Vogel_04-20-12

VASSAR COLLEGE
Exploring Identity Zones:
A Case Study in Urban After-School Space and Black Masculinity
A thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree
Bachelor of Arts in Urban Studies
by
Pamela Vogel
Thesis Advisors:
Professor Colette Cann
Professor Tyrone Simpson
May 2012

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank my parents, my mentor, my family members, and my second family at Vassar – for
creating the spaces that shaped my own identity.
I would like to thank my advisor, Colette Cann, for always pushing me to do my best and to make the
decisions I knew I was capable of making all along.
I would like to thank Erin McCloskey, for reminding me in a moment of academic crisis to write about
what inspired me in the first place – my kids.
And, most importantly, I need to thank my boys – because loving someone means growing with them, and
you can't mess with that.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements 2
Introduction: Mapping Identity Zones 4
Chapter 1: Context 14
Chapter 2: The Stories Already Told 21
Chapter 3: Methodology and Methods 29
Chapter 4: The Boys' Story 41
Chapter 5: Identity Zones in Practice 46
Conclusion: Now what? 53
Bibliography 56
Appendix A: Interview Schedules/Focus Group Guiding Questions 59

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Introduction
Mapping Identity Zones
In my very living room, right here, a woman whose husband is brilliant on Wall Street
stood right here and said, ‘I want you to put my husband’s client out of business. Because
what they do is they build prisons. They look at the failure rates of Black boys in the
fourth and fifth grades and they determine how many prison cells they’re going to need in
the future.’ You know, I had heard that. And I thought, oh, this couldn’t be! No one is
actually doing that! Well, I was wrong.
Susan L. Taylor,
Founder of National Cares Mentoring Movement
in The Lottery (2010)1
I found myself watching a documentary film called The Lottery one summer afternoon, a film that
explores the lottery system by which students destined to attend ‘at-risk’ schools can gain admission to the
best charter schools in New York City. The filmmakers focused on the lives of four students hoping to
benefit from this system. The documentary features commentary from struggling parents, educators and
activists deeply embedded in the charter school debate: Geoffrey Canada of the Harlem Success Zone,
Newark Mayor Cory Booker, and Susan Taylor, to name a few.
Taylor’s anecdote about predictive imprisonment rates is set to images of young, Black boys
playing in a schoolyard. As a boy of about six years clutches at an iron gate like prison bars, in the back of
my mind his face becomes the faces of the boys I know. I see an eight year-old I have known since he was
only six, as he scrawls a few sentences about what he would do if he were President, and I feel a deep
weight in the pit of my stomach. In the United States, we teach our children that they can be anything in
the whole world that they want to be, from President of this country to a surgeon, from a professor to an
entrepreneur. Yet in 2003, Alfred Tatum succinctly details why that is not that case. “Black males remain a
caricature of social pathology and disdain in U.S. society – an enigma of the U.S. consciousness,” he says.
“They are disproportionately represented in the categories of special-needs students and low achievers.
1
The Lottery (Great Curve Films, 2010).

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Their high school dropout rates have increased since 1990. They are underrepresented on college campuses
and in most professions. Black males are the only group to hold the distinction of having more of their
number in prison than in college.”2
There are forces at work that make this prison builder’s job possible; these are the same forces that
manifest in an educator watching a Black fourth grader struggle with his math homework and wondering if
society has already failed him. It is certainly difficult, however, to stop a force that we struggle as a society
to recognize and name. Oppressive social structures insure that racism remains endemic, even in 2012 –
but do our schools recognize that? The traditional school structure forces schools to make an active
choice about participating in the re-creation of racist systems of oppression. Those choices are reflected in
what our children learn about themselves and their racial and gender identities inside and outside of the
school space. In this case study, I will explore the particular ways in which an alternative after-school space
presents a different construction of identity for Black pre-adolescent boys, both implicitly and explicitly,
than the traditional public school space.
Society as a Map of Identity Zones
The City
Crenshaw3
is a post-industrial urban city near a major metropolitan area, occupying a space so
convenient for travel that a visitor could easily tell it once was a bustling city of grandeur, founded when
waterways and factories defined a city space. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, Crenshaw has a
population of around 33,000.4
Compared to the state average, residents are statistically more than twice as
likely to be Black, and almost twice as likely to be living below the poverty line. Crenshaw has a slightly
2
Alfred W. Tatum. “All ‘Degreed’ Up and Nowhere to Go: Black Males and Literacy Education.” Journal of Adolescent and Adult
Literacy 46, no. 8 (May 2003): 623.
3 Note: All names of places and participants have been changed to protect the anonymity of participants. When appropriate,
participants chose their own pseudonyms. In citations, pseudonyms have been inserted in brackets.
4
"[Crenshaw] (city), [ST]," U.S. Census Bureau: State and County QuickFacts, accessed November 16, 2011, last modified
October 18, 2011, http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/.[..].html

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younger population than the state average, yet has a smaller percentage of high school graduates in its adult
population. The median income in Crenshaw is significantly lower than the state median income, and the
rate of home ownership is also much lower.5
A local community activist and friend once said that he could have begun his work in The Bronx
or Oakland and he would have been more successful and well-known, but instead he came to Crenshaw
because “no one cares.” For many of its residents, Crenshaw has been constructed as a forgotten place, a
city that has fallen from grace with the exodus of its biggest job source a few decades ago. If you walk
along the Main Street of Crenshaw, you are treading on complicated turf – teetering mere blocks away
from dilapidated public housing in one direction and ‘old money’ mansions in the other. Though Crenshaw
is somewhat a city of young people, it is not necessarily a productive space for them – the closing of the
YMCA building in the last decade has eliminated one of few public places designed for family use.
Crenshaw is a city of fragmented economic and social organization, but also an environment that has
recently seen grass-roots efforts to mobilize its young residents, physically manifested in a resurgence of
public art in the downtown area and several concentrated revitalization projects.
The Schools
The public city school district of Crenshaw is recognized as notoriously low-performing by city
residents, as well as by residents in neighboring suburban districts. In 2009-2010, 61% of students enrolled
in the district identified as African American, 15% identified as White, and 23% identified as Hispanic or
Latino. Since the late 1980s, White students have moved out of the district and students from recent
Latino immigrant families have dramatically increased in numbers. The vast majority of students in the
district continue to be students of color. 80% of the district’s students were eligible for free or reduced-
5
Ibid.

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price lunches, a statistic often used as an indicator for poverty levels among students.6
In the state district report card for Crenshaw school district in 2009-2010, academic achievement
and behavioral statistics present a handful of interesting identity group-specific details. In the 2009-2010
school year, 850 students (18%) were suspended for at least one day, although unfortunately there is no
data available about the racial or gender breakdown of discipline rates.7
The district did not meet annual
yearly progress guidelines for African American students in English Language Arts at both the elementary
and middle/high school levels.8
The overall graduation rate that year was 55%, with African American
students graduating at a rate of 54% and Hispanic and Latino students graduating at a rate of 44%, while
White students had a graduation rate of 65%. Male students also graduated at a slightly lower rate
compared to female students, 54% to 57%.9
The leadership within the district is relatively representative of the population it serves, although
the rising number of Hispanic or Latino students is not reflected. Of the five elementary schools in the
district, three of the school principals are African American women, one is a White woman, and one is a
White man. The Board of Education is 3/5 African American – two of the three are the President and
Vice President of the Board. The superintendent of the district is also an African American man.10
Elsewhere in the city of Crenshaw, however, the idea of representation in leadership takes on a much more
radical meaning.
The After-School Program
In the heart of Crenshaw, housed in a public services building on a major cross-street in the
downtown area, an after-school program thrives – Youth Leadership Project (“YLP”). Here, the social
6
The [ST] State District Report Card, Accountability and Overview Report, 2009-2010: [Crenshaw] City School District, p 3, accessed
November 16, 2011, https://reportcards.stsed.gov/files/2009-10/A..[.....]pdf.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid., 9.
9 Ibid., 15.
10
[Crenshaw] City School District, accessed November 17, 2011, last modified 2011, http://www.[crenshaw]schools.org/.

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trends of the city and school district are reflected and often magnified. Students who attend this program –
from the elementary schoolers to the high schoolers– are all students of color. The vast majority of the
children attend school in the city district, although a handful travel from predominantly White,
neighboring districts explicitly to interact in a cultural space with other students of color. Demographically,
the children who attend any of the smaller programs that comprise this after-school ‘network’ closely
mirror their classmates, but the similarities appear to end there.
The students of YLP boasted a 100% high school graduation rate in 2009-2010. Many came to the
program because their parents or guardians were desperate for a space that would help their failing child –
for free. 6-8 sizable11
youth empowerment initiatives function under the larger umbrella of Youth
Leadership Project, distinguished from each other in terms of age group and specialty. Programs offered
as part of YLP include a more ‘traditional’ homework help group, a leadership skills group, arts groups that
present theatrical productions or fashion shows, and several lecture-based health education groups.
Students who come to Youth Leadership Project often begin at the elementary school level, working on
homework in a small community library and eating donated food at a community soup kitchen, both
located in the same public services building. Middle school and high school students have their own
programs as well, and as a child grows older and moves through the programs, messages of responsibility,
leadership, and empowerment become more explicit. The focus of the oldest kids in the program has
entirely shifted away from the traditionally academic – high school students spend time studying life skills,
learning First Aid, mentoring the elementary-age students, and learning about the job market by developing
resumes and practicing interviews.12
Every student, from preschooler to high school senior and beyond, knows the philosophy, the
slogan, the mantra, the motto, and the names of the charismatic founder and director’s wife and his late
mother. A great deal of the physical, social, and cultural environment at Youth Leadership Project is a
11 Note: regular student participants in one of the initiatives typically fall between 15-50, in number.
12 Description synthesized from field observations, official [YLP] website.

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reflection of Michael D.’s identity as its founder and director. His image mirrors that of the students who
are not succeeding in the Crenshaw school district – he was illiterate until his late-20s, when he learned to
read in prison. He is that fourth or fifth grade boy that filled a jail cell for a time, but he is also the
embodiment of the ‘exceptional’ Black male stereotype. He moved beyond his criminal history to help
found an alternative school within the Crenshaw district for students labeled as having behavioral issues, to
establish a youth leadership network that reaches thousands of students in this urban area, to create a space
for students ‘at-risk’ to discover their leadership potential and move beyond their means to something
better. Michael D.’s background and personality are critical to the atmosphere at YLP on a daily basis – the
field trips students take are the same trips he once made with his Big Brother from the Big Brothers Big
Sisters of America program in his own childhood; his advice and appreciation are punctuated by anecdotes
about his mother, his life in the drug community, and his world before, during, and after prison. Whereas
the schools in the Crenshaw district are highly location-defined, the space at YLP is constructed equally by
physical location and the powerful identity of its creator.
Defining the Parameters of an Identity Zone
Urban spaces are physical and social – they are physically constructed in a way that reflects social
location, and, in turn, physical setting can control or determine social structural hierarchies. When a space
is recognized as both physical and social, it becomes a constructing element of identity for the people who
interact with that space. An urban community center is an example of a space that actively contributes to a
specific aspect of personal identity. Within neighborhoods, individuals who interact with the community
center are labeled as members of a group, and that identity label as a ‘community center visitor’ could
signal specific, recognizable assumptions within the neighborhood. One’s association with that space
would thus provide them with a new element of identity. Labels such as “White,” “Black,” “poor,”
“educated,” “immigrant,” and, in this example, more specific labels like “community center member,” map

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over one another to construct a multilayered individual identity, comprised of a multitude of group labels
that form a whole. These labels intersect differently on an individual basis to produce a set of unique
experiences, in a phenomenon Critical Race theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw first termed “intersectionality.”13
For the purpose of this study, I will use the term identity zone to mean a physical and social space
that actively constructs identity labels for members of a specific group or groups. Schools are, perhaps,
the prime example of identity zones – within a rigid and historical social structure, educators engage in a
traditional power relationship with students in which knowledge is delivered in one direction, similar to
Paulo Freire’s “banking model”.14
Students internalize this structure in a way that requires them to adopt a
certain identity label within the space: the identity of “student.” Within this label, the social structure
dictates further sub-groups; students internalize the labels of “good student,” or “bad student,” “good
girl” or “bad boy.” This active construction of identity almost always aligns with the dominant power
structures of society; racism, sexism, classism, and ableism are all perpetuated in traditional identity zones
precisely because they are traditional. An identity zone becomes alternative when it actively constructs
identity labels that oppose dominant power structures, rather than recreate them. Essentially, an alternative
identity zone produces what might be called a counter-identity, an answer and challenge to traditional identity
associations.
A Black boy in the average public school setting carries with him the labels of his race and gender,
as well as his implied class and family experiences, and is confined within a traditional identity zone. In this
zone, he is first and foremost a Black boy, and is thus viewed through the lens of traditional connotations
associated with those labels. If he happens to act in accordance with any of these notions, his group
identity label overshadows his individuality. If he does not, then he is ‘exceptional’, ‘high-achieving,’ ‘going
somewhere in life.’ In either case, he is stuck firmly in the zone.
13
Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color.”
Stanford Law Review 43, no. 6. (1991): 1241-1299.
14
Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 12th ed., trans. Myra Bergman Ramos (1968; repr.,New York: Seabury Press, 1970).

