Citation

Irby DJ. Educ. Adm. Q. 2014; 50(5): 783-795.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2014, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/0013161X14549958

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

PURPOSE: In this article, I explore White racial purity desire as an underexamined ideology that might help us understand the compulsion of disciplinary violence against Black boys in U.S. public schools. By pointing to the dearth of research on sexual desire as a site of racial conflict and through revisiting Civil Rights-era fears about interracial intimacy between Black men and White women, I encourage readers to consider if and to what extent fears about sexual desires remain in the fabric of our school and social lives. Proposed Conceptual Argument: I argue that in schools, White-supremacist patriarchy reproduces normative Whiteness through the continual surveillance, punishment, distancing, and removal of primarily heteronormative Black male bodies, locating its justification in protecting the bodily safety and academic achievement of heteronormative White girls. I suggest that in predominantly White desegregated schools, disciplining heteronormative Black boys represents a new policy-based campaign of institutionalized violence and intimidation that reflects a subtle, but nonetheless pernicious, White male segregationist agenda. Implications: Considering fear/desire of interracial intimacy as a lens, alongside economic and political explanations of resistance to desegregation, provides a more complete analytical framework to comprehend racial conflict and segregationism in contemporary school settings. Our collective failure to acknowledge and interrogate the ways schools produce Whiteness by seeking to protect White girls from Black boys ensures Black boys' bodies and minds will continue to be unfairly subjected to the violence of harsh and disproportionate disciplinary measures.

Language: en