Black Activist Mothering

Abstract

The prevalence of poor health among young disadvantaged Black mothers and their children has prompted a revival of maternal activism among Black middle-class urban women. A study of the California-based "Birthing Project," founded in 1988, reveals that such activism is best understood as a modern-day version of Black activist mothering practiced by AfricanAmerican clubwomen from the time of slavery to the early 1940s. This article demonstrates the legacy of "normative empathy" as a significant motivator for middle-class maternal activism and as a basis for a middle-class critique of Black mothering among the disadvantaged. 1 BLACK ACTIVIST MOTHERING: A Historical Intersection of Race, Gender and ClassFor more than 20 years, reformative social policy and technological advances have done little to curb the unyielding threat of Black infant mortality. Although the overall infant mortality rate in the U.S. has been on the decline for many years, recent figures show that Black babies continue to die at more than twice the rate of those of whites (Fullilove 1993;Rowley et al. 1993;Singh and Yu 1995). This crisis, one of the most vexing problems for African America, was precipitated by a host of interrelated medical, sociodemographic, and psychosocial problems suffered primarily among the most vulnerable population: young African-American mothers of the "underclass" (Boone 1989;Fullilove 1993;Rowley et al. 1993).While the root cause of elevated poor pregnancy outcomes among African-Americans lies in the historically oppressive conditions of Black women's lives, a popular argument is that this crisis, like many others, has been exacerbated by the restructuring of Black social capital. The persistence of poor birth outcomes for Blacks is often linked to the recent "Black flight" of the middle class from urban areas (Anderson 1990;Baca Zinn 1990; Wilson 1987 Wilson , 1989. The resultant spatial concentration of disorganized, unskilled, and alienated "underclass" populations in urban neighborhoods is said to worsen the most negative features of Black mothers lives by effectively severing the long-standing link between Black middle-class maternal support and disadvantaged women.Claims about the significance of the social class schism in the Black community are not 2 easily dismissed. For example, Black feminist theory has addressed, though scantily, the class polarization of the Black community and its potential to dismantle gender/ethnic solidarity.Some authors openly admit that the strong Black maternal activist tradition is not immune to the problems of urbanization and the dislocation of women from the "once familial" character of social relationships within the community (Ladner 1986, 17). As Collins explains,The entire community structure of bloodmothers and othermothers is under assault in many inner-city neighborhoods, where the very fabric of African-American community life is being eroded (1991, 122).Nonetheless, while there has been a re-organization of social relations among African-American urban women...

Becoming Entrepreneurs

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“…Yet this gender/ racial solidarity also has a dimension of class solidarity. Other research describes gender/racial solidarity among upper-and middle-class Black women as the manifestation of a desire to help their lower-class counterparts (Giddings 1984;McDonald 1997;White 1999). This willingness to help is based on shared experience of racial and gender discrimination but is also characterized by the willingness to reach across class lines to help those less economically privileged.…”

“They Just Keep Coming”: A Study of How Anti-Black Racial Violence Informs Racial Grief and Resistance Among Black Mothers

“…In response, they felt driven to try and effect positive change in their local communities via family education programs and within sociopolitical sectors. Akin with prior scholarship on Black maternal activism (McClain, 2019;McDonald, 1997), they described social change strategies that included caring for others in the Black community and finding ways to empower the next generation of leadership and resistance through the messages they communicated to their children and the ways they mentored other Black youth. Their words and actions aligned with historical and contemporary legacies of Black parental activism (e.g., Monifa Bandele of MomsRising and Rose Aka-James of Black Mamas Matter Alliance; Brown, 2020), as the mothers explained how they translated their feelings of racial fear and grief into their parenting, community involvement, and political engagement.…”

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“…Work like theirs has begun filling in wide analytical gaps in scholarly fields that have overlooked centuries of African American women's leadership. McDonald (1997) has further explained that traditions of "maternal activism" (p. 775) among many African American mothers from the 18th century and beyond are well documented. Nevertheless, such activism and modeling of both familial and communal care have yet to consistently be framed or understood as leadership.…”

“…Historically, African American mothers' leadership has embodied ethics of social justice and care that are usually family and community-centered (Cooper, 2009i;McDonald, 1997;Siddle Walker & Snarey, 2004). These ethics have reflected both mothers' childrearing responsibilities -natural, mandated, or chosen (Collins, 1994;Davis, 2005;O'Reilly, 2005) -and their empathy for and social investment in the elevation of other African Americans as a whole (Collins, 2000;McDonald, 1997). Furthermore, they have typically reflected what Beauboeuf-LaFontant (2002) called "embrace of the maternal, political clarity, and an ethic of risk" (p. 71), which is part of black womanist caring norms.…”