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In an alternative identity zone, like Youth Leadership Project, Boy A is still Black, and he is still
male. He may even be labeled as hyperactive, or aggressive, or struggling in math – but those
characteristics are seen as labels of the individual, rather than stereotypical symptoms of his Blackness or
masculinity. In an alternative identity zone, a different thread of history or a different, non-dominant group
of people has likely constructed the space. A space that was created by a Black man who has spent time in
prison, and who was failed by the school system, will construct notions of Black masculinity that are
entirely separate from those constructions made in a White-defined space. The goal of this study is, thus,
to identify the specific ways in which this particular out-of-school space becomes an alternative identity
zone for Black boys through implicit and explicit messages.
A Note on the Location of the Researcher
As a White, working class, female college student from the suburbs, I struggled with finding and
acknowledging my own location within the context of such a study. I wonder how I place value on the
experiences I am chronicling, when I objectively share so little with those experiences. I am also, and very
importantly, approaching this study with a dual role as participant and observer. I have worked at Youth
Leadership Project for almost three years, and I am now a part of that constructed space. I am familiar to
the students, and an authority figure, though my authority is nowhere near that of Michael D., or their
principal, or their mothers. I am another teacher to many of them, and I am also a friend.
For many of the parents, my race can become a barrier, or an odd indicator that I am trustworthy
in some ways. In other ways, it is only Michael D.’s solid faith in me that redeems my Whiteness, my
outsider status, and makes me honorable in spite of it. My experiences with race, and particularly race in
the classroom and the field of education, are varied. My identity at YLP is evolving and constantly
reconstructed – because it is defined by others rather than by me, in a lot of ways. When I began to work
there in 2009, I was labeled and treated as another college student, as a White educated female, as an

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individual with assumed class privilege. I spoke and styled myself in a way that was completely foreign to
most of the students and parents I met. Over time, I found myself falling deeper and deeper into the
‘shades of gray’ – I was no longer labeled as primarily, overwhelmingly, almost singularly White. I was, and
still am the head teacher, the lady in charge, if students are pressed to give me a title. I am still sometimes
the White lady or the White girl, but I am also simply ‘Pam’ most of the time.
When I talk to one of ‘the boys’ about what they want to be when they grow up, and he spouts out
“football player,” “wrestler,” and “rapper,” I can’t help but question even more. I wonder if this boy’s
teachers have ever told him he could be a lawyer, because he is as convincing and argumentative as any
professor I’ve met, and because I was less talented at arguing as a child and my teachers often told me I
could be a lawyer some day. I wonder if the educators in his life have ever suggested that he read a book
that actually challenges him, because I know that he can tackle a chapter book way before his peers, just as
my parents knew I could. The Black boys I know are my mirrors – in them I can see the difference in
identity formation between the Black and White, the male and female.
In my examination of the construction of these specific identity zones, I will often integrate my
own narrative as a participant and researcher. It is only through my specific identity in the Youth
Leadership Project space that I am able to glean fruitful research, after all – so it is only fair to
acknowledge how that participation might affect the results. Narrative plays a central role in the way
identity is formed, as well as in the ways that educators can control that formation through modifying
classroom practices and engaging with critical pedagogy. Critical Race Theory, the primary lens through
which I will explore these identity constructions, dictates the importance of narrative as a tool for engaging
and reflecting voices “from the bottom” – the experiences of those who do not typically tell the stories of
history. It is in this spirit that I will utilize the narratives of the people I have worked with on this project,
as well as my own. You will find, then, that the experiential knowledge of the students themselves will be
placed at the center of this conversation about identity formation within these two, distinct identity zones.

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Structure
In Chapter 1, I will discuss the theoretical framework that will serve as the basis for this study. My
research choices and analysis will be rooted in the school of Critical Race Theory, supplemented by Omi
and Winant’s “racial formation” theory and Paulo Freire’s work on oppression and education. I will also
discuss the interdisciplinary roots of Critical Race Theory as they relate to my personal theoretical
framework, in the form of MacKinnon’s work on dominance theory.
In Chapter 2, I will provide a brief review of the research on particular subjects related to this study
– psychic cost and stereotype threat for Black male youth and previous theories about the Black male
cultural identity; foundational theories of racial identity development; and our understandings of urban
school and out-of-school spaces.
In Chapter 3, I will outline the methods of this case study, which use elements of a Critical Race
methodology focusing on narrative and resulting in action. This chapter will detail the interview, group
conversation, and observation processes, as detail the physical space of YLP. I will also discuss more
specifically my own role in the research process as both participant and observer.
In Chapter 4, I will present a composite counter-story of identity formation in each of the identity
zones, constructed through an amalgamation of their own words and thoughts; observations of their
interactions with each other, other individuals, and the two spaces; and their creative narratives.
In Chapter 5, I will expand the counter-narrative by including the voice of Michael D. and my own
field observations in both identity zone spaces, in an analysis of the central themes of the study.
I will conclude with a Critical Race Theory goal in mind – that research is nothing without an aim
towards action.

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Chapter 1
Context
If we have been gagged and disempowered by theories, we can also be loosened and
empowered by theories.
Gloria Anzaldúa,
in Making Face, Making Soul: Creative and Critical
Perspectives by Feminists of Color (1990)15
Finding Personal Understandings of Race, Racism, and Oppression
Before a genuine and truthful conversation about any difficult topic can take place, those in
conversation must define the terms. In articulating my personal framework concerning race, racism, and
oppression, I primarily focus my understanding in the tenets of Critical Race Theory. In addition to this
theoretical basis, which I will articulate later in the chapter, I also utilize the critical writings of Michael
Omi and Howard Winant, and Paulo Freire to produce working definitions of race, racism, and
oppression. The aforementioned texts and key writings from the Critical Race Theory perspective combine
with my interdisciplinary experiences in the field of Women's Studies and the hours I spend as coordinator
of a program within Youth Leadership Project to produce my personal theoretical framework.
Defining Race, Racism, and Racial Projects
As the primary source of identity construction in this exploration, race must be first defined and
located within a larger context. For the purpose of this piece, the seminal work, “Racial Formations,” by
Michael Omi and Howard Winant, will serve as the basis for my conceptions of race, racism, and racial
projects. Omi and Winant first define race as “a concept which signifies and symbolizes social conflicts and
interests by referring to different types of human bodies.”16
For these theorists, race is a means of
15
Gloria Anzaldúa, “Haciendo caras, un entrada,” in Making Face, Making Soul: Creative and Critical Perspectives by Feminists of
Color. (San Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute Books, 1990). xxvi.
16
Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 1994 ed. (New York: Routledge, 1994), 55.

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representing human conflict through physical variations. It is neither a construct that can be simply re-
constructed out of existence, nor an essential and defined set of characteristics of a group of people.
Instead, it is a “complex of social meanings” that allows for one’s own racial identity to change, re-
categorize and de-construct itself over time – Omi and Winant’s idea of racial formation.17
This
understanding of race is exhibited in our everyday interactions: an uncomfortable situation in which you are
asked to guess another person’s race, or speak on behalf of your own racial group, can showcase the
instability of racial categorization in concrete, realistic terms.
Omi and Winant also explain how racial formation occurs through the concept of racial projects.
They define a racial project as, “simultaneously an interpretation, representation, or explanation of racial
dynamics, and an effort to reorganize and redistribute resources along particular racial lines.”18
The
concept of racial projects is particularly useful because these projects can exist on macro and micro levels;
the admissions policies at a small liberal arts college, a particular facet of a large-scale political ideology,
and a series of conversations in a single space could all be labeled as racial projects. This term is also
helpful because it allows for a distinction between a social project and a racist act. Racism, according to the
racial formation theoretical framework, is a racial project that reproduces the dominant structure by
employing racial essentialism.19
To use an example from my own experiences, a need-blind admissions
policy is a racial project – it allows for a redistribution of resources and implicitly acknowledges the
importance of racial diversity in an educational setting – but it is not a racist racial project, because it does
not perpetuate an existing system of domination.
Throughout this piece, I will employ the theories of Omi and Winant when referring to race and
instances of racism. When an individual is described as being of a certain race, is it as a result of his or her
own identification with that racial category. Recognizing and remembering that racial categories are fluid
17 Ibid.
18 Ibid., 56.
19 Ibid., 71.

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but culturally meaningful to the individual is an essential component of this study.
Locating Oppression
A second guiding framework for this exploration is the work of Brazilian educator and
philosopher Paulo Freire. Freire’s 1968 work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, laid the groundwork for discussions
that continue today in the field of culturally relevant teaching or in alternative schooling methods. Within
his writing, Freire provided several critical definitions and descriptions related to the study of oppression,
outlined the fundamental relationship between oppressor and oppressed, and defined the oppressive act.
In the context of this study, it is particularly helpful to understand three aspects of Pedagogy of the
Oppressed: Freire’s definition of an oppressive act, a brief synopsis of his comparative models of education,
and an understanding of the importance of dialogical thinking. First, Freire defines an act as oppressive
“when it prevents men from being more fully human.”20
This idealistic and relatively vague description
becomes more useful when it must be applied to real experiences and situations, but the essential
distinction encapsulated within the statement is that of emotional involvement – intention and/or
response.
Secondly, Freire outlines two competing educational models: the traditional “banking” method;
and the “problem-posing” method. In the first model, knowledge is transferable, and only from teacher to
student. Power dynamics remain uneven in this educational structure, and systems of oppression are thus
maintained or perpetuated. The teacher seems to regard all knowledge of the world as a completed entity
that may be packaged and passed on to an eager student. In contrast, Freire advocates for a second model
of education – one in which knowledge is shared between two parties and both teacher and student can
shape the information they are meant to understand. In regarding the world as a series of problems to be
discussed and re-visited over time, and knowledge as an inherently incomplete construction, Freire’s
20
Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 42.

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“problem-posing model” directly challenges its foil and is designed to ultimately produce a new social
order. “In sum,” Freire writes, “banking theory and practice, as immobilizing and fixating forces, fail to
acknowledge men as historical beings; problem-posing theory and practice take men’s historicity as their
starting point.”21
Integral to this understanding of Freire’s two models of education is the recognition of the
importance of dialogical thinking in a problem-posing educational model. For Freire, an essential element
of the “pedagogy of the oppressed” is the incompleteness of knowledge and the constant space to discover
and re-discover oneself in the process of finding and naming knowledge. A key component of this activity,
then, is the ability to separate one’s own “situation,” in order to outwardly reflect on experiences and ideas
from a particular viewpoint, to composite experiences into a broader, almost transcendent understanding
of self.22
You will see in the methodology of this study the influence of Freire’s ideas, particularly
concerning this presentation of “contextual reality” and in choosing methods of discourse with child
participants.
Through the Lens of Critical Race Theory
The theoretical approach to this exploration will be largely grounded in the tenets of Critical Race
Theory, a discipline developed from the Critical Legal Studies movement of the 1980s. Critical Race
Theory (“CRT”), which focuses on the ways in which race and power interact with one another
throughout history, provides radical insight into the construction of a racialized society. For Critical Race
theorists, racism was created and is perpetuated by power structures in the government, the law, the
accepted history, and the schools of our nation. It is reinforced today through such often-unintentional
racial projects as de facto segregation within classes, White male-focused history textbooks, standardized
testing, and classroom structure. Critical Race Theory is firmly grounded in the belief in centering the
21 Ibid. 71.
22 Ibid. 95-100.

