Black Adolescent Boys’ Perceived School Mattering: From Marginalization and Selective Love to Radically Affirming Relationships

Abstract

Inspired by Black Lives Matter activism, we used racialized lenses on social‐psychological “mattering” to investigate how Black high school boys’ interactions shaped their perceived mattering. Researchers conducted interviews with 17 self‐identified Black boys who were part of a larger school‐based partnership called The Black Boy Mattering Project. Participants reported experiencing and resisting interpersonal marginal mattering (e.g., evidenced in negative interactions with educators and peers and fueled by racist stereotypes) and described mattering partially through selective love (e.g., inferring significance through athletics, yet deemed anti‐intellectual). Our study exhibits how schools uphold systemic anti‐Black racist notions that shape relationships between Black boys and their peers and educators and diminish adolescents’ self‐concepts. Implications aim to support educators and researchers in radically affirming Black boys in school contexts.

The Postsecondary Future Selves of Black and Latinx Boys: A Case for Cultivating More Expansive Supports in College-Going Schools

“…Missing were radical visions of collective liberation for Black and Latinx social futures. Although this was partly due to familial beliefs (see Carey, 2021, 2022), this finding can also be attributed to Metro’s practice of (re)inscribing individualistic middle-class values—a complacency with status quo social arrangements—into its students’ aspirational thinking. This draws attention to the need for radical and critical educators to help students embrace “social dreaming beyond the constraints of current institutional bounds” (Mirra & Garcia, 2022, p. 347) so youth can imagine past existing, seemingly immovable oppressive social arrangements.…”

“…Yet few groups face more barriers in this process than adolescent Black and Latinx boys from low-income communities. Their encounters with racial and ethnic stereotyping, negative media portrayals, and hypercriminalization constrain their ability to fully imagine and actualize bright futures on their own accounts (Carey et al, 2022; Howard, 2014; Polite & Davis, 1999; Rios & Vigil, 2017).…”

Seen and Unseen: Narratives of In/Visibility of Black Youth Who Attend a Predominantly Latinx High School

“…A body of scholarly literature examines Black students in various educational contexts. For instance, scholars have investigated Black students in white upper-middle-class suburban schools (Gordon, 2012;Kelly, 2020;Lewis & Diamond, 2015;Lewis-McCoy, 2018), racially diverse schools (Carey et al, 2022), and predominantly Black urban schools (Brooms, 2022;Warren, 2017). However, there remains limited empirical research exploring Black students' unique experiences in predominantly Latinx educational settings.…”

Good Trouble, Necessary Trouble: Expanding Thinking and Research on Youth of Color’s Resistance to Oppression

“…It means daring to disagree and sometimes it means just having an opinion.” In our BLM special issue, Carey et al. (2022) offered examples of Black boys’ everyday resistance in speaking up to teachers who exhibit racism, and how these youth were often hyperpoliced or further marginalized by schools as a result. It is well established that Black and Brown youth in the United States are disproportionately disciplined in schools for classroom behavior that includes talking back, and this harsh discipline feeds the school‐to‐prison pipeline (Dutil, 2020; Simmons, 2016).…”