Abstract
This article presents the complex relationship between how black male and female identities have been constructed dichotomously in response to the gender framed “crisis” in black America. The ethnographic research study was conducted in an secondary African American History course, located in an urban school district in the southern portion of the United States. A case study of one black female student in a class of fourteen black male students was developed to deconstruct opposition and the use of resistance and empowerment by the female student. The classroom interactions among the male students, teacher, and Nicole were presented and analyzed from Nicole’s perspective. Analysis centralizes how Nicole interprets the class community, social interactions, and language used reflecting the needs of the African American males at the expense of her own social, cultural, and gender identity.
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Notes
I use black and African American interchangeably; however, in most cases black refers to people of African decent where African culture and language exists throughout the world. African Americans specifically refer to black people born in the United States.
The word “race” is used in quotation to denote the social construction, which opposes the acceptance of race (without quotes) as a biological reality. In this, I also do not capitalize words that denote race groups like black or white, for this re-inscribes those biological constructions of “race.”
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Although prescribed by the American Psychological Association manuscript guidelines, I do not capitalize racialized terms like “Black” or “White” because it represents racial essentialization. I use lowercase to emphasize race as a social and political construct attributed to color.
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Brown, A.F. Descendants of “Ruth:” black Girls Coping Through the “Black Male Crisis”. Urban Rev 43, 597–619 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-010-0162-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-010-0162-x