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voices of people of color; as a White scholar, I believe that it is an appropriate theoretical framework to
employ in this exploration for that very reason. Though Critical Race Theory as a guiding framework
typically serves as a distinct scholarly space of color, I use it in this case to center the voices of the students
whose stories I hope to tell, rather than my own.
The Tenets of CRT in my own Context
The essential components of Critical Race Theory have been articulated in many different ways, but all
contain roughly the same few central ideas. For the purpose of my research and writing, I will synthesize
some of these previous articulations23
and list the tenets of CRT as I have come to think of them in the
course of this study:
1. Racial projects exist all around us. Conceptions of race – more often racist than not – are found in
almost all aspects of modern society. Racial projects construct our everyday experiences. Racism is
not an isolated incident, but an endemic problem in society that can be found all around, if you are
conscious of it. Institutional and structural racism have shaped our laws, government, and schools
for as long as our nation has existed in its modern form.
2. Oppression intersects. As Kimberlé Crenshaw first articulated in her feminist CRT writings, different
forms of subordination due to various personal identity labels intersect differently in each
individual to produce a wide range of life experiences. A person’s understanding of oppression is
formed by their experiences in relation to dominant structures at this intersection. Ignoring other
facets of a person’s identity in order to address one facet ultimately disempowers the individual and
contributes to systematic oppression.
23 I primarily used the writings of Gloria Ladson-Billings and William F. Tate; Daniel Solórzano and Tara Yosso; Richard
Delgado and Jean Stefancic; Kimberlé Crenshaw; and Adrienne Dixson and Celia K. Rousseau to formulate these five
points.

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3. Responses to oppression must actively challenge the dominant structure. CRT scholars also challenge the
notion that we live in a post-racial society and that ‘colorblindness’ is the most equality-driven
stance to take. Omi and Winant identify how this concept of equal opportunity, by avoiding issues
of racial oppression, inadvertently perpetuates existing dominant structures.24
Rather than re-
construct the existing power relationship implicitly or explicitly, educational projects grounded in
CRT must actively pursue social justice.
4. Experience is a form of knowledge, and creative expression is a valuable method for expressing that knowledge.
CRT strengthens the legitimacy of personal experience and narrative story telling by people of
color as a valued source of knowledge. This tenet places first-person accounts at the center of any
presentation of knowledge, lending credence to the belief that the effects of a power dynamic on
the individual are as important as the historical construction of that dynamic.
5. The most successful critical understandings of power, race, and oppression transcend a single discipline. Many of the
crucial components of CRT originated in different disciplines; legal studies, feminist scholarship,
multi-cultural studies, and sociology have all contributed to the composite views of Critical Race
Theory. Further disciplines have also emerged from the CRT umbrella to focus on the experiences
of a single racial group, i.e. LatCrit or Asian Crit.
Using an Interdisciplinary Lens
Since this exploration is located at the intersection of Blackness and masculinity – and the feminist
discipline is intertwined with the beginnings of CRT – it is of particular importance that my theoretical
approach also incorporate elements of feminist scholarship. In the spirit of interdisciplinary scholarship,
the writing of Catherine MacKinnon on dominance theory is of particular usefulness to this piece. In her
24
Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 57.

20
1987 article, “Difference and Dominance: on Sex Discrimination,” MacKinnon artfully articulates an idea
of constructed difference similar to Omi and Winant’s:
Here, on the first day that matters, dominance was achieved, probably by force. By the
second day, division along the same lines had to be relatively firmly in place. On the third
day, if not sooner, differences were demarcated, together with social systems to exaggerate
them in perception and in fact, because the systematically differential delivery of benefits and
deprivations required making no mistake about who was who. Comparatively speaking,
man has been resting ever since.25
Simply insert the word “White” before “man” in the last sentence, and MacKinnon has unknowingly told
the story of the very first racial formation through a racial project. Indeed, MacKinnon’s broad
understanding of dominance and power is almost identical to a basic understanding of Critical Race
Theory, and her work has been used in contemporary CRT and multicultural studies scholarship.26
This
essay has been crucial in developing my personal conception of power structures more generally, and it
would be incomplete to approach any significant academic endeavor without acknowledging MacKinnon’s
place within my theoretical framework.
25
Catherine A. MacKinnon, “Difference and Dominance: On Sex Discrimination.” In Feminist Legal Theories: Foundations, ed.
D. Kelly Weisberg, Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1993. 281.
26
For one example, see Gary Howard’s discussion of dominance theory in Can’t Teach What We Don’t Know: White Teachers,
Multiracial Schools. (New York: Teachers College Press, 1999). 49-64.

21
Chapter 2
The Stories Already Told
I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids – and I might even be said to
possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the
bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been
surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my
surroundings, themselves, of figments of their imagination – indeed, everything and
anything except me.
Ralph Ellison,
in Invisible Man (1952)27
The Story about Black Male Youth and Stereotypes
As Alfred Tatum’s earlier quote illustrated, the plight of the Black male has long been a theme in
sociological and educational studies. Researchers have struggled to develop an understanding of the
structural and cultural forces that produce such alarming statistics about the location of Black males in
U.S. society. African American males have been categorized, essentialized, and studied for decades, in an
attempt to identify a definitive cause and, thus, prescribe a definitive solution, for the sometimes startling
achievement gap between Black males and their White or female counterparts. A counter-narrative of the
early identity formation of Black males must also include the original story and previous attempts to
dismantle or modify that story. In this chapter, you will find a brief overview of the dominant stories
academics have told about the Black male experience in the United States, as well as a handful of attempts
at further shaping those stories.
How Others See Them
In 1994, Claude Steele introduced a compelling theory about the ways that stereotypes and
perceived stereotypes interact with space to threaten traditional academic success in marginalized groups of
people. Steele argued that differences in achievement between White students and Black students, and
27
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man, 2nd vintage international ed. (1952; repr., New York: Vintage Books, 1995), 3.

22
between male and female students, were created and perpetuated as a result of “stereotype threat.” For
these identity-based groups of students, interacting with a physical or social space, or “domain,” in which a
negative stereotype about the group exists and is known by individual group members would create a
“threat in the air.” Individual group members then had two options – to self-identify with the domain, or
to “dis-identify” with that space and seek fulfillment elsewhere. Steele directly challenges the concept of
stereotype internalization in this piece, arguing that instances of “stereotype threat” were situational and
the effects of a negative stereotype were triggered by 'situation,' rather than through any internalization on
the part of the individual. Steele’s “stereotype threat” theory is a useful writing that incorporates the idea
that identity formation and conception can drastically change with situational change, although the
“domain” he writes about is not strictly physical.28
Whereas Claude Steele’s study of “stereotype threat” was not limited solely to the identity group of
Black males, there have been many other attempts to understand the school performance rates of Black
males, more specifically. Jawanza Kunjufu began his work with the publication of Countering the Conspiracy to
Destroy Black Boys in 1982, which explored the ways in which the Black community has been propelled by
structures of racist oppression to perpetuate cycles of failure. For Kunjufu, the only antidote to a society
that places African American boys on the most difficult pathway to traditional success is the presence of a
strong role model in the Black father.29
In this piece the cause is external, but the best solution is internal.
Similarly relying on cultural significance in the study of the relationship between Black boys and
schooling is the work of John Ogbu and Majors and Billson’s concept of the “cool pose.” Ogbu argues
that Black males, as part of an “involuntary minority” group, have different cultural ideas for achievement
than the dominant views in U.S. society, and, furthermore, that this cultural difference produces a situation
in which Black males associate dominant notions of achievement with Whiteness and regard their peers
28
Claude M. Steele. “A Threat in the Air: How Stereotypes Shape Intellectual Identity and Performance.” 1997. In Foundations
of Critical Race Theory in Education, edited by Edward Taylor, et. al, 164-189. New York: Taylor & Francis, 2009.
29
Jawanza Kunjufu. Countering the Conspiracy to Destroy Black Boys. Chicago: African American Images, 1983.

23
who subscribe to that system of achievement as traitors of their race. Ogbu’s most notable article, co-
authored by Signithia Fordham in 1986, details how African American students have “oppositional social
identities” as a result of the painful history of African Americans in the U.S., and that such oppositional
forces of identity lead to “inordinate ambivalence and affective dissonance in regards to academic efforts
and success.”30
In the 1992 study Cool Poses: the Dilemmas of Black Manhood in America, Richard Majors and Janet
Mancini Billson also examined the role of a broad notion of “culture,” and implicated cultural forces that
shape the identities of Black males. According to the authors, traditional, White cultural norms have
systematically “psychologically castrated” Black men.31
As a response, Black men employ an alternate code
for living – a “cool pose” – in which they may identify the terms of success outside these norms. The “cool
pose” is a series of actions, ways of crafting one’s outward appearance, and speech that together construct
a message of power and control.32
For both Ogbu and Majors and Billson, an alternative culture in the
Black community is identified and implicated, to some extent, in the achievement gap between Black males
and their peers.
Educators have more recently focused on developing tools for the classroom that would actively
work to engage the unique challenges Black males may face in school. Alfred Tatum has particularly
focused on a critical literacy approach to the achievement gap, and has written many academic articles
calling for culturally responsive teaching methods and the use of critical literacy techniques when working
with African American male students. Tatum further pushes for the incorporation of specific texts that are
more relevant to the experiences of Black males living and learning in Black communities.33
30
Signithia Fordham and John Ogbu. “Black Students’ School Success: Coping with the Burden of ‘Acting White’.” Urban
Review 18, no. 1 (1986): 189.
31
Majors, Richard, and Janet Mancini Billson. Cool Pose: the Dilemmas of Black Manhood in America. New York: Lexington Books,
1992.
32
Ibid.
33 Note: see Tatum, “All ‘Degreed’,” “Engaging,” and “Toward.”

24
In 2000, Ann Arnett Ferguson released an in-depth study of Black masculinity in public schooling,
focusing on the identity formation of pre-adolescents as they relate to punishment and power dynamics in
the school setting. In Bad Boys: Public Schools and the Making of Black Masculinity, Ferguson found that Black
male students in the school she studied were overrepresented in the “Punishing Room,” where students
were sent as a method of classroom management and a discipline tactic. Students were essentialized and
treated in different ways based on their perceived race and sex within this space, but were also free of the
label “bad,” and valued the space for its social opportunity. Hailing back to Majors and Billson, Ferguson
noticed that engaging in certain behaviors led to punishment, and that those behaviors were typically the
opposite of established White norms. Furthermore, she describes the ways in which Black boys,
specifically, are “adultified” when their behavior is punished in the school setting – the same actions
labeled as harmless and mischievous in their White peers were seen as precursors of a dangerous future in
Black boys.34
Ferguson’s work makes strides in understanding the identity construction of Black boys in the
public school setting, and a thoughtful application of her theories to an after-school setting would be
equally helpful.
How They See Themselves
There are two commonly accepted jumping-off points for discussions of racial identity
development in adolescents – for Black students, the primary text is Shades of Black: Diversity in African
American Identity by psychologist William Cross. Cross outlines five stages for identity development in
people of color: pre-encounter, encounter, immersion/emersion, internalization, and internalization-commitment.35
These
stages are summarized and discussed in Beverly Tatum’s book Why are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the
Cafeteria, in which Tatum notes that her ten year-old son is hovering in the pre-encounter stage, destined to
34
Ann Arnett Ferguson, Bad Boys: Public Schools in the Making of Black Masculinity (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,
2000), 84-86.
35
Cross, William E.. Shades of Black: Diversity in African American Identity. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1991.

