Please note that our Winter 2024 in-person events will require masks due to the rise in COVID-19 and flu activity within the region. The MCC will provide masks to attendees on site, as needed.
This presentation and discussion draws from two qualitative studies of African American Children and their racialized gender identity. We will discuss the meaning making world of African American children, particularly how they expressed their ideas of gender and racial constructions (“Blackness”) and the intersections of race and gender- racialized gender identity. Their words and lives revealed an externally “earned” maleness, centered on performance, as well as an ideal maleness oriented around caring and relationship. Femaleness was seen as strong and complex, yet sexualized by a male gaze and silent in the face of it. The children displayed a strong sense of the racial projects which surround them and their resistance to them. The idea of Blackness centered around the body, lack, and deviance, functioned alongside their contrasting definition of Black as triumphant in the face of struggle, and as a testimony to overcoming.
Speaker Bio:
Dr. Denise Isom received her doctorate in Socio-Cultural Anthropology of Education from Loyola University, Chicago and is currently serving as Interim Vice President for Diversity and Equity & CDO at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Her Master’s in Curriculum and Instruction with an emphasis in Multicultural Education along with a B.S. in Engineering and B.A. in African American Studies were earned at the University of California at Davis. Dr. Isom’s areas of expertise include- racialized gender identity, ethnic studies, sociology/anthropology of education and whiteness.
