By Nichole Guillory (WellAcademic Guest Blogger) - Mothering in Color

This past summer, I received an invitation from a leading scholar in my field to do a keynote address for a conference where other leading scholars showcase their work. He had asked before, and at that time, I said no. I said no, not because I didn’t want to do the keynote, but frankly, I didn’t even think I—or my body of work—was worthy of the ask.

Let me say that again. I did not even think I was worthy of the ask. Sad, right? Like too many other Black women in the academy subjected to consistent devaluation as scholars, I have struggled with/against Impostor Syndrome since I entered the academy as a professor more than twelve years ago.

I am the poster child for what psychologists identify as a condition of self-perceived intellectual phoniness. Doubting my accomplishments, thinking I am not deserving of my achievements, fearing exposure as an intellectual fraud—this is the internal script that has been on constant replay in my head. To this day, when people I meet for the first time ask me what I do for a living, I don’t say “professor.” I say I teach. The next question is invariably about where I teach, and when I tell them my university’s name, they tell me that I’m a professor. Did you catch that? Perfect strangers have to tell me that I’m a professor.

So when I received the invitation to do a keynote this time, my first reply was not just no, but hell no.  Doing a keynote with this group in particular, my closest colleagues in curriculum theory, engendered my worst fears about myself. I do not belong in this space. I am not a real theorist. I work in teacher education, not in a curriculum theory program. What someone else has to say is far more important than I what I have to offer.

I didn’t think that I could stand in front of large room full of scholars whose work I had read and studied. I felt like that they would see me just as I saw myself—an academic fraud, a phony, an impostor. I didn’t send the “regrets” email right away though. I told myself that I would sleep on the invitation and reply the following day.

Some of you reading this who are not Black women scholars may also feel like impostors in your workplaces too, but I just want to make clear that for marginalized groups, feeling like you are fraud and are not deserving of your achievements is often intensified by systemic racism, sexism, cis-genderism, and ableism, to name just a few. Systemic practices in the academy which value us for our service more than our scholarship, for our obedience more than our critiques, for our silence more than our voices are dehumanizing and do real damage to our productivity, not to mention our physical, emotional, and spiritual health and well-being.

So back to my decision about the keynote. I eventually said yes for one reason only. I am trying to teach my son to practice bravery when situations arise where he might be fearful. I don’t want him to allow fear to drive his decision-making like it did (does) mine for a lot of my life. I am not a perfect mother, but I am always an honest one, even when it’s hard. So I figured that I could not say no to the keynote and then turn around and tell him to say yes to doing things he fears. 

Mothering always pushes my boundaries. I’m not always grateful for the nudges, but this time proved differently.
The writing of the keynote—not delivering it in front of an audience—was the hardest part for me, mostly to calm the noisy voices of doubt and fear long enough to produce thoughtful and provocative analysis. I learned that I write best with an academic babysitter, which Roxanne reframes as writing “in community,” and without my writing partners—Roxanne and Megan—the voices would have won. The second hardest part was to quiet my comparison mind because conference organizers sandwiched my talk in between keynotes by two popular big name scholars whose work I admired from afar for all of my career. I told myself that they were the badasses, not me; that people would come to hear what they had to say, not me.

Having given the keynote last week, I now have the space to recognize that saying yes was one of the best decisions I made for myself (and ultimately for my son). Not because what I said was positively received, but because of the lessons I learned about myself and my work.

I am not an impostor after all. The academy has done its best to convince me that I’m not a scholar, but no more. It’s time we step back from the expectation of institutions that don’t value us in the first place and step up on behalf of ourselves.

My institution and all of its problems seem very small now in comparison to the work/writing I have left to do, and I realize that I must center my energy on intellectual work, which is my writing on Black mothering as a resistance practice, both as theory in my academic publications and as praxis in Mothering In Color.

People being moved by the keynote was a humbling experience that highlighted how grateful I am to all who paved a way for me to deliver the keynote in the first place. I was moved even more toward bravery by their very generous support of the work.

