RACIALIZED PARENTING TECHNIQUES

I identify three typologies of racialized parenting techniques: 1) Cultural Socialization and Racial Identity Development, 2) Awareness of Racialized Social Spaces, and 3) Strategies of Racial Navigation. I identify these typologies of racialized parenting techniques based off my review of scholarship on racial socialization, racialized social space and racial identity management, and everyday strategies of antiracism. After demonstrating the strong presence of racialized parenting techniques, I make critical claims about their pertinence to improved sociological understanding of parenting culture and its linkages to the reproduction of inequality.

RE-READING UNEQUAL CHILDHOODS

In this section, I offer alternative interpretations of selected examples in Unequal Childhoods by re-reading excerpts through the prism of race-based critical theory. I use racial parenting technique literature and follow analytical frameworks for intersectionality (Choo and Ferree, Reference Choo and Marx Ferree2010), studies of social and cultural contingencies of class marginality (Jack Reference Hughes and Johnson2014), and burgeoning work on racial socialization amongst White families (Hagerman Reference Hagerman2016; Underhill Reference Umaña-Taylor and Fine2018) to demonstrate the sociological utility of this approach.

The intersection between racial parenting techniques and elements of concerted cultivation can be seen in how Black parents in Unequal Childhoods discuss race with their children. The Marshalls and the Williams, two Black middle-class families, are featured throughout Unequal Childhoods and their experiences are where discussions of race appear. Though there is little data presented that specifically shows Black parents talking about race with their children, there are interview quotes that reveal the presence of racial parenting techniques. The Williams’ have conversations with their son about race with in a way that reflects preparation for bias and equalization. Mr. Williams and Ms. Williams described their approach to discussing race with their son as follows:

Here, Alexander’s parents directly cultivate an awareness of race and racism and present strategies for dealing with racism. Similar to Stuart Hall’s (Reference Hall, Back and Solomos2009) conversation with his son, Alexander’s parents directly transmit meanings of race and identity to their child. Their discussions with Alexander about the history of race in the United States, how race influences their own experiences in the workplace, and explanations to him that race will impact his life reflects the preparation for bias racial parenting technique. At the same time, Mr. and Ms. Williams emphasize that racial discrimination cannot be used as an excuse as he progresses in life, which is reflective of equalization (Lamont and Fleming, Reference Lamont2005). The approach of the Williams family is very similar to the common adage spoken in Black communities and Black families—that in order to succeed in a racist society—“Black people need to be twice as good and work twice as hard” (Coard et al., Reference Coard, Seyatta, Stevenson and Brotman2004).^{Footnote 10} In this particular case, the Williams use these two racialized parenting techniques to prepare their son to develop resilience to a racist social world.

In Unequal Childhoods, Black parents struggle and debate how to prepare their children for a racialized and racist world. Both the Williams and Marshall families are aware of race and are tuned into issues of racial exclusion and insensitivity on the part of other children as well as adults. They tell stories of their experiences of racial discrimination and acknowledge the legitimacy of their children’s observations of racism, while trying to preserve a hope for a racially integrated society. Both Black middle-class families perform the cultural dimensions of concerted cultivation (interventions in institutions, language use, structuring their children’s time) similar to other middle class White families. But in my reading, which is informed by scholarship on racialized parenting techniques, their parenting practices are deeply intertwined with race, both in terms of identity and social development, and a broader racialized social context. In turn, this amplifies how concerted cultivation is at the same time a classed and racialized parenting logic.