25
move towards encounter as he graduates to junior high school in the next year. She also notes that,
although Cross explains his stages of development as occurring in late adolescence or early adulthood, such
an internal examination of racial identity may begin much earlier in life.36
Tatum’s example of her son’s
outward conceptions of his race is particularly helpful for approaching research with other Black males of
his age. Ten year-old David does not include his race in his descriptions of self, his mother notes, but
instead focuses on personality traits and his height. David’s height has been reflected back to him as
important by the adults with whom he interacts on a daily basis – as Tatum points out, the powerful adults
David talks with do not acknowledge his race, but rather exclaim that he is “tall for his age.” “At ten,”
Tatum concludes, “race is not yet salient for David, because it is not yet salient for society. But it will
be.”37
This mini-narrative about Tatum’s son illustrates how pre-adolescents like David and the participants
in this study can understand their identities through societal mirrors, through the interactions they have
with a particular person or within a particular space. For David, his interactions with adults reinforce the
importance of his height; their silence likewise speaks to the relative salience of his race.
Using Cross’s five stages as a tool, Janet Helms introduced the six stages of White identity
development in her 1993 book Black and White Racial Identity: Theory, Research, and Practice. Helms’s stages for
White identity development are: contact, disintegration, reintegration, pseudo-independent, immersion/emersion, and
autonomy.38
As both Cross and Helms note, the stages of racial identity development are not always
experienced in this fixed order, nor are individuals meant to experience each stage once and then never
return. These locations within the framework of racial identity development, Helms mapped over Cross,
present a useful understanding for the ways in which an interaction can occur between two individuals at
different points in their identity development, and may force one or the other into a new stage.
36
Beverly Daniel Tatum. Why are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?: and Other Conversations about Race. (New York:
BasicBooks, 1999), 54-55.
37 Ibid., 54.
38
Janet Helms, ed. Black and White Racial Identity: Theory, Research, and Practice. (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1993).

26
While these theories of racial identity development recognize the potentially fragmented way an
individual may experience particular stages, they do not focus on the ways in which different physical
spaces can directly affect that journey. Locating myself within the framework of Helms’s stages, I can see
how new encounters in my life have pushed me from stage to stage, skipping ahead or moving behind to
re-examine issues I previously thought I had mastered. For many of my peers, beginning college and
finding themselves in an entirely new physical space meant simultaneously jumping backwards or forwards
in their journey to racial identity development. This connection between space and identity, then,
contributes to the delineation of identity zones.
Understanding Urban School and Out-of-School Spaces
Identity as Connected to Space
The notion that identity formation is connected to space has undergone significant evolution. In
Race, Culture, and Schooling: Identities of Achievement in Multicultural Urban Schools, Peter Murrell outlines the
bodies of work in psychology and sociology that are concerned with contextual identity development.39
Building from this traditional theoretical framework, Murrell proposes his own theory of “situation-
mediated identity.” He argues that identity formation occurs in three steps in this context – first, an
awareness of a situation is reached; second, an awareness of one’s own position in a situation comes to exist;
and finally, the individual develops agency to change his or her 'situation.' Murrell’s theory also introduces
the concept of “figured worlds,” or cultural meaning systems embodied through identity in cultural
contexts.40
His understanding of the connection between space and identity is succinctly built on the
foundations of theories developed throughout the twentieth century, and expands to produce a
complicated but useful framework for further study. Where Murrell focuses on a broader “situation” –
39
Peter C. Murrell, Race, Culture, and Schooling: Identities of Achievement in Multicultural Urban Schools. (New York: Taylor & Francis
Group, 2007). 29-30.
40 Ibid., 31.

27
not necessary a physical location, but a social context as well – some of these ideas can be transferred to a
realm grounded in the built environment.
Our Conceptions of the Urban Community through Pop Culture
The term “urban” has come to carry a multiplicity of meanings, ranging from the theoretical and
obtuse, to the social, physical and metaphysical. In some modern contexts, it is used and understood to
function as a euphemism for “Black,” “ghetto,” “associated with people of color,” as in “Well, that
clothing choice is very urban!” Urban” as a euphemism has been cultivated through popular media images
since the beginning of the twentieth century, and it finds its current pop culture home in the urban school
movie genre. Zeus Leonardo and Margaret Hunter outline the three dominant, incredibly contradictory
conceptions of urban space, as popular culture presents to the masses: the urban as cosmopolitan, the urban as
an authentic space for people of color, and the urban as a chaotic jungle.41
The authors assert that such conceptions
are rooted in the imaginary; in other words, dominant society has used fact and physical setting to
construct a particular – and not necessarily true – story about the urban environment. Not only do these
ideas about imagined urban communities construct the people within that space, Leonardo and Hunter
argue, but they also often contribute to misunderstandings of their needs.42
In terms of the image of the urban community as an authentic place for people of color
(particularly for Black and Latino communities), the authors cite many societal attempts to construct this
authenticity – rap videos, films about Black barbershops, the cultivated personalities of celebrity hip hop
stars, actors, and basketball players. In constructing this image of authenticity, a potential counter-story
instead becomes an alternate dominant narrative, and the voices of people of color are still lost. The
authors illustrate this point with a brief discussion on the popular images of community organizing – an
41
Zeus Leonardo and Margaret Hunter. “Race, Class, and Imagining the Urban.” In Race, Whiteness, and Education by Zeus
Leonardo, 143-165. The Critical Social Thought Series. (New York: Routledge, 2009)
42 Ibid., 144.

28
embodiment of strength in urban communities that often goes unrecognized.43
In direct contrast to this depiction of the urban as alternative haven is the racist notion of the
urban space as “jungle.” Aside from its obvious borrowing from exoticized notions of people of color, the
“urban as jungle” image regards urban space as dangerous, wild, and uncontrolled. Closely associated with
this image of violence in a community of Black and Brown faces is the notion of a “culture of poverty,” in
which living standards below poverty level are perpetuated through generations, aided by broken social
systems like welfare.44
In this context, urban communities are boiled down to negative images of the ghetto
or barrio, and spaces are depicted as dangerous, racialized, masculinized by violence, and entirely
incongruous to traditional ideas of success. The authors illustrate this essentializing of the urban
community with the example of White, middle class appropriations of “urban style” – White students
from the suburbs performing their own ideas about urban space through their choices in dress and
behavior. As Leonardo and Hunter note, “they can dabble in the ‘urban’ without ever losing their access to
suburban space and White privilege. In short, they have the luxury of being urban without the burden.”45
In relation to exploring these essential misunderstandings of urban space, Leonardo and Hunter
propose that the urban be “re-imagined” by its residents and those who make policy decisions or work as
educators in urban settings, but operate with some assumptions from these dominant imaginations. Urban
school space, they argue, is a dynamic intersection of racial, gendered, political, and economic meanings –
it must be regarded as such before it can construct different terms of success.
43 Ibid., 154.
44 Ibid., 155.
45 Ibid., 160.

29
Chapter 3
Methodology and Methods
It is not our role to speak to the people about our own view of the world, nor to attempt to
impose that view on them, but rather to dialogue with the people about their view and
ours.
Paulo Freire
In Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968)46
Structure of the Research
There are plenty of statistics about the achievement rates of African American males in urban
public schools; there are numbers about graduation rates, SAT scores, college admissions decisions,
employment, and all things in between. But there is a story that cannot be told by numbers alone – a story
that is powerful and carries with it the strength of the individual experience. Qualitative research attempts
to understand these stories, to create a composite that colors in the lines of raw data and rows of numbers.
Case study gives space to the voices that often find none; it allows for a different kind of truth. The
choices I made in the research process were rooted in a Critical Race methodology, which centers the
voices of people of color and advocates the use of narrative as a tool to communicate the experiences of
participants.47
This case study was constructed from data gleaned through a conglomeration of techniques
designed to provide different insights into the daily lives of the child participants – two semi-structured
interviews with each of the participants; a semi-structured interview with Michael D., the founder and
director of Youth Leadership Project; five informal focus group sessions with the three primary
participants; daily field observations at YLP; an examination of original stories written by the three primary
participants in their journals from the YLP middle school program; and an ongoing collaborative writing
project with the three primary participants, all conducted over the course of four months.
46
47
Daniel G. Solorzano and Tara J. Yosso, "Critical Race Methodology: Counter-Storytelling as an Analytical Framework for
Education Research," Qualitative Inquiry 8, no. 1 (February 2002).

30
Choosing Participants
The three primary participants for this study were chosen from a pool of ten children who
regularly attend the elementary age after-school program at Youth Leadership Project and fit the desired
criteria of race, age, and sex. All self-identify as Black or African American and male, and are enrolled in
the fifth grade at the same local elementary school in the Crenshaw City School District. Beyond fitting
the ideal demographic criteria, these three boys were invited to participate in the study because they
expressed interest and excitement in the project in informal conversations with me. This level of energy
was an essential factor in my choice of participants because a high interest level would likely produce more
nuanced and extensive data, and would also be helpful in designing the most engaging data-collecting
processes. I imagined the conversations these particular participants would have when I chose to focus on
them, and I was excited to hear what they had to say. During the selection process, I also had the benefit
of my previous knowledge of each participant’s relationship to the space and to one another, and could
consider my own informal observations of and interactions with them over the course of almost two years
before my formal research began.
The first participant, Derek, is an eleven year-old boy in Ms. G's fifth grade class at Hughes
Elementary School. He lives in the same neighborhood as both the community center where Youth
Leadership Project is located and Hughes Elementary. Derek is an energetic and funny boy who loves
playing video games on the weekends and joking with his friends at the “big kids” end of the snack table at
YLP. Derek, Shawn, and Marcus – the three primary participants – can often be found traveling in a pack
through the different settings of the Youth Leadership Project day, stopping together to laugh and joke in
the hallways and remind some of the younger kids to walk in line or be quiet in the stairwells. In our
conversations, Derek often used humor to express his thoughts about school and after-school time – he
would frequently make the other boys laugh during our focus group sessions and was often the first to

31
engage in the light-hearted teasing that came to punctuate most of our conversations. Derek describes
himself as funny and “not that quiet,” and reports that he sometimes gets lunch detention for talking in
class when the teacher wants him to “be quiet and listen,” although he rarely reports experiencing any
more severe punishment in school.48
Derek's brother, Shawn, is ten years old and enrolled in the other fifth grade class at Hughes
Elementary – Ms. R's classroom. Shawn and Derek have never been in the same class in school, as per
their parents' request. Shawn is a bit more reserved and observant than Derek, and often stayed quiet for
periods of time during the focus groups before voicing his opinions. As Shawn predicted, one of the first
words that Michael D. would use to describe Shawn is “dancer” – he is often dancing in the hallways
during the after-school day, and silences the rest of the group when he dances in the aisles of the buses
during our periodic field trips. Michael D. has a close relationship with Derek and Shawn's family that
spans about seven years; their oldest sibling participated in the YLP high-school program four years ago.
Shawn describes himself as quiet and a loyal friend, and he proudly showed me his report card twice
during our conversations – always earning 3s and 4s out of a possible 4 in all of his subjects.49
The third primary participant, Marcus, is a close friend of Derek and Shawn's -- as Marcus says
frequently, “family.” The three walk to and from school together, as Marcus also lives in the same
neighborhood as the location of Youth Leadership Project, Hughes Elementary, and Derek and Shawn's
house. Like Derek and Shawn, Marcus's older sibling graduated from the YLP high school program a few
years ago – often the students in YLP are members of families who have personal relationships with
Michael D., or who learned about the programs at YLP through other students who attend or used to
attend regularly. Marcus's younger brother began participating in the elementary school program this year,
although Marcus has been coming to Youth Leadership Project for about two years. Marcus describes
himself as an “excellent student,” and reports experiencing very little formal discipline at school – he has
48 Derek Walker, interview by author, Crenshaw, NY, March 19, 2012.
49 Shawn Walker, interview by author, Crenshaw, NY, April 2, 2012.

