Contemplating Antiracist Mothering in the Lives of White Women in Multiracial Families

Although more white women live, love, and mother in multiracial contexts, there remains limited scholarship on them, particularly what role they can play in antiracism efforts. In this article, I consider what antiracist mothering means to white women in multiracial families, and how they practice antiracist mothering in their lives. I draw on data from two participant workshop discussions on antiracism and mothering, held as part of a larger qualitative study of ten white women in multiracial families in Canada. The participant dialogues reveal four key themes: facing fear, developing critical skills, finding “comfort in discomfort,” and engaging in self-reflective learning. The research findings demonstrate how white women in multiracial families can be proactive in their negotiation and resistance to dominant discourses of race and racism, especially if they are willing to participate in ongoing learning. The research study suggests using an antiracism framework to explore the perspectives and practices of white mothers in multiracial families is informative to reconceptualizing their mothering roles, and how they can cultivate their own and their children’s critical skills. Participant workshops are recommended as a method to engage issues of race and difference with white women in multiracial families

Settler Colonial Socialization in Public Sector Work: Moving from Privilege to Complicity

In this piece, we ask, what are the risks of a pedagogy and politics that begins and ends with privilege? What does it mean to declare privilege when embedded in institutions of the settler colonial state? These questions are raised through an ongoing project where we interview provincial public sector workers on Treaty 6, 7 and 8 (Alberta, Canada) and Coast Salish Territories (British Columbia, Canada) about their implications in settler colonialism through public sector work. In the project, we articulate the interdisciplinary framework of settler colonial socialization to consider the space between individuals and structures – the meso-space where settlers are made by learning how to take up the work of settler colonialism. For these reasons, in our research we ask, “what do the pedagogical processes of settler colonial socialization tell us about how systemic colonial violence is sustained, and how it might be disrupted or refused in public sector work?” In this paper, we narrow our focus to the declarations of privilege that many of our interview participants are making. We reflect on these declarations and consider whether focusing on settler complicity and Indigenous refusals can better support a decolonial politics for settlers working in the public sector. We argue that declarations of privilege risk reproducing settler-centric logics that maintain settler colonialism, settler jurisdiction, and settler certainty, and we reflect on how to orient participants (and ourselves) towards the material realization of relational accountability and towards imagining otherwise