Mr. and Ms. Williams indicate that race shapes their decisions about what activities to select for their son (Lareau Reference Lareau, Lareau and Conely2011). In particular, they attend an all-Black and middle-class church. Lareau briefly situates the Williams’ Church attendance as one of the ways Alexander’s mother ensures that he is not the only Black child in any given activity, whether that be sports, theater, piano, or school classrooms. We do not learn why the Williams family chooses to attend an all-Black middle class church and what this particular church community contributes to their child’s development. There is also no context provided about the social and cultural importance of churches in many African American communities and families (Billingsley Reference Billingsley1999; Chatters and Taylor, Reference Chatters and Taylor J.1988; Frazier Reference Frazier1964; Morris Reference Moore1984; Pattillo Reference Mukherjee1998), its relationship to neighborhoods, (McRoberts Reference McHale, Crouter, Kim, Burton, Davis, Dotterer and Swanson2003), or that Black social spaces like church are inherently pleasurable, relished, and sought out by Black middle-class families (Lacy Reference Kurz2007). Given that Black churches are important sites of instilling positive messages about Black identity and African American history (Bagley and Carrol,1998), and provide support networks and role models (Franklin et al., Reference Franklin, Boyd-Franklin, Draper and Pipes McAdoo2002), I infer that attending a Black and middle-class church for the Williams family is a racialized parenting technique that fits under the banner of cultural socialization, because it facilitates cultivation of a positive racial identity in a raced and classed social environment.

Lareau (Reference Lareau, Lareau and Conely2011) states that Black middle-class parents view preparing their children for experiencing race in America as a crucial obligation of parenting. The Williams family and Ms. Marshall constantly observe the racialized spaces that their children interact in. Ms. Marshall expressed concern about social and racial isolation for her daughter at a majority White basketball camp and closely monitored racist treatment of her daughter and peers from a White school bus driver. Ms. Williams states to Lareau’s research team that it is not fair to their son to place him in racially isolating spaces. They make sure their son is in relatively racially mixed social settings, and with White people that they perceive to be “cultured” or not racist.

For each of these Black middle-class families, interactions in and experiences with “White space” shapes their parenting practices. Black people are often required to navigate “White space” on a daily basis and this is especially relevant for the increasing numbers of Black middle-class families who live, work, and/or send their children to school in majority White social spaces (Anderson Reference Anderson2015). Wariness about racist treatment, racial stigma, and isolation within “White space” is a distinct and central feature of the parenting logics of Black middle-class families, like the Williams and Marshalls, and impacts their child-rearing decisions. For Ms. Williams, it was to purposely select extracurricular activities with a particular racial composition. And for Ms. Marshall, it meant strategically scrutinizing, and then intervening in the institution on behalf of her child by calling administrative officers to alert them to racist treatment. In each case, concerted cultivation techniques regarding the organization of daily life, and interventions in institutions were reflective of a race- and class-based parenting logic that exists within a larger racial social context.

In these few examples, the interplay and process between race and class with regards to parenting logics are evident. When read through a racial lens, racial socialization and parenting techniques are central to the class-based concerted cultivation practices of Black middle-class families in Unequal Childhoods.^{Footnote 11} There is also the utility in applying a racial lens to the relationship between parenting practices and how youth relate to social institutions as they enter into adulthood. In the next few pages, I demonstrate this utility through a re-reading and discussion about how Alexander described his transition to and experiences in college. Here, I situate Alexander’s reflections with scholarship about negotiating racial social environments, racial and class identity management, and the cultural and racial contingencies of marginality.

PARENTING CULTURE AND THE INTERSECTIONAL PROCESS OF RACE AND CLASS

What are the sociological implications from a re-reading of Unequal Childhoods through a racial lens grounded in race based critical theory and empirical research about racialized parenting techniques? In this section, I argue that this approach: 1) adds more layered depth to core arguments made by Lareau in Unequal Childhoods; 2) demonstrates the need to implement analysis of parenting styles that understands race and class as an intersectional process; and 3) facilitates an unmasking of Whiteness in relation to parenting and child-rearing.

Given the prevalence of racialized parenting techniques, I argue that parents, especially Black parents and parents of color, guide their children into social environments that have a socialization purpose that goes beyond solely developing a “valuable set of white-collar skills, including how to set priorities, manage an itinerary, shake hands with strangers, and work on a team” (Lareau Reference Lareau, Lareau and Conely2011, p. 39). In Unequal Childhoods, Black middle-class families perform a particular racialized version of concerted cultivation. In terms of the organization of daily life, extracurricular activities are not generic and only linked to class reproduction, but simultaneously infused with racial meaning. Other scholarship on cultural and racial socialization and racial identity development, signals how prevalent the practice of cultivating a positive racial identity is for Black families and other families of color. Analyzing the organization of daily life for children from a class only framework diminishes the centrality of racial socialization as a parenting practice.

