Parenting during Ferguson: making sense of white parents’ silence

ABSTRACT

This paper examines what white, middle-class parents report saying to their children about racial tension and racial protest when events like Michael Brown’s death and the Ferguson protests are the top news stories. The data come from interviews with forty white, middle-class parents in 2014–15. The study results indicate that few parents recalled speaking with their children about racial tension or racial protest even when such discussions were highly visible in the news and on social media. I argue parents’ silence stemmed from a desire to create a protected, worry-free childhood combined with an inability to understand how such subjects related to their white life. However, not all parents were silent. Twelve participants reported speaking with their children about these subjects via a neutral or a defensive colour-blind frame. Only two participants drew attention to issues of power and privilege.

KEYWORDS:

• Parenting
• racial socialization
• whiteness
• silence
• racial protest
• Ferguson

Acknowledgements

The author thanks Jennifer Malat, Sarah Mayorga-Gallo, David Brunsma and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback on earlier drafts of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 I use the term “racial protests” to describe the actions of activists in Ferguson (2014) and Cincinnati (2001). I do not use the word “riot” to describe these events because of the word's racially charged, negative connotation.

2 I define “racial tension” as a sense of discord or distrust between members of different racial groups.

3 Like other researchers, I also established rapport with participants by informing them that I too was a parent, and as a parent, could empathize with the challenges they faced (Mose 2016). Being a parent created a point of commonality between myself and participants, which may have helped attenuate participant discomfort speaking about race.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Charles Phelps Taft Research Center (Charles Phelps Taft Dissertation Award, Charles Phelps Taft Graduate Enrichment Award) and the Kunz Center for Social Research (Kunz Center Graduate Student Research Award) at the University of Cincinnati.