I invite others who are suffering through Impostor Syndrome to say yes to something you are fearful of doing. Taking that risk just might quiet those impostorism voices once and for all…or at least quiet them considerably.

Author

Nichole Guillory, PhD, is Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at Kennesaw State University. She publishes on the experiences of women of color in the academy. She is mom to Nicholas, the love of her life. We couldn't be happier that she has agreed to pen a the Mothering in Color series for WellAcademic.

By Nichole Guillory (WellAcademic Guest Blogger) - Mothering in Color

I did not realize what an exhausting and stressful academic year I’ve had until I attended a wellness retreat last month with 23 other faculty women of color from my university. It was an entire day of culturally responsive mindfulness activities designed to help us take a pause on our lives, reflect on what is important beyond our work, and learn strategies for calming our minds and taking care of our bodies.

We gave up our phones and spent eight luxurious hours on ourselves and with each other, in conversation and in silence, in stillness and in movement. The day was simultaneously intense and playful, calming and rejuvenating. In all of my years in academe, I have never had an experience like the retreat.

I was honored to be attending a retreat in memory of the brilliant Kathryn Epps, a Black woman leader at our university, and to be in the company of so many badass faculty women of color, to go through one activity together where we laughed so hard we cried and to go through another where we held painful experiences for each other.

I could tell that our laboring—visible, invisible, and too often unpaid—in various departments across the university had taken its toll mentally, physically, and spiritually on many of us. The retreat was an opportunity to fill our depleted tanks. For me in particular, it was a clarion call to center my energy on what I have identified as most important, which includes time with family and friends and work that aligns with my commitment to justice pedagogy.

At the end of the retreat, our lead facilitator and organizer Roxanne Donovan asked us to thank someone who was instrumental in our healing that day. At the time, I did not convey everything I wanted to, so I’m taking an opportunity now to publicly thank my retreat sisters for sharing in an experience that brought me back to center.

Below are my top ten take-aways from the day. I share them as one way to pay forward what I have learned.

1. Many faculty women of color are so busy care-giving in the academy for our colleagues and students and in our personal lives for our families, whether we have biological children or not, that we do not take time to care for ourselves. We deserve to put ourselves first. 

2. Self-care is a form of resistance against the regular dehumanization we often experience in the academy. My self-care regimen includes pedicure therapy, last minute lunches, or cheap bowling Tuesdays with my closest friends.  

3. Bearing witness to each other’s pain is another form of resistance against oppression. Sometimes we hold this pain in sadness and sometimes in rage. Both can be productive because naming injustice is a necessary first step in the fight to end it.

4. Not being ourselves in the academy is exhausting. Performing superwoman strength all the time is also costly. That energy is better spent on ourselves and our families.

5. Silence every now and then may be necessary for self-preservation. But silence all the time is dangerous. Speaking up is sometimes our only form of resistance against oppressive structures, and speaking up today might pave the way for change later. 

6. You are not alone. When oppressive forces take direct aim at us as individuals, it is best that we fight back in solidarity with allies we trust. While defending myself against an attack this year, I learned that I have a solid number of ride-or-die friends, and I could not be more grateful for their support.  

7. It’s past time that universities actually commit resources for faculty wellness that go beyond the usual limited term physical fitness challenges and instead prioritize the retention of faculty women of color, a claim many universities include in their strategic plans but do not resource accordingly.

8. A gratitude mindset, where we practice reframing our day to consider what went right and what we’re grateful for, can set a foundation for improving our relationships and increasing our happiness. It did for me (and those who know me know that I was very skeptical of the possibilities of a “gratitude journal”). 

9. We must never forget to pay it forward because our newest sister colleagues deserve our help and we owe our foremothers a great debt.

10. We deserve joy in our academic spaces. In all our spaces. Go find what brings you joy and do more of that by any means necessary. Period. The end.

Shout out to Roxanne for her leadership and facilitation; to Kami Anderson and Michele DiPietro, our movement teachers; and to everyone who participated in the Kathryn Epps Faculty Wellness Retreat.  

