The Lies We Tell About Blackness: Racialized Anxieties of Black Youth in Lean on Me

• In Event: Reimagining Educational Landscapes through Visual Culture

Abstract

In this paper, I explore the encoding of racist narratives about Black youth in Lean on Me, which is very loosely based on the story of black male principal (Joe Clark) who is said to have transformed the “decaying inner-city” Eastside High by using unconventional classroom/school management methods (Avildsen, 1989). It is that looseness that I want to explore, and what it tells us about the persistence of black criminality narratives that disappear the violence of white supremacy. By changing facts about Clark’s methods and obscuring his failure, the audience leaves the theater feeling like Clark’s authoritarianism was justified, which then provides legitimacy for the use of violent discipline against black and brown students. This is why examining the messages that are encoded in these films can provide some perspective on white narratives around Black youth: it reveals embedded cultural values in relation to the subject-making process for Black youth.

Author

• Akua Nkansah-Amankra, University of Illinois at Chicago