Abstract
The present study investigated how advocacy, relatedness, and care and concern, three of the five tenets of Black othermothering, served as a structure to engage African American/Black students and families through cultural brokering. Othermothering is critical to the pedagogy of Black teaching and contributed to the success of African American students prior to the 1954 ruling of Brown v. Board of Education. Following desegregation, Black students began performing disproportionately lower than their White counterparts. Additionally, 40,000 Black teachers and administrators lost their jobs and, to date, have not been able to rebound from this travesty in education, as Black teachers only make up 7% of the teaching population (Farinde et al., 2016). To combat the Black teacher deficit gap, this study examined the impact of Black othermothers (BOMs) at one Sacramento-based junior high school and one Sacramento-based elementary school from the perspectives of four White teachers. In addition, this study sought to examine how Black/African American parents/guardians (N = 54) felt about the idea of Black othermothering at their child’s school. An anonymous survey was administered on social media for Black parents to complete. From the perspectives of the teachers, the results showed that Black othermothering improves their connection to Black students and families through advocacy, relatedness, and care and concern, and Black parents/guardians equally desire said support with a greater desire in elementary and junior high school. These findings suggest the need for increased cultural representation and understanding of Black students and their families for holistic and equitable methods of inclusion.