We all deserve a sister circle who loves and cares for us unconditionally, who tells us hard truths even though we don’t want to hear them, and who holds us accountable to what we say we’re going to do. I am humbled by the many women who have paved the way for me to be here—biological and non-biological foremothers—and who continue to build with me a path toward joy. ​For me, that path will include more attention to my overall well-being and fostering connections with other faculty women of color. 

To that end, I’ve already planned my next women of color faculty retreat. This one is through WellAcademic and, not coincidentally, also organized and led by Roxanne. It is October 5-7, 2018, at the Elohee Retreat Center in the foothills of the Georgia mountains. Just like this past retreat, Roxanne will create an intimate sisterly environment where I and the other faculty women of color retreaters can practice strategies that decrease our stress and boost our joy and productivity. There’s yoga, sister circles, and even individualized coaching by accomplished scholar Joycelyn Moody. I can’t wait! 

Author

​​Nichole Guillory, PhD, is Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at Kennesaw State University. She publishes on the experiences of women of color in the academy. She is mom to Nicholas, the love of her life. We couldn't be happier that she has agreed to pen a new series for WellAcademic, Mothering in Color. ​

By Nichole Guillory (WellAcademic Guest Blogger) - Mothering in Color

*This post was inspired by Roxane Gay’s New York Times Op-Ed “No One is Coming to Save Us From Trump’s Racism” (1/12/18).

I was in a good place at the start of 2018. During my holiday break, I practiced regular self-care—a couple of dinner and movie dates with myself, a massage, a pedicure, some reading, and binge Netflix-ing. Then I took advice from Roxanne Donovan (WellAcademic’s co-founder) to develop a Top Ten list for what I was grateful for in 2017. That list helped me to realize that I took some risks on behalf of my work, I prioritized time with my family, I made gratitude an almost daily practice throughout the year, and I developed a regular writing routine again. Faculty received good news at my university about some leadership changes, and my mother’s doctor gave us good news about her surgery’s success. I was in a real space of calm.

Anyone who knows me will laugh at my description here. Me? Calm. Cut me some slack. It was the closest I could get to calm. I was so dedicated to developing more space for calm in my life that I took Roxanne’s advice (again!) and tried a Mindfulness app, a real stretch for me. I didn’t even delete it from my phone when I received notifications to “Draw attention to your feet” and “Focus on your breath.” I was happy and hopeful about 2018.

That lasted almost 11 full days. Anger slithered its way back on Thursday, January 11, 2018, when the president of the United States allegedly(!) objected to a bi-partisan immigration proposal that allowed protections for immigrants to continue entering the U.S. from “shithole countries” (or shithouse, depending on reports), his description for El Salvador, Haiti, and African nations. He suggested instead that we needed more immigrants from Norway. He allegedly(!) said this in a room full of elected lawmakers.

I am not shocked by the president’s continued racism or the support he’s enjoyed in Congress to enact racist policies. What disturbed my calm and triggered my anger this time were the responses. (Non)Responses by people in the room, responses by prominent immigrants from these countries, responses by the media, and responses by people on social media, including some I know personally. The responses are familiar: excuses and lies by politicians to justify the racist comments, immigrants from these countries defending how much they contribute to the U.S., and apologies to people of color by so-called well-meaning progressives for another instance of Trump’s racism. The response, however, that triggered my anger the most was silence.  

Which brings me to the hard lesson I had to teach my son: complicity. How do you teach a ten-year-old when to be silent and when to speak up? As I have shared in previous posts, I usually wait on Nicholas to ask questions as a point of entry into these difficult lessons.

Not this time.

I don’t know if I made the right decision, but I figured that if I’m trying to help my child to understand complicity, the last thing I need to do is wait or be silent. Nicholas knew right away that what the president said was wrong and hurtful—the language was a clear signal. But he did not realize that there were many other people in that meeting who were also guilty and that there have been many guilty others since then who have made excuses, lied, or chosen silence as their response to racism.

Connecting this event to bullying and bystanders and asking Nicholas what he would want others to do if they witnessed him being bullied resonated with him.

