonstrate been their plan for her to continue working a the richness of the African-American family life while longer so they could pay back student loans experience. and get his construction firm on a more stable Narratives from the three women I focus on ground, they knew for Nancy’s health and the sta- in this article suggest that race-work, while seen as bility of their family, she had to leave her job and beneficial to the Black community, is detrimental they had to put all of their focus on the firm. But to the health of all Black people; but is particu- for Nancy, the effect was more than just leaving a larly detrimental for Black mothers and their job. She had dreamed since she was a little girl Riche J. Daniel Barnes 55  15487466, 2016, 1, Downloaded from https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/traa.12060 by University Of Texas Libraries, Wiley Online Library on [19/08/2024]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License being raised by her grandmother, that she would for the community. This perspective, crystallized be a doctor and she would help her community. in the National Association of Colored Women’s9 Her mother and father were teenagers when motto—Lifting As We Climb—goes back a full Nancy was born in her small, rural Texas town, century (Giddings 1984; Shaw 1996; White 1999). and the entire community had rallied in support Unlike the White women of the Victorian era, of their small family to send first her father to col- Black women subscribed to the elite habits of mar- lege and then her mother to nursing school, while riage, and domesticity, but through uplift ideology she stayed with her grandmother. “We all had and the politics of respectability they also believed work to do,” said Nancy. “That’s how I was they had to speak and be active for the equal raised. There was a responsibility to the commu- rights and protections owed the Black community nity.” Nancy was a bright child; she did well in (Higginbotham 1993; Roberts 2005). But it is a school and earned a full scholarship to an elite his- difficult balance, one in which Black women often torically Black college. She went to medical school feel divided against themselves (White 1999). at an Ivy League school, completed her residency At the time of the initial study, Natalie was back in the South, married her college sweetheart the lead teacher at a middle school with an inter- who had just completed law school, and decided national baccalaureate program where she was to begin her career by participating in a program only one of two African American teachers in the where she would treat poor and uninsured people school. She admittedly faced a lot of pressures, in an Atlanta clinic. For Nancy, leaving the clinic, and because she was married with three children even if it was for her health and the well-being of of her own, she often felt herself being pulled in her family, meant leaving her community. “I knew multiple directions. Scholars have noted that Black I was making a difference,” she explained. “That’s women work and have historically worked a third why I became a physician. Not being able to do shift. Lynda Dickson, writing about the Black that, even though I know the stress was killing me Women’s Clubs in Denver (1900–25), explains that and my children, was hard.” their club work created a third shift in which they Similarly, Natalie explained that despite hav- contributed to racial uplift efforts within their ing perinatal complications that almost resulted in communities (Dickson 1997). Angela Davis wrote her death, she had a responsibility, as a schooltea- about this work in her essay “Reflections on the cher, to return to work. She said, “both moms Black Woman’s Role in the Community of [her Mom and mother-in-law] wanted me to stay Slaves.” Performing the drudgery of the household home [to be a stay at home mom]. But I couldn’t. and the field, she writes, the Black enslaved I went back to work five weeks after she [her woman, daughter] was born. It was too soon. Doctors said wait six to eight weeks. But it was not part of my even as she was suffering under her unique experience that women did not work.” What oppression as female, she was thrust by the Natalie is referring to when she discusses a need to force of circumstances into the center of the return to work, despite her own health concerns, slave community. She was, therefore, essential is Black women’s practical and ideological per- to the survival of the community. Not all peo- spective on work. Natalie explained that while ple have survived enslavement; hence her sur- most of the White teachers she worked with did vival-oriented activities were themselves a not return to work following childbirth, she never form of resistance. Survival, moreover, was considered not returning. “My kids need me,” the prerequisite of all higher levels of struggle. Natalie said, “especially the Black ones. They need (Davis 1972:87) to know that I am there for them.” Natalie comments on two of the prevailing When George Zimmerman was acquitted for themes in this article. She refers to her students as killing unarmed child Trayvon Martin, many of her kids. As such she is vested in their success and the moms I interviewed told me they were to tending to their needs. Second, she responds to reminded of why they have to change the way the stereotypes that denigrate Black women as Black people are viewed by White