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We Rise Together: Perspectives of black male students in secondary school: Understanding the successes and challenges
Abstract
As stated in report:
We Rise Together: The Peel District School Board Action Plan to Support Black Male Students is a comprehensive response to that challenge. The plan is both defined and open—there are clear, detailed first steps, and also a commitment to continue to consult with the community on these steps. The goal is to balance the need to act on the findings without delay, while we honour and respect the powerful knowledge and insight in our community to refine that work. The bottom line is that this action plan will not succeed without the genuine involvement of the community. We can only rise together.
... Therefore, while not overt, poor relationships and perceptions of school climate are pervasive in the scholarship regarding Black students in the GTA context. For example, Black male high school students in Peel region reported a culture of low expectations from teachers, including differential treatment and disbelief from teachers when they performed well academically (Bailey et al., 2016). In addition, these students reported ostracization from their peers and instances of stereotyping (Bailey et al., 2016).These findings echo Dei, Mazzuca, and MacIssac's (1997) earlier ethnography, which captured similar experiences in Toronto and more recent media reports point to direct and indirect exclusionary and marginalizing practices being an ongoing issue (Ahma, 2018;Ferguson, 2018;Moye, 2018;Murray, 2018). ...
... For example, Black male high school students in Peel region reported a culture of low expectations from teachers, including differential treatment and disbelief from teachers when they performed well academically (Bailey et al., 2016). In addition, these students reported ostracization from their peers and instances of stereotyping (Bailey et al., 2016).These findings echo Dei, Mazzuca, and MacIssac's (1997) earlier ethnography, which captured similar experiences in Toronto and more recent media reports point to direct and indirect exclusionary and marginalizing practices being an ongoing issue (Ahma, 2018;Ferguson, 2018;Moye, 2018;Murray, 2018). It is important to note that these perceptions of school climate in this population are often not found through explicit studies on school climate and are often not clearly named but are instead reflected and inferred through studies and reports that explore the broader experiences and outcomes of Black students in the GTA. ...
Drawing on Toronto District School Board (TDSB) Student Census data (2006 and 2011), we examine if there have been changes in the perceptions of school climate between two cohorts of high school students. First, we contextualize our study and review relevant policy changes to student inclusion and equity to set the stages for examining, by way of a sort of “natural experiment”, to see if there was a change in the perception of school climate by students after these policy changes occurred. We then review the scholarship on school climate, its relationship to race, and its relationships to educational experiences and outcomes. We then examine how self-identified race is associated with students’ perceptions of school climate in both cohorts, interpreting our results within a Critical Policy Analysis framework. We find evidence of improved school climate from 2003 to 2008, although the changes have not been uniform by self-identified race, and in some cases have worsened, particularly for self-identified Black and Latin American students.
... Blacks comprise an estimated 12.6% of the student population, yet Blacks are disproportionately represented in college and work-related streams (or tracks), with 22.7% in college streams and 29.3% in workrelated tracks. Only 8.6% of Black students are enrolled in university streams while 80% of their White peers are enrolled in university-track programs (Gray et al., 2016;Radd and Grosland, 2019;Robson et al., 2019). Furthermore, 58% of Black students do not apply for post-secondary educational (PSE) pathways compared to 41% of students from other ethno-racial groups (James and Turner, 2017;Toronto District School Board (TDSB), 2018) In addition, Blacks, especially Black males, are less likely to attend 4-year university and 2-year college programs compared to Whites and Asians in Toronto; however, in Chicago, Black males have a 7% higher probability of attending a 4-year university program (Robson et al., 2019). ...
... In a study examining the impact of the explicit and implicit racial ideologies and practices in the Ontario educational system on Black male youth, Gray et al. (2016) found that Black males experience low expectations from their non-Black teachers and peers. Indeed, their teachers are surprised when they perform well academically. ...
This study utilizes a Critical Anti-Race Qualitative Phenomenological Methodology to challenge the dominant deficit perspective which reinforces the notion that the cultural deprivation of Blacks causes their marginalization. From this viewpoint, Blacks should take individual responsibility for changing their life conditions. However, this article offers narratives of Black men that reveal how structural factors grounded in the notion of racial battle fatigue limit their autonomy, education, and access to employment opportunities. The study focuses on underemployed, second-generation Caribbean Black Male Youth between 18 years and 30 years of age who have made the post-high school transition into the labor market but remain underemployed. This study seeks to understand the central theme emerging in the counternarratives: Caribbean Black Male Youth perceive and experience a lack of employment opportunities. This article’s aim is to show how Caribbean Black Male Youth struggle to address their limited employment opportunities by exploring the impact of the intersecting politics of race, gender, and class on the City of Toronto labor force.
... -Black students face racial profiling from teachers, peers and the police often being blamed for incidents at school or queried for their whereabouts without just cause (Gray, Bailey, Brady, & Tecle, 2016). ...
Through employing critical race theory, seen-invisibility, and circuits of dispossession as theoretical frames, this article complicates discourses around equity and Black student achievement by examining the underexplored experiences of high-achieving Black Canadian students in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). Drawing on focus group data with four adolescent participants, the study finds that they experienced violent forms of racialization in their educational environments through a lack of physical, social, and intellectual space to exist as both Black and high-achieving. This rendered them persistently present due to their race, yet invisible in the perceptions of their intellect. Central to this article is an articulation, unpacking, and thus granular analysis of the particular ways that racialization can operate within education systems to still marginalize Black students and erect complex barriers––even when they demonstrate strong academic performance. These emerging insights inform a need for a broader and more holistic understanding of Black Canadian student experiences and a rethinking of intervention and resistance strategies.
Fighting an Uphill Battle: Report on the Consultations into the Well-Being of Black Youth in Peel Region
- F A C E S Of Peel Collaborative
F.A.C.E.S. of Peel Collaborative. (2015). Fighting an Uphill Battle: Report on the Consultations
into the Well-Being of Black Youth in Peel Region. Retrieved from
http://www.unitedwaypeel.org/faces/images/fighting-an-uphill-battle-sm.pdf