Snitching and Switching Up: Finding, Keeping, and Testing Trust for Black Boys

• In Event: 34.096 - MTCC Roundtable Session 12
  In Roundtable Session: 34.096-8 - WITHDRAWN: Black Youth in Urban Contexts

Abstract

This AERA paper explores how boys describe the bonds of brotherhood through varying types and degrees of trust: annealed and tempered trust. Drawing from qualitative research data, I examine how black boys conceive of and enact brotherhood with their peers in and out of school. I describe how boys find, keep, and test trust; and to what degree, if at all, boys’ understandings and values of brotherhood align with the values and practices of the single-sex school that they attend. This paper presents implications for school practices and culture, including how practitioners can teach and take academic and emotional care of black boys and how, in turn, we can support boys’ care-taking and trust with one another.

Author

• Pavithra Nagarajan, Teachers College, Columbia University