society. Their lazy, welfare mothers. Natalie and other Black conversations and cries for action are similar to middle- and upper-middle-class women have devel- those of some of the women who have actually oped a cultural response that privileges the profes- lost their unarmed children to police violence. For sional roles of Black women as not simply getting instance, when the police body camera footage a job but having that job mean something to or was released of the University of Cincinnati police 56 TRANSFORMING ANTHROPOLOGY VOL. 24(1)  15487466, 2016, 1, Downloaded from https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/traa.12060 by University Of Texas Libraries, Wiley Online Library on [19/08/2024]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License officer who killed unarmed Sam DuBose, his a breath in my body, I will fight to the end.”13 In mother, Audrey DuBose, and sister, Tiera Allen, an even more radical response, Trayvon Martin’s expressed joy and relief that the video helped to and Jordan Davis’ mothers, Sybrina Fulton and vindicate Sam and would not be able to paint him Lucy McBath, have become activists following the as “a thug in the neighborhood.”10 Like Kalia, killings of their sons. Each has been a part of the Natalie, Nancy, and many of the women in my #BlackLivesMatter movement and have offered ethnographic study, there continues to be concern their support to other mothers whose children over the ways Black people are portrayed in the have been killed. media and the ways that portrayal allows for a No matter their actions in search of some public sentiment that justifies their deaths at the semblance of peace, the toll on their bodies and hands of police. Some of these women often go on their minds is incomprehensible. Eric Garner’s to forgive their children’s assailants. DuBose’s mother, Gwen Carr, recalled the day’s events when mother stated, “I can forgive him. I can forgive she received news of her son’s death, stating, “I anybody. God forgave us.” Judy Scott, the mother just, like sort of lost my mind.”14 While she was of Walter Scott, who was killed by a Charleston, reportedly out with family and friends at a church South Carolina police officer, said that she felt event a year after the death of her son, Gloria “forgiveness in her heart for the officer who mur- Darden, the mother of Freddy Gray, an unarmed dered her son.”11 Black man killed while in police custody in Balti- But a recent report by Clutch magazine begged more, was rushed to the hospital following a sui- the question: “Why are Black families, particularly cide attempt. Darden has had a life that shines Black mothers, asked by the media to publicly for- light on each of the issues I have revealed here. give the assailants of their children, often at the According to news reports, before receiving the beginning stages of their grief?” Answering her settlement from the city of Baltimore in the unlaw- own question, reporter Britni Danielle wrote, ful killing of her son, Darden had already received a settlement from the city when her children Because of our history in America, Black peo- incurred adverse health effects from living in a ple aren’t given space to be publicly angry, home that exposed them to toxic levels of lead because when we are, it feeds into deep-seated poisoning. While they received a settlement, the stereotypes about our supposed animalistic harmful effects to the children, who had already nature. Far too often, expressing ourselves been born prematurely, were irreversible. Now, forcefully is categorized as being “angry” and Gloria Darden suffers the knowledge that her child “combative;” calling people out on their is dead at the hands of officers, in the national inconsistencies is seen as an “attack;” flooding spotlight. This is something no parent should have the streets in protest is regularly called a riot. to endure but is becoming a common occurrence In America, Black folks are supposed to swal- for Black women.15 low everyday microaggressions, or even not- so-subtle racism, because pointing them out CONCLUSION means we’re too obsessed with race and just This article adds to the growing body of literature want to complain.12 that privileges the experiences of middle-class and elite Black women as a counter-narrative to the Although their actions can be seen as a way post-race, color-blind society of the 21st century; to reinscribe White supremacy and structures of where media commentary and social analysis pre- patriarchy on our body politic, some mothers also sents the election of the nation’s first Black presi- respond in visibly radical ways to terror. The dent and the growing numbers and influence of mother and wife of unarmed Eric Garner, who Black people in every sector of society as proof of was killed by Staten Island police for allegedly ille- a supposedly post-racial America. On the con- gally selling cigarettes, said they will not forgive trary, as Giddings suggests, race-relations at the the officers who were responsible for his chokehold turn of the 21st century reflect the persistence of death while he exclaimed he could not breathe. some of the issues experienced at the turn of the Esaw Garner, Eric’s wife, stated, “This fight ain’t 20th century. The physical and social divide over, it has just begun. I’m determined to get jus- between the Black elite and the Black masses tice for my husband. He should be here celebrat- seems to