Black youth, identity, and ethics

Educational Theory

Volumn 55, Issue 1, 2005, Pages 3-22

  Duncan, Garrett Albert ^a  

^a WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 34247193087     PISSN: 00132004     EISSN: 17415446     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-5446.2005.0002a.x     Document Type: Article

References (85)

1. See, for example, William E. Cross, Shades of Black: Diversity in African-American Identity (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991);
2. Reginald Jones, ed., Black Psychology (Berkeley, California: Cobb & Henry, 1991); and Joyce Ladner, ed., The Death of White Sociology: Essays on Race and Culture (Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1998 [1973]). Black social movements in the United States certainly occurred before what we commonly call the Civil Rights or Black Power era. Clandestine antislavery activities among captive and free Africans during both the colonial and antebellum periods; the network of African Free Schools of the mid-1800s;
3. the National Baptist Convention and its auxiliary, the Women's Convention, at the turn of the twentieth century;
4. and the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s represent some of the earlier social movements that successfully intervened on dominant depictions of people of African descent in the United States. In short, various black and other social movements have historically exerted their influence on dominant institutions, albeit each with its particular inflection. Nuances particular to the black social movements of the 1960s and 1970s largely inform social scientific and popular media discourses on black culture and life in contemporary American society, and, thus, I begin my analysis within these specific contexts.
5. Jean Stefancic and Richard Delgado, No Mercy: How Conservative Think Tanks and Foundations Changed America's Social Agenda (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996).
6. Daryl Michael Scott, Contempt and Pity: Social Policy and the Image of the Damaged Black Psyche, 1880-1996 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), xi.
7. Ibid.
8. William Cross notes that stage models of black identity, specifically nigrescence studies, "are but a modest subset of the general literature on black identity." See Cross, Shades of Black, 160.
9. George Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality: Middle-Class Morality and Sexual Norms in Modern Europe (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985).
10. Ibid., 1.
11. Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man (New York: W.W. Norton, 1981).
12. Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (New York: Vintage Books, 1992);
13. David Roediger, "Whiteness and Ethnicity in the History of -White' Ethnics in the United States," in Race Critical Theories: Text and Context, eds. Philomene Essed and David Theo Goldberg (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), 325-343;
14. and Christine Sleeter, "The White Ethnic Experience in America: To Whom Does it Generalize?" Educational Researcher 21, no. 1 (1992): 33-36.
15. Nancy Lesko, "Past, Present, and Future Conceptions of Adolescence," Educational Theory 46, no. 4 (1996): 453-472.
16. Ibid., 456 n. 5.
17. Erik H. Erikson, "A Memorandum on Identity and Negro Youth," Journal of Social Issues 24, no. 10 (1964): 29-42;
18. and Erik H. Erikson and Huey P. Newton, In Search of Common Ground: Conversations with Erik H. Erikson and Huey P. Newton (New York: W.W. Norton, 1973).
19. Richard Delgado, The Rodrigo Chronicles: Conversations About America and Race (New York: New York University Press, 1995);
20. and Garrett Albert Duncan, "Beyond Love: A Critical Race Ethnography of the Schooling of Adolescent BlackMales," Equity and Excellence in Education 35, no. 2 (2002): 131-143.
21. James Marcia, "Development and Validation of Ego Identity Status," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 3, no. 10 (1966): 551-558.
22. Cross, Shades of Black.
23. See, for example, Vivian Cass, "Homosexual Identity Formation: A Theoretical Model," Journal of Homosexuality 4, no. 3 (1979): 219-235;
24. Diane de Anda, "Bicultural Socialization: Factors Affecting the Minority Experience," Social Work 29, no. 2 (1984): 101-107;