In addition to positive racial identity development, concerted cultivation is a deeply racialized parenting style because Black parents are regularly monitoring and strategically choosing the racialized social spaces in which their families and children interact. Strategies to avoid racial isolation, such as not allowing one’s child to be the only Black person in an activity or school environment, and the need to constantly monitor for racist treatment are features of racial socialization and daily requirements for Black families and performed by parents in Unequal Childhoods. The extensive literature on racialized parenting techniques and racial socialization shows that there are degrees of variation in the content of racial parenting techniques. Black families across class backgrounds teach their children about race, and parents can implement multiple strategies depending on the social context. Some Black families downplay race and stress the importance of equality between White and Black people, others prepare their children for racial bias, some emphasize individualism and self-discipline as a strategy of resilience, others teach their children to distrust White people. Many socialize their children how to manage their identities and presentation of self in different racial social spaces and institutions, such as school, work, and law enforcement. In sum, racialized parenting techniques cultivate racial awareness and racial knowledge for children as they interact with the social world.

In their critique of Unequal Childhoods, Choo and Ferree (Reference Choo and Marx Ferree2010) note that Lareau’s analysis subsumes the anti-racist work of Black middle-class mothers under the big picture of class-based advantage. This in turn reproduces an additive and static understanding of how categories of race, class, and gender intersect in relation to the reproduction of inequality (Choo and Ferree, Reference Choo and Marx Ferree2010). Rather than just an added burden of labor for Black families, racialized parenting techniques are crucial and intertwined with class-based parenting logics. To be clear, I am not claiming that race is a “bigger effect” than class in terms of shaping parenting culture, but rather that the intersectional process between race and class is key to a distinctive parenting logic for Black families, in particular Black-middle-class parents as they manage, negotiate, and navigate different racial spaces, institutions, and class and raced identities. This analytical approach also helps add more depth to one of the most important contributions of Unequal Childhoods—that class-based parenting logics are intricately and quietly linked to the reproduction of inequality because children develop different relationships to key social institutions as they enter adulthood.

Overall, the experiences and outcomes for the youth in Unequal Childhoods support one of Lareau’s (Reference Lareau, Lareau and Conely2011) core arguments that in broader society, “concerted cultivation appears to have a greater promise of being capitalized into social profits than the natural accomplishment of growth” (p. 244). This is a valuable sociological contribution about how cultural capital, class dispositions, and habitus are transmitted in everyday family interactions, and that such interactions between parents, children, and social institutions are crucial to process of stratification and inequality. I agree that the cultivation of a sense of entitlement for middle class children is a key cultural mechanism where different levels of cultural capital are unequally transferred. However, not accounting for the layered articulation and intersectional process of race and class misses connections between racialized parenting techniques, class-based child rearing logics, and how children navigate and understand their relationship to the social world and social institutions. In Unequal Childhoods, Black middle class children understand their success and comfort within racialized educational and social environment in a way that signals the importance of racialized parenting techniques and the larger racial context that they grew up in. The ability for Black children and other marginalized youth to culturally straddle and negotiate social contexts that favor particular and often dominant social groups, cultural experiences, habits, orientations, and interactional styles is something that is in part developed through racialized parenting techniques. The social contingencies of racial and class socialization, childrearing, and marginality should be grappled with when interrogating dynamics of cultural capital and the reproduction of inequality.

