Learning Race, Learning Place: Shaping Racial Identities and Ideas in African American Childhoods

Notes

183 NOTES CHAPTER 1 COMPREHENSIVE RACIAL LEARNING, GROUNDED IN PLACE 1. A four-part series, “Kids and Race in America,” aired on the CNN primetime program Anderson Cooper 360 from May 17 to May 20, 2010. The study was designed by Margaret Beale Spencer, a developmental psychologist at the University of Chicago. Full results of the study can be found at http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/images/05/13/ expanded_results_methods_cnn.pdf. 2. Although the recruitment information for this study made a gender-neutral request for middle-school-aged children and their parents or primary caregivers, all of the interviewed adults were mothers. Some interviews were scheduled with fathers and their children, but these resulted in cancellations or missed appointments. 3. At the time, some literature on racial socialization claimed differences in practices between parents with higher and lower socioeconomic statuses (SES) and levels of education, but the findings were mixed (Caughy et al. 2002; S. Hill 1999; Spencer 1990; Thornton et al. 1990; Thornton 1997). I wondered whether the differences observed by some were due to SES and education or whether those were simply serving as proxies for racial demographics of neighborhood—that the differences might have come from living in a predominantly white area or attending a predominantly white school, not from SES or education itself. Detroit, with its wide range of SES but predominantly black demographics, allows the two to be separated. 4. See note 2. 5. Interviewed mothers were not asked for exact incomes, but rather to place their families within income brackets. Four placed themselves in the “Less than $15,000 per year” category and one placed herself in the $15,000–$25,000 category. The poverty threshold is determined by the size of the family unit and number of related children under the age of eighteen living in the household. 6. National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, “Students by Race and Ethnicity, 2005–2006, MI—Detroit Public Schools,” http://dashboard.publiccharters.org/ dashboard/students/page/race/district/MI-31/year/2006 (accessed October 15, 2011). 7. These remuneration amounts were decided upon in conjunction with faculty at the University of Michigan School of Social Work, who advised me on the average and appropriate remuneration for interviews of this length at this time in Detroit. Remuneration for participants was made possible through a grant from the Berkeley Center for Working Families. 8. I received a BA in African and African American studies and social science from the University of Michigan, an MA and a PhD in African American studies from the University of California, Berkeley, and spent a year as a postdoctoral fellow in African American studies at Northwestern University before accepting a position as an assistant professor in the Department of Africology at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. CHAPTER 2 RHETORIC VERSUS REALITY 1. National Center for Education Statistics, http://nces.ed.gov/ (accessed May 13, 2005). 2. This mirrors the Detroit Public Schools overall, which were about 90 percent African American in 2005. 3. Cara attended a school in which the student body was over 98 percent African American. CHAPTER 4 PLACE MATTERS 1. Eight Mile Road constitutes the northern border of Detroit, dividing city from suburbs and Wayne County (in which Detroit is located) from Oakland and Macomb Counties. Symbolically, it represents a racial divide, although there are some suburbs with significant black populations on the north side of Eight Mile Road, including Southfield and Oak Park, to name a few (see map 3.1). CHAPTER 5 COMPETING WITH SOCIETY 1. These interviews were conducted in 2003 and 2004, at a time when MTV and BET still played several hours of music videos per day. 2. At the time of Tanya’s admission, the University of Michigan awarded potential undergraduate applicants “a total of 20 points for having an economically disadvantaged background, being an underrepresented minority, attending a high school serving a predominately minority population, or being a scholarship athlete, among others” (University of Michigan, 2003). After the June 2003 Supreme Court decision on the University of Michigan’s admissions policies, the point system was altered. 3. Cora is referring to the November 30, 2003, police beating and subsequent death of forty-one-year-old Nathaniel Jones in Cincinnati, Ohio, which was caught on video and shown on national television news (CNN 2003). CHAPTER 6 BLACK IS BLACK? 1. One child in this study has one white and one black parent. The remaining twentyseven have two black parents, although two of...