Inner-City “Schoolboy” Life

Gunn, Raymond

doi:10.1177/0002716204267404

Cited by 5 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 3 publications

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“…In most ethnographies, African-American male characters are presented as poor, homeless, street savvy, and psychologically vulnerable and/or overwhelmingly constrained by entrenched social and ecological forces (Dance 2002;Gunn 2004;Young 2004). The earliest characterisations are found in ethnographies published in the 1960s and 1970s, which depicted the Black male character as a poverty-stricken street corner dweller who was impoverished, fatherless, and kept up a 'cool pose' with his jive talking and pimp walking.…”

Section: The Characterisation Of Black Male Lifementioning

confidence: 99%

Racialised subjectivities: a critical examination of ethnography on Black males in the USA, 1960s to early 2000s

Brown

2011

Ethnography and Education

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The intent of this paper is to show that while ethnographic research for decades has helped to challenge one-dimensional, deficit-oriented perspectives about Black males, this work has also helped to reproduce essentialised racial motifs. I define a racial motif as a central theme or story used to make sense of the social and educational experiences of a racial group.I argue that long-standing racial motifs inform how ethnographic research is conducted within a historical context, and how the theories that come out of ethnographic research inform how we understand the social and educational concerns of African-American males in the present. In other words, past constructions and theories close off the kinds of questions one can ask within a particular historical period and limit how contemporary questions are explored.In this paper, I show how ethnographies written during the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s were constructed in a way that was aligned with the dominant tropes and theories about Black males during those decades. I additionally show how these same theories and tropes were visible in television programs and movies. I conclude by discussing both the challenges and the promise of ethnography, including how educational ethnographers can explore new questions that challenge historically entrenched racial motifs. I conclude this paper by suggesting that attention should be given not only to the institutional, structural, and pedagogical practices within schools that constrain and reproduce Black males' schooling experiences, but also to the historical and discursive constructions that have taken form throughout decades of ethnographic research.

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Section: The Characterisation Of Black Male Lifementioning

confidence: 99%

Racialised subjectivities: a critical examination of ethnography on Black males in the USA, 1960s to early 2000s

Brown

2011

Ethnography and Education

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Gang-banging as edgework

Garot

2015

Dialect Anthropol

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Non-violence in the Inner City: ‘Decent’ and ‘Street’ as Strategic Resources

Garot

2007

J Afr Am St

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This study explores how young people in the inner-city draw upon "the code of the street," the paradoxical notion that one must resort to violence to find security, as an incorrigible proposition, which members sustain even when providing evidence to the contrary. While "the code" may describe what young people would like to do when confronted with potential violence, both their reasons and methods for avoiding violence are artful and nuanced, expressed with a wit that can be quite liberatory.

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Inner-City “Schoolboy” Life

Cited by 5 publications

References 3 publications

Racialised subjectivities: a critical examination of ethnography on Black males in the USA, 1960s to early 2000s

Racialised subjectivities: a critical examination of ethnography on Black males in the USA, 1960s to early 2000s

Gang-banging as edgework

Non-violence in the Inner City: ‘Decent’ and ‘Street’ as Strategic Resources

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