Threatened and Placed at Risk: High-Achieving African American Males in Urban High Schools

• In Event: Race, Masculinity, and the Pursuit of Academic Excellence: Educating Gifted Black Males

Abstract

1. Objectives or purposes: The objective of this study was through qualitative methods investigate the risk and protective factors of 11 high-achieving African American males attending 4 urban charter high schools in a Midwestern city to determine what factors account for their resilience and success in high school. There is no shortage of empirical evidence to highlight the difficulties African American males encounter, including the realm of education and the consequences associated with being undereducated (Howard & Flennaugh, 2011; Noguera, 2009). However, Black males’ academic achievement is a complex and multilayered issue.

2. Perspective(s) or theoretical framework: This research was guided by a Phenomenological Variant of Ecological Systems Theory (PVEST), which assisted in extrapolating how these young Black males make sense of their experiences despite the many challenges they face growing up in urban Black America.

3. Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry
This study addresses two primary questions: (a) How do high-achieving African American male high school students characterize the risk factors and sources of support that are present in their high school experiences and lives?, and (b) How do the participants make sense of and respond to situations they consider as heightened forms of risk? This study was guided by narrative analysis procedures (Creswell, 2012; Marshall & Rossman, 2010), and it used a semi-structured interview protocol and a structured debriefing protocol process to identify participants’ perceptions and explore their insights and beliefs.

4. Data sources, evidence, objects, or materials
This study took place at four charter high schools in a Midwestern city called Canvas (pseudonym) during the 2010 spring and summer semesters. I conducted interviews with 11 high-achieving Black male students at four charter high schools. High achievement was defined as having a mathematics GPA of 3.0 or higher and being identified by mathematics teachers as one of the top five students in their classes.

5. Results and/or substantiated conclusions or warrants for arguments/point of view: Results indicate that although students were under multiple forms of academic and physical threat within and beyond school walls. There was a keen presence of academic agency and management of potentially threatening situations to cleverly protect themselves from complex systems of risk.

6. Scientific or scholarly significance of the study or work: The students in this study created sophisticated strategies to protect themselves. Suggestions that African American high school male students have to emulate the behaviors of the mainstream to position themselves in better favor for positive educational outcomes, is to ignore the fact that doing so could put them in increased danger. The environments these students function in every day require them to maintain a certain level of street credibility (Majors & Billings, 1993). However, most of the participants spoke of or demonstrated an outward appearance of “acting hard” not as a way to seek out violence but to avoid it or to defend themselves, preventively (Majors & Billings, 1993).

Author

• Ebony Omotola McGee, Vanderbilt Peabody College