Defensive Strategies & Counternarratives: Middle Class Black Boys? Critical Social Analysis of Their School Experiences

Abstract

Whether persistent or apathetic, academically struggling or high achieving, living in urban or sparsely populated contexts, Black boys are still disproportionately affected by academic, social, and political challenges in their school experiences. Among the many challenges they may face, Black boys are at a high risk of experiencing racial discrimination from adults and peers at school. In light of this risk—after decades of scholarship on Black boys in school—scholars encourage the increased inclusion of Black boys’ meaning making of their school experiences in the literature and they emphasize the potential importance of Black boys’ critical social analysis (the awareness and rejection of oppression) in the school context. In this dissertation, I employ a sociopolitical development framework to explore seven Black adolescent boys’ meaning making and critical social analysis of their experiences at Lakeside, a high school in an affluent suburban community. I co-facilitated a youth participatory action research program aimed at promoting critical social analysis through group discussion and photovoice; the participants completed photovoice projects aimed at highlighting problems they saw at Lakeside. Finally, I conducted semi-structured interviews with each participant; these interviews were aimed at capturing their meaning making and critical social analysis of their experiences at Lakeside. Generally, the boys viewed school as a normal and/or boring space; they recognized the privilege of attending Lakeside—a well-resourced public school with a strong reputation in their region. Regarding their meaning making of being Black boys at Lakeside, the boys reported a trend where mostly boys of color received disciplinary action; additionally, each of the boys reported experiencing overt and public racial discrimination from teachers or peers. In response to their negative experiences in school, the boys reported coping by: (1) de-emphasizing the role of race and racism in their problems at school, (2) emphasizing the importance of their personal responsibility in improving their situations as Black boys at Lakeside, and (3) withdrawing emotionally from school. For their photovoice projects, the participants chose to highlight problems of segregation in school spaces and lack of engagement at Lakeside. They initially employed a deficit-based narrative in the description of these problems—asserting that the problems primarily affected and were the fault of Black students. After group discussion and completion of photovoice projects, the boys countered their own deficit-based narratives about Black student achievement and presented suggestions for improved engagement in Lakeside classrooms. The boys in this study engaged in a complicated critical social analysis of their experiences at Lakeside; they recognized the existence of systemic oppression in the world, but denied its manifestation in their experiences of racial discrimination at school. Instead, they often opted to hold only themselves accountable for their negative experiences at Lakeside. Taken together, through discussion and photography, this study expands our understanding of Black boys’ school experiences and the development of their critical social analysis in school and program contexts.