To conclude this section, I want to highlight that racialized parenting techniques and its linkages to cultural capital, and inequality, does not just fall within the domain of Black families and other families of color. My re-reading of Unequal Childhoods and engagement with racial parenting techniques centers mostly on scholarship about Black families. Yet, a layered racial and classed lens of analysis of parenting culture allows for more questions how race and parenting play out for other racial and ethnic groups. There is likely nuanced variation in racialized childrearing styles across and within different racial and ethnic groups and this should be recognized when considering the racialized dimensions of parenting practices and logics.^{Footnote 14} In particular, parenting styles, racial socialization, and interactions with social institutions can be shaped by the position of groups in the U.S. racial hierarchy, immigration status, the social location of families, and the racial composition of city, neighborhood residence, and school. Attempts to interrogate how race and other social categories influence the relationship between parenting, culture, and inequality, must situate families within the broader, yet particular social context in which they interact.

Hae Yeon Choo and Myra Ferree, (2010) note that in Unequal Childhoods race is discussed only in relation to the accounts of Black families. Such an analytical design implicitly theorizes race as an additional issue for just Black people and diminishes the role of Whiteness and its relationship to families and childrearing (Choo and Ferree, Reference Choo and Marx Ferree2010). Choo and Ferree provide two examples where race is implicated in cultural logics of parenting for White families. They point out that Billy, a working-class White child, plays only with White children despite living in a neighborhood that is blocks away from a predominantly Black neighborhood. Choo and Ferree astutely ask if parenting work is linked to creating and maintain segregated spaces for White children.

There has been a recent uptick in scholarship about the racial socialization amongst White families, especially at early to middle childhood, when parents often mediate children’s exposure to what is considered appropriate and comfortable (Hagerman Reference Hagerman2014; Lewis Reference Levey-Friedman2003; Mose Reference Morris2016). Most work on White families and racial socialization finds that White parents rarely initiate conversations about race and racial inequality with their children (Underhill Reference Umaña-Taylor and Fine2018; Vittrup Reference Vincent and Ball2016). Instead, most conversations about race amongst White families are reactive to current events or questions from their children (Vittrup Reference Vincent and Ball2016).^{Footnote 15} Often, when racial conversations happen White parents reproduce colorblind ideals or just stress in broad terms that racism is bad (Hagerman Reference Hagerman2014; Vittrup Reference Vincent and Ball2016). The most common pattern found by this group of scholars is that racial socialization within White families happens through silence, meaning that conversations about race do not come up, which in turn contributes to a colorblind upbringing (Hagerman Reference Hagerman2014, Reference Hagerman2016; Vittrup; 2016). The racialized parenting practice of silence has also been found to occur even when racial tension and protest is highly visible on a national stage (Underhill Reference Umaña-Taylor and Fine2018).

Coupled with current research on White families and racial socialization, I agree with Choo and Ferree’s critique of Unequal Childhoods with regards to Whiteness and intersectional analysis. By separating race to just the domain of Black families, Whiteness is analytically re-inscribed as a taken for granted and unmarked norm of American family life. Many race scholars have argued that Whites’ lack of racial awareness, unawareness of their dominant social location, and perceptions of White dominated social institutions as normal, are key features of White normativity and colorblindness (Bell and Hartmann, Reference Bell and Hartmann2007; Bonilla-Silva Reference Bonilla-Silva2017; Doane Reference Doane, Doane and Bonilla-Silva2003; Frankenberg Reference Frankenberg1993; Underhill Reference Umaña-Taylor and Fine2018). If analysis of parenting culture misses the role of White racial socialization, we miss a significant way in which Whiteness manifests itself within families and how it links to the transmission of cultural capital and social forces of reproduction. A complete analysis of parenting logics, culture, and social reproduction must mark and interrogate Whiteness. If analysis of racial and class parenting techniques does not mark Whiteness, then it is easy to be bounded by a narrow analytical category of class, and to understand race and class as additive and separate effects, rather than a layered and intersectional process (Choo and Ferree, Reference Choo and Marx Ferree2010).

