Fifth-Grade Black Boys' Identities in a Single-Sex School for Boys of Color

• In Event: 52.036 - Identities of School(ing) in Urban Contexts

Abstract

Single-sex schools for boys of color have been embraced in the United States as a strategy to ameliorate a so-called, “Black Male Crisis” (Sharpton, 2004; Mincy 2005). Black boys and men lead the U.S. in rates of homicide, suicide, and incarceration (National Urban League, 2007). They are overrepresented in suspension and expulsion rates, and underrepresented in advanced-placement and honors courses (Oakes, 1985; Skiba, et al., 2002). Some scholars link these deleterious outcomes to the intersection of Black boys’ race, class, and gender identities (Ferguson, 2000; Stevenson, 2004). Mass media outlets, in turn, often portray Black males as “hypermasculine,” a persona rooted in hyperaggression, anti-intellectualism, and hypersexuality. (Cose, 2002; Majors & Billson, 1992)

With hypermasculine identities shaped by urban poverty considered a profound contributing factor (Anderson, 2008; Cunningham, & Meunier, 1999), these single-sex schools not only express a commitment to educating boys of color, but also fostering their identity construction (http://www.coseboc.org). Prior research purports how supporting Black male identities can promote positive outcomes (Fordham & Ogbu, 1986; Smalls, et al., 2007). Future empirical studies must therefore strive to deeply understand how this intervention school model influences Black boys’ intersectional identities, particularly during childhood where these disparaging outcomes typically originate.

Privileging Black boys’ perspectives, this 3-year ethnography examines the interplay of school culture, academic performance, and identity at a 4th-8th-grade single-sex middle school for boys of color in a major northeastern city. The cultural, social, and academic dimensions targeted include: (a) school values and beliefs; (b) peer and student-teacher relationships; (c) specialized programming; (d) curriculum and instruction; (e) discipline policy, and; (d) academic engagement. The school-site has a student population of 113 boys from low-income backgrounds. Focus groups, school observations, and interviews are analyzed with a robust and integrated analysis procedure comprised of “open-coding” (Strauss & Corbin, 1990), and thematic analysis. (Miles & Huberman, 1994)

After three years (2013-2016), a preliminary theory of Transformative Brotherhood has emerged, and begins to explicate how the boys negotiated their identities within this distinct school environment. Theoretical categories to date consist of: (1) structure and culture – boys accept, reject, and modify school policies, practices, and values; (2) peer and adult relationships – boys’ school relationships either foster or inhibit positive identity construction, and; (3) identity construction – boys’ race, class, and gender identities intersect throughout school-site. Together, these interrelated categories reveal the complex dynamics of Black boys’ identities within a single-sex school context for boys of color, and thus underscores the need to investigate how intersecting race, class, and gender identities are shaped by school environments.

Identities nevertheless are distinctly racialized, classed, and gendered in U.S. society. Educational research, however, grappling with the intersections of race, class, and gender acknowledges a more nuanced human condition with far greater implications for understanding identity construction across the critical social contexts of home, neighborhood, and school. This inquiry stance requires scholarship to embrace intersectional approaches to inform educational policies sanctioning successful programs, classrooms, and schools engaging identity construction, academic performance, and the social development of not just boys, but all students.

Author

• Joseph D. Nelson, Swarthmore College