25. and W.S. Carlos Poston, "The Biracial Identity Development Model: A Needed Addition," Journal of Counseling and Development 69, no. 2 (1990): 152-297.
26. See, for example, Lawrence Kohlberg, The Philosophy of Moral Development: Moral Stages and the Idea of Justice, vol. 1 of Essays on Moral Development (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1981);
27. and Lawrence Kohlberg, The Psychology of Moral Development: The Nature and Validity of Moral Stages, vol. 2 of Essays on Moral Development (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1984).
28. Geneva Gay, "Implications of Selected Models of Ethnic Identity Development for Educators," Journal of Negro Education 54, no. 1 (1985): 45.
29. W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (New York: Bantam Books, 1989 [1903]), 3.
30. Beverly Daniel Tatum, "Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?" And Other Conversations About Race (New York: Basic Books, 1997), 60, 62.
31. Beverly Daniel Tatum, "African-American Identity Development, Academic Achievement, and Missing History," Social Education 56, no. 6 (October 1992): 331, 333.
32. For an example of the dominant psychological model, see G. Stanley Hall, Adolescence: Its Psychology and Its Relations to Physiology, Anthropology, Sex, Crime, Religion, and Education, 2 vols. (New York: D. Appleton, 1904). Commenting on "adolescent races and their treatment," G. Stanley Hall, the so-called father of adolescence, surmised that most "savages [Black, Chinese, and Native American peoples, in particular] in most respects are children or, because of sexual maturity, more properly, adolescents of adult size," 649.
33. See, for example, William Kessen, The Rise and Fall of Development (Worcester, Massachusetts: Clark University Press, 1990);
34. and Martin Packer and Mark Tappan, eds., Cultural and Critical Perspectives on Human Development (Albany: SUNY Press, 2001).
35. Michael Cole, Cultural Psychology: A Once and Future Discipline (Cambridge and London: Belknap Press, 1996), 103, 104.
36. See, for example, Edward Barnes, "The Black Community as the Source of Positive Self-Concept for Black Children: A Theoretical Perspective," in Black Psychology, ed. Reginald L. Jones (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), 166-193;
37. Margaret Beale Spencer, "Self-Concept Development," in Black Children and Poverty: A Developmental Perspective - New Directions for Child Development, no. 42, ed. Diane T. Slaughter (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1988), 59-72;
38. and Janie Victoria Ward, "Raising Resisters: The Role of Truth Telling in the Psychological Development of African American Girls," in Urban Girls: Resisting Stereotypes, Creating Identities, eds. Bonnie Leadbeater and Niobe Way (New York: New York University Press, 1996), 85-99.
39. Amina Mama, Beyond the Masks: Race, Gender and Subjectivity (London and New York: Routledge, 1995).
40. See, for example, Tatum, "Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?" and her discussion of her own secondary and postsecondary education, 75-77.
41. Antonia Darder, Reinventing Paulo Freire: A Pedagogy of Love (Boulder, Colorado: Westview, 2002); and Robert Miles, Racism (New York: Routledge, 1989).
42. Kohlberg, The Philosophy of Moral Development, 38.
43. Ibid., 45.
44. Ibid.
45. Martin Luther King, Jr., Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr., ed. Melvin Washington (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1996), 666.
46. Kohlberg, The Psychology of Moral Development, 336, 337, emphasis in original.
47. See, for example, Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White (New York: Routledge, 1995);
48. Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark; and David Roediger, TheWages of Whiteness (London: Verso, 1991).
49. E. Frances White, Dark Continent of Our Bodies: Black Feminism and the Politics of Respectability (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001).
50. Erikson, "A Memorandum on Identity and Negro Youth," 30.
51. White, Dark Continent of Our Bodies, 35, 37.
52. Kenneth Monteiro and Vincent Fuqua, "African-American Gay Youth: One Form of Manhood," in The Gay Teen: Educational Practice and Theory for Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Adolescents, ed. Gary Unks (New York: Routledge, 1995), 167.