In these three sections, I have argued that racialized parenting techniques, an underappreciated dimension of Unequal Childhoods, are central to parenting, and for Black families it is a universal experience as parents try to help their kids be successful in life. There are class dimensions of racialized parenting techniques and the middle class practice of concerted cultivation is itself racialized. Grappling with the layered articulation or intersectional process of race and class builds off of Lareau’s contributions by enriching our analysis and theorization about how families of different racial and classed backgrounds prepare for and negotiate various racialized and classed institutions and spaces. My race-centered and intersectional analysis complicates how, but also provides a more holistic understanding about, cultural capital, socialization, and styles of parenting are linked to the experiences of children in particular institutional environments and potentially the social reproduction of inequality.

BROADER IDEOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS: CONCERTED CULTIVATION AND THE LEGITIMATION OF RACIAL NEOLIBERALISM

In the previous three sections, I argued that racialized parenting techniques, an underappreciated dimension of Unequal Childhoods, are central to how people of color navigate—and Black families in particular—an almost universal experience as parents try to help their kids be successful in life. For families of color, and again especially Black families, concerted cultivation can be understood as a racialized parenting style by which racial identities are developed as well as a key dimension of preparation for children to manage, navigate, and ideally succeed in an unequal, racist social system. Furthermore, I have suggested that racial parenting techniques can also serve to generate and sustain collective identities, organizations, and spaces for people of color. From a more normative point of view, then, racialized parenting techniques is often both necessary and valuable in a multitude of ways; however, at the same time, such parenting nevertheless exists in tension with a system of racial capitalism and dominant neoliberal logics.

Here, I explore this tension by widening my analysis beyond particular racialized parenting techniques and the text of Unequal Childhoods. I discuss concerted cultivation, in both its generic and racialized forms, as a mechanism in legitimating larger systemic forces and ideologies by situating intensive parenting culture, concerted cultivation, and racialized parenting techniques, with scholarship on racial capitalism and racial neoliberalism, especially as they connect with critiques of Whiteness and colorblindness. My primary insight here is that attending to the forces and tensions experienced by parents of color in trying to enact concerted cultivation are both exposed and better understood through these critical frameworks.

Critical theorists have argued that in the era of neoliberalism, the nation-state and individual subjectivity is re-imagined in the model of the “free-market” (Boltanski and Chiapello, Reference Boltanski and Chiapello2005; Brown Reference Brown2015; Connell Reference Connell2010). Under neoliberal rationality, life is a project that must be managed and all facets of it can be viewed as an opportunity for self-investment, competitive positioning, and the appreciation of value (Clair Reference Clair2015). In this context, constant personal management and economized self-investment is transposed into supposed non-economic spheres and activities, such as recreation, fitness, dating, and family life. The parenting style of concerted cultivation and the plethora of scholarship on the normative cultural position intensive mothering (e.g., Blair-Loy Reference Blair-Loy2003; Hays Reference Hays1996; McCormack Reference McAdoo2005) mesh well with the hegemonic logic of neoliberal rationality. Intensive mothering, which is the common belief that good mothers should first be caregivers and invest great swaths of time, money, energy, and emotional labor in intensively raising children, is considered a tenacious and dominant ideology (see also Elliott et al., Reference Elliott, Powell and Brenton2015). Parents face contradictory demands with regards to child-rearing because as children enter adolescence, they must prepare them to be independent and responsible while at the same time protecting them from social ills and possible failure (Elliott 2010; Kurz Reference Kelley2002). In these social conditions, intensive parenting styles such as concerted cultivation thrive and become increasingly associated as proper and normative parenting.

Neoliberal rationality thrives within parenting culture due to the competitive nature of American life, a growing sense of instability, and the threat of downward mobility. In this social landscape parents have to work extremely hard in order to expand their children’s sense of possibility through competition, develop their ‘competitive attitude,’ and make sure they attain the formal credentials necessary for success in social institutions of school and work (Collins Reference Collins1979; English Reference English2005; Lamont Reference Lamont, Graziella Moraes Silva, Welburn, Guetzkow, Mizrachi, Herzog and Reis1992; Lareau Reference Lamont and Marie Fleming2008). Within the arena of children’s extracurricular activities, emphasis on competition and rankings has intensified in the in the past two to three decades and are now often defined by hyper-competitiveness, professionalization, and higher participation costs (Grasmuck Reference Grasmuck2005; Levey-Friedman Reference Lareau2013).

