Researchers have repeatedly found parent engagement essential to students' academic success (Fan & Chen, 2001; Jeynes, 2010; Wilder, 2014). However, most research on this topic fails to acknowledge underlying systemic issues that prevent marginalized families from participating in traditional parent engagement efforts and ignores the work they do in resistance to unjust social pressures (Latunde & Clark-Louque, 2016; Koonce & Harper, 2005; Zaidi et al., 2021). Traditionally, parent engagement has been viewed, modeled, and measured using white-centric, narrow definitions (Ishimaru et al., 2018). Further, these models have been weaponized in school policies against families of color (Harry et al., 1999; Lareau & MacNamara Horvat, 1999; Olivos, 2006).

This study focuses on Black mothers' performances of parent engagement and illuminates the invisible and undervalued labor that traditional parent engagement models have failed to capture. It illuminates the work of a sample of middle- to higher-income Black mothers in service of their children's education as an outward performance of their endarkened feminist epistemology (EFE) (Dillard, 2006). Their labors demonstrate a radical and ongoing commitment fueled by an ethos of emancipatory learning and teaching emanating from the historical realities of Black education in the United States.

With a desire-centered lens (Tuck, 2009), this study aims to widen scholarly notions of parent engagement by acknowledging the systemically unjust realities that Black parents face when interacting with educational institutions to illustrate more fully the extent of their labors in service of their children's education. Desire-centered research strives to understand the complexities, contradictions, and self-determination of lived lives. This approach does not ignore the effect of oppression but also highlights the ingenuity and agency enacted by Black parents. While the sample in this study is US based, we recognized that this issue is a global problem for racial minorities that has been problematized in New Zealand (Smith, 2003), South Africa (Ebrahim & Waniganayake, 2019), the United Kingdom (Crozier, 2001; Ward, 2020) and Canada (Butler, 2021; Sylvestre, 2018).

The following research questions guide the study: 1) How do Black mothers conceptualize their support for their children in school in light of ever-present racialized harm? 2) What added burden, if any, do racial tensions present for Black parents in their interactions with school staff and the parenting community, and how do they navigate these situations?

  In full recognition of the systemic racism and sexism faced by Black mothers in educational settings, this study leaned into the concept of motherwork by lifting up the narratives of Black mothers to better illuminate the ethos of Black parent engagement. Patricia Hill Collins (1994, 2000) theorized motherwork for Black women as the enactment of unpaid, hidden labor that promotes collective self-definition and self-reliance and benefits the survival of those beyond the members of one's own family. Motherwork manifests as labor interwoven with political acts that resist the multiple forms of oppression faced by the Black collective. These often-invisible endeavors are dynamic and dialectical and defy social structures while navigating an oppressive hierarchical order. Collins first coined the term motherwork in direct resistance to the white supremacist cultural myth of the problematic Black woman - evidenced by tropes such as the welfare queen and domineering matriarchs (Collins, 2000). Intentionally and in this same vein, this study utilizes the theoretical lens of motherwork in resistance to narratives of Black mothers not valuing education and the perpetuation of the white-centered delineations of parent involvement. A lens of motherwork facilitates a critical approach, recognizing the racially harmful environment and systemic realities within which Black mothers operate in school environments hence giving context for the additional labor required to support their children's educational futures.

A critical inquiry methodology was chosen as it requires the researcher to grapple with the power dynamics within the social and cultural context in their approach and analysis, which often challenges prevailing understandings of a given social phenomenon (Kincheloe & McLaren, 1994; 2011). Critical inquiry methodology is a branch of interpretivism epistemology through which data is analyzed by reflective reconstruction of narratives embedded in data (Denzin, 2017; Kincheloe & McLaren, 2011). Taking this approach allows this study to uncover how Black women conceptualize their own parent engagement around school issues instead of letting the definitions of researchers or educational institutions dictate if these women's actions meet the criteria of parent engagement. A qualitative approach provided the most robust opportunity to adequately honor the complexity of the racialized experiences of these Black mothers while still allowing for the congruences and divergences of their narratives to be captured. The study draws on data from 20 in-depth interviews of middle-higher-income, primarily suburban Black mothers analyzed through the Black feminist theoretical lens of motherwork. Using purposeful sampling allowed for a targeted focus on the population of interest and the gendered and racialized phenomena that plague them. These mothers were recruited through digital flyers on parenting and school-related groups on social media and by contacting mothers featured in news media on race-related issues in their school district. Recruitment criteria included location (states or communities that had approved or were in the process of debating anti-CRT laws or school board rulings), race (self-identified as Black), gender (self-identified women), and parenting status (parent of K-12 children). In addition, recruitment flyers asked that participants have some working understanding of anti-CRT or anti-Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) related battles that were playing out in their local community. The coding process used was rooted in a practice of African storytelling. First, the interview data were synthesized using thematic and functional analysis of the text and context of the narratives shared by these mother storytellers (Banks-Wallace, 2002). The initial themes were 1) invisible/hidden work, 2) work in response to systemic issues/racism, 3) counter-narratives, and 4) work undertaken for communal good. The data were then further explicitly coded with the research questions in mind. This study was IRB-approved and abided by the protocols required by Northwestern's Institutional Review Board (IRB) for ethical, social science research.

Initial findings show a propensity for this sample of Black mothers to act in service of the collective good of marginalized populations rather than in ways that solely benefit their children. More specifically, the study found examples of Black mothers fostering and delivering alternative Black-centric education curriculums for their children, but also educating school staff on both curriculum and the management of racially harmful situations, and educating on issues of race and racism more broadly within the parenting community. These mothers' lived experiences and their own educational journeys within a racialized society make them consistently aware of the hegemonic forces that act upon their families. Their resulting critical race consciousness materialized in their educational efforts that foregrounded the racial, historical, political, and systemic contexts when imparting knowledge to their children, school staff, and the community around them. Existing research on parental racial socialization, which includes racial and cultural acculturation and preparation for bias (Hughes et al., 2006; Tatum, 1987; Umana-Taylor & Fine, 2004), foreshadowed this study's findings of a pattern of racialized ingenuity and resilience as Black mothers support their children through racially treacherous waters at school. Beyond this expected phenomenon, this study sees evidence of CRS perpetuated beyond the home, perhaps due to the collective ways of knowing and exemplified in Black feminist epistemologies and ontologies (Collins, 1990). Participants described performing acts of education specifically aimed at developing a race-critical lens among school staff and their immediate community so that they, too, can better navigate race-related encounters in the future. These educational labors included: 1. Helping teachers create more inclusive and dynamic curriculums around issues of race. 2. Tirelessly educating staff about why classroom incidents were racist in their impact and advising what repair should look like. 3. Creating racial equity and anti-racism training events for the parenting community.

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