Reimagining Black Boyhood: Toward a Critical Framework for Educational Research

• In Event: Creating Spaces for the Politics of Resistance

Abstract

In this theoretical paper, we call on scholars to reimagine Black boyhood in educational research, policy, and practice. We argue that Black boyhood has been rendered both unimagined and unimaginable in educational research and popular discourse, due, first of all, to the tenuous position of Black children within our already fragile and troubled conceptualization of childhood, and second, because of the lack of attention to young Black boys’ lives in the scholarly and public discourse on Black males and Black masculinities. Drawing from the scholarly literature in critical childhood studies and inspired by critical theoretical work on Black masculinity, we construct a new framework for investigating Black boyhood in educational research, and for imagining what is possible in Black boys’ lives.

Authors

• Michael J. Dumas, University of California - Berkeley

• Joseph D. Nelson, Center for the Study of Boys' & Girls' Lives