Learning Through Collective Testimony: African American Motherwork, Womanism, and Praxis

Abstract

Focus groups serve as a form of collective testimony empowering women, in this case black mothers, to share their lived experiences and connect with one another. This article discusses how collective testimony revealed black mothers’ gendered racial socialization work—or African American motherwork—done on the behalf of their young daughters attending predominantly white schools in suburban Detroit, Michigan. I use womanism as a guiding framework to reflect upon my own positionality and the significance of understanding, explicating, and employing these strategies. As an expression of black women’s consciousness, womanism advocates for the empowerment of black women and thus requires me to share, as demonstrable praxis, my own personal testimony of the gendered racial socialization of my daughters.