Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Sefa Dei, George J.
• James, Irma Marcia

Titel

'Becoming Black': African-Canadian youth and the politics of negotiating racial and racialised identities

Ist Teil von

• Race, ethnicity and education, 1998-03, Vol.1 (1), p.91-108

Ort / Verlag

United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis Group

Erscheinungsjahr

1998

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Taylor & Francis

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• To move beyond the 'intellectualisation of transformative social practice', we as researchers, community activists, etc. need to conduct thorough examinations of discursive practices, employ self-reflective analyses, and gain an understanding of the power differentials among stakeholders within the Euro-American/Canadian context. One method of analysis employs 'black perspectivism', which means understanding the school system from the multiple interpretations of black/African youths. Black youth are given a racial identity and stereotypes, of 'being black', but reject simple constructions and instead take on a politically engendered identification of 'becoming black', which is a process of negotiating the social locations of race, gender, sexuality, class and ability to make sense of domination and subordination in Canadian society. In a 3-year study of over 150 African-Canadian students and 'drop-outs', their parents, teachers and community workers, we found that students felt pressure to leave school for pragmatic reasons, but also felt that the system inadequately addressed their needs. Students have a sophisticated sense of how social locations effect barriers such as poverty and teacher discrimination. They think both about systemic changes and personal acts of resistance, and seeking out empowering knowledge through effective and culturally relevant teachers, curricula and pedagogical practices. The narratives demonstrate that students situate various strategies for resistance in dynamic racial identities. To move beyond 'good intentions' educators must recognise students' identification with blackness as a necessary resistance of claiming contested identities integral to their survival and success in a white dominated system. We must ask hard questions about the lack of representation of students' identities in the school system, and explore new possibilities of fostering an inclusive school and society.