Negotiating Sociocultural Discourses: The Counter-Storytelling of Academically (and Mathematically) Successful African American Male Students

Abstract

This study documents the counterstories of four academically (and mathematically) successful African American male students. Using participative inquiry, the participants were asked to read, reflect on, and respond to historical and current research literature regarding the schooling experiences of African American students. Their responses were analyzed using a somewhat eclectic theoretical framework that included poststructural theory, critical race theory, and critical theory. Collectively, the participants’ counterstories revealed that each had acquired a robust mathematics identity as a component of his overall efforts toward success. How the participants acquired such “uncharacteristic” mathematics identities was to be found in part in how they understood sociocultural discourses of U.S. society and how they negotiated the specific discourses that surround male African Americans. Present throughout the counterstories of each participant was a recognition of himself as a discursive formation who could negotiate sociocultural discourses as a means to subversively repeat his constituted “raced” self.

Co-Calculus: Integrating the Academic and the Social

“…It also suggests that how students identify "smartness" may be more related to race and gender than actual understanding or performance in mathematics. While these results are only suggestive, they do align with prior research (Stinson, 2008) and do have important equity implications.…”

“…All three of these students identified as White, and two of three identified as male. This pattern aligns with what Stinson (2008) has called the "White male math myth," that White males inherently possess a greater mathematical ability than other people. With the given dataset, it is not possible to determine whether or not these students actually contributed more than other students, simply that they were recognized as contributors by the most students.…”

Content Learning and Identity Construction: A Framework to Strengthen African American Students’ Mathematics and Science Learning in Urban Elementary Schools

“…To date, emerging research shows that Black children's mathematics identities are strong correlates of their mathematical success or failure and that teachers' classroom practices and beliefs can dramatically shape these identities -not just for the short term, but also over life spans [Berry, 2008;Jackson, 2009;Martin, 2000Martin, , 2009McGee & Martin, 2011a, b;Spencer, 2009;Stinson, 2009]. Moreover, studies of racial identity among African American adolescents show that positive racial identities can promote positive aca-demic identities and that achievement can serve as a buffer to a number of risk factors [Chavous et al, 2003;Harper & Tuckman, 2006].…”

When the “Burden of Acting White” is Not a Burden: School Success and African American Male Students

“…The extracted quotations from Ethan, Keegan, Nathaniel, and Spencer clearly demonstrate, I believe, the participants' complex, nuanced, and multilayered schooling experiences. As I have argued elsewhere (Stinson, 2008(Stinson, , 2009a), the counter-stories of schooling experiences of these academically (and mathematically) successful African American male students must be contextually located in how they negotiated a plethora of sociocultural discourses that attempted to (unjustly) frame them as somewhat of a problem, a contextualization that refutes oversimplification. It is within the notion of oversimplification that I provide, briefly, a concluding critique of Fordham's and Ogbu's theories.…”

“…Given the aforementioned extracted comments from the counter-stories of success from Ethan, Keegan, Nathaniel, and Spencer, I have argued elsewhere (see Stinson 2004Stinson , 2008Stinson , 2009a) that these young academically and mathematically successful African American men negotiated sociocultural discourses that had attempted to construct (unjustly) African American boys and adolescents, including the burden of acting White discourse. That is to say, that throughout their individual and collective counter-stories of success there were instances where they managed the burden of acting White by accommodating, reconfiguring, or resisting the discourse.…”