be widening; there is an active retrench- ing Thanksgiving and Christmas. Somebody who ment of economic and political gains fought for got paid to do right, did wrong. As long as I have and won; there are very few state-sponsored, Riche J. Daniel Barnes 57  15487466, 2016, 1, Downloaded from https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/traa.12060 by University Of Texas Libraries, Wiley Online Library on [19/08/2024]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License reliable benefits and safety nets; and, as a result, The concept of race-work offers a way to there is greater need for individual and communal investigate the multiple experiences of racism that supports. A key difference at the turn of the 21st negatively affect pregnant and perinatal bodies, as century, however, is the busyness of the lives of well as the offspring of those bodies from birth to the professional middle class such that when moth- adulthood. Future research will explore the extent ers attempt to combine the needs of their biologi- to which Black middle-class women continue to cal families with community needs and political perform race-work and feel a responsibility for activism on behalf of the race, the stress load is communal and racial uplift, especially as the too heavy. As Katrina McDonald reported in her parameters of what is meant by “the Black com- study of Black middle-class women who mentored munity” changes. Additional ethnographic young disadvantaged mothers at-risk of having research will investigate the strategic mothering low-birth-weight babies, there were negative conse- practices designed and implemented to protect quences to an overburdened community life. In against both the perinatal loss of children, and the one instance, McDonald reports, after one of the violent loss of children by state-sponsored actors volunteers said she was no longer able to work and others. Moving forward it will become with her “little sister,” “Charlie failed to ade- increasingly necessary to develop health parame- quately protect herself from extreme emotional ters that will help to quantify the extent to which and physical burn-out” (McDonald 1997:787). the effects of race-work appear in the physical The Black community has survived, in large body. part, because of Black women’s race-work. As demonstrated, Black women have historically rooted their work on behalf of the race in both Riche J. Daniel Barnes Africana Studies, protective measures for their own children and Smith College, Northampton, MA, 01060; community children, and are employed in particu- [email protected] lar careers or volunteer services for the betterment of the Black community. However, a prolonged attempt at survival in a society intent on their demise has taken its toll. Cultural anthropologist NOTES Leith Mullings suggests in her conceptualization 1. This paper was initially developed as part of the Sojourner Syndrome (2002), based on the of a panel organized by Christen A. Smith at the life and work of Sojourner Truth, that Black 114th meetings of the American Anthropological women in multiple contexts have developed sur- Association. I thank Christen for organizing this vival strategies built upon notions of race and gen- important panel and having the foresight to der that ascribed African-American women a develop it into a special issue of Transforming conflicted identity as laborers. Indeed Black moth- Anthropology. I also thank the women who partici- ering is at the heart of the Sojourner Syndrome pated in the study that gives rise to this conversa- wherein Black women worked “as much as a tion for sharing many of the intimate details of man” while simultaneously bearing children, and their lives with me. then watched them sold off into slavery as they 2. I use “the Black community” as scholars “cr[ied] out with a mother’s grief” (Ain’t I a and lay-persons have long used it to designate the Woman Speech by Sojourner Truth 1851). Again, relationship between American people of African this dual role as mother and worker of the race, descent and the institutions, neighborhoods, and plays out in three ways as Black mothers continue, businesses that were founded by them and for even in the contemporary period, to experience (1) them. I also use “the Black community” as an the terror in seeing their children and other mem- extension of Benedict Anderson’s use of the imag- bers of the community murdered by police and ined community to denote the ways in which a other officers, official and unofficial of the law, (2) group is not bound by face-to-face interactions, the grief of having and then losing their children but is bound by similar experiences through con- through pregnancy complications, and (3) the structed social consciousness (Anderson 1983). responsibility to and for the Black community. Since the Civil Rights Movement, there has been a Indeed, the reality of these strategies continues to growing understanding that there is no one Black be a source of emotional and psychological strain community, even in our construction of the imag- that understandably directly affect Black women’s ined. Therefore, I also use Black communities to health. denote this shift. 58 TRANSFORMING ANTHROPOLOGY VOL. 24(1)  15487466, 2016, 1, Downloaded from https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/traa.12060 by University Of Texas Libraries, Wiley Online Library on [19/08/2024]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License 3. Strategic mothering is not a new practice. 