According to the article, “Doing Identity Categories in Educational Research” reviewed Davis (2002), race, gender, and sexuality are critical factors that affect the “doing identity” categories in educational research. Identity politics has appeared in the recent years as a crucial watchword in the educational theory and practice. This aspect of identity politics is attested by the special attention offered to the identity intersectionality categories like class, sexuality, gender, and race in the popular press as well as in the academics. According to Stecopoulos " Uebel (1997), identity politics closely examines the impacts of the cultural factors on identities and the forms in which identities are perceived. Moreover, Ann Ferguson’s recent book, “Bad boys: Public Schools in the Making of Black Masculinity” as well as Susan Talburt’s recent book, “Subject to Identity: Knowledge, Sexuality, and Academic Practices in Higher Education” are the two critical scholarly resources that have entered into the identity discussion. The two presented the politics of identity from varying racial and gendered vantage perspective. As a result, it engages the meaning and the understanding of personalities along with the unspoken questions attending to the processes and practices in education.
Ferguson and Talburt’s research studies project two predominately significant aspects of gender-based identity, experience, constructions, and performance. The research participants of the two identity politics research books show some ethnographic representation. In the real sense, these research participants are differentiated based on the developmental stages, sexuality, privileges, positions, and power. Therefore, this is a unique approach of doing some research regarding identity, and self. The two prominent authors’ arguments on identity politics use unique research formulae of approaching their research. The two pieces of research begin with interesting as well as controversial actors that offer an educational point of view appearing as both nuanced in its convolution and commonplace in its effects. Resultantly, the formula establishes both revelations as well as discomfort. Ultimately, by so doing, Harper (1996) suggests that the formula reveals and provoke at the same time.
(Re) making Black Boys
According to Ann and Arbor (2000), some critical sections outstandingly miss in the various contemporary educational reforms initiatives. These include the differential outcomes and experiences connected to the gender along its manifestations in educational settings. Mostly, these educational reforms advocates for gender neutrality. The philosophy of these reform initiatives is based on the suppositions that every student, both male, and female should have equal opportunities since there are potentially affected in similar capacities. Contrastingly, according to Sewell (1997), the experience encountered by the male Black American creates foreboding for those building consensuses on the most effective learning atmospheres to enhance educational excellence for every student.
According to Davis (2002), education of male Black Americans is deemed as the failure of both the critical role of the schools as well as that of the Black boys themselves. From the statistical research provided by Carbado (1999), male Black American students have relatively poor academic and social performance. There are several adverse outcomes associated with this poor performance of Black boys (Joseph, 2001). These include lags in school engagement on academic achievement, poor assignments for exceptional learners, increased suspension rates, disciplinary infringements, high dropout rates, and low tertiary-education entry rates. Therefore, Davis (2002), acknowledges that even though the current situation of the Black boys is wanting and has attracted many authorities, still very little is known and done to offer processes and mechanisms for addressing the condition. Therefore, Davis (2002) attempt to investigate the social and structural processes undergirding the short reports of the Black boys in schools. By doing this, the similar authors offer a timely as well as an insightful review of how the school punishments and schooling are antitypes of the anticipatory forms of adult punishments.
Specifically, Ferguson (2010) has provided a convincing point of view supported by data and keen theory-driven analysis on the application and misuse of the system of punishments. According to the sociological theory of learning, the environment forms a critical avenue for education; therefore, the school systems ought to be constructive to offer constructive channels for study. Following this understanding, Ferguson (2010) affirms that school interactions, as well as masculine identities along with positive socialization, are fundamentally significant. According to Harper, (1996), masculinity is an approach that enables Black boys to perform. However, in the real sense, masculinity can be used to enact some individual power in instances where social and economic positions of these black boys in the schools and the society are limited. From the social structuralism theory, Black men are deemed violent, menacing and threatening. As a result, the same social construction of Black men is extrapolated to their Black boys in schools.
The school performance of the masculinity is abysmal (Ferguson, 2010). Despite this fact, the performance in most cases have no connectivity with the troublemaking nature of the Black boys instead, and it is linked to how the educators, as well as other adults, interpret the performances. Expressively, the interpretation made about the Black masculine brands the Black boys as troublesome in school; however, that not what they are. Some sociological theories like intersectionality theory can be applied in bringing upright teaching and learning systems that object discrimination. For instance, the intersectionality theory enables the educators as well as other school teams to comprehend social inequalities based on class, sexuality, gender, and class. Racial and gender inequalities are what Ferguson deem to cause tension between the essential programs of the schools and Black boys’ practice. Therefore, an introduction of intersectionality theory provisions will complement Ferguson’s recommendations for equal institutional norms and procedures in the education sector that enhance social order.
