Politics of Silencing: Social Ostracization and the Threat of White Anger on Girls of Color

• In Event: Reimagining Suburbia: Youth of Color, Family, and Community Activism for Educational Justice

Abstract

Purpose

Schools in the suburban imaginary are often uncritically deemed “good” and reason enough for a family’s decision to move to a particular suburb. Important research pulls back the curtain on the suburb as an idealized educational space (Lewis-McCoy, 2018), yet more is needed that explores the relationship between these schools and students’ political education (Sánchez Loza, 2021). And while pivotal work exists that illuminates Black girls’ political meaning-making (Brown, 2007; Cox, 2015) and their academic and social experiences in white spaces (Fordham, 2016), more scholarship is needed that looks at the political meaning-making of girls of color in/through suburban schooling experiences. This project contributes to filling this gap and asks: 1) How do girls of color experience the social and political landscape of their predominantly white and affluent school? And 2) How do these experiences shape their political development and engagement?

Framework

For this paper, I utilize Fraser’s (1990) understanding of the public sphere and Harris’ (1995) conceptualization of whiteness as property. Building on the idea that “[w]hite identity has cultural and social purchase” (Moreton Robinson, 2015, p. xix), I argue that schools function as public spheres mediated by race, gender, and class and that these then delineate social and cultural norms to construct the “actually existing public sphere.” By attending to how normativity was made manifest at this suburban site, I surface the political implications of being “in” or “out” of normative bounds.

Methods & Data Analysis

This paper draws on data culled from a political ethnography (Schatz, 2013) conducted throughout the 2017-2018 academic year across two schools in central Ohio, where I investigated teaching and learning in US Government classrooms and everyday school life. I utilized Lutrell’s (2010) three-step process to analyze participant observations, interviews, and artifacts from the affluent suburban high school. Field notes were taken during visits (Emerson et al., 2011), and in-depth semi-structured interviews with students (n=19) at this site were conducted. I focus here on the four girls of color interviewed and their experiences navigating this predominantly white suburban school-community.

Results & Significance

Girls of color in this study articulated a climate of hostility along with a fear of graver consequences meted out to non-white students who deviated or were perceived to deviate from right-leaning conservative politics and the community’s social norms. They described a threat of white anger and self-silencing to avoid ostracization at the hands of the majority white conservative student body muting themselves—their mannerisms, their volume, their opinions, their politics—to stay safe. Given these findings, this study points to the need for practitioners and scholars to consider how non-white (and non-conservative) students experience politics in school and how this may impact, and perhaps hamstring, all students’ political development. Further, while best practices in civic education advocate for the inclusion of political and controversial topics into the course material, more interrogation is needed that addresses how to mitigate the very real potential of aggression, risk, and consequences experienced by students who dare to challenge normative ideas.

Author

• Dinorah Sanchez Loza, The Ohio State University
  Presenting Author