Explorations of the Organizational Governance of Two Schools and Their (Re)Production of Black Masculinity

• In Event: 21061 - Section on Race, Gender, and Class Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 1: Political Ideologies, Action, and Movements

Abstract

This paper investigates two central questions (1) How do schools (re)produce gender, race, and class ideologies, and (2) What impact does this (re)production have on Black youth’s perceptions of school as sites of work as opposed to spaces of progress? This paper utilizes 200+ hours of observations and 57 interviews with teachers, students, staff, and administrators across two different school contexts: an all-Black-Male School (ABMS) and a Co-Educational Public Magnet High School at two different time points (pre- and post-COVID-19). Utilizing ethnographic fieldwork and interview data from teachers and administrators, the first chapter offers a macro-level analysis of the organizational space of two distinctive high school contexts to examine how their governance structures – or the compilation of school rules, code of conduct, mission, value set, and guiding principles – influences the racialized, gendered, and classed politics of the school environment. Decoding this body politic is significant to establishing the school as a racialized organization as opposed to a meritocratic, race-neutral site of learning. Furthermore, the framing of school as a racialized organization showcases how Black bodies become seen as sites of labor, production, and exploitation. Thus revealing the fault lines of America’s schooling promise. By examining how rules and other governance structures in schools reproduce discipline and structure labor relations, I offer a new lens into a longstanding phenomenon in the sociology of education subfield known as learning to labor (Willis, 1977), specifically how schools (re)produce racialized, gendered, and classed ideologies that students must navigate in their daily interactions within school. The implications of these effects are important for future policy-driven educational transformations and build on the deferred vision and hope of BlackCrit theory to reimagine the space of school for Black students as one of hope, prosperity, and freedom from the confines of racial capitalism.

Author

• Aliyah Turner, University of Washington