Meeting myself: race-gender oppression and a genre study of Black men teachers’ interactions with Black boys

ABSTRACT

Increasing the number of Black men teachers and single-sex schooling options have been heralded as necessary to reverse trends in the failure of US education institutions to adequately educate Black boys. Too little research interrogates Black men teachers’ interactions with Black boys for how they might reinforce anti-oppressive conceptions of race, gender and sexuality. A genre study – the multidimensional, intersectional examination of social identity to explain one’s persistent dehumanization – was utilized to investigate how Black men teachers’ interactions with Black boys shape the boys’ understanding of Black manhood and masculinities. Regardless of schooling arrangement, findings suggest Black men teachers must recognize and disavow hegemonic gender logics in interaction efforts aimed at improving Black boys’ lives. Additionally, I argue the potential of Black men teachers’ interactions with Black boys to function as sites for reimagining Black boys’ humanity in ways that counter persistent messages of their inferiority and disposability (i.e. aniblackness).

KEYWORDS:

• Gender
• antiblackness
• Black male teachers
• Black boys
• single sex schools

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. See https://bmeaofmichigan.org/.

2. See https://academics.rowan.edu/education/impact/.

3. My use of urban in the paper is understood to be any high-poverty, densely populated neighborhood located in a large city marked by decades of municipal neglect, racial segregation, economic disenfranchisement, food deserts, and few institutional assets (e.g., parks, libraries, community centers, institutions of higher education, etc.).

4. Institutional assets are churches, social service agencies, parks, universities, youth centers, among other social institutions that add value to a neighborhood (Green 2015).

5. One very public example includes the baseless accusation of sexual misconduct that lead to a Black boy’s death, such as in the case of Emmett Till.

6. This is in reference to a national movement for human rights for Black people under the banner of #BlackLivesMatter.

7. This is a line from the US Declaration of Independence.

8. For more information about genderqueer or non-binary, see Richards et al. (2016).