Black Male Futurism: Re-envisioning Giftedness, the Attitude Achievement Paradox, and the Public Personas of Black Male Students

Session Submission Type: Panel Discussion

Abstract

This panel seeks to recover and revitalize public images of the Black male student. This panel will silence the prevailing master narratives of Black male students as innately inferior to their white counterparts. Collectively, these papers will push the audience to re-envision Black male students as intellectuals, change agents, and organic intellectuals committed to communal uplift. Specifically, this panel makes four useful interventions in current scholarship on Black male students. First, panelists suggest that Black male students possess gifted qualities—which are largely ignored in contemporary Education scholarship. Second, the panel interrogates the attitude achievement paradox as part of a critique of mainstream educational policy. Third, this panel will re-consider the significance of cool pose as part of the Black male student athlete persona. Lastly, panelists will consider the responsibilities of Black males on historically Black college and university campuses (HBCUs).

Sub Track

• Cultural Studies of Education

Individual Presentations

• Re-reading Dope: Re-fashioning Gifted Black Male Student Status in Mainstream American Film - Heather Cherie Moore, Allegheny College

• Primetime Collegians: An Analysis of Black Male Student Representations in (Fictional) HBCUs - Kevin Joseph, University of Kansas

• All About The U: Black Male Student Athletes, Masquerading Hip Hop, and Public Cool Pose - Charles Ross, Allegheny College

• Revenge of the Blerds: Re-Envisioning the Attitude Achievement Paradox through the Black Nerd Movement in Hip-Hop - Jason Hendrickson, LaGuardia Community College - CUNY