GenCen Spring Colloquia Series: Chezare A. Warren

Chezare Warren, assistant professor in the Department of Teacher Education, will speak as part of the Center for Gender in Global Contexts Spring Colloquia Series.

“Meeting Myself: Race-Gender Oppression and a Genre Study of Black Men Teachers’ Interactions with Black Boys”

Both increasing the number of Black men classroom teachers and expanding single-sex schooling options have been put forward as plausible solutions to reversing trends in the failure of public schools to adequately educate Black boys. Too little extant research has interrogated the significance of Black men teachers’ interactions with Black boys to reduce their race-gender oppression inside and outside of school. A genre study—the multidimensional, intersectional examination of social identity to explain one’s persistent dehumanization—was utilized to interpret the specific influence of Black men’s student-teacher interactions on Black boys’ understandings of their racial and gender identity. Findings suggest that regardless of a single-sex or co-educational organizational arrangement, Black men teachers’ capacity to disavow white supremacist logics and thereby actively counter antiblackness, is central to improving Black boys’ lives, academic and otherwise. Additionally, Warren will discuss the significance of Black men’s teachers’ interactions with Black boys as a site for enabling Black boys to reimagine (and redefine) their own humanity despite dominant messages from society about their intersectional race, gender and sexual identities.