Youth, Agency, and the Dominant Gaze: How Young African American and Latino Males Make Their Social Identities Strategically Visible

• In Event: 33.078 - Roundtable Session 11
  In Roundtable Session: 33.078-2 - Finding and Determining Oneself: Making Sense of Social Identities

Abstract

Although social identities are now understood to be fluid and constructed through multiple contexts, schools rarely take this nuanced view of students. Additionally, low-income Black and Latino male teenagers, whose experiences and insights sit at the intersection of race, gender, and class inequities, face particular challenges in schools. Yet their own meaning making and agency are often removed from discussion. This article therefore draws from the narratives of Black and Latino male youth to uncover often-unacknowledged experiences and challenges. Findings suggest that these male youth navigated race, ethnicity, and representation in school in purposeful ways. These adolescent males made certain aspects of their identities, including racial/ethnic identities and race-gender intersections, strategically visible to others in socially stratified classrooms.

Author

• David Jonathan Knight, University of Chicago