“Performance,Resistance, Caring: Racialized gender identity in African American boys”

This study illuminates the meaning making world of 5^th, 6^th, and 7^th grade African American boys in a community based after-school program. Employing participant observation, questionnaire and interviews, the work captures the manifestations of their definitions of gender and racial constructions, including maleness, masculinity, “Blackness,” as well as the intersections of race and gender- racialized gender identity. Their voice revealed the implications of those constructs on schooling along with their sense of the raced and gendered nature of their school experiences. Their sense of identity emerged as multiple, shifting and produced, yet also reflected the presence and desire for a self apart from external constructions.