Who Really Cares? The Disenfranchisement of African American Males in PreK-12 Schools: A Critical Race Theory Perspective

By T. Howard. Teachers College Record, 2008

411 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Background/Context Despite recent gains from a number of students in U.S. schools, African American males continue to underachieve on most academic indices. Despite various interventions that have attempted to transform the perennial disenfranchisement, their school failure has persisted. Conversely, their failure in schools frequently results in poor quality of life options. Purpose/Objective/Focus of Study The objective of this study was to use critical race theory as a paradigmatic lens to examine the schooling experiences of African American males in PreK-12 schools. The focus of the study was to shed light on how African American males believe race and racism play as factors in their schooling experiences. Research Design The article includes qualitative data from a case study of African American males who offer counterstorytelling accounts of their schooling experiences. This article also explores the utility and appropriateness of critical race theory as a methodological tool to examine and disrupt the disenfranchisement of African American males in U.S. public schools. Findings/Results The results from this study revealed that the participants were keenly aware of how race shaped the manner in which they were viewed by their teachers and school administrators. The data also revealed how the participants explicitly fought to eradicate negative racial stereotypes held about African American males. Finally, the use of counter-storytelling within a critical race theory framework seemed to provide the participants a platform to discuss race-related issues in a manner that many of the participants felt was lacking in their school environments. Conclusion/Recommendations The findings from this study reveal some of the difficult obstacles that many African American males seek to overcome in order to become academically successful. Moreover, the findings suggest that educators must become more conscious of the role that race and racism plays in their schooling environments. Furthermore, educational researchers who are concerned with disrupting school failures of students of color and from low-income backgrounds should consider conceptual and methodological frames that place race, class, and gender at the center of their analysis.

Subfields: Education, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/29fab38fa7dc2e212fdba9ec97fde704bfb41911

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Citations in the corpus

Black Achievers’ Experiences with Racial Spotlighting and Ignoring in a Predominantly White High School (2012, background): “…Milner, 2002; Oakes, 1985; O’Connor, 1997; Rist, 1970; Wiggan, 2008); there is a growing body of research dedicated to these students’ experiences in predominantly White public schools (D. J. Carter, 2007, 2008; Carter Andrews, 2009; Ferguson, 2002; Howard, 2008; Ogbu, 2003; Wells & Crain, 1997).”
Black Males, Social Imagery, and the Disruption of Pathological Identities: Implications for Research and Teaching. (2012, background): “…Black males may play an important role in creating useful research, theory, and practices that will help to improve the schooling experiences and educational outcomes for Black males, who consistently find themselves at the bottom of most academic indices (Howard, 2008; Howard & Flennaugh, 2010).”
Council for Children with Behavioral Disorders (2008, background): “…topic, the literature on stereotype threat (Steele, 1997), cultural mismatch (King, 2005), micro-aggressions towards individuals of color (Howard, 2008; Sue, 2010), and implicit bias (Amodio & Mendez, 2010) suggests that conscious or unconscious bias must be considered as a possible…”
Reciprocal Love (2014, background): “More recently, scholars have applied notions of care in the education of Black and Latino students (Garza, 2009; Gay, 2010; Howard, 2008) to examine issues of student engagement, academic achievement, and student perceptions of schooling.”
Mathematical Counterstory and African American Male Students: Urban Mathematics Education From a Critical Race Theory Perspective (2011, neutral): “Young Black men, in particular, rank among the highest casualties of our urban schooling efforts (Garibaldi, 1992; Howard, 2008; Jackson & Moore, III, 2006; Noguera, 2003b); this is no less true in their experience of mathematics classrooms (Davis & Martin, 2008; Stinson, 2004, 2006; Tate, 1997).”
Students “at Risk” (2012, background): “Through the conceptual lens of cultural analysis and critical race theory (CRT), I discuss how a “web of stereotypes” (Howard, 2008, p. 966) or “confluence of stereotyping” (Hernandez & Davis, 2009, p. 20) operates to racialize and marginalize these youth and structure their learning process,…”
Whiteness as Property in Science Teacher Education (2018, methodology): “As a theoretical and methodological tool, meaning-making was guided by the “social realities and lived experiences” of the seven PTOC in this study (Howard, 2008, p. 969).”
A Multilevel Examination of Racial Disparities in High School Discipline: Black and White Adolescents’ Perceived Equity, School Belonging, and Adjustment Problems (2017, neutral): “For example, a participant in a qualitative study (Howard, 2008) on this issue commented:”
Parsing Disciplinary Disproportionality (2014, background): “Research continues to show that racial stereotypes and implicit bias remain widespread in society in general (Cunningham, Nezlek, & Banaji, 2004) and in schools in particular (Ferguson, 2001; Howard, 2008).”