Introduction

The Introduction opens with the stories of a Black parent and a Black student who were victims of the school-to-prison pipeline and their journeys to racial justice organizing. These experiences and these stories ground the emergence of the movement to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline. The Introduction then recounts the author’s own journey to awareness of the school-to-prison pipeline and describes the development of the community engaged research project upon which the book is based. It recounts the author’s traumatic experiences in the field witnessing the abusive treatment of students and parents of color, and it discusses the challenges faced addressing the author’s privileges and positionality as a white, male professor partnering with and studying organizers and leaders of color based in low-income communities. It ends with an overview of the book and its chapters.

Why We Gather: Educational Empowerment and Academic Success Through Collective Black Parental Agency

Though previous literature has explored the importance of parents in education, scholarship has failed to empirically demonstrate the influence voluntary parent groups have on the educational trajectory of Black students. Using institutional agency and community cultural wealth frameworks, the author qualitatively evaluates a Black parent group’s self-initiated efforts to influence the academic outcomes of high-achieving students. The author illustrates how one parent organization negotiates an environment in which their racial group comprises less than 5% of the population to effectively guide and support families as their students navigate academic success. Findings show that at least three critical components— accountability, alliances and networks, and legitimacy—are vital in the provision of collaborative support and agency on behalf of high-achieving students.

Intonation and Referee Design Phenomena in the Narrative Speech of Black/Biracial Men

This study examines how men with one Black parent and one white parent variably construct their racial identities through both linguistic practice and explicit testimonials, with a specific focus on how this construction is realized in narratives about law enforcement. The data consist of interviews with five young men, aged 18-32, in Washington, D.C., and the analysis compares use of intonational phenomena associated with African American Language (AAL) in response to questions about aspects of their racial identities. Declarative intonational phrases from responses to questions were MAE-ToBi annotated and analyzed for use of intonational features subject to racialized stylistic variation, including use of L+H* versus H*, focus marking, and peak delay interval length. Results of multiple regression models indicate speakers avoid intonational features associated with AAL in police narratives, especially L+H* pitch accents with broad focus marking and longer peak delay intervals. These findings illuminate an important aspect of the relationship between linguistic performance and identity: both racial and linguistic identities are subject to topic and audience/referee-conditioned variation and individuals can use specific intonational variables to align themselves within specific audience and topic-influenced constraints. In the context of police narratives, avoidance of salient features of AAL intonation can serve as linguistic respectability politics; these speakers have motivation to employ linguistic behavior that distances them from the most societally and physically precarious implications of their identities.

Low-Income Black Parents Supporting Their Children’s Success through Mentoring Circles

This article presents the results of a parent engagement project called “Mentoring Circles.” The project focused on the needs of low-income Black parents who have children enrolled in the Toronto District School Board. Two focus groups, with seven to eight Black parents in each group, were conducted during the summer of 2018. The study drew on theories of community wealth and funds of knowledge (González et al., 2005; Yosso, 2005), Black feminist theory (Collins, 2000; Crenshaw, 1991), and critical race theory (Delgado & Stefancic, 2012). The Black parent narratives served as counter-stories to stereotypes about Black parent disengagement in low-income communities. The low-income Black parents in the study were very engaged in their children’s education and were invested in their academic success. The Black parents strategized to support their children’s education by forming supportive peer mentoring networks and advocating for their children though relationship-building. The findings suggest that mentoring circles could serve as a model for engaging Black parents in the support of their children’s academic success. Keywords: Black Canadian children and youth, anti-Black racism, Black parents and students, low socio-economic status, race and ethnicity, social class

Black, White, Mixed or Biracial

This chapter focuses on the subset of black-white couples who were parents to examine: expectations of their child's racial classification; how parents categorized their children after birth; and the implications for eligibility for university affirmative action. Carioca parents often expected to have black children due to mixture with a black parent. However, after birth, a child's phenotype determined the category they fit into, such that a child could be white, black, or less commonly, “mixed." Affirmative action did not cause Carioca parents to waver in their assessments of their children's race; white children were ineligible. Angelino parents described their child's race as additive: both black and white. They maintained the biracial categorization before and after their child's birth, regardless of the child's appearance. In light of affirmative action eligibility, Angelino parents became more flexible in their assessment, emphasizing blackness if they considered it advantageous. Sometimes they understood “biracial” as a unique minority status adding to institutional diversity. This chapter demonstrates parents' part in the social construction of new ethnoracial boundaries, strengthening of pre-existing ones, and the effect of public policy on understandings of ethnoracial boundaries.

The Rise of Mixed Parentage: A Sociological and Demographic Phenomenon to Be Reckoned With

Ethno-racially mixed parentage is rising in frequency, creating a strong challenge to both census classification schemes and, indeed, to common conceptions of ethnicity and race. Majority (white) and minority (nonwhite or Hispanic) parentage predominates among individuals with mixed-family backgrounds. Yet in public presentations of census data and population projections, individuals with mixed backgrounds are generally classified as nonwhite. We analyze 2013 American Community Survey data and summarize the results of important studies to argue that individuals from mixed majority-minority backgrounds resemble whites more than they do minorities in terms of some key social characteristics and experiences, such as where they grow up and their social affiliations as adults. Those with a black parent are an important exception. An implication of this analysis is that census classification practices for mixed individuals risk distorting conceptions of the current population, especially its youthful portion, and promoting misunderstandings of ethno-racial change.