32
only had lunch detention a handful of times, and has never encountered discipline deemed more severe
than that. Sometimes, he frequently notes, his teacher has to remind him to “keep his mouth shut.”50
All three participants began the school year as some of the oldest students in the elementary school
program at Youth Leadership Project, but transitioned to the middle school program in the wintertime.
The decision to switch programs was initiated by the three students – though they cannot agree on which
of them first had the idea – and approved by Michael D., who keeps a more watchful eye than most
children realize. This transition served an unexpected, but critical, role in my research as a source for
further comparison between spaces within Youth Leadership Project and an important signal of the
growth of the three participants throughout the school year.
To insure that the research would primarily focus on the voices of the students themselves, formal
interviews were only conducted with the three primary participants and with Michael D. Since the subject
of this exploration is grounded in what the participants took away from each space – as opposed to what
the spaces are designed to produce for the boys – the impressions they shared in interviews and focus
groups were the most important facet of my research. The decision to interview Michael D. stemmed
from the observation that the identity zone of Youth Leadership Project was inextricably defined by his
personality, and thus a conversation with him would present information about the environment itself.
An interview was conducted with Michael D. right around the middle of the research period, and
questions were designed to illuminate Michael D.'s impressions of the primary child participants, as well as
give space for his reflections on his own experiences as a Black male in an urban community.51
Michael D.
is a Black man in his late sixties, with severe health problems he often uses as a threat to inspire active
listening in the student who seem to constantly surround him. His deep and booming voice can be heard
around the corner from his office, with the door closed – “I am the one dying in this room!” he sometimes
50 Marcus Hayes, interview by author, Crenshaw, NY, March 30, 2012.
51 Note: see Appendix A for the full interview schedule.

33
shouts as a method of punctuating his spontaneous lectures about the Black Power movement, life in
prison, or the gang mentality of Crenshaw. When Michael D. speaks, the students moving in his office, or
in the other spaces of YLP, all stop to listen instantaneously. A room is never as silent as when he is
speaking, nor as loud as when he asks students to recite the YLP motto or blasts the latest J. Cole album as
a backdrop for grant-writing in the YLP office deep into the night. In his interview, Michael D. took
advantage of the opportunity to ask me questions in response, using his skills as an orator to move me to
tears about the significance of my own involvement at Youth Leadership Project over the years.52
The Issue of Temporariness
Although there were some creative and idealistic elements that determined my choice in
participants, space and time had more concrete contributions to make in the decision-making process.
Youth Leadership Project is, by nature, a somewhat temporary space. The physical settings in which the
elementary school after-school program takes place are constantly changing with regards to basic layout
(i.e. tables and chairs, different locations of resources for homework, and one instance of complete
remodeling in the three years I have been involved there). The front entrance to the building where Youth
Leadership Project operates was even closed off for about eight months at one point, during which the
initial interactions participants had with the physical space were altered. The ebb and flow of construction
and physical change within the space mirror the rise and fall of public funding for the building and for
non-profit organizations, in general, in the downtown Crenshaw area.
Other than Michael D., many of the people the students view as part of the YLP space are also
temporary; the majority of the staff at YLP are college students, who cycle in and out as often as a single
semester, or for as long a period as four years. The college mentors, as they are known, develop
relationships with YLP students that often bridge at least a year or two in which they attend college near
52 Michael Dyson, interview by author, Crenshaw, NY, March 22, 2012.

34
Crenshaw, but all have graduated and gone on to different cities. My three-year involvement at YLP is
unusual among the college mentors and defines me as a constant, one step below Michael D. – it also
further complicates my impending graduation and move away from Crenshaw and YLP in about a month.
Most of the college mentors are around just long enough to stick in the short-term memories of the
elementary students before moving on to a different fieldwork assignment or graduating and moving away
in a different sense.
Just as the physical and social shape of this identity zone is constantly shifting, and so is the
population of students it serves. While there are certain families who have remained constant at Youth
Leadership Project – or at the very least, as constant as I have been as a staff member – many students
attend in cycles, often based on the season and weather, custody issues with parents, the operating
schedules of other seasonal programs, or the work schedules of parents or guardians. When the school
year ends, it is expected by most staff members and by Michael D. that not all will return the next fall. This
temporariness of the space played a large role in determining the primary participants of the study – Derek,
Shawn, and Marcus are all students who have returned year after year. Ideally, this study would also include
the voices of three of their peers who were a year above them in the school system, and who have thus
undergone Tatum’s telling transformation from elementary to middle school. Those potential participants,
however, have succumbed to the cyclical changes of the student roster at Youth Leadership Project, and no
longer attend the after-school program or have up-to-date contact information on file.
Talking with the Boys
The Interviews
The initial semi-structured interviews were the least organic interactions the boys and I had
throughout the research process. I utilized an empty office that belonged to YLP, adjacent to the hub of
the central office, to conduct these interviews. The participants were often all in different areas of this

35
same large, partitioned room during the first round of interviews, with the interviewee and I sitting close
together while both or one of the other participants played games on the far side of the room, often
around a corner or through a doorway. Although there is a small chance that some of the interview
responses may have been overheard and had influence in later interviews with the other participants, I
believe that small chance was mediated by the acoustics of the room. In addition, I was willing to forgo a
technical one-on-one interview in order to preserve a higher comfort level for the participants, all three of
whom had expressed concerns about being separated during the initial interview process.
The interviews were semi-structured, with almost all open-ended questions in the pre-determined
interview schedule and the addition of more open-ended questions and clarifications as necessary.53
Interviews were recorded with computer software that showed the sound waves across the screen as it ran.
This became a source of fascination, then distraction, and quickly and finally, comfort for the participants.
In this instance, my tool for convenience in research became an unplanned source of energy and interest
in the research process for the students. Our conversations about the recording and transcribing process
after our interviews and focus group sessions were a fun aspect of the research and, I would like to think,
may have sparked imaginations about a future in academia for one participant in particular. After one of
our focus group sessions, Marcus asked if he would be able to record interviews with people when he went
to college.54
Conversation, Common Ground, and Candy
Although I had perceived my relationship with the three child participants as strong prior to the
start of this formal research process, I quickly learned that I would need to modify my interview and group
discussion plans to maximize their comfort level. In this first series of interviews, I had introduced the
process with informal conversation and some joking around with the boys, but had switched into ‘scholar
53 Note: see Appendix A for the full interview schedule.
54 Marcus Hayes, interview, March 23, 2012.

36
mode,’ as soon as the recording began. In spite of my efforts to remind each of them that I was not
expecting or hoping for a particular answer, I could sense that my interview structure was not serving its
intended purpose. As I listened to the very first recording later that night, I immediately recognized
something quite familiar in our conversation – this interview was modeling Freire’s banking model of
education. I was an authority figure, sitting directly across from a student and asking him a series of
questions. He was expected to supply responses each time, and likely felt a lot of pressure to answer each
question as quickly as possible and in the “correct way,” in spite of my reminders that “there was no right
answer.” Many of Derek’s responses in his initial interview were phrased as uncertainties, his words
inflecting upwards like questions when he made statements, for example. After this initial series of
interviews, I proceeded to modify my approach in order to make the participants more comfortable during
the research process, as well as to gain more valuable insight with their responses and energetic
participation.
Reminding myself that I was the individual with the sole responsibility of collecting and
interpreting this data, I began to loosen up in the group interviews. My relaxed demeanor and frequent
pausing to ask more ‘fun’ questions, laugh, make my own comments or observations, and draw
comparisons to my own experience made a quick and visible difference with the participants. The boys
began to share more anecdotal observations about their surroundings and weaved impressive stories for
me about their time at school or in the neighborhood. Once I stopped worrying about somehow
invalidating the data I was collecting with my own participation in the process, once I reminded myself that
I had a unique role in this setting after all, I could see the boys stop altering their behavior or conversations
because of the recording computer or the formal shadow of a research project looming above all of our
heads.
I also – and equally importantly – shifted from one-on-one interviews to group-style interviews,
which I simply called “conversations” when introducing the idea to the students. Our first group

37
conversation, facilitated with questions I had scrawled on small pieces of paper earlier that day, was still a
bit less natural than an organic conversation at snack time, in which we were all closer to being equal
participants.55
At the same time, it was far less stiff than any of the interviews I had conducted by that
point. I view this shift to group conversations as both a strategic decision to improve data and a testament
to the importance of storytelling as a source of strength, as well as knowledge. The switch to conversations
marked another instance in which the comfort of the participants was centered in the research process, and
data improved as a result. As I became more confident in my research, and began to involve the boys more
deeply in the research process by encouraging them to pose their own questions within the conversations, I
could see them growing more confident as well with the responses and stories they shared. 56
We conducted five focus group conversations in total, on Fridays for several weeks over the
course of the winter and early spring. During the course of these group conversations, Derek, Shawn, and
Marcus began to attend the middle school program at Youth Leadership Project, rather than the
elementary school program. Many of the formal group meeting techniques employed in the middle school
program began to influence our group conversations – by the close of our last focus group conversation,
the boys' behavior was deeply influenced by the group meeting rules Michael D. employs in the middle
school and high school programs, such as owning up to “regressions,” giving each other “teachings,” and
sharing experiential knowledge with one another in a banking model format. I would only return to
individual interviews at the end of my research, as a de-briefing mechanism. In this second round of
interviews, the boys were visibly and audibly more relaxed and their language was more casual and colorful.
The questions in the second round of interviews were designed to serve primarily as a source of closure,
rather than as a source of data.
55 Note: see Appendix A for a list of focus group questions.
56 Note: I suppose it should be noted that the three child participants generally had approximately 2-3 serving sizes of sour
gummy worms every time we had interviews or conversations, as did the researcher. Research with children can be uniquely
rewarding in that way.

38
Understanding the Space
YLP takes place within several different spaces of the large community center, a building that used
to be the Crenshaw Public High School. Though the space still looks somewhat like a typical public school
from the mid-1900s, the atmosphere inside is decidedly different. Michael D.s' office, or just “The Office”
is located on the first floor, and is often the first place the front desk workers will point to when a new
face comes through the front doors. Within this larger center, YLP primarily operates from within this
office and a larger, recently renovated office in the former classroom space next door. The elementary
school program moves between The Office, the soup kitchen in the basement of the community center,
and the Africana Studies-focused community library on the second floor of the building. The middle
school and high school programs take place primarily in The Office, which is big enough to hold about
twenty-five desk-top chairs and a large dry-erase board, under the closer eye of Michael D. The arts
programs use the theater space in the community center.57
The Office is bright blue and yellow, and worksheets with colored-in pictures of the White House
and the phrase, “If I were President, I would ________” fill up one wall. On another wall, surrounding the
dry-erase board, which always sports either a list of terms with their dictionary definitions – i.e. “initiative,”
“discipline,” – or the cursive script of middle school students marking their territory, are colorful posters
with the names and photos of the each group of children. There is a row of donated desktop computers
against a third wall, though I have yet to see them plugged in and operating in my three years at YLP.
Dictionaries and journals are stacked up in bins under the computer table, and candy wrappers and
miscellaneous handouts often litter the floor, though once a week Michael D. slips a friend in need a few
dollars to sweep up after the kids leave.
The soup kitchen is entirely neutral in color scheme and seems a little dirty – the community
dinners it hosts have left the tabletops and floors scratched and well-worn. Though this space is technically
57 Field observations, conducted by author, Crenshaw, NY, January 2012.

