A 38,000-person Facebook group for New York moms briefly shut down after members asked for a black moderator. It highlighted the racial divide in parenting groups.

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A 38,000-person Facebook group for New York moms briefly shut down after members asked for a black moderator. It highlighted the racial divide in parenting groups.
Crystal Cox/Business Insider
  • The UES Mommas Facebook group, which has over 38,000 members, was temporarily shut down this week after a request for a black moderator led to debates about racism in the group.
  • Some members said the feelings of black members weren't being considered.
  • One of the moderators, who is white, deleted posts and comments about racism, which she said was standard protocol. She reopened the group on Thursday after appointing black and Asian moderators.
  • Other mom groups across Facebook have faced similar controversies, as parents want to see racism included in the conversation around raising children.
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A private Facebook group with more than 38,000 members — which initially launched as a forum for mothers who reside in a predominantly white upscale Manhattan neighborhood — was temporarily put on pause this week after members asked for a black moderator. The fallout led to heated, and at times, racist interactions.

The UES Mommas group was created in 2011 as an online community for well-off New York City moms to share advice on breastfeeding, admission to competitive preschools, and other parenting-specific topics. As the group grew, it went on to tackle weightier issues, including domestic abuse and divorce.

But as the group expanded beyond the Upper East Side — where the median income is more than $133,000 — many parents said they wanted the conversations, and the moderators running the group, to better reflect its membership.

That came to a head over the past few weeks after Amy Cooper, a white woman, called the cops on Christian Cooper, a black man who was bird-watching in Central Park, and after George Floyd, a black man, died in police custody in Minneapolis after a white policeman knelt on his neck for more than eight minutes.

As the events unfolded, certain members defended Cooper, saying that people should wait before judging her. When discussions around police brutality came up, some people in the group implied that the outrage was outsized.

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Members who were opposed to adding new moderators said that people who were unhappy should leave the group and start their own.

A 38,000-person Facebook group for New York moms briefly shut down after members asked for a black moderator. It highlighted the racial divide in parenting groups.
Facebook

Now mom groups across Facebook are facing a reckoning about racism within their ranks. While some leaders in these communities are listening to their members' concerns, others are instead trying to ban race as a topic of conversation altogether. Still others are creating anti-racist splinter groups instead of waiting for the major mom groups to make changes.

As protests got underway across the US, group members started pushing for a black moderator

Debates about racism became heated in the UES Mommas Facebook group as protests erupted throughout the country. A number of members spoke up about adding a black moderator to the group to foster discussion on police brutality and racism. There were three moderators at that point — two were white and one who identifies as Latina and Native American.

While administrators and moderators both can remove members and posts, only administrators — who are also moderators — have the power to put groups on pause and shut them down.

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A 38,000-person Facebook group for New York moms briefly shut down after members asked for a black moderator. It highlighted the racial divide in parenting groups.
Protesters gather at the scene where George Floyd, an unarmed black man, was pinned down by a police officer kneeling on his neck before later dying in hospital in Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S. May 26, 2020.Eric Miller/Reuters

A white administrator, who co-led the group, and asked to remain anonymous to protect her and her family's employment, said she deleted a number of posts that pertained to racism and police brutality. That's because, she said, they violated the group's terms. Among a number of restrictions, the group is not permitted to discuss "divisive topics." She also blocked members who she said violated the group's rules.

A 38,000-person Facebook group for New York moms briefly shut down after members asked for a black moderator. It highlighted the racial divide in parenting groups.
Facebook

A handful of members who were kicked out this week told Insider that they felt they were targeted for making critical statements and being vocal about wanting to hire a black moderator.

When members brought up the need for a black moderator last week, the white administrator reminded the group that they had a woman of color in the position. She said the Latina administrator left her post this week after some members questioned if she could effectively represent women of color if she's "white passing."

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Eddy Bright, a black mother of two who was kicked out of UES Mommas this week without explanation, told Insider that, as far as she's aware, members didn't tell the moderator that she was "too white." They only wanted to educate the group about the differences between being a woman of color and being black.

The white administrator told the group in a post that she could handle the job on her own and that if she added a black moderator, she'd have to add numerous other moderators of varying ethnicities.

But she also told Insider that she had been working on adding a black moderator before the events of the last few weeks. "It's not as simple as just snap your fingers and 'poof,' there's a black moderator," the administrator told Insider. "It's a very time-consuming job and nobody volunteered."

Black members told Insider that her comments, response to the request, and the censoring of posts made them feel that the group wasn't welcoming to black parents and other parents of color.

A number of black members said they were distraught when posts and comments were deleted

"The group very clearly caters towards upper middle class white women," Melissa Lherisson, a black mother of two, and member of the Facebook group for about four years, told Insider, "and doesn't care to do the work around being considerate or understanding to groups that do not fall outside of that."

