Alex [says] smiling, “Yeah. That’s a good idea! I’ll go upstairs and copy one from out of the book.” Terry turns around with a dish in hand, “That was a joke—not a valid suggestion. That is not an option.” He smiled as he turned back around to the sink. Christina says, looking at Alex: “There is a word for that you know, plagiarism.” Terry says (not turning around), “Someone can sue you for plagiarizing. Did you know that?” Alex: “That’s only if it is copyrighted.” They all begin talking at once.8
Here we see Alex cheerfully (though gently) goading his father by pretending to misunderstand the verbal instruction to consult a book for help. Mr. Williams dutifully rises to the bait. Ms. Williams reshapes this moment of lightheartedness by introducing a new word into Alexander’s vocabulary. Mr. Williams goes one step further by connecting the new word to a legal consequence. Alex upstages them both. He demonstrates that he is already familiar with the general idea of plagiarism and that he understands the concept of copyright, as well.
Williams family members also often casually interweave scientific terms or medical terms into their daily conversations. When a field-worker accompanying Alex to the soccer field comments on the boy’s deep cough, Alex nonchalantly remarks, “I’m allergic to grass,” and then adds, “Yeah. And leaf mold,” thereby using a specialized term. The parents also see it to be important to develop their son’s nascent political awareness. The African American Baptist church they attend each Sunday includes sermons on social and political issues such as the national debt, welfare policies, and poverty programs. They also discuss political issues at home with him over the dinner table, including events in the national news, such as destructive fires set in African American churches in the South.
Finally, we observed Alex and his parents, as well as other middle-class families, using reasoning and negotiation to achieve specific ends. For example, rather than order or direct children, middle-class parents would offer children “choices” for decisions. But then, these parents would unobtrusively guide their children toward the choice that they thought was preferable. In choosing fast food or in choosing a book for a summer reading list, for example, Ms. Williams would ask Alexander what he wanted, but then would suggest one or two options as the most appropriate. Often, when Alexander felt he was making his own decisions, he was in fact following his mother’s suggestions.
Overall, a commitment to a strategy of concerted cultivation is sometimes physically and emotionally exhausting for parents, yet this does not seem to lessen the appeal of this approach to child rearing among the middle class. Making a deliberate and conscious effort to raise their son in a way they believe will allow him to maximize his potential as a human being is a top priority for Mr. and Ms. Williams. In this, they are like all the other middle-class parents in our study, including Garrett Tallinger’s parents. As Black middle-class parents, however, they see themselves as having an additional, equally important obligation to prepare Alexander for the range of experiences he is likely to encounter growing up as a Black male in American society. We turn now to that aspect of their parenting.
THE ROLE OF RACE
Both Mr. and Ms. Williams are very concerned about the impact of race on Alexander. They monitor his experiences closely. Their actions are very similar to those of other African American middle-class parents in the study.9 Mr. Williams explains how he and his wife orient their son:
What we try and do with Alexander is teach him that race unfortunately is the most important aspect of our national life. I mean, people look at other people and they see a color first. But that isn’t going to define who he is . . . He will succeed, despite racism. And I think he lives his life that way. I mean, he is amazingly, refreshingly an individual. Uh, and he continues to be able to draw people to him . . . He just—he makes friends easily, and I’m happy for him.
Mr. and Ms. Williams are adamant, however, that race not be “an excuse” for failing to succeed in life:
We discuss how race impacts on my life as an attorney, and we discuss how race will impact on his life. The one teaching that he takes away from this is that he is never to use discrimination as an excuse for not doing his best.
Ms. Williams comments that racial issues help shape her decisions about Alex’s activities. She monitors the racial composition of each activity before she enrolls her son:
We have been very careful not to put him in situations where he is the only Black child. We’ve been very careful about that. Not only is that not fair, but we’ve also been careful to make sure he mixed with a group . . . let’s say of white kids whose parents . . . uh, I, never thought I’d be using this—but my dad used to say—are cultured. You know. They’ve been introduced to many different types of people and can accept that there are differences in people in a positive manner.
Note that Ms. Williams’s concerns reflect two distinct goals. She does not want Alexander to be the only Black child in any given activity. In this regard, she seems quite successful. Across all the activities we observed—piano, soccer, guitar, choir, baseball, basketball, and the school play—Alexander was one of the few Black children, but he was never the only Black child. At school, his grade level is about 10 percent Black. His friends include both Black and white children. The Baptist church the family attends has an all-Black, middle-class membership. Ms. Williams’s success in achieving her second goal, that the whites with whom her son interacts be “cultured,” is more difficult to assess. This does not diminish its importance to her, however. During an interview, she related a story about a painful incident that had taken place several years earlier.
Alexander had attended the birthday party of a child the Williamses did not know well. The invitation was linked to his baby-sitter, Rose. From time to time, Alex would accompany Rose when she baby-sat for other families. A young boy in one of these families took a shine to Alex:
The kid was really attached to Alex . . . Alexander was invited to, I guess it must have been his second or third birthday party . . . we went, and, um . . . the uh, grandparent was there. . . . [During the party,] the grandparent kept saying, um, “That kid is pretty dark.” (laughing) [He asked,] “Who is that kid?” Well, I didn’t have to say anything because Rose took care of it. (laughing)
This event reinforced Ms. Williams’s conviction that she “needed to be very careful” about monitoring the activities Alexander took part in:
We’ve never been, uh, parents who drop off their kid anywhere. We’ve always gone with him, and even now we go in . . . to school in the morning and check . . . You know, not every day but, you know, just go and check and see what’s going on.
The Williamses are generally happy with their son’s school experiences, but they objected to the racial balance at the beginning of the school year.10 Mr. Williams reports:
For some reason, this year Alexander was the only Black kid in his class—which was—which was very bad planning, because there were two fifth grades and there were . . . five (laughs lightly) Black kids in the other fifth-grade classroom, one in this classroom. Utterly ridiculous. Something that I raised holy hell about.
The Williamses are well positioned to take prompt action on Alex’s behalf because they are well informed. They may be pleased with the school’s emphasis on cultural diversity, but they continue to keep a watchful eye on both the curriculum and their son’s overall school experience. This monitoring is similar to what Ms. Williams’s mother and father did when she was a child. The elementary school in the mid-sized town in the South where she grew up was all Black. Her parents’ worries centered on academic standards: