Mexican American Male Masquerades in the Institution as Bully

ABSTRACT

This Black and Chicana Feminist case study challenges national discourse surrounding school bullying as individualistic, student-centered. We explore the warrior lens of Mexican/Mexican-American males. While masquerading institutional compliance, they simultaneously unmask policies, practices as the means to control mind/bodies/spirit. This research seeks to uncover and more deeply understand lived realities at intersections of race, class, and gender while highlighting these young men’s agency to physically and psychologically resist that which seeks to circumscribe their educational and social outcomes. Within an elusive and subversive rasquachismo resourcefulness, they adhere to expectations while masquerading compliance to create spaces of resistance and survival within the institution as bully.

KEYWORDS:

• Mexican American males
• school Bullying
• educational marginalization
• youth agency
• Black and Chicana Critical Feminist Case Study

Notes

¹ Operating within Chicana and Black critical feminist frameworks honoring voices silenced and marginalized at intersections of race, class, gender, age, and sexuality, we respect and maintain pseudonyms chosen by our participants. In some cases, pseudonyms contain and reflect ethnic identities or pop culture references with which our middle school male participants identified.