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Purpose – We seek to understand how gender shapes the practice of concerted cultivation in connection to other key social locations of race and class.Design/methodology/approach – This quantitative research paper uses multi-level modeling to provide an intersectional analysis of parenting practices across diverse social and institutional settings.Findings – We find gender matters: across three aspects of “concerted cultivation” (involvement in schooling, extracurricular activities, and cultural outings), parents invest more time and resources in girls compared to boys. More importantly, using an intersectional approach, we find distinct racial/ethnic differences in engendering concerted cultivation. Gender differences occur among Black and Hispanic but not white parents’ involvement in their child's schooling. Additionally, parents cultivate girls’ participation in certain kinds of extracurricular activities more so than for boys, but this difference is greatest at the highest socioeconomic levels.Social and practical implications – The ways in which parents’ shape young children's activities and experiences in daily life vary greatly across gender, race, and class statuses.Originality/value – Gender shapes access and exclusion to various social settings across the life course; this paper adds to literature on socialization, incorporating other social statuses into understandings of processes of the social reproduction of inequality. These results are of value to parents, schools, and social scientists.

Black Panther depicted a positive representation of Black culture. The film transcended Black minds to believe in power, excellence, and intelligence. Black youth posted images on social media using the Wakanda pose as a symbol of pride. The film not only countered the stereotypical generalized ideologies of African culture, values, and customs, but it capsized false narratives by including the historical context of Black scientist with a female character. Articles summarizing depictions of Black Panther and its influence on Black youth assert that the character of Shuri and her perfection of the sciences contributed to pathways for young Black girls to join science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) programs. Other factors contribute to the increase of Black girls in STEM programs, but the image of Shuri's character in a position of power of the sciences pinpoints representation as key to cerebral pictures and reflections of Black female excellence in the sciences. However, representation is minimal among Black male youth in STEM programs.

Although it is true that African American male youth have Black male representation in media through sports figures, rappers, and hip-hop artists, inquiring minds need to know that Black male representation in the sciences and mathematics is the formula to how young minds view themselves and their relation to the world. Accordingly, this underrepresentation of Black male youth in STEM programs leads to the big “what if” question. If LeBron James conducted a critical analysis using physics and mathematics to make a 3-point shot, then what is the likelihood that young Black males' interest in the STEM programs would increase?

In this chapter, I present narratives of two Black men who represent a population of people who are often talked about but seldom heard from in school-to-prison pipeline research. To analyze their stories, I employed a framework that centers on understanding human dignity and the conditions, circumstances, and experiences that threatened it. I found that their sense of self was eroded by moments of personal loss, disposal, and ways that even well-intentioned people marked them as “problems.” I explore how their eroded sense of self led them to engage in disruptive and destructive behaviors. I conclude by discussing the importance of supplementing school-to-prison pipeline research with Black boys’ and men’s first-hand accounts of their own experiences as a way of humanizing the primary subjects of this burgeoning area of education research.

This paper aims to examine how a Black male teacher made sense of the ways racism and white supremacy function in schools and constrains his practice by addressing the question: How does a culturally relevant Black male teacher engage a racial perspective in his pedagogy and make sense of the socio-political context of his practice?

This qualitative case study draws its data from semi-structured interviews and participant observations and was situated within a transfer high school in the Northeastern region of the USA.

This study elucidates the ways in which a Black male teacher’s racial literacy enabled him to make sense of the socio-political context of his school, the profession and help his Black male students negotiate how they are racialized in schools and society.

This paper closes with a call for additional research that further examines the relationship racial literacy plays in retaining teachers of color in the profession and for racial literacy to be positioned as a vital component of teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge in both teacher education and professional development.

This study contributes to the literature on critical Black male teachers by forwarding a framework that helps us to understand how they engage in transformative work within assimilationist educational spaces.

In this chapter, the authors utilize both risk and resilience as conceptual frameworks to discuss the academic and psychosocial development of African American adolescent males. Given the amount of attention placed on the academic underachievement of African American males, they explore popular academic themes, such as academic disidentification and the role of teachers and parents. The authors examine psychosocial themes related to racial and athletic identity, the phenomenon of cool pose and “acting Black,” and the development of alternative masculinities. They conclude the chapter with recommendations for education research, practice and policy.

The purpose of this study was to examine whether girls of color (GOC) had more or less social support than their peers and whether that affected their likelihood of experiencing the symptoms of anxiety and depression.

The National Comorbidity Survey – Adolescent Supplement (n = 10,123) is a nationally representative study of mental disorder in US adolescents. GOC made up roughly 10% of the sample (n = 1,016). Structural equation models were used to analyze the relationship between family support and psychological distress for the entire sample and then analyzed for GOC, boys of color, White girls and boys, and Latino girls and boys to compare across groups. Because of the inextricable relationship between socioeconomic status and race, three-way interactions between