39
connected to the rest of the community center, the doors leading from The Office to the soup kitchen
have been locked since January, in an effort to control the movement through the building of the un-
housed people who visit the non-profit adjacent to the soup kitchen. When the YLP elementary and
middle school students travel to and from this space for snack, they must briefly duck outside and cut a
corner to get back into the building, navigating around the locked door.
The Library where the elementary students spend the majority of their time at YLP each day is
bright orange and green. The tables and chairs are mismatched and sometimes broken – a few times, a
table or chair has been relegated to a forgotten corner or marked with tape because of exposed sharp metal
edges or broken legs. Here too, there is a row of computers that I've never seen in use. The Library is open
to the community at large and carries mostly books about black leaders in history and the Civil Rights
movement, and children's books that prominently feature black characters. Posters on the wall show
Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, outline the “Early Warning Signs of Fascism,” or detail traditional
African values like imani and ujamaa. Glass display cases and bookshelves showcase relics from the 2008
Obama campaign and old newspapers from the 1980s, stacked haphazardly in a corner. The Library is
equally liable to be extremely organized or littered with pencils and paper scraps on any given day, as access
to the library is technically open to all.
Seeing the Boys in Action
Although I was present at the after-school program an average of four days per week throughout
the research process, I elected to take extensive field notes only once or twice a week, often scribbling
down quotes or particular thoughts on the fly on the other days. I also had to complete most of my field
observation notes immediately following an afternoon at the program, simply because I was still required
to serve in my regular capacity as coordinator. Fortunately, my field observations extended much further
back in memory than I could synthesize onto paper. Just as my dual role was both helpful and harmful in

40
the interview process, it also made the field observation component of my research simultaneously more
interesting and less easily navigable. In taking notes and later coding them, I sometimes found it difficult to
distinguish between my own long-term participation in the space and my observations of the participants’
interactions within the same space.
Taking Field Notes on Myself
This study has been an exploration of the ways in which an individual constructs a physical space,
not just how a physical space can construct the identity of an individual. My own participation as an
accepted facet of the after-school program means that, in studying the messages of this alternative identity
zone, I must also attempt to analyze the ways in which I have contributed to that message. This aspect of
my research has been particularly challenging, as I have the simultaneous advantage and disadvantage of
understanding my own intentions for certain actions or conversations in which I participated.
As Daniel Solórazano and Tara Yosso outline in their article about Critical Race methodology in
educational research, the tenet of Critical Race Theory that challenges dominant ideology also challenges
the specific notion of a ‘neutral approach.’ In CRT, this facet focuses on investigating the idea of
“colorblindness” and other, similar dominant narratives of contemporary race relations. Translated into
methodology, this same concept can be focused on rejecting the notion of a neutral or objective
researcher.58
The prime focus on narratives and personal experiences as legitimate forms of knowledge
also contributes to an overall push against traditional ideas of objective research. In openly acknowledging
my own location within this ethnography, and in my attempts to engage in a Freirian dialogue with my own
“situation,” I hope to lend more credence to my findings. Recognizing bias is the first critical step to
drawing conclusions that transcend that bias.
58
Solorzano and Yosso, "Critical Race Methodology: Counter-Storytelling as an Analytical Framework for Education
Research," 26.

41
Chapter 4
The Boys’ Story
To all the kids in the future, whoever sees this – we was doin' beast. We was so cool. We
was cooler than ya'll.
Derek,
from Interview (02-13-12)59
What to Expect
When I began the process of researching for this paper, I had only a vague conception of how the
final product would look. I knew that I wanted to create a narrative from the perspectives of Derek,
Shawn, and Marcus – a story written in their voices, with the help of their own creative endeavors, that
would speak to the role of Youth Leadership Project as an alternative identity zone. With the help of the
boys' creative journals from the middle school program and their stories from our interviews and focus
groups, I have shaped a narrative story that chronicles a typical day in the lives of the participants, through
the use of a composite character. The narrator is an un-named composite character meant to represent the
experiences of all three boys, as well as the experiences of their peers. It is written in the language and style
they used in their own work, and borrows specific ideas and sometimes direct quotations from their
journal entries, from my field observations, and from our conversations together. Throughout the process
of constructing this narrative reflection, I included Derek, Shawn, and Marcus in creative process by
introducing small portions of the developing text at the end of several of our focus group conversations.
What you see below is the final result of this collaborative project – a story told from them to me – the
jokes, observations, and creative story-telling of the boys, sometimes mediated through my own
observations or through each other's, and often presented in original pencil-to-paper form.
59 Derek Walker, interview, February 13, 2012.

42
A Day in the Life
When I woke up, it was so early! My sister is always waking me up so early for school – I don't need to be up for
hours, but instead I get up at, like, 6 in the morning for school. It's because her school starts earlier than mine. Anyway, so I
get up and get those fresh clothes on, get my fitted on because I got to take it off when I get to school anyway. I got my clothes
on, my sneakers – 23s! – and I get breakfast or whatever and then I got to grab my brother and walk to school. I don't take
the bus because we live too close. My mom is always wanting to say goodbye, sometimes she kisses me right on the forehead all
wet, and she says, “Have a good day!!!” And then she gives me lunch money for me and my brother. Jordan's mom does that
too. I usually pick up Jordan on my way because we pass by his house anyway and then we walk the rest of the way to school.
“Sometimes I wish we could just take the bus!” Jordan says.
“I hate the bus anyway, it's mad loud on there and it' s just too early for those little kids to be so loud all the time.
They're loud all the time, like so noisy. I hate it!” I always argue back.60
Sometimes my dad gives me like an extra dollar or something or Jordan's mom does, and we go to the corner store
that's on the way, that's in between my street and school. It's the one we go to sometimes before trips, remember that time you
went with us there and we got those hot fries?
Anyway, when we get to school, it's the same every day, most of the time. We all walk in together and sometimes the
monitor, Mr. C., is sitting near the front door and he has like a clipboard and stuff. He usually says hi, but sometimes not,
like if he's in a bad mood. Sometimes he says we need to put on like a warmer coat if it's cold out and stuff. Or he'll ask
about my sister since she goes to the high school now. And then everyday we go to class and my teacher, she is too crazy
sometimes. She'll pretend like she doesn't see me or whatever, but then she does. Jordan says she's got two sides to her, one like
a soft-spoken lady, and then she just turns into a crazy monster for no reason!61
I guess some parts of the day are different, like when we go to gym and stuff. But most of the day is the same, like we
go to our classrooms. Well, first I make sure that my brother gets to his classroom because my mom says I got to watch out
for him and make sure he goes to class. Sometimes he doesn't go, so now my mom makes me or my sister watch out for him
60 Shawn Walker, interview, February 15, 2012.

43
more. Then after that, I go to my classroom. It's brown, I guess, and there are some posters but I don't remember what they
look like. It's not very colorful in there. It's noisy, too, most of the time – especially in the morning before we have to be quiet
and do work.
My teacher is crazy! Sometimes she'll be nice, like when we are all listening and on Fridays sometimes we get to play
games and stuff. But then other times she gets mad, like when people don't listen or aren't doing what she wants, and then she
goes hard. She is always going hard, like switching personalities almost. She's a good teacher because she doesn't let us stop
working and she always is making sure we do stuff right. Most of the teachers are female, I would say. But my gym teacher –
he is so funny! He is probably my favorite teacher. He is always laughing and making jokes. He is thirty-one years old and
he has blond hair and he's White and he has blue eyes.62
I know he's thirty-one because it was his birthday and we counted all
the candles and there were thirty-two and he said, “One to grow!” I guess he's my favorite because he is funny and because he
watches out for all of us, like if we don't understand something because we weren't paying attention, he'll explain it instead of
getting mad and yelling. That's why gym is the best part of school besides math and when we get to hang out more on Fridays.
If I had to describe myself as a student, I would say, “has discipline,” “good handwriting,” “best writer in the class,”
“best everything in the class,” but also “noisy sometimes.” Math is my favorite subject because I can do all the multiplication
and sometimes some algebra, even. I can do math better than everyone else! I know my 9-18-27-36-45-54-63-72-81
whatevers!63
My least favorite subject is history because I just hate it. It's so boring. We do the same thing every year like
George Washington, Native Americans, peninsulas, Martin Luther King, colonies, Presidents, that's it. I know it all, it's
not new stuff all the time. History stays the same – that's why it's boring.64
My other subject that I like is science, because I
get to make projects and make them colorful and stuff. Like my blizzard project except I got scared when I was walking
home one day and I dropped it and then the next day my teacher brought it in to school and she said I didn't put in enough
effort. This other kid in my class made this wack project that was too funny and it just had those weird, blue fuzzy noodle
things in a bowl. And my teacher said it was better than my project! But it was not better. That project was so fun though.
63 Derek Walker, interview, March 9, 2012.
64 Shawn Walker, interview, March 12, 2012.

44
So after school sometimes I go with my brother and Jordan to the Center, like to see Michael D. or whatever. And
then we stay and there's food and he'll ask us how we're doing and then we have to do homework. My mom and dad check in
with Michael D. sometimes to see if we get there because some of the other kids on our street say they're going to the Center but
then they don't go and they just play basketball outside and stuff. Sometimes I want to be playing basketball with them, but
it's okay. So we go to program and we used to all go to the same one, me and Jordan and my brother. But now, Jordan and I
stay with the middle school kids in Michael D.'s office because we were too old for that elementary program and all those little
kids are so loud all the time! We still go down for food and stuff, but we sit at the end of the table by ourselves and we don't
mess around with the little kids. They're too noisy, I can't stand them!
After we eat, we go upstairs and do group meeting with the other middle school kids, like with Grace and Destiny
and sometimes Matt comes. I like it better than going all the way upstairs to do homework because we have more freedom,
like to do what we want. I mean we don't have a lot of freedom because Michael D. knows where we are and we still have to
do the group meeting and write new words in our journals and stuff, but like we walk around the building sometimes, and we
got to join the middle school group even though we're not in middle school yet, so I guess that's freedom. Plus we get to go on
trips sometimes, like the time we went to that museum. Man, that movie was so boring, I was like falling asleep. We were all
falling asleep though, even Michael D. and you and the other helpers too. It was too boring, but the rest was fun, like when
we went to that restaurant and Jordan had all that soda and got so hyper.65
Michael D. says we've all been growing a lot from coming to middle school group, like the other day it was my turn
to run the meeting and he said I did a really good job. That was his feedback – that I did a really good job and that I just
needed to talk louder and that I forgot one part, but I knew the rest of the parts. Next week I'll probably have to run
meeting again one of the days, and that is usually fun. I like running meetings because I get to be in charge and tell everyone
else what to do and I get to do the knowledge session and talk about stuff I think is interesting. Sometimes the girl that runs it
will let us watch stuff, like on YouTube, or we read articles from magazines. I wish we got to read from VIBE at school, not
that boring history stuff like John Adams, or whatever.
65 Derek Walker, journal entry, February 18, 2012.

45
The other days we write in journals and stuff – like we can either write about the articles in the magazines or we can
write about something that happened to us that day or like about football or the Knicks or something. Mostly I write these
stories that are funny and sometimes stupid – like this one about a man called, “Scrumptious Chicken.'66
I won't tell it now,
but it's mad funny. It always makes Jordan crack up and one time he fell out of his seat he was laughing so hard and then
he got stuck and then we got in trouble a little bit because we weren't paying attention. But most of the time we don't get in
trouble because we listen and we're smart.
After program we walk home together or sometimes we get picked up by my sister or by Jordan's mom or his brother.
Most of the time we walk though, and then we drop Jordan off at his house and we go home. Sometimes we see Vincent and
T.J. out playing basketball, like if it's still light outside. They used to come to program with us, but now they're in middle
school and they go to a basketball camp or they just go home after school.
I have a lot of questions about middle school, but mostly I'm just excited to go there next year. But I want to know
about lockers and like if the teachers are meaner or whatever. I heard that the teachers don't care if you don't do your work,
like they don't check your planners or anything. I hope they don't do that because I hate when people want to check my
planner. I always do my homework... most of the time. I think about middle school sometimes, and high school and college.
All the older kids from program are in high school now or some of them are at college too. And you're at college, so that's
cool. I forget sometimes that you go to college but it's really so weird that you live at your school, I have to say.67
Am I going to
go to college? Yeah, probably. I want to go to college for football coaching. Can you do that? I see myself as President and
then – no, as a lawyer, and then President, and then after that I will buy my favorite football team and make myself the
coach. Or else I'll be like Michael D. and be so funny and loud and just know everything. Can you go to college for that?
67 Marcus Hayes, journal entry, March 20, 2012.

