As noted by Associate Professor Jay Huguley, a Black parent, educator, researcher, and scholar who led development of the Parenting While Black (PWB) Project: “There’s no manual for what to expect when you expect racism.”
PWB is a strengths-based group intervention offering eight 1.5-hour sessions that include short presentations, community building activities and discussions. The process is iterative, incorporating intergenerational knowledge with robust research to build a toolkit that promotes personal and community resilience for Black caregivers.
Huguley goes on to explain, “For black families, stories like that of George Floyd, Trayvon Martin and Tamir Rice do not end when we turn off the television.” He elaborates: “Over the generations, we’ve known thousands of George Floyds. Our sons could be Trayvon or Tamir, our daughters, Breonna Taylor.”
Begun in Greater Pittsburgh as a pilot program which registered over 100 parents, the idea for the project clearly resonated with a black community facing structural and interpersonal racist challenges to the healthy upbringing of their children. After the pilot project, Huguley, his doctoral student, Cecily Davis, and an interdisciplinary team from across the university successfully secured Pitt Innovation Challenge (PInCh) funding to continue and expand the work.
Research has shown that Black parents can effectively support their children by promoting racial pride for Black youth, affirming the fundamental American value of human equality, teaching strategies for coping with discrimination and modeling effective parental involvement in schools.
The project provides a venue for parents and caregivers of Black schoolchildren to meet and share their intergenerational knowledge and learn research-based strategies. The sessions also provide time to process experiences, develop communal supports, and share collective strategies for Black youth success.
For example, the researchers hear from families that Black youth glean positive racial identity cues from famous and historical figures and that these can be augmented with examples from their own family’s history of resilience and overcoming. Because research has shown that it’s important not to downplay or dismiss their children’s experiences of racism, the PWB workshops teach ways a parent can show they are emotionally present for their child. Parents and caregivers also gain knowledge, strength, support, and encouragement through engagement with a peer group, enhancing their own emotional resilience.
What can White allies do to support these efforts? Huguley suggests: advocate for supports for Black families in schools, fight for resources, and talk to your peers to educate them. Learn the history of exploitation and violence that the Black community has endured. Affirm the rights of all marginalized groups.
PWB began as a project of the Center on Race and Social Problems’ Race and Youth Development Research Group, which Huguley leads. It realizes one of the center founder Dr. Larry Davis’s core visions: reduce the lag between research and practice to create positive change, personal empowerment, and solve complex social problems.