Incidents where he has to be brave and speak up in defense of what is right even when he is scared and when the outcome will most likely not be positive will follow him the rest of his life. Teaching my Black child not to be complicit when he is witness to racist, sexist, xenophobic, and homophobic acts, especially by people in power, is one of my most important and terrifying responsibilities as a Black mother. I live in that contradictory space of hope and fear. While I hope that my child will be brave enough to challenge White supremacy, I also fear for his safety when he does. 

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Before I end, I feel compelled to talk directly to those White progressives who share my sadness and anger at the times in which we are living. I hope that if you are reading this, you’ll be prompted to stand up against racism because frankly I’ve lost patience with so much inaction. Of course, I’m angry with the president and other White supremacists whose racism is easy to detect. But I’ve also had enough of the insidious acts that work to shore up racist structures, especially as they work against women of color.

Unfortunately, I know far too many so-called progressives who say they are social justice educators and allies but sit back in silence while Black women and other women of color are alone on the front lines 1) calling out racism in overt and implicit forms; 2) trying to change oppressive structures for the benefit of progressives as well; 3) voting consistently against pedophiles, rapists, and racists running for public office; and 4) working more for less money. We see you waiting in the cut while we speak first. We see you standing up when it benefits you individually, but we don’t always see you standing up for our collective interests.

So I say to you would-be allies: I am/we are tired of putting on the Olivia Pope gladiator cape every time a problem needs fixing or someone in power needs to be told a hard truth. Stop waiting on us to do the work of justice. When is the last time you did something other than apologize to people of color for yet another instance of Trump’s racism? When is the last time you asked us how we are really doing, what you might do to come in alongside and fight with us, or just sit with us in the pain of this mothering moment where every day there’s another terrifying thing?

We all have a responsibility to each other. I hope you will choose to do something next time so that we are not carrying all of this extra weight by ourselves.  

Author

​​Nichole Guillory, PhD, is Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at Kennesaw State University. She publishes on the experiences of women of color in the academy. She is mom to Nicholas, the love of her life. We couldn't be happier that she has agreed to pen a new series for WellAcademic, Mothering in Color. ​

By Nichole Guillory (WellAcademic Guest Blogger) - Mothering in Color

​This has been a year. Nationally, we have been disgusted by the inhumanity of those in power, and we have consoled each other through several successive natural and unnatural disasters. Locally, we have seen an increase in the number of racist incidents in public schools, and at my own college campus, we have experienced several administrative decisions that seemed antithetical to a welcoming, transparent, and inclusive environment. Through all of these incidents, the young people I work with at my university are a constant reminder to me that the (other)mothering spaces we create for students are absolutely necessary.
 
Before I outline some characteristics of these spaces, I want to make clear that mothering spaces are not to be confused with mammy-ing spaces, where a Black woman professor agrees with everything her students say and does not challenge their long-held beliefs no matter how problematic they might be; who chooses to avoid difficult conversations about race, gender, sexuality, and class difference and the intersections of these; and who does not highlight how privilege and power work to maintain inequity.

[Some of you unaccustomed to the hardships of working while Black and woman may stop reading at this point because I have dared to suggest that contemporary academic work places sometimes conjure Old South politics of servant-served relationships between Black women and their White colleagues. If so, I’ll miss you. Those who dare to read on, I welcome your fortitude.]

Don’t take my word for it. I respectfully encourage you to ask your Black woman professor friend—wink wink—about her experiences and if she’s honest, she will tell you that when she agrees with the majority, does not ask questions, exposes inconsistencies, or points out potential problems, things go much more easily than when she does not. In a mammy-ing space, Black women professors must lose their agency and become passive players in the educational enterprise.

A mothering space in an educational setting is exactly the opposite. While it will take varied forms, fundamentally it is an empowering and culturally sustaining space that allows our students to see themselves reflected in the curriculum, encourages them to be their authentic selves, prepares them with frameworks to help them make sense of interlocking systems of oppression, and supports them to develop their own praxis for change. These are the kinds of educative spaces historically marginalized students need and deserve to have, especially now, and these are the kinds of spaces necessary to the overall health of schools and universities.

