Criminalization of Black Boys: Education, Legal, and Media Gangsterism

• In Event: (Re)Teaching Trayvon Martin: Critical Pedagogy for Racial Justice and Human Freedom

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to examine the racially hostile environment of U.S. public schooling towards Black males. The article draws on the work of Foucault (1977, 1982) regarding the construction of society’s power relations and Bourdieu’s (1977, 1986, 1990) work concerning how beliefs are established to show how power operates within schools alongside racism, racial profiling, and gender stereotypes to criminalize Black males. Additionally, the article utilizes the theoretical lenses of populational reasoning (Popkewitz, 1998), conceptual narrative (Somers & Gibson, 1994), and critical race theory (Delgado, 1999) to link the common narrative and the cultural memory of Black males to the death of Trayvon Martin and the treatment of Black males in schools.

Author

• Bettina L. Love, University of Georgia