Gender, Race, and Justifications for Group Exclusion

Abstract

Relational theories of gender conceptualize masculinity and femininity as mutually constitutive. Using a relational approach, I analyzed ethnographic and interview data from male and female black adolescents in Grades 8 through 10 enrolled in ‘‘Diversify,’’ an urban-to-suburban racial integration program ( n = 38).1Suburban students ( n = 7) and Diversify coordinators ( n = 9) were also interviewed. All the bussed students, male and female, were racially stereotyped. Yet as a group, the Diversify boys were welcomed in suburban social cliques, even as they were constrained to enacting race and gender in narrow ways. In contrast, the Diversify girls were stereotyped as ‘‘ghetto’’ and ‘‘loud’’ and excluded. In discussing these findings, the current study extends previous research on black girls’ ‘‘loudness,’’ identifies processes of racialization and gendering within a set of wealthy suburban schools, and offers new theoretical directions for the study of racially integrated settings.