Being Who I Am or Who You Want Me to Be: Racial Identity Development of African American Males at a Suburban Jesuit High School

• In Event: Current Issues in Catholic K-12 Schools

Abstract

There is a paucity of research exploring how African American males attending Jesuit high schools navigate race and racism during their schooling experiences. This paper aims to contribute to this gap in the literature by focusing on 15 African American males at a suburban Jesuit high school. Findings from this study indicate that the development of coping skills deemed acceptable by their White peers has a significant impact on their positionality within the larger school culture and within their peer culture as African American males. Further, the students give significant attention to the ways they understand concepts of “acting Black” and “acting White”, and how these identifiers can limit or provide access to the dominant White culture of the school.

Author

• Robert Weldon Simmons, Loyola University Maryland