Acknowledging Different Experiences of Black Motherhood
We live for the We by Dani McClain , Motherhood so White by Nefertiti Austin, Essays from You are your Best Thing
I wanted to learn more about Black motherhood and the differences in Black mother’s experiences so I could share their stories responsibly. I wanted to interview Black mothers on my podcast Overcoming Working Mom Burnout and to include their stories in my book so that women could see themselves in these experiences. I wanted to be prepared to do this task. Not only have I been privileged by my education and income during my burnout journey, but as I have recently come to see after reading Nice Racism, as a White working mother I have many advantages. I learned much about Black women in the workplace and the daily barriers they face through Minda Harts’ The Memo. Also from stories in the media explaining why Black women did not want to return to the office and its microaggressions post Covid. I found Minda Harts’ request for us to ‘acknowledge the difference’ empowering. It could help me write about these books I have read.
We live for the We by Dani McClain describes her story as a single mother bringing up a daughter. Motherhood so White by Nefertiti Austin focuses on her journey raising her adopted Black son as a single mom. Finally, in ‘You are Your Best Thing’, edited by Tarana Burke and Brene Brown, the essays by Black mothers stood out to me including “This Joy I have” by Austin Channing Brown and “To You: Vulnerable Mother: A Choreo-Essay” by Imani Perry.
Nefertiti’s book was motivated by her inability to find any helpful reading materials that represented her journey, a black single mother of a black adopted boy. All the stories were of White women adopting Black or foreign babies. Mostly from the stance of a White savior narrative. She shares her story but also the stories of 3 other Black women she interviews.
Dani’s book was motivated by her work reporting on the greater health risks Black mothers’ face during pregnancy and post partum. Because of my public health background, I have read the research on this topic and as a grant writer I helped a hospital system get almost $6 million in funding to work with a Black community organization to support programs to reduce this risk. Black women are 3x more likely to die in pregnancy or post partum. I partly share this to demonstrate that I am in a privileged position to be able to help. But also to provide context that I understand some of the risk, but certainly not the lived experience. The most heart wrenching story I have read on this topic was the death from post partum hypertension of Shalon Irving. Her story stood out to me because she was a public health professor too. But she was Black and despite her education was at increased risk.
The essays in ‘You are your best thing’ were motivated by Tarana Burke’s discussion with Brene Brown that Black people could not show vulnerability in the same way as White people could. That it was not safe to do so. And that their experiences of it were different.
I remember Brene Brown describing a room full of parents and her asking why are we so afraid? She described the palpable emotion on that occasion. It felt sadly comforting to realize other people kept themselves up in the night imagining the worst. The year my daughter was born I started running Chelsea’s run in San Diego. Chelsea never finished her run, she was murdered. The run symbolized the finishing of her run. I had run many miles on my own over the years in similar places to Chelsea. I did not want my daughter to not be free to run on her own. I also heard the startling statistics of how many women were raped on University campuses. I never thought a University education would put my daughter at risk. And two summers ago, a family friend, Sara Green, lost her 19 year old son in a car accident. She wrote about her grief in the Gift of Losing You. So I have felt that type of parental fear. In fact, just last night, probably prompted by writing this piece, I had a nightmare about my son being killed in front of me. You feel sick. But imagine feeling it every hour of every day. I cannot. It is not my lived experience, so I cannot imagine or understand that constant state. The nightmare prompted me to ask what is the difference between rational and irrational fear?
I know the statistics on maternal risk. How do Black pregnant mothers manage that fear? But fear for ourselves is different than fear for our children. What are the statistics for Black men and boys dying? Not that the statistic is the lived experience. But I am also trying to grasp the size of the difference. One research paper I found, stated the risk of being killed by police as 1 in 1000 for Black men, 2.5 times higher than for White men. Another study found Black children were 6 times more likely to be shot and killed by police than white children. Black Americans are exposed to four police killings of other unarmed Black Americans in the same state each year and the mental health burden of police killings of unarmed Black Americans is comparable to that associated with diabetes, a disease that strikes 1 in 5 Black Americans.
The essay ‘This Joy I have’ by Austin Channing Brown, really illustrated the differences in fear of a car accident which is tied to foreboding joy, versus fear due to racism that is beyond your control, but which you constantly take action to mitigate: keeping a receipt, taking your ID, asking your son to avoid having his hood up. She describes the fears of Black women in her book group, fear of walking in the neighborhood, fear of driving in certain neighborhoods. Austin was able to draw from Treyvon Martin’s death and the life his mother shared with the world and commit to realizing there would be pain but that no one could take away the joy she experienced being the mother of her son, for how ever long the world allowed.
In the essay To You: Vulnerable Mother: A Choreo-Essay” by Imani Perry, she describes the lack of empathy when Black mothers do express their vulnerability.
“If you are person whose very body marks you as deserving of disregard or as available for violence you are vulnerable no matter how strong or smart you are… so why do we not call being Black in the United States as being vulnerable? “
She asks that the health data presented on Black women is not used to judge them but rather to understand the myriad stressors they face. She describes how Black mothers are expected to be strong and break the cycle, to raise their vulnerable children as invulnerable in a ‘cruel choreography’. She describes self care as not accepting the system that makes you be vulnerable but punishes you when you show the range of emotions that allows you to be fully human.
A difference that stood out to me in Dani’s book was around advocacy. I can advocate for healthy communities, neurodiverse education and working moms’ burnout as a luxury. My kids are safe, I am safe. These are nice things to have to make our life more enriched. For Dani it is a necessity. She advocates for safe streets and mental health services for Blacks because without these Black children and Black parents will die. These two realities are worlds apart. Her advocacy is personal and as a journalist, professional. Although my advocacy comes from my lived experience, growing up in walkable communities, having a son on the autism spectrum, and burning out myself. I was able to earn a PhD and work as a paid professor in the field of public health advocacy. When most Black mothers advocate, it is unpaid, and they do not always have the educational advantages that gain them a seat at the table. My White expertise and privilege gains me more access than their Black experience. Although the latter is more valuable. As Saroful says “experience should always trump expertise”.
What stood out to me about Motherhood so White was the intersectionality of experiences and attitudes Nefertiti faced. She faced the stereo type of being a single and black mother. She faced the lack of understanding in the Black community. While informal adoptions of extended family members were common, she was the formal adoptive mother of a Black boy who was not part of her extended family. She was judged by the men in her community for being a woman raising a boy without the influence of a strong Black man. Nefertiti also addresses the myth of the crack baby. She talks about the complexity of her relationships, her experience of being informally adopted by her grandparents and her own absentee parents. She shares the challenges of raising a male without a dad on father’s day and the men who showed up in her ‘village’ to make him feel loved. And how Obama was a role model for her son.
After reading these books and wondering what I could do I googled that very thing: “how can white moms support black moms”. The following article came up in the search results, written by Shanida Carter:
https://njmom.com/things-to-do/5-ways-you-can-support-black-moms-in-solidarity-against-racism/
It led me to read Nice Racism by Dr DiAngelou and to take a racial bias assessment test. And after reflecting on my role in harming Black women I found the courage to write about their experiences.
Thank you to these Black mothers for sharing their experiences. I see the difference in our lives. May I support you in sharing these stories and use my position of privilege to try to change these systems.
