Raising Black Youth: A Parent’s Role in Cultivating Joy and Resilience
Written by: Alice Bui
In the first week of June, the BYMHI series returned with a new webinar on parenting with Black joy led by Dr. Anjali Ferguson, the executive director of the Virginia Association for Infant Mental Health and the founder of Parenting Culture Incorporated, providing resources for inclusive parenting communities. Joined with her was her niece, Mila, who started off the webinar with her journey on mental health. As a Black girl, Mila encountered multiple barriers in attending predominantly white schools, shifting between different schools, and finding herself disconnected from others due to the lack of diversity in the environment. Through those challenging moments, Mila expressed that her mother has been her greatest source of support, as she initiated conversations over her child’s emotions and thoughts, relieving the bottled-up worries in Mila.
The opening statement remarks on the crucial role of parents in establishing healthy emotional development for their children, especially in navigating through racially structured situations and interpreting their cultural identity, which is Dr. Ferguson’s main scope of focus in the webinar. As a South Asian mother who is raising multiracial (Indian-Black) children, she used to question her role in addressing racial inequality and racial socialization with her children, especially during racial awakening times, such as the Black Lives Matter movement. Henceforth, through the webinar, Dr. Ferguson informed more parents on the impacts of race on child development of mental health and strategies to counteract bias with joy.
Challenges in raising Black youths: systematic racism & racial trauma
To understand the importance of joy in parenting, our keynote speaker explored the realities of Black children’s mental health risks and child development. Exposed to systematic racism both passively and directly, Black adolescents face a greater risk for the development of mental health symptoms, such as anxiety and depression compared to their counterparts. Hence, parents should take these societal expectations and stereotypes into consideration even at the early stages of childhood, when racial bias starts to form in their identity.
Racial trauma can be transformed into intergenerational trauma, in which the traumatic experiences from race-based events or history can transmit the fear and trauma into the next generations of the individual. Thus, Dr. Ferguson emphasized how families of color specifically may experience higher mental health symptoms, as cautious and warning messages on racism from parents may contribute to the anxiety and hypervigilance in children when facing the world. Although parents cannot change the systems that lead to stressors on children, they can benefit from recognizing these social determinants and then using joy and resilience as a way to counteract the negative effects of systemic racism.
Another key idea that the speaker mentioned is code switching, which is the behavior among historically minoritized individuals to adjust their behaviors to fit in with the dominant culture. Dr. Ferguson emphasizes that while it is good to teach children to navigate social situations, parents also can play a role in reducing the pressure that code switching may have on their children by relieving pressures, and thus, reducing mental health risks.
Cultivate joy in the cultural identity of Black children at home
As Dr. Ferguson shared that “cultivating joy is one of the strongest ways to combat racial trauma,” undoubtedly the term “Black joy” has been the focus of parenting strategies for many Black families. However, the question here is how can parents apply these grand concepts into daily practices for their own children. Her recommendations include:
- Expose children to media from their culture: representation, especially in the media is crucial in developing the sense of belonging in children. These could be Black characters or real-life figures portrayed in books, stories, movies, and social media.
- Validate emotions: parents should teach and have frequent conversations with their children on various kinds of emotions, including those on the negative spectrum. Moreover, teaching children to cope with those difficult emotions and combat them with positive strategies is as important for their healthy emotional development.
Daily Practices of Joy at Home
- Create safe and affirming spaces at home
- Celebrate cultural heritage and achievements
- Encourage creative expressions (such as dance, arts, storytelling, etc.)
- Build strong bonds by having family activities together
- Create a family joy calendar - setting time off to do joy activities together with children (prioritizing the relationships)
The Value of Community
Finally, Dr. Ferguson ends the webinar with the value of community as a source of strength. The supportive community spaces allow both parents and children to connect with one another and together, combat the racial trauma shared in many Black families. Linked with her earlier talks on racial socialization, the practices of joy and resilience, require the participation of all parents. Only then, will it resonate to counteract the long history of systematic racism in the future of Black youths.
“The most underrated form of generational wealth are emotionally intelligent parents.”
- Dr. Anjeli Ferguson