With regards to concerted cultivation, competition, and intensive parenting, most scholars have documented its presence in middle- and upper-middle-class families. Yet, there is some evidence that concerted cultivation and intensive mothering is practiced across class, racial, and ethnic backgrounds, thus increasingly becoming hegemonic (Chin and Phillips, Reference Chin and Phillips2004; Elliot et al., 2015). Interviews conducted as part of Kids Involvement and Diversity Study (KIDS), a new project about parents and youth experiences in extracurricular activities, helps illustrate this point.^{Footnote 16} The following quote is from Liz, a Latina and working-class mother of two who lives in a Midwest exurb, talked about the challenges and pressures of getting her twelve-year old daughter into a dance program and her eight-year old son into a soccer program.

For Liz, it is very important for her children to have structured extracurricular activities as a part of their daily life. Liz’s experiences speak to the potential hegemonic presence of concerted cultivation and that families in America may adhere to an “activity ethic” (Swartz and Hartmann, Reference Sue and Okazaki2017). Her understanding of what is socially understood as good parenting is shaped by racist and classist ideology and the racial context in which Liz’s family interacts. In relation to gendered cultural pressures and racial and class stigma, Liz’s sacrifice and effort reflects the dominant ideology of intensive mothering and that mothers of all social backgrounds feel pressure to conform to such mothering standards (Blair-Loy Reference Blair-Loy2003). It is entirely on Liz as an individual to navigate and provide appropriate extracurricular opportunities for her children despite material barriers shaped by race, class, and gender inequities. Similar to Liz’s experiences as single and working Latina mother, Sinikka Elliott and colleagues (2015) document that low-income, Black single mothers’ also embrace and perform intensive mothering, but do so with limited resources and social support, which can come at a cost for their own well-being.

There is research that indicates that all parents adhere to dimensions of concerted cultivation with regards to extracurricular activities and the organization of daily life (Chin and Phillips, Reference Chin and Phillips2004). Many parents want to cultivate their children’s skill and talents, and opportunity for academic, physical, and social development, development of time management skills, and preparation for the adult world yet, working-class and poor families, who are often disproportionately Black, Latino/a, and Asian American, have differential access to quantity and quality of activities due to financial resources, time, and social capital (Chin and Phillips, Reference Chin and Phillips2004). The structurally unequal landscape of extracurricular activities and its impacts on families and youth of color can be linked to a decline in public support for financially accessible extracurricular activities (sports, arts, and academic clubs) in schools and community centers coupled with the rise of privatization. The contemporary arena of structured and organized activity opportunity for youth is becoming more exclusive, competitive, and expensive (Aspen Institute 2016; Ewing and Seedfelt, Reference Ewing, Seefeldt, Frank and Smith2002; Peguero et al., 2013; Sabo and Veliz, Reference Russell-Brown2008).

I highlight Liz’s experiences and the research done on intensive mothering and youth extracurricular activity participation to recognize the labor and agency of parents who are systemically marginalized by race, class, and gender, and to note that parents in less privileged social locations exert choice and negotiate structurally unequal institutions and environments. But I also think it is important because Liz’s words, when situated in W. E. B. Du Bois’ critical perspective towards competitive liberal society, provides an empirical foundation to understand the growing competitive landscape of parenting and youth life in the United States.

Du Bois expressed concern that liberal ideology and seemingly universal and appealing ideas about individual opportunity, private capital accumulation, and competition discouraged critical consideration of the ways in which such ideas and norms benefit the “White world” (Douglas Reference Douglas2015). Belief in a seeming natural social reality that is fiercely competitive, which simultaneously purports people as equal individuals has substantial consequences in terms of reproducing hierarchy and inequality, in that people of color are more often on the losing end within the competitive but supposed fair liberal world. (Douglas Reference Douglas2015). Within unequal social systems, incredible parenting efforts performed by mothers similar to Liz may represent exercising a weak form of empowerment and equalization as marginalized parents attempt to support their children and win in competitive society (Pattillo Reference Pattillo2015).^{Footnote 18} I make this claim because normative parenting logics are linked to larger systems of racial capitalism and match well with cultural logics of racial neoliberalism.