Lest I become too reductive, I want to make clear that mothering spaces are not biologically determined as the domain of cis-women. Let my articulation of such spaces be an all-call to the professoriate writ large. Long before I became Nicholas’s biological mother ten years ago, I constructed mothering spaces for my non-biological sons and daughters because the world does not always want students from historically marginalized communities to be fully human. With almost 25 years in teaching, here’s what I prioritize in the design and teaching of my courses and in my mentoring of students: 
 
Priority #1: The self in the context of the collective.
I depend heavily on the use of the autobiographical both in written assignments as well as a mode of analysis of and engagement with readings. I always begin with some form of autobiographical writing connected to course content so that we can introduce ourselves to each other and begin to share our perspectives. In doing so, I hope to create a space where students want to share some of what they have experienced and connect with others. Additionally, I depend on Kimberlé Crenshaw’s intersectionality framework to help students understand the context for identity and the role power plays in its construction. 

Priority #2: The dialogic. 
In my classes, we often meet in a circle so that we can better listen to and engage with each other, so that we are accountable to each other, so that we can dialogue with each other. Dialogue is evident in my selection of readings too. I choose pairs of readings that present different perspectives on a single topic, or I choose a classic text juxtaposed with a contemporary text for comparative study. I often use the dialogic as an approach to teaching, especially when co-teaching is an option. Students benefit from two instructors who are not in the same discipline or who use different frameworks to structure their classes. Through the dialogic, students learn how to evaluate perspectives and draw their own conclusions.

Priority #3: The voices of historically marginalized scholars.
I deliberately choose to center voices that are typically omitted from required reading in other courses. That we take the experiences of historically marginalized students as central to our learning and that we use scholars from historically marginalized communities to analyze those experiences allow students to understand their experiences in new ways.  Students also learn that we have a significant intellectual lineage, past and present, of extraordinary thinkers. And that they are next in line. 

Priority #4: Action.
Almost every course I teach requires students to take what they’ve learned and apply it in some way in a historically marginalized community. We don’t begin with the belief that our communities are lacking, but we identify community assets and develop projects that build on those in order to make some kind of positive impact. Making a difference in our own communities often has the effect of reducing some of the hopelessness students feel about what’s going on nationally.  

Priority #5: Revolutionary love.
This is the most important characteristic of mothering spaces. In our rush to “cover” as much content as possible at the college level, we forget that relationship building is often more important for students from historically marginalized communities. Showing students that I care about them, that their well-being matters to me, that if they’re absent from class, we’ve lost the opportunity to learn from them that day, that I will tell them the truth even though they may not want to hear it, that I support them and hold them to very high standards at the same time, that I ask them to thank a classmate publicly in our last class for something they’ve learned during the semester: these are all acts of revolutionary love for our students, love that just might inspire them to show this kind of care to others and to themselves.
​
As you head into a new semester, I invite you to think about your classes and what they might become for students if we thought of them as mothering spaces instead of pass/fail, meets/not meets, covering content only kinds of spaces. They just might excel beyond our expectations. 

Author

​​Nichole Guillory, PhD, is Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at Kennesaw State University. She publishes on the experiences of women of color in the academy. She is mom to Nicholas, the love of her life. We couldn't be happier that she has agreed to pen a new series for WellAcademic, Mothering in Color. ​

By Nichole Guillory (WellAcademic Guest Blogger) - Mothering in Color

Note: I intend for Mothering in Color to not only address my role as a biological mom.  In this two-part post, I consider how our classrooms might also be mothering spaces where we help students to think critically and challenge assumptions. In Part I, which follows, I pay tribute to five young women college students as intellectual daughters of so many women who refused silence and used public platforms to critique injustice. In Part II, I reflect on what classrooms as “mothering spaces” look like in the academy.

You don’t know me, but because of all the news coverage, I feel a connection to you. The five of you took a knee in a college football stadium during the pre-game national anthem on a warm September evening in the middle of Newt Gingrich’s old Congressional district. This is the same district that is home to Kennesaw Mountain, the site of the famous Civil War battle during the 1864 Atlanta Campaign, where Union forces waged a bloody attack on the Confederate Army of Tennessee. The Confederates won that battle, and they have been reminding us of that fact ever since. The football stadium where you took a knee sits in the shadow of this mountain and its historical legacy, literally and figuratively.  

