Black Queer Bodies, Afrocentric Reform and Masculine Anxiety

Abstract

Even though queer youth of color have a strong presence in urban communities and schools across the United States, they are often misunderstood, ignored, and assaulted (Blackburn, 2007; McCready, 2004; Quinn, 2007). Gay and gender nonconforming Black male youth, in particular, can be troubling to urban educators because they disrupt beliefs and behavioral norms associated with young Black men who are often represented as hyper-masculine, heterosexual, thugs (Majors and Billson, 1993). Maintaining such as negative view of Black queer youth constitutes a missed opportunity for urban educators to develop more socially just praxes that challenge multiple forms of social and cultural oppression. In order for this to happen, however, urban educators must treat the lives and experiences of queer youth of color as “pedagogical” in the sense that they have the potential to educate teachers, researchers, and policymakers about the effects of dominant cultural practices, representations, and ideologies in urban communities and schools (Rodriguez, 1998). In this article, I consider the experiences of two gay and gender non-conforming Black male students who participated in a northern California high school’s African dance Program (ADP) as pedagogical. These students’ experiences serve as a strong reminder of the possibilities and limitations of Afrocentric reforms that aim to foster student engagement.

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