Toy Guns: A Critical Race and Antiblack Analysis

• In Event: 45.092 - MTCC Roundtable Session 17
  In Roundtable Session: 45.092-2 - Critical Race Analysis, Racial Disproportionality, and Racial Violence in Schools

Abstract

This paper explores the question in what ways does race determine who has the right to play with toy guns? The authors analyze data from case study research focused on multiracial youth (11-21) in a midwestern city. In this collaborative analysis, new connections are forged between the respective work of the authors to bring facts and findings to bear on the rights to safety, play, and childhood. This paper takes up several concepts from emergent theories grounded in Critical Race Theory (CRT) and BlackCrit specifically (Dumas & ross, 2016; Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1999). As a whole, the authors seek to better understand the systemic oppression that underlies the unimaginable childhood of Black boys in the present analysis of toy gun play.

Authors

• Joy Howard, University of Southern Indiana

• Nathaniel Bryan, University of South Carolina - Columbia