You have articulated a very clear rationale for taking a knee: to protest racial injustice and police brutality against Black people in this country. You have made it crystal clear that you are not protesting the flag or the military even though locals have accused you of being unpatriotic, ungrateful, and disrespectful.

Even when the local sheriff used the local newspaper to disparage your actions and call for your removal from the cheerleading squad—some have labeled his actions as intimidation—and said that he was doing so not as the sheriff but as a local citizen season ticket holder, you remained steadfast in your commitment.

Even when local news reports uncovered text messages that revealed the sheriff and the chair of the Georgia legislature’s house appropriations subcommittee on higher education may have pressured your university president to remove you from the football field during the pre-game national anthem, you called for a meeting with the president so he could explain the athletic department’s sudden change in pre-game activities.

Even from the stadium tunnel, the site of your banishment from the field, you continued to take a knee outside of the view of fans and cameras. You remained strong and determined, courageous and bold. 

Your actions prompted other young people on campus to organize themselves and protest on behalf of your first amendment rights and against the athletic department’s decision to remove all cheerleaders from the field during the national anthem. Students protested during our new President’s formal investiture ceremony, a grand celebration attended by state and local leaders; community stakeholders; faculty, staff, and students. A band played on the campus green and people ate a catered lunch under a big tent while students chanted, “Land of the free, but we can’t take a knee.” I could not have imagined a more contradictory, meaningful, high stakes moment inspired by your actions. 

I think about you often. How you are coping with the endless hate, a lot of it forever documented on social media, hate-driven posts that demanded you go back to Africa, suggested you go back to giving blow jobs to football players, and called for your scholarships to be revoked. How you are managing to get your assignments done with the non-stop media requests from around the world for interviews and comments on your stories, some of which have not been completely truthful. How you remain steadfast in your commitment to continue taking a knee when not doing so would be so much easier on you and your families. How your families must be so proud and yet so terrified for you. 

I hope that faculty support for you and your first amendment rights continues to increase. In my own teaching, I always strive to help students develop good arguments with supporting evidence and analyze multiple perspectives so that they become stronger writers and critical consumers of content. You have had to defend your actions too many times to count, and every time, against a loud din of hatred, I heard a strong clear argument—to protest racial injustice in this country.

Having been through a few student protests now, I am in awe of former and current students thinking through contradictory perspectives, voicing their concerns through effective argumentation, organizing on social media, always ready to take risks. I realize that the success of these protests matters little. What matters most is that students are thinking through difficult issues and thinking of themselves in relation to others, as part of a collective—a characteristic the millennial generation is often accused of ignoring in favor of more individualistic paradigms—that they understand they deserve better.     

All of you have disrupted the everyday-ness of oppression. Unless something big happens, something obviously unjust, too often we go about our day dealing with micro aggressive behaviors against us. We suffer in silence because to do otherwise takes just too much energy. Your bravery showed us that we can be more courageous and that naming injustice is a necessary first step in the fight to end it.

Standing on the shoulders of Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells, the Combahee River Collective, Audre Lorde, among many others, you are the daughters of a long line of women intellectual-activists who have refused silence, choosing instead to use the public sphere to critique injustice. Your example provides me with hope that movements—big and small—continue to be birthed in educational spaces.

Finally, you have reminded us that Black lives do matter and that Black women have always been and continue to be important players in the fight for our civil rights.

Author

​​Nichole Guillory, PhD, is Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at Kennesaw State University. She publishes on the experiences of women of color in the academy. She is mom to Nicholas, the love of her life. We couldn't be happier that she has agreed to pen a new series for WellAcademic, Mothering in Color. ​

By Nichole Guillory (WellAcademic Guest Blogger) - Mothering in Color

What is the KKK, mom?

[Readers: I’ll pause here so you can think about how you would respond if your nine-year-old son asked you this question and so that you might imagine the dread that came over me as I thought about a response.]