The strategies used in the article such as gender equity and integration create fundamental implications for teaching practices and modification of students. For instance, punishments suggested by Ferguson are positive reinforcements that establish safe as well as supportive atmospheres of schools. This implicates that Black boys matters in the school as the bad boys suppose (Davis, 2002). As a result, for these Black and Bad boys to manoeuvre and have a positive relationship of conforming to the school culture of masculinity, both internal forces like teachers and school officials and external forces like parents and the community ought to come on board to find for long-lasting solutions.
(Un)Making Lesbians in the Academy
Veenstra (2011) Academic journals as well as publishing education houses have shown increased interest and awareness for concerns related to gay, bisexual, transgender, and lesbianism. All these aspects show the interconnection depicted between gender and education. Education and gender can be viewed as an international forum where discussions of multidisciplinary educational study, concepts, and ideas about gender are singled out as a category of analysis. This conceptual understanding, according to Susan Talburt (200) “Subject to Identity: Knowledge, Sexuality, and Academic Practices in Higher Education” aim at empowering feminist knowledge, debate, actions, and consciousness.
“Subject to Identity” is a concept that provides an essential contribution to issues regarding the shift of the political landscape. Entirely, this book discusses issues about identity constructions as well as movements across identities. This implies that the central concepts of the journal revolve around the understanding of character as a political, pedagogical, and theoretical tool. Parallel to this fact, Talburt persuasively scraps identity from its fundamental duty of explaining sexual orientation. Borrowing from feminist and French theorist like Michel De Certeau and Judith Butler, Talburt profoundly shows some educational implications and practices. It’s an implication of how these feminists created some critical meaning about themselves as well as their social environments.
As supported by Davis (2002), the issue of lesbianism academics attracts another concept of problematizing the categories of identity linked to the participants. However, looking critically into Talburt’s work, it is clear that she targets the University as well as its structure that helps and empower academic practices. Feminism theories are crucial in informing and providing a safe as well as supportive environments for teaching and learning practices. These theories can interpretively unfold critique of higher education culture along with the institutional identity. This implies that public institutions should have little or no racial, ethnic or gender discrimination. That why Talburt acknowledges the State University of New York for its public mission, “the civilization of what lies beyond it” (Talburt, 2000, p. 39). Resultantly, that why the university establishes and reinforces and identity distinguishing them from the larger environment. By the term “what lies beyond” is a symbolic phrase staking the contrast to the liberal policies held so dearly by the university. Such contradictions suggest some internal and external disunity. Both internal and external different realities of higher education pose a dynamic as we as a challenging context for institutional identity.
Multiplicative models of sociological theories are essential in Talburt’s research following the two-and three-way interactions depicted between the four social inequality aspects (sexuality, gender, class, and race). Each of these four aspects of social inequality belongs to the pantheon of intersectionality axes contributing to the educational improvement of the teaching practices. However, from the intersectionality theoretical perspective, focusing on the inequality identities distinctively instead of the intersected process causes a challenge to the social, educational researcher. These influences lack a clear understanding of the nature of the social encounters and identities because the results and interpretations produced are misleading since it’s incomplete. The research implies that Talburt (2000)’s perception of lesbian academic is an endorsement of identity politics and the entrenchment of the identity categories. That way for the three women Talburt used in her research.
To conclude, at the centre of these two research books is the challenge as well as the promise of intersectionality. Something that explains lesbian and academic intersectionality produces some understandings in higher education. This forms the fundamental principle and goal of Talburt. On the other hand, Ferguson aims at investigating the crowded space where gender, race and sexual orientation join in affecting the Black boys in schools. Therefore, these books are based on education where they deliberately discuss and demonstrate unusual analytical problems in schools. Although both Ferguson and Talburt investigate the contribution of educational settings in information delivery and reinforcement of the meaning for learners, the amalgamation of the topical themes is distinct compared to their titles.
References
Carbado, D. W. (Ed.). (1999). Black men on race, gender, and sexuality. New York: New York University Press.
Davis, J. E. (2002). Race, gender, and sexuality :(Un) doing identity categories in educational research. Educational Researcher, 31(4), 29-32.
Ferguson, A. A. (2010). Bad boys: Public schools in the making of black masculinity. University of Michigan Press.
Harper, P. M. (1996). Are we not men? Masculine anxiety and the problem of African-American identity. New York: Oxford University Press.
Joseph, J. (2001). Bad boys: Public schools in the making of black masculinity. Contemporary Sociology, 30(5), 462.
Sewell, T. (1997). Black masculinities and schooling: How Black boys survive modern schooling. London: Trentham.
Stecopoulos, H., " Uebel, M. (Eds.). (1997). Race and the subject of masculinities. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Talburt, S. (2000). Subject to identity: Knowledge, sexuality, and academic practices in higher education. SUNY Press.
Veenstra, G. (2011). Race, gender, class, and sexual orientation: intersecting axes of inequality and self-rated health in Canada. International journal for equity in health, 10(1), 3.