46
Chapter 5
Identity Zones in Practice
Homes and schools (from nurseries to universities) exist not in the abstract, but in time and
space. Within the structures of domination, they function largely as agencies which prepare
the invaders of the future. (152)
Paulo Freire,
in Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968)68
Narrative > Actions
The boys’ stories have been presented in a close to unmediated context in the last chapter. This
centering of the student narrative is essential to any understanding of the implications of this study –
though an interview with Michael D. and numerous field observations were conducted, they were primarily
meant to provide further nuance through the lens created by the students’ words. The perceptions of the
individual are most critical for identity development; it is not so much the actions others have taken, nor
the observations of interactions that have been made, but the primary source of the boys’ words that
construct these two spaces. Although physical setting is integral to the idea of identity zones, it is the
connotations of these settings as experienced and expressed by the students who interact with them that
serve as the basis for identity formation.
“They're too noisy! I can't stand them!” : Noise/Silence in Identity Zones
The noisy/quiet trope that often came up in our conversations is a prime example of the ways in
which Youth Leadership Project, as an alternative identity zone, allowed the boys to create their own
identity labels. For the participants, “being quiet” was associated with good behavior, and was rewarded by
authority figures at school and at YLP. Teachers, Michael D., and after-school staff members were often
characterized as “funny” or “nice” unless they had to raise their voices because “everyone was being loud”
68

47
or “noisy,” and “not listening.” This strong connection between noise and behavior was enforced in both
spaces, but the students seemed to find more nuance in their identities as “loud” or “not that quiet kids,”
at YLP.
In the school space, all three described “teacher pet” students as generally quiet individuals who
“listen and do what the teacher says all the time.” For the boys, succeeding in school is directly related to
the amount of noise a student makes. There is also an important distinction made between the classroom
and other areas of the school – in gym class or at lunchtime, almost all students are louder. The students
often identified these spaces as the best parts of school, or their time there as favorite times in the school
day. When asked to think about how their teachers would describe them, two of the three students
confidently labeled themselves as louder than most, but at school that noise carries confusing
connotations.
At Youth Leadership Project, the boys are often not the loudest students – when they were in the
elementary school program in the fall, they spent most of their time with younger students who naturally
can be a bit noisier. For all three of the fifth graders, “noisy” became a negative label for the other
students, a source of annoyance. “They never listen,” Shawn said.69
All three identify the loud behavior of
the younger students as a negative part of the program space, and an important factor in their decision to
switch to the middle school program. In this context, the identity label of “noisy” carries a different
meaning, and the boys have the power to create that meaning. Rather than be given the label of “not that
quiet” or “loud in class,” they find themselves bestowing that label on others within the alternative identity
zone. Michael D. and the other helpers at Youth Leadership Project were also characterized as negatively
associating loud behavior, but when asked about how he thought these individuals would describe the
boys, “noisy” was never the first or only response for Michael D., or for the boys when they were asked to
describe themselves. Together, the boys eventually settled on a label for all three of them as “good but a
69
Shawn Walker, interview, February 23, 2012.

48
little noisy” when they are in school, and “quiet compared to the other kids, just chill” when they are at the
after-school program.70
“So funny and loud and just know everything.” : Modeling and Mentoring
Both identity zones are shaped by the people Derek, Shawn, and Marcus associate with each space.
In our conversations, the boys often described their impressions of Michael D., of me, of individual
teachers at school, of friends and classmates, and of each other. While both zones were characterized to
some extent by the individuals found there, the alternative identity zone seemed to provide a stronger
connection between the role models there and the way each boy thought of himself.
Being Funny
When identifying teachers or mentoring figures, the descriptive word most often used in the
interviews, by far, was “funny.” By the end of the first round of interviews, it became clear that either
“funny” was a very important personality trait for the boys, or it was a term they used to describe any
person they really liked. Not only did they describe all of their favorite teachers and staff members,
especially Michael D., as “funny” before using any other descriptions, but they also associated being
“funny” with their own identities, with each other, and with some of their classmates. Notably, the label of
“funny” was distinctly masculine; it was almost never used to describe female teachers or staff members,
but was almost always used immediately in describing any male in a positive way.
One particular “funny” characterization of Michael D. was related to language use. All three child
participants, as well as Michael D. himself, identified his use of “colorful language” as a way to sustain
attention from students and appeal to adolescents, in particular. “If I put the shit I spew in their terms,
rather than in the terms they hear or – don't even hear – at school, then they think, 'Hey Michael D. makes
70
Derek Walker, Shawn Walker, Marcus Hayes, group interview, April 6, 2012.

49
sense. He's kinda crazy but my moms is letting me come here for a reason. I'mma start listening and see
what happens.’ And then they come back, and they come back, and they bring some other little gangsta
from their crew, and then they good.”71
In contrast, one of the only instances in which the child participants described a specific thing said
by one of their classroom teachers is when Marcus and Derek told an anecdote about their White, female
teacher “talkin' gangsta.” “She was like, 'I'mma have to get gangsta up in here!” Marcus said between
giggles. “And she did!” Derek exclaimed.72
They went on to talk about the specific phrases their teacher
used in this interaction, laughing at the way she said each word. In the end, they insisted that she was not a
good teacher, or a bad teacher, but a fun teacher – the use of language in a humorous context had made her
the exception to the masculinized “funny” club.
The Importance of Age
Additionally, the students seemed to appreciate age as an identity label far more than race or sex –
at the very least, they were more willing to discuss age and told stories that specifically related to the ages
of different adult figures. At the same time, they directly identified disparate ages as ideal for teachers and
helpers – in conversation, they together described one of their favorite teachers as “old,” but their current
favorite teachers as “young,” or “middle age.” In another conversation, they also talked about how they
liked that the helpers at Youth Leadership Project were younger than their teachers because, “teachers is
old and they get on my nerves half of the time,” while also agreeing in one of our conversations that they
liked Michael D. because he was “kinda old,” “knows a lot because he already got his education,” and
“reminds me of my dad.”73
In the end, although they were more willing to talk about age than race or sex,
it seems age did not determine how or why they liked or related to certain adult figures in their lives.
71 Michael Dyson, interview, March 22, 2012.
72 Derek Walker and Marcus Hayes, interview, March 9, 2012.
73 Marcus Hayes, interview, February 13, 2012.

50
Empathizing with Role Models
Whereas the traditional school space at Hughes is constructed by larger social structures and
concepts – of what a school is supposed to be, what a teacher looks like and does, how a school day
should look – the alternative space of YLP presents the boys with a space that is defined by individual
personality, rather than rigid physical and social structures. YLP as a person-identified and person-constructed
space, one that is as much about the set-up of a room or the location in a neighborhood as it is about what
Michael D's mother said to him as a child or whether his medical treatment zapped his energy that day,
constructs identity differently because it approaches identity in a fundamentally different way. Many
teachers are replaceable at Hughes and many college mentors are quite frequently replaced at YLP, but
while there is no one constant at Hughes, Michael D. becomes the constant at YLP and his day-to-day
experiences and personal history also become an essential part of the physical fabric of this alternative
identity zone.
Perhaps because of the sheer amount of time and energy the participants spend around Michael D.,
the boys often showed a greater level of empathy for him than for any of the other adults or potential role
models in their lives. Whereas their teachers often “yelled for no reason,” “went off because of nothing,”
or “just yelled all the time,”74
Michael D. yelled when “he was maybe having a bad day,” or “not feeling
good,” or “he absolutely had to because they was being too loud.”75
In empathizing with Michael D., the
boys are showing that they can view themselves as versions of him, as individuals who exist in his context.
To identify with YLP is to identify with Michael D., in a very basic and heartfelt way.
“Like to do what we want” : Concepts of Freedom in Space
Finally, and perhaps most interestingly, all three students placed importance on the feeling of
74 Marcus Hayes and Shawn Walker, interview, March 9, 2012.
75 Ibid.

51
“having freedom.” Though these students generally shift between these two identity zones and their
homes in routine ways, with parental check-ins and sometimes supervision, “freedom” is an essential
element of their relationship with a space. When asked if they preferred school or after-school, the
students almost always chose the after-school setting because it afforded them more perceived freedom.
“We got freedom. We can do anything we want sometimes.” Even in cases of contradiction, in which two
of the boys identified the school setting as the place they liked more than or equally to the after-school
setting, after-school was still they place they would rather occupy because of the “freedom” it represented.
“We get to have freedom. And we don’t have to stay in one spot. Like we can move somewhere else,” one
of the boys explained to me.76
The freedom to move from space to space within the Center where Youth Leadership Project is
located or the freedom to linger a little longer in the neighborhood during their walks to and from
program, are not the only ways in which the boys' concept of “freedom” manifested in the context of
after-school. Both Derek and Marcus identified their move from the elementary school to middle school
program in February as an example of the freedom at Youth Leadership Project. Whereas their school is
constructed around a traditional teaching structure and is defined by rigid grades and classrooms during
the day, movement within the structure of YLP is more fluid and personal. Michael D. operates YLP with
the philosophy that nothing is right for everybody – students in the program earn their “freedom” by
succeeding in school, being respectful at Youth Leadership Project, and owning up to their mistakes. When
the boys made the decision to talk to Michael D. about switching to the middle school program, the
initiative they showed in that act ultimately decided their fate.
In the months since Derek, Shawn, and Marcus have begun attending the middle school program –
which meets three times a week, as opposed to the five-days-a-week elementary school program – Michael
D. and I have noticed a positive change in their engagement and energy levels. Both Derek and Shawn
76 Derek Walker, interview, March 7, 2012.

52
have had turns to run the group meeting that serves as a basis for the program structure, and have showed
commitment to memorizing the parts of the meeting and participating with the middle school students. As
Michael D. notes when discussing this shift, “they're on another level.”77
The freedom to “move
somewhere else,” is not just about physical movement from one place to another, but in this case, is also
about moving upwards and into different social spaces. Derek, Shawn, and Marcus have identified the
classrooms of Youth Leadership Project as a unique identity zone, a space in which they have the freedom
to shape their own identities as students who have discipline, who pay attention and are good at
memorizing, and who are “ahead of their age.”78
The transition from the school zone to the alternative
after-school zone also allows for more freedom of identity – traveling from place to place and sometimes
helping to monitor the elementary students in the hallways allow Derek, Shawn, and Marcus the freedom
of space to develop responsibility on their own terms and to cultivate their identity label as “older kids”
and “mature boys.”
In essence, the physical and social structures of Youth Leadership Project are more easily navigable
than those of the traditional school zone – though both zones contain strict agendas for the day, the boys
view YLP as having more “exceptions” to the rules. At Youth Leadership Project, a student can become a
middle schooler, for all intents and purposes, when he is still technically in fifth grade. The identity label
of “older kid,” is defined differently in this zone – it has less to do with age than with the behavior of the
individual as perceived by those that determine the structure of the zone, in this case, Michael D. The
freedom and fluidity the boys describe as an integral part of the Youth Leadership Project zone are
essential to its label as “alternative” – here Derek, Shawn, and Marcus feel they have more control over the
way their peers and adults perceive them.
77 Michael Dyson, interview, March 22, 2012.
78 Ibid.

53
Conclusion
Now what?
Mayor: Doctor...
Mookie: C'mon. What? What?
Mayor: Always do the right thing.
Mookie: That's it?
Mayor: That's it.
from Do the Right Thing (1989)79
At ages ten and eleven, Derek, Shawn, and Marcus are just beginning the difficult project of
discovering and accepting who they are, of using the physical and social spaces in their everyday lives as
mirrors to label and construct the parts of their identity that will stick. They use the built environment of
their classroom at Hughes or the corner store between the community center and home to hold together
the inevitable and unstoppable force of self-identification that circles in on growing children. In beginning
this study, I sought to better understand the ways in which Youth Leadership Project help them
unconsciously work toward this final goal of identity formation; I learned that it not only contributed to
the formation of Derek, Shawn, and Marcus's conceptions of self, but also to the decidedly more difficult
project of making those conceptions positive. In redefining and reorganizing identity labels, the alternative
identity zone at YLP prepares Black boys to navigate their futures with greater understandings of their
personal strengths.
The inflexible borders of traditional spaces like their public school classroom serve a purpose –
they reveal the barriers that Black boys like Derek, Shawn, and Marcus will continue to encounter as they
grow into adulthood. They prepare them for the future, and help them to understand the importance of
knowing where the lines are, if only so they may cross them better. Within the identity zone at Hughes
Elementary, the boys are often confined to very specific expectations as Black male students, expectations
79
Do the Right Thing (40 Acres & a Mule Filmworks, 1989).