The question caught me off guard early one morning as we were driving to school. Nicholas heard it mentioned on NPR news coverage of the Charlottesville events. As with so many news events lately, I was unprepared for my son’s question. I fumbled through an answer and provided minimum details, mostly historical information: what the letters KKK stood for, when and where it was started, what its purpose was.

That was the easiest and least painful question Nicholas had for me that day. I thought my initial answers were enough, but harder questions came later. 

What is white supremacy? Did the KKK kill black people? Do they still kill black people? Why did they hate Black people? Why did they also hate Jewish people? Why were the police members of the KKK?  Are any police in the KKK now? How did they get members? How do they get members today? How can we find out who’s a member? Do you think anyone at my school belongs to it?

If you haven’t noticed already, Nicholas is curious and asks a lot of questions, and most of them don’t have simple answers. His questions always prompt me to think. They rarely shock me into silence.

But this is what has been happening more often since Friday, January 20, 2017. Tweets, executive orders, un-Presidential responses, non-responses, and equivocating responses complicate our conversations. I sputter through answers and hope that I’m providing some clarity.   

I had expected a slow steady trickle of changes aimed at dismantling the modest gains in healthcare, banking regulation, justice reform, marriage equality of the last eight years. I was unprepared for—I can’t say exactly why—the rapidly running river of hate-driven, border-closing, rights-reducing policy decisions made in such a short amount of time. As a result, I have been mothering from a defensive position for the last nine months. That is, something happens, I scramble to make sense of it with my son, we take a family self-care break, and then repeat. This is a familiar cycle for mothers of color, especially now, but how sustainable is it for our own emotional well-being and our children’s?  Charlottesville was a wake-up call. It prompted me to change how I mother my son through these difficult times.

l now refuse to let every ugly truth revealed to Nicholas define my conversations with him, define how I mother him, define how I teach him about life, especially about difference. Like all good teachers who don’t teach to a test handed down to them from people who don’t know (or care about) their students, I resist having a curriculum about race dictated to my child and me. Good teachers don’t use other people’s pre-packaged lessons on race and racism. They find openings where other teachers can’t to enact transformative teaching. The transformative approach as it has been applied to education, my academic discipline, requires that teachers “be willing to deconstruct their own existing knowledge, explore alternative perspectives critically, research and include voices and ideas other than those traditionally presented to us, and [for teachers who belong to the dominant culture] address their own roles in perpetuating racism and oppression” (Cumming-McCann, 2003).

And what are parents if not teachers?  [Thanks, Roxanne, for reminding me of this.]

Mothers of color practice transformative teaching in our homes all the time. We help our children unlearn oppressive ways of thinking, think and question critically, and love ourselves and our communities. For my child’s sake, I’ve become more intentional about my transformative mothering because these times call for it. Every new troubling incident has the potential for what those of us in education call inquiry learning. That is, a problem comes up, Nicholas has a question he wants answered (also known as an inquiry opportunity), and we work together to unpack complex ideas so that he has more complete information to draw his own conclusions. This is a very different approach than the Heroes and Holidays strategy I used during the Obama years. [See “What’s a Mom to Do in the Age of Trump?”]  Even for me—for someone who does “diversity” work in teacher education—this kind of mothering is difficult. 

With the barrage of problems that comes up almost daily, I realized that if I’m feeling ill equipped to handle such big questions with such a young child, you might too. There are no simple answers or sure-fire strategies for such complicated matters. In my original ending for this post, I provided a list of resources that I thought might help moms navigate race and racism talks with their children. In the end, however, I decided that what is most important is to offer you my story. Sharing our stories is as important now as it ever has been. Audre Lorde (1984) reminds us to share “what is most important… even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood.”

Imperfect, unfinished, and messy as it (and I!) may be, the story of the day Nicholas asked about the KKK helped me articulate and enact a process of transformative mothering.  I hope it helps others to do the same.   

