Power, School Culture, and Exclusion: The Socio-Academic Realities of Four Under-Credited Black Male Youth

Abstract

Black male youth continue to amaze us with their ability to exist, construct, create and frequently recreate an individual and collective self that continues to influence, bewilder, agitate, satisfy, educe, restore, and preserve a humanity that has been historically denied. Their humanity does not go unrecognized, considering the amount of time, energy, and resources that have been used, and are consistently being used, to demoralize the very multifaceted and admired nature of Black male youth. The meanings attached to being Black, being male, and being a youth, ignites mixed emotions and a myriad of thoughts that both, constructs and deconstructs the various concepts of what it means to be Black, male, and a youth.Like any other group of students, Black male youth enter the school setting with their social constructs, concepts, and lived experiences. The difference between other students, and Black male youth is the spoken and unspoken expectations placed upon them by onsite educators: they will fail, they don't belong, they're in school to play sports, they don't care about their education, they receive too many special support services, they wouldn't succeed without special supports, they'll drop out eventually, they come from broken homes, they are criminals, they use drugs, and they are not smart 2 enough to succeed. These social stereotypes and lived experiences have a direct and negative impact to their academic experiences. Therefore, I will refer to the interpreted experiences, constructed environments, and detailed exchanges as the socio-academic realities of Black male youth. This study investigates the socio-academic realities of four under credited Black male youth who attended a high-performing public high school.The day-to-day experiences of Black male youth are provocative in the sense that they are regularly policed in their communities as well as at their schools.While they are often only celebrated for their recreational abilities such as athletics or entertainment, they are also perceived as emotionally unstable, thus more often discriminated against, or even killed in broad daylight (Juzwiak &