Call and response: how narratives of black queer youth inform popular discourses of the ‘boy crisis’ in education

Abstract

The shift in attention to the ‘boy crisis’ has been fuelled by a spate of popular trade books dealing with raising of boys and the alleged failures and deceptions of feminist educational reforms. This article argues that from a black feminist perspective the ‘boy crisis’ depicted in these texts is a misnomer because no social problem can be understood through a single lens of difference. Rather, through an analysis of the narratives of gay and gender non-conforming black male students, the article argues that the ‘boy crisis’ needs to be approached from an intersectional perspective that rejects essentialist notions of boys and embraces the sociocultural differences among them. In the conclusion, the author provides suggestions for ways teachers can practise this kind of inclusion, termed ‘making space for diverse masculinities’.

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