In a Classroom of Their Own: The Intersection of Race and Feminist Politics in All-Black Male Schools

Abstract

Reviewed by: In a Classroom of Their Own: The Intersection of Race and Feminist Politics in All-Black Male Schools by Keisha Lindsay Gordon Alley-Young (bio) KEISHA LINDSAY, In a Classroom of Their Own: The Intersection of Race and Feminist Politics in All-Black Male Schools. University of Illinois Press, 2018. ix + 192 pp. ISBN 9780252083358. Keisha Lindsay’s In a Classroom of Their Own argues that many Black male supporters of all-Black male schools (ABMSs) “espouse an antifeminist politics that obscures the extent of black girls’ own oppression in the classroom” (p. 8). Specifically she argues that ABMS supporters construct Black female students as distractions to their male counterparts and/or as undeserving of initiatives providing educational uplift. Lindsay argues that Black male ABMS supporters thus make intersectional arguments, reflecting both their own male gender privilege as well as their race marginalization, which possess both liberatory and oppressive qualities. The introduction presents a history of ABMS and racist/sexist education. Chapter one describes the material/discursive environment in which Black male ABMS supporters have embraced antiracist/antifeminist politics. Chapter two interrogates intersectional arguments as politically fluid. Chapter three examines resistance politics via oppression hierarchies. Chapter 4 explores coalitions between ABMS supporters and feminist critics. Lindsay’s conclusion calls for realistic but revised coalitions around gender-based antiracist politics that serve all Black children. Lindsay asks how antifeminist/antiracist ABMS discourse analysis is synthesized into educational/social policy that perpetuates neoliberal oppression. In chapter three, Lindsay problematizes how experiences of racism/sexism become archetypal models on which antiracist/antisexist public policy is created. The trouble then becomes that one’s racism/sexism experience must fit within this model to benefit from said antiracist/antisexist policy, even though everyone experiences marginalization/oppression uniquely. Lindsay urges disadvantaged groups to realize how their experience-based arguments oppress marginalized others (i.e., women, LGBTQ+) and to recognize how politically diverse people’s experiential [End Page 151] claims are. While critical of Black male ABMS discourse, Lindsay also takes feminist theories to task for having underexamined theoretical assumptions (i.e., intersectional politics framed only as liberatory) and feminist critics for discounting calls for Afrocentric and ABMS education. This book will interest readers of antiracist/antisexist social policy and political science, specifically, resistance politics, sociocultural coalition building, and community organizing. Readers in feminist and gender studies will appreciate chapter two’s complication of Black-feminist-pioneered intersectional politics. Chapter four would benefit readers of educational history for exploring how antifeminist/antiracist arguments emerged during a 1992 ABMS roundtable and how critical reflection brought both ABMS supporters and their feminist critics closer together. Future directions for research could explore how ABMS discourse has changed/specialized in response to criticism over time and/or how other educational movements/supporters have seized on ABMS supporters’ discourse and arguments. Lindsay presents as a pragmatist in her book by urging realistic coalitions based on having all those involved engage in a normative-critical self-assessment of how social power operates and how it is implicated within their own and their critics’ arguments. Finally, Lindsay questions how the 1992 ABMS debate she analyzed was staged by national organizations in such a way so as to displace it from its rightful place within the Black community, in spaces accessible to those outside political inner circles, in order to engage a fuller spectrum of experiences and perspectives from those directly affected by educational initiatives like ABMS. [End Page 152] Gordon Alley-Young GORDON ALLEY-YOUNG (gordon.young@kbcc.cuny.edu) is a professor of Speech Communication and the chairperson of the Department of Communications & Performing Arts at Kingsborough Community College— CUNY. His most recent publication is a book chapter titled “Secret Superhero in a Black Burka: A Cultural Analysis of Identity Politics, Representation, and Impact in the Burka Avenger” in the book Negotiating Identity & Transnationalism: Middle Eastern and North African Communication and Critical Cultural Studies (Peter Lang, 2020). Copyright © 2020 Trustees of Indiana University and The Ohio State University