The structurally unequal, racially biased, and highly competitive institutions that families of color and working-class families must negotiate reflects racial capitalism and its historical legacies pertaining to White supremacist capitalist development, specifically slavery, colonialism, and contemporary racial welfare (Clarno Reference Clarno2013; Jung Reference Juang, Yishan, Kim and Wang2006; Melamed Reference McRoberts2015). Families parent in a social world where racism is a material and discursive formation that produces differential human value that is embedded in a global landscape and the expansion of capitalist society and ideology is pursued in racial directions (Pulido Reference Pugh2016; Robinson Reference Riggs2000). They parent in a social world where capital can only accumulate by producing and moving through relations of severe inequality among human groups (Melamed Reference McRoberts2015). Furthermore, the social divisions and inequities created by racial capitalism are exacerbated and reproduced in part because of neoliberal rationality, neoliberal governance, and the pervasive ideology of individualism (Clarno Reference Clarno2013; Melamed Reference McRoberts2015).

Du Bois argues that within the dominant social structure of White supremacy, inclusion of people of color and other marginalized people as free competitors with White people is a significantly limited version of freedom (Douglas Reference Douglas2015; Du Bois Reference Du Bois1940). It is limited because such inclusion does not challenge a playing field that is still effectively rigged in favor of the White establishment (Douglas Reference Douglas2015; Kelley Reference Kaufman and Gabler2002). The realities of limited racial inclusion and systemic racism coupled with the pervasiveness of neoliberal logics are the social facts used by scholars to identify neoliberalism as a racialized system. Under racial neoliberalism, the notion of race and racism are not legitimate topics of public discourse, privatized, and rendered immune from state intervention while erasing structural and historical underpinnings of racial inequality (Enck-Wazner Reference Enck-Wanzer2011; Goldberg Reference Goldberg2009; Mukherjee Reference Moynihan2006; Soss et al., Reference Smalls2011).

In the case of families, parenting, and childrearing, the structural conditions produced by racial capitalism are minimized under racial neoliberalism, while the private sphere (families) must take on more responsibility and perform neoliberal market rationality in a competitive social world. Today, families face seemingly never-ending pressure to secure opportunities and future stability for their children through meticulous, intensive, and strategic planning, which is becoming increasingly culturally understood as “good parenting.” Providing the best possible future for an individual child is accepted as the universal and seemingly colorblind norm in the United States. Yet, the odds to succeed in the performance of intensive parenting through concerted cultivation are not even. The unrecognized, and combined forces of historic racial capitalism, contemporary racial neoliberalism and systemic racism rig the field, leaving parents and kids in the hands of market rationality, with unequal chances to succeed.

Given the hegemonic presence of neoliberal market rationality and an increasingly competitive and racially neoliberal social world, it makes sense that families, almost out of necessity, fiercely compete and perform intensive parenting and concerted cultivation in order to give their individual child the best chance to succeed in a world centered on private capital and status accumulation. Because liberal and now neoliberal ideals and rationales do little to overcome the racially biased foundation of the United States (Douglas Reference Douglas2015; Du Bois Reference Du Bois1940), intensive parenting and concerted cultivation become the taken for granted norms that match well with racist and capitalist modernity (Douglas Reference Douglas2015). Ultimately, these logics that center on securing resources for an individual child in a competitive social system are very much linked to principles of Whiteness, contemporary racial ideology and racial systems, and the perpetuation of social status quo.