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As criticism intensified, the administrator archived the group on Monday and shared a statement saying that she shut it down because of the "chaos and racist debates."

A 38,000-person Facebook group for New York moms briefly shut down after members asked for a black moderator. It highlighted the racial divide in parenting groups.
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A number of members told Insider that they wanted the administrator to be more transparent about her plans and to apologize for offensive remarks. Members said they were hurt when the administrator called the woman who initially asked for a black moderator "aggressive."

On Thursday, without explanation, the group was reinstated with two new moderators — one black and one Asian. The white moderator told Insider that she had been in talks with those women for months. A number of members told Insider that just knowing that she was working on the issue would've eased their concerns.

The current administrator said she plans on stepping down soon.

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"I reached an understanding that the group probably can't function the way it was intended at its founding," she said.

The white administrator had inherited the role in 2017 after another contentious event. The original administrator relinquished her position and nearly shut down UES Mommas when the group members sparred over the promotion of a children's book called, "P is for Palestine."

Parent groups across Facebook are grappling with how to effectively address racism

UES Mommas is one of numerous New York mom groups that have faced backlash for anti-black sentiment in recent weeks.

Prior to the controversy at UES Mommas, a user posted an anonymous response to the Amy Cooper incident in "UWS Mommas," a Facebook group for parents living on Manhattan's Upper West Side of Manhattan, which a number of members said they felt was rife with racist language. One of the white administrators stepped down at that point, and members asked for a black moderator to be hired, another white administrator told Insider.

A white administrator for that group told Insider that the group is working on appointing a black moderator, and is accepting applications for the role.

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Two Facebook groups for mothers in Astoria, Queens, "Working Astoria Moms Group" (WAMG) and "MOMally Astoria," were also paused this week after members said that black women in the groups were denigrated and removed without valid reason. The "Momally Astoria" group is now experimenting with having no moderators at all. The WAMG group is pursuing the opposite approach, where every post has to be approved by a moderator.

Some Facebook mom groups want to ban conversations around race altogether

A 38,000-person Facebook group for New York moms briefly shut down after members asked for a black moderator. It highlighted the racial divide in parenting groups.
Crystal Cox/Business Insider

Other mom groups are trying to still keep race out of their discussions entirely, despite the fact that parents in these groups say they believe race and parenting are inextricable.

The administrator for another New York-based mom group, who's white — and asked to remain anonymous to protect her family's privacy — told her members to keep the topics to parenting, and to discuss issues around race in other groups.

Black parents say those types of blanket statements ignore the fact that racism often seeps into basic conversations around parenting in ways that a non-black moderator might overlook.

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Over the years, Bright said she mostly ignored posts in the UES Mommas group that had racists underpinnings. She was there for the recommendations and community support.

But it pained her when parents would weigh in on public schools and make veiled statements about the makeup of the student body.

"When moms are giving their view on the school, and say, 'The students aren't quality,' depending on the neighborhood, you know what they're trying to say," Bright said.

Black members said they often had no choice but to ignore posts with racist overtones

A 38,000-person Facebook group for New York moms briefly shut down after members asked for a black moderator. It highlighted the racial divide in parenting groups.
Getty

Bright also took issue with the frequent "nanny shaming" posts found in the UES Mommas group for being racist. In these posts, members put up photos of nannies, typically women of color, taking care of white children, in an effort to "out" bad behavior to their employers. The nanny might not have been holding a child's hand, for example, or could've been looking down at their phone in the moment. Members rarely post photos of white caregivers engaging in the same behavior.

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"Maybe she's doing something that you deem is wrong, but they were almost never putting the child in danger," Bright said. "If the child is in danger, call 911, don't go run to Facebook."

Bright had suggested that members post a description of a caregiver instead of a photo. That issue devolved into a heated debate, with some moms agreeing with Bright. But many others said they still wanted the "free nanny surveillance," Bright said.

New anti-racist parenting groups are started to crop up on Facebook

In light of the controversy at UES Mommas, a number of new groups have sprung up.

That includes one group called, "Anti-Racist Parents of NYC: Parents/Caregivers Dismantling White Supremacy."

Another group, called "UES Mommas*" aims to offer the same support of the original "UES Mommas" group, while ensuring that all "ALL members feel included, represented, and respected," one of the administrators wrote in a statement. The group has four administrators, including a black woman.

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While Bright said she appreciates these groups, she wishes that there could've been a way for the original UES Mommas group to help all of its members feel accepted and safe.

"New York city is a very diverse place. But yet, it's very segregated. These mom groups are a way for us to try to dismantle that," Bright said. "I don't want my kids' friend groups to be homogeneous, but I also don't want them to feel like an outsider. If there's a way for us to build connections, even if it's on social media, so that when we're in the neighborhood, when our kids are out, that there's openness there, that's what I would have hoped for these kinds of groups."

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