Flirting with the fascination and fear of black boys: racial phobias and policing interracial dating in a private catholic high school

Abstract

Black men and boys have been constructed as libidinous threats to white womanhood and white racial purity since the sixteenth century. In the wake of the landmark Brown decision, white citizens fused the Black male rapist trope with segregation theology to create private segregation academies to minimize Black-white contact. These schools remain more segregated than traditional public schools. The participants in this study were recruited to a private Catholic high school where the entire Black population was made up of Black boys who played a sport and whose interracial relationships with white girls triggered resistance. Drawing from qualitative data, the purpose of this paper is to highlight five Black boys’ experiences with phallic-based Negrophobia in a predominantly white and private Catholic high school. Findings reveal that participants realized they were transgressing institutional boundaries to preserve a racial order, and their transgressions were constantly policed and monitored.

Keywords:

• Black boys
• Black education
• private schools
• catholic education
• misandry

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Daniel J. Thomas

Daniel J. Thomas III is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Teaching, Learning and Culture within the College of Education and Human Development at Texas A&M University. Broadly, his scholarship focuses on the intersection between two strands of research—anti-Black historical discourse and the contemporary experiences of Black men and boys within secondary education. His first strand currently explores the critical, antiracist practices of Black men serving as teacher-coaches. The second strand examines how Black boys encounter and resist anti-Blackness within predominantly White and private Catholic high schools. His work has been featured in the Peabody Journal of Education, Teachers College Record, Theory & Research in Social Education, Urban Education, Educational Studies, and Race Ethnicity and Education.