The historical construction of Whiteness and its deep linkage to racial hierarchy serves as a foundation for understanding how seemingly well-intentioned parenting culture and practices maintain unequal racial and class social systems. Whiteness itself has become valuable in part due to the historical legal construction of White racial identity as the sole group to determine and possess legal rights, and other social privileges that are defended by law (Haney Lopez Reference Haney-López1996; Harris Reference Harris1992). Today, despite less rigid racial stratifications, Whiteness persists as a hyper valued social identity, both materially and symbolically, in terms of economic, social, and political status (Harris Reference Harris1992; Lipsitz Reference Lewis and Diamond2006; Roediger Reference Robinson2002). I want to suggest that the perpetuation of racial inequality and the social benefits of Whiteness are often made possible through dominant parenting styles and logics. Furthermore, a generic, non-racial conception of concerted cultivation, that is not attentive to the specific challenges and complexities faced by parents of color, misses the influential markings of Whiteness and facilitates a colorblind construction of parenting culture.

Schools are a window to seeing how Whiteness as a valued social identity operates, is tied to parenting culture, and works to reproduce unequal social systems. Even in diverse and affluent schools and social environments Whiteness operates as symbolic capital, which often advantages White students and disadvantages Black and Latina/o students (Lewis and Diamond, Reference Lewis2015). In these environments White parents, rather than passive beneficiaries of structural advantage, are active racial actors who work to cumulatively protect advantages by ensuring that rules, policies and arrangements serve their children. Such parenting strategies and actions are understood as opportunity hoarding, and in certain cases it is done seemingly haphazardly and not out of animosity (Lewis and Diamond, Reference Lewis2015; Tilly Reference Threlfall1999). Individuals rarely note opportunity hoarding as racial. But as a consequence, White families fully participate in reproducing racial hierarchy and status quo. Similar to White favoritism in the labor market, White parents often secure advantage through fierce advocacy for their children and support for maintaining structures that facilitate advantage for their children, rather than explicit blocking of racial minorities (DiTomaso Reference DiTomaso2013; Walters Reference Ward2007).

Intensive parenting culture and concerted cultivation is a cultural logic that matches well with opportunity hoarding. These everyday practices contribute to the reproduction of social advantage and reflect group position theory and dimensions of Laissez Faire Racism in that group-based interests and practices flow from the institutionalization of a racially stratified social order (Bobo et al.,Reference Bobo, Kluegel, Smith, Tuch and Martin1996; Bobo and Tuan, Reference Bobo and Tuan2006). Moreover, many White Americans are comfortable with racial inequality that is produced through a perceived nondiscriminatory, meritocratic, and competitive social world (Bobo et al., Reference Bobo, Charles, Krysan, Simmons and Marsdsen2012). The combination of opportunity hoarding, and normative parenting culture fosters the reproduction of Laissez Faire Racism.

Scholars have documented that White Americans shift blame for inequality from themselves to “victims,” usually African American families (Bobo et al., Reference Bobo, Charles, Krysan, Simmons and Marsdsen2012; Bonilla-Silva Reference Bonilla-Silva2017; Perry Reference Peguero2002). With regards to the success of youth in key institutions, White and middle-class families often operate with a double consciousness, which allows them to deny larger racial realities because privilege is understood to be earned (Wells et al., Reference Waters and Foner2009). White people regularly operate from what Charles Mills (Reference Melamed2007) describes as “white ignorance,” and do not recognize that they have more access to transformative assets, which are unearned, inherited resources that enable economic and social success (Shapiro Reference Scott2005). Moreover, they often do not recognize that their own race and class status is connected to the outcomes for people located at the bottom of social hierarchies (Lewis and Diamond, Reference Lewis2015). Such misrecognition and ignorance is a feature of ideological belief in a competitive liberal society. As Andrew Douglas (Reference Douglas2015) notes, “belief in the supposed fair inclusion of formerly marginalized people into competitive and fair liberal society effectively “absolves White Americans of any continuing responsibility for social inequity or the hardship and suffering that competitive interaction may yield” (p. 28). Instead, hard work, innate ability, excellent family culture and parenting, serve as legitimate discursive explanations for their own “achievement” and differential outcomes for youth and families, which does little to close gaps in material, cultural, social, and symbolic resources.