53. Adrienne Rich, "North American Time," in Naming the Waves: Contemporary Lesbian Poetry, ed. Christian McEwan (London: Virago, 1988), 170.
54. Vanessa Siddle Walker and John Snarey, "Conclusion: Primary Values and Developing Virtues of African American Ethics," in Racing Moral Formation: African American Voices on Care, Justice, and Moral Education, eds. Vanessa Siddle Walker and John Snarey (New York: Teachers College Press, 2004), 131.
55. John Langston Gwaltney, Drylongso: A Self-Portrait of Black America (New York: The New Press, 1993), xxiii.
56. Monteiro and Fuqua, "African-American Gay Youth," 167.
57. Michele Moses, Embracing Race: Why We Need Race-Conscious Education Policy (New York: Teachers College Press, 2002).
58. Antonia Darder, Culture and Power in the Classroom: A Critical Foundation for Bicultural Education (New York: Bergin & Garvey, 1991).
59. Ibid., 54.
60. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, 3.
61. Darder, Culture and Power in the Classroom, 57.
62. Garrett Albert Duncan, "Space, Place, and the Problematic of Race: Black Adolescent Discourse as Mediated Action," Journal of Negro Education 65, no. 2 (1996): 133-150.
63. Mama, Beyond the Masks, 142.
64. Community nomination, a term coined by Michele Foster, is a selection process in which the names of the participants in the study were solicited through direct contact with members of black communities;
65. see Michele Foster, Black Teachers on Teaching (New York: The New Press, 1997).
66. For detailed methodological notes regarding the larger project, see Duncan, "Space, Place, and the Problematic of Race";
67. and Garrett Albert Duncan, "The Play of Voices: Black Adolescents Constituting the Self and Morality," in Racing Moral Formation, eds. Walker and Snarey, 38-54.
68. Elijah Muhammad, Message to the Blackman in America (Chicago: Muhammad's Temple No. 2, 1965), 61.
69. White, Dark Continents of Our Bodies.
70. See Ron Simmons and Marlon Riggs, "Sexuality, Television, and Death: A Black Gay Dialogue on Malcolm X," in Malcolm X: In Our Image, ed. Joe Woods (New York: Anchor Books, 1992), for a discussion on the manner in which dominant narratives ignore the sexuality of Malcolm X, including his homosexuality.
71. For a move in a more inclusive direction, see Huey P. Newton, To Die for the People: The Writings of Huey P. Newton, ed. Toni Morrison (New York: Writers and Readers Publishers, 1995 [1972]), in which Newton argues for the feasibility of the Black Panther Party uniting with the Women's Liberation and Gay Liberation Movements "in a revolutionary fashion," 152.
72. See also the transcript of leading Afrocentrist Molefi Kete Asante's interview on Pacifica Radio that details how he came to revise his view attributing homosexuality to European decadence, http://www.qrd.org/qrd/www/ culture/black/articles/asante.html.
73. See Duncan, "Space, Place, and the Problematic of Race"; and Duncan, "The Play of Voices."
74. The Black Girls, eds., Black Girl Talk (Toronto, Ontario: Sister Vision Press, 1995);
75. Devon Carbado, ed., Black Men on Race, Gender, and Sexuality: A Critical Reader (New York: New York University Press, 1999);
76. Rebecca Carroll, Sugar in the Raw: Voices of Young Black Girls in America (New York: Crown, 1997);
77. Darrell Dawsey, Living to Tell About It: Young Black Men in America Speak Their Piece (New York: Anchor, 1996);
78. Robin D.G. Kelley, Yo' Mama's Disfunktional! Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America (Boston: Beacon Press, 1997);
79. Bonnie Leadbeater and Niobe Way, eds., Urban Girls: Resisting Stereotypes, Creating Identities (New York: New York University Press, 1996);
80. Joan Morgan, When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: A Hip-Hop Feminist Breaks it Down (New York: Touchstone, 1999);
81. Tricia Rose, Longing to Tell: Black Women Talk About Sexuality and Intimacy (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2003);
82. and Sapphire, Push: A Novel (New York: Vintage, 1997).
83. Erikson, "A Memorandum on Identity and Negro Youth," 42.
84. Maya Angelou, "Maya Angelou," in Discovering Authors (Detroit: Gale Research, 1993), CD-ROM.
85. Erikson and Newton, In Search of Common Ground, 106.