Motherwork and Republican Motherhood

     This Monday’s reading was the article “Racially Conscious Mothering in the ‘Colorblind’ Century:  Implications for African American Motherwork” by Camille Wilson Cooper, an associate professor in Educational Leadership and Cultural Foundations Department at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.  In the article, Cooper elaborates upon the struggles and strategies many African American women employ as they raise children in the United States today.  Going off of Eduardo Bonilla-Silva’s term “color-blind racism” in his book “Racism Without Racists,” Cooper explores how the newly conceptualized racial order impacts African American mothers’ childrearing.  Ultimately, Cooper comes up with the category “motherwork” – racially conscious mothering that seeks to empower children through a meaningful racial identity in a society that systematically degrades and oppresses people of color.

     As I read Cooper’s work, I found myself comparing her concept of “motherwork” to an earlier concept of “republican motherhood.”  We read about "republican motherhood" in the article "Muslim Motherhood: Tradition in Changing Contexts" by Gail Murphy-Geiss, a professor of sociology and feminist and gender studies at Colorado College.  Overall, the "Muslim Motherhood" article was terrible - full of over-generalizations, Orientalist judgments, and sweeping claims with no self-reflexive analysis - however, the idea of "republican motherhood" was intriguing.  Murphy-Geiss explains that throughout history mothers have been expected to raise a certain type of child for the common good.  In her analysis, she claims that as Muslim women become mothers in the increasingly globalized world, they are "rethinking what it means to be Muslim in non-Muslim contexts" and instilling that knowledge into their children in order to maintain a meaningful identity.

     When comparing motherwork to republican motherhood, it is evident that mothers from oppressed groups constantly have to act as "freedom fighters in addition to being bearers of culture, identity and love" (Cooper) because the dominant culture surrounding them and their families despises, negates, denigrates, and/or ignores their existence and value.  For this reason, Cooper concludes that "racially conscious mothering remains an important form of political resistance."

     While I agree with her, I wonder a few things:

Why mothers - not parents, fathers, families?

What is the experience of children who are told in the home that their race, ethnicity, nationality, and religion are important and valuable but encounter strong messages in the public sphere that counteract their racially conscious upbringing?

When will we, or will we ever, live in a society that doesn't necessitate this type of activist childrearing?

Will women of color, and other marginalized groups, always have to defend their children from attacks on their very identity?