54
that are set forth by the rigid systems of a White educational institution. Such expectations cannot be
changed by the efforts of any single educator operating within those systems. As long as traditional school
spaces dominate the American school structure – as long as Freire's banking model continues to prevail in
classrooms across the country – alternative identity zones must also exist for Black males.
In these zones, where the boundless energy of their potential is reflecting off the dynamic
community engagement of Michael D., rather than the pages of a racist social studies textbook or another
confusing request from a teacher, Derek, Shawn, and Marcus have more freedom than they can identify.
To them, YLP creates a space to move more freely, in a very literal sense; they can move from space to
space, from the Office to the soup kitchen, without direct supervision. They can also stick together at the
end of the snack table with the middle school crew, labeling younger students as “noisy” or “bad,” rather
than incurring those labels themselves. The freedom they experience at YLP is far beyond the physical –
there, they have the chance to claim new identities, and to earn identity labels from an energetic role
model.
In the alternative identity zone of Youth Leadership Project, the terms of identity have been
fundamentally re-defined. Within the walls of Michael D.'s Office or the YLP classroom, the personality of
the initiative's founder and director is infused in the boys' interactions with their physical surroundings.
Their conceptions of self bounce off the posters about traditional African values, back at them from the
pages of their YLP journals, from the mouths of their peers and the jokes they share. Derek, Shawn, and
Marcus can also find positive notions of Black male identity embodied, quite literally, in the individual that
constructs YLP far more than any blue wall or row of computers: Michael D. single-handedly determines
the ways that the boys experience this space on a day-to-day basis. Youth Leadership Project, as a person-
defined and person-constructed space challenges both the basic concept of identity and the stereotypical claims
about Black male identity.
In this space, the boys can navigate their own paths to success, because a person whose history and

55
context they can relate to has created such paths. While the terms of success in a traditional classroom
environment are relatively easy to understand (achieving high standardized test scores, being quiet in the
classroom, walking in a straight line in the hallways), the strategies for achieving such success are not
always as easily navigated. In this particular alternative space, the terms of success are relative to the
individual, and the strategies for achieving such success also vary. At Youth Leadership Project, where a
student in fifth grade can earn his way into middle school early, or become a helper for younger students if
they need a break from struggling with their own math homework, success is defined by Michael D., and
by the motivational philosophy of the program. Derek, Shawn, and Marcus still have expectations to meet
for their behavior and academic success, but they have a stronger hand in creating those expectations and
developing their own effective strategies to meet them.
The true contribution of an alternative identity zone is to create a space where boys like Derek,
Shawn, and Marcus can feel empowered by their own actions and beliefs, free from the weight of
stereotypes they are just beginning to understand. The Youth Leadership Project works as a space for this
kind of growth because it was created in the wake of reclaimed identity. A Black boy grew up in the
projects about sixty years ago, and he didn't learn to read until his time in prison. He earned parole and
then changed what it meant to be a Black male in downtown Crenshaw. Now he sits behind his desk in a
bright blue and yellow room, watching as a student writes the word, “power,” on the dry-erase board and
explains the definition to his friends. He'll close his eyes for just a moment, and then open them again to
give this younger version of himself some feedback. “Tomorrow,” he'll say, “just a little bit louder.” And
tomorrow, he will be.

56
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59
Appendix A
Interview Schedules
The interview schedules for my initial and exit interviews with the child participants, the interview schedule for Michael D.,
and a list of questions from the focus groups are all provided below.
Initial Interview [Child Participants]
Okay, before we start with our interview, let's just talk for a minute about what it will be like to participate.
I am going to ask you some questions about yourself, your school, and the after-school program. Mostly
we will be talking about things you already know a lot about, and I will be asking you to talk about things
you see or do every day. I am asking these kinds of questions so that I can understand more about what it's
like to go to be a student at your school and come to after-school. I want to find out for my project how
your time at school and here at program have helped you understand your own personality and actions. Do
you have any questions so far?
Now if I ever ask you a question that you don't want to answer, you don't have to answer it. You can also
stop the interview at any time if you decide that you do not want to do it or feel uncomfortable. Do you
understand?
I will be using a tape recorder during the interview, just to make sure that I don't miss anything that you
have to say. Then I will be able to listen later to the recording and take better notes for my project. The
tape recorder will be right here on the table, and you should act like it isn't there – you don't have to talk
into it or anything like that. Is that okay?
One more thing before we start – here is some paper, pencils, crayons and things. Sometimes people feel
more comfortable talking when they can do other things at the same time, right? If you want to, you can
draw or something while we're talking.
Do you have any other questions before we start?
Ready to begin?
Okay, first of all can you tell me how old you are?
And what grade are you in right now? Have you ever skipped or repeated a grade?
And finally, what school do you go to? Have you always gone to that school?
How would you describe yourself to someone, like a friend? How about to a teacher?
Okay, now we’re going to talk more about your school.
Do you like your school? What do you like about your school?
What is your favorite part of the day at school?

60
What don’t you like about your school?
What is your least favorite part of the day at school?
How would you describe your teacher?
Do you like that your teacher is (a man/woman)? (old/young)? (race)?
How do you think your teacher would describe you?
Does your teacher ever have to be mean?
When is your teacher mean? When is your teacher nice?
Do you have other teachers for special classes, like gym or art?
Who is your favorite teacher or teacher’s helper at school?
How would you describe him/her? Why is this person your favorite teacher or teacher’s helper?
How do you think (s)he would describe you?
What about the other students in your class? Can you tell me about them?
What are your friends in your class like?
Do all of the kids in your class behave the way the teacher wants them to?
What do you call kids who behave the way the teacher wants? What do those kids look like? How do those
kids act?
What do you call kids who do not behave the way the teacher wants? What do those kids look like? How
do those kids act?
Now, how do you and your friends act in class?
One more question about school –
Can you think of anything that makes your school different than other places?
What makes school different than being at home or at the Partnership?
You’re doing a great job! We’re already half-way done. Are you having fun?
[pause and let the child rest for a few minutes, make small talk]
Okay, let’s finish your interview. Now we’re going to talk about coming to after-school.

61
Do you like coming to program?
What do you like about program? What is your favorite part of program?
What don’t you like about program? What is your least favorite part of program?
What about [Michael D.] and the helpers? What is [Michael D.] like?
Do you like that [Michael D.] is (a man/woman)? (old/young)? (race)?
How do you think [Michael D.] would describe you?
Does [Michael D.] ever have to be mean? When is [Michael D.] mean? When is [Michael D.] nice?
What are the other helpers like? (You can talk about me too, if you want)
Do you like that the helpers are (a man/woman)? (old/young)? (race)?
How do you think the helpers would describe you?
Do the helpers ever have to be mean? When are the helpers mean? When are the helpers nice?
Talk about one of your favorite helpers at program. What does (s)he look like? Why is this person one of
your favorite helpers?
How do you think s(he) would describe you?
What about the other students at program? Can you tell me about them?
What are your friends at program like?
Do all of the kids in program behave the way the helpers want them to?
What do you call kids who behave the way the helpers want? What do those kids look like? How do those
kids act?
What do you call kids who do not behave the way the helpers want? What do those kids look like? How do
those kids act?
Now, how do you and your friends act at program?
Are your friends here at program different than your friends at school? Do they act or look differently?
Only a few more questions left now! We’re almost done…
How do you think that program is different than school? What is different about program?
Which place do you think is more fun?

62
Why do you think you come here to program every day?
Closing Statement
We're just going to finish up now. We're practically done.
Since you know a little bit about what the project is about, do you have anything else you want to tell me?
Do you have any questions about the interview or anything we talked about?
What happens now is that I will go back and listen to this interview and take some notes for my project. If
I decide to write about any of the things you said today, I will not use your name in my writing.
Do you have any questions about what happens next?
Just so you know, I am going to give you a copy of the form you and your parent signed earlier. That form
has my phone number and e-mail on it, and you can contact me at any time to ask questions about the
study.
Do you have any other questions?
Thanks! You've been a big help. I hope you had fun.
Michael. D. Interview Schedule
Introductory Statement
Thank you for agreeing to participate in this interview.
This interview is part of a project designed to explore the identity formation of pre-adolescent black male
youth in their school and after-school settings. Your participation in this study will consist of 1 interview
with the researcher, featuring questions about your own thoughts and perceptions about the child(ren)
participant(s) you know, as well as your own ideas about the identities of black male youth in your
experiences. Your participation in this study will last approximately 60 minutes, depending on the duration
of the interview.
All data from this interview and all research for this project will be kept confidential, and your anonymity
will be maintained in the final presentation of this research in its written form. All data will be coded with
pseudonyms and only the primary researcher and two faculty advisors will have access to the full data
used.
Do you have any questions about the project or the questions that will comprise this interview?
I will be using a tape recorder during this interview to best record data. Any data recorded from this event
will be transcribed and archived, maintaining your anonymity through coding. Do I have your permission
to use the tape recorder?

63
– Get consent form signed, Ask about pseudonym –
Ready to begin?
First of all, can you just briefly describe your relationship with [Derek]? [Shawn]? [Marcus]?
How would you describe [Child’s name] to another teacher?
How would you describe [Child’s name] to a friend?
Why did you choose to work with kids in [Crenshaw]?
How do you think working with different age levels changes your interactions?
Okay, now we’re going to talk more about how you feel about their experiences at [YLP], more generally.
How would you describe [YLP]?
How would you describe the student population here?
How do you think most students at [YLP] view themselves?
How would you describe the role of parents in student's lives here?
Have you noticed any trends with student behavior in the classroom/program?
[Kids from certain parts of [Crenshaw] kids with similar family experiences, etc.]
How do you think your own experiences might have helped you to better understand your students?
Describe some of the most successful students you've encountered in your time as an educator.
Describe some of the students you think have faced the most challenges in your time as an educator.
Now let's talk a little more about [Child's name] specifically.
What are some of [child's name]'s strengths that you've noticed this year?
What are some of the challenges [child's name] faces that you've noticed this year?
What kind of resources do you think that [child's name] could use to be most successful as a student?
How do you think [child's name] sees himself as a student?
How do you think [child's name] sees himself as a person, more generally?
What kinds of things do you think might contribute to the way [child's name] views himself?

64
Talk a little about the switch from elementary school program to middle school program with [Derek],
[Shawn], and [Marcus]. Why do you think they wanted to make the switch? Why did you support that
decision? Do you think the transition has been successful?
Closing Statement
Since you know a little bit about what the project is about, do you have anything else you want to tell me?
Do you have any questions for me?
Focus Group Questions
Note: These questions were asked over a span of five focus group sessions, each lasting about 45 minutes.
On some days, we would answer up to 7 or 8 questions, but other days focused on only 2 or 3. Each focus
group began and ended with questions about the week and day preceding it.
If you had to describe the Office to someone, what would you say?
If you had to describe the library to someone, what would you say?
If you had to describe your classroom to someone, what would you say?
How would you describe [Crenshaw] to someone? Think about good and bad qualities.
Describe what a person would see when they walked into the community center. How would they feel?
Describe what a person would see when they walked into your school. How would they feel?
How are your teacher and [Michael D.] the same? And different?
What does a good teacher say?
What does a good teacher do?
What does a bad teacher do?
Describe yourself as a writer.
What does a bad teacher say?
What is your favorite subject in school?
Describe yourself as a student.
Describe yourself as a friend.

65
How do you see yourself in high school?
How do you see yourself after high school?
What do you think the word “freedom” means when you talk about having freedom at program or at
school?
What do you think the word “discipline” means when you talk about having discipline in school or at
program?
Can you describe the other after-school program you attend at [Hughes]? How is it different or the same as
[YLP]?
Talk about being in the middle school program. How is it different from the elementary school program?
Think about good and bad things.
Which program do you like better? Why?
Tell me about your relationship with the elementary students since you've started going to the middle
school program.
Tell me about your relationship with the other middle school students since you've started going to the
middle school program.
Tell me about your relationship with [Michael D.] since you've started going to the middle school program.
Exit Interview Schedules
Do you remember the first time we did an interview like this, with just us?
Try to remember what you were thinking and feeling that day.
How are things different?
How are things the same?
Do you think that being at [YLP] for another year has made a difference in your life? How?
Do you think you will come back to [YLP] next year to do the middle school program? Why/why not?
Tell me one thing you think you have learned from doing our interviews and conversations.
Tell me one thing you think you have learned from coming to [YLP] this year.
Tell me one thing you think I have learned from doing our interviews and conversations.
Tell me one thing you think I have learned from coming to [YLP] this year.

66
If you had to give someone advice on how to be a good teacher, what would you say?
If you had to give someone advice on how to be a good role model, what would you say?
If you had to give someone advice on how to be a good friend, what would you say?
Now that you are an expert in what I am writing my thesis about too, what do you think I should talk
about? What do you think my topic sentence should be?
What do you think I should make the title of my thesis? Why?

Vogel_04-20-12

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