21st-century-anti-lynching-movement, accessed April As the analysis demonstrates, Black women have 20, 2015. been employing these strategies for centuries. I 7. “The politics of respectability” was coined conceptualize strategic mothering as an overarch- by Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham in her book ing term developed to aid in our recognition and Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in analysis of the strategies women have used to the Black Baptist Church: 1880–1920, (Harvard mother their children and their communities. Con- University Press, 1993). ceptually, strategic mothering challenges our reli- 8. Consider Marissa Alexander, who was sen- ance on the myth of the ideal mother as tenced to 20 years in prison after firing a warning homemaker in a nuclear, male-headed family and shot in a dispute with her ex-husband who she renders visible the ways in which Black women in accused of domestic violence. No one was hurt in particular and ethnic minority women more gener- the shooting and Alexander said she feared for her ally have historically strategized their mothering life. Her attorneys used “Stand Your Ground” practices. Using strategic mothering as a concep- laws in Florida as a legal defense, which allows tual tool is one of the ways we can first navigate the use of a firearm in an act of self-defense. (The and then dismantle the homemaker-mother ideal case came under national scrutiny when George and the corresponding mythology on self-reliance Zimmerman’s attorneys used the same defense espoused by the state. and he was acquitted for shooting and killing 4. Audre Lorde discussed the violence and unarmed teenager, Trayvon Martin.) The convic- hatred that consume Black lives in her work “Age, tion was overturned and Alexander faced a new Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Differ- trial when the trial court ordered her to prove ence” (1984, 2007). Discussing the difference she had been abused and was acting in self- between Black and White women’s lives, she says defense. Alexander was finally granted a plea deal violence weaves itself through Black women’s when the judge in the case decided to allow evi- everyday lives. “You [referring to White women] dence that Alexander’s ex-husband Rico Gray fear your children will grow up to join the patri- had abused women in the past. http://www. archy and testify against you, we fear our children cbsnews.com/news/marissa-alexander-woman-in- will be dragged from a car and shot down in a florida-stand-your-ground-case-released-from-jail/ street, and you will turn your backs upon the rea- accessed April 20, 2015. sons they are dying” (119). Thirty years later, Isa- 9. The National Association of Colored bel Wilkerson, writing for The Guardian, addresses Women (NACW) was the umbrella organization a similar fear as it relates to recent killings of for the Black women’s club movement. Black people and the connections that can be 10. See Mother Jones article discussing the made as it pertains to the public lynchings of the statement made by the Dubose family following the Jim Crow era, both of which involved police offi- release of the body camera video. http://www.moth- cers who killed without impunity. http://www. erjones.com/politics/2015/07/samuel-dubose-shoot- theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/aug/25/mike- ing-family-response accessed October 25, 2015. brown-shooting-jim-crow-lynchings-in-common ac- 11. See Walter Scott’s mother’s statement con- cessed April 21, 2015. cerning her son’s assailant. http://www.cnn.com/ 5. See the article “Harry Belafonte, Jay-Z and videos/us/2015/04/09/ac-sot-walter-scott-mother- Intergenerational Beef,” by Code Switch writer sc-police-shooting.cnn-ap accessed October 25, Gene Demby, where he discusses the media brou- 2015. haha that erupted after Harry Belafonte was 12. “Stop Asking Black People to Forgive Their quoted as “having turned (his) back on social Children’s Killers” http://www.clutchmagonline. responsibility.” Belafonte and Jay-Z exchanged com/2015/07/stop-asking-black-people-to-forgive- words through the media and Jay-Z’s subsequent their-childrens-killers/ accessed October 25, 2015. album Magna Carta Holy Grail, on the song “Nick- 13. “Hell no!: Eric Garner’s Widow Rejects els and Dimes.” http://www.npr.org/blogs/codes- Officers Condolences Amid Shock Over Grand witch/2013/07/30/207068455/harry-belafonte-jay-z- Jury’s Decision. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ and-inter-generational-beef accessed April 20, 2015. 2014/12/03/eric-garner-family_n_6265792.html 6. See Paula Giddings “It’s Time for a accessed October 25, 2015. Twenty-first Century Anti-Lynching Movement” 14. “Family and Faith Guide Eric Garner’s http://www.thenation.com/article/181403/its-time- Mother a Year After His Death.” http://www.wnyc. Riche J. Daniel Barnes 59  15487466, 2016, 1, Downloaded from https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/traa.12060 by University Of Texas Libraries, Wiley Online Library on [19/08/2024]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License org/story/family-and-faith-guide-eric-garners- James, Joy 1997 Transcending the Talented Tenth: Black Leaders and mother-after-his-death/ accessed October 25, 2015. American Intellectuals. 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