“They Write Me Off and Don't Give Me a Chance to Learn Anything”: Positioning, Discipline, and Black Masculinities in School
Anthropology & Education Quarterly
Published online on August 07, 2017
Abstract
This study examines the schooling of black male students in a U.S. high school. Drawing upon positioning theory and student resistance literature, I describe how the students make meaning of the pathologizing positioning practices of the school, including how they resist and internalize dominant discourses about black masculinity and how their performances of particular masculinities within the school are met with surveillance, regulation, and discipline. I argue that schools are locations where dominant ideologies of black masculinities are imposed, contested, and sometimes reproduced.