What big idea conversations are you having with your children? I’d love to hear from you…

Author

​Nichole Guillory, PhD, is Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at Kennesaw State University. She publishes on the experiences of women of color in the academy. She is mom to Nicholas, the love of her life. We couldn't be happier that she has agreed to pen a new series for WellAcademic, Mothering in Color. 

By Nichole Guillory (WellAcademic Guest Blogger) - Mothering in Color

I have a confession to make. It’s a big one. Really big. So big, in fact, I suggest you sit down….

and go to your happy place…The beach always works for me.

and do some deep breathing exercises…Inhale, hold it, exhale, and repeat.

and pour yourself a drink….The kind that adults enjoy. Take a big sip of your happy drink because you’ll need it to chase away the ugly truth I’m about to reveal. Ready?

Here goes…

Donald J. Trump is making me a better mother. 

Yes, I said it, and no, I am not crazy, at least not this early into his presidency. 

If you’ve stayed with me until now, let me explain. How I got to this point did not start on November 8, 2016, but instead with the election of President Obama on November 4, 2008. Nicholas, my only child, was about to turn one. Hope for my son’s future slipped its way back into my life with that election. 

While the Obama Presidency did not yield substantive systemic changes that reduced the effects of institutionalized oppression for most people of color, especially people of color who are also economically vulnerable, the Obama years were important to our family. My son in his earliest years conceptualized what race meant in a country led by a President who looked like him; he saw a family in the White House who looked like our family. And when asked what he wanted to do when he grew up, he could literally imagine President of the United States as a real possibility. 

I did not realize during the Obama years that I took a passive role mothering Nicholas. Through his questions about difference and discrimination, I relied heavily on children’s books to expose my son to major figures and events in our history. When he showed interest in a particular field, we researched people of color in that area: space, Mae Jemison; baseball, Satchel Paige; guitars, Carlos Santana, to name a few. I relied on National Public Radio—lest you judge, we spend 2-3 hours in the car every day commuting to and from school—to do most of the heavy lifting on topics like immigration, marriage equality, Stand Your Ground, and police brutality. 

I realize now I took a heroes-and-holidays approach in helping Nicholas to understand questions of identity, the same approach I critique as a professor who is committed to education for social justice. Before you accuse me of mom-shaming myself, I want to be very clear the approach is not bad; developmentally, it was certainly appropriate. But it was easy. I mostly took a backseat (from the driver’s seat) answering—not asking--questions to help Nicholas make sense of his complicated, messy, and beautiful identity. 

And then November 8, 2016, happened. I wasn’t surprised or shocked. I’m from Louisiana, after all, where David Duke, ex-Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, won almost 39%  of votes cast (>670,000 votes) in the 1991 election for governor. This White nationalist compliments Donald Trump every chance he gets. 

Many months later, I’m still walking around in my post-election feelings.  I’m either angry—if it’s a good day—or sad because my son will experience (t)his country’s hostility for the next four years. How is it that Trump, this man, can be helping me become a better mother? 

In my circle of moms of color, one thing is always true no matter how different we might be in our parenting styles, economic and ethnic backgrounds, career paths. When someone tries to hurt our babies, there is no one fiercer, stronger, more focused, more badass than we are. 

In my assessment, Donald Trump is trying to hurt my baby.  And I won’t sit for that.  I choose to stand. Nicholas and I listen to the news together, and I ask him lots of questions that prompt him to uncover inconsistencies and contradictions. I’ve turned off NPR for some of our morning commutes so we can start the day in positivity. Mostly we listen to “mom’s terrible music,” and I tell him stories about the times in my life that correspond with the music.

In addition to our family movie and game nights, we also schedule weekly work out/physical activity time together as a family. Nicholas and I dress up and go on dates once a month. We alternate who picks the place, and I always choose free things to do. He calls me a cheap date. We make a “fancy” meal together once a month, and before we eat, we share what we’re most proud of or thankful for.

While you might already have done activities like these, I didn’t do them consistently. I’m still a work in progress, but family care is a regularly scheduled priority now. It has to be in this context.   

How are you standing up for your children? I’d love to hear from you…

Next time, I’ll share how I’m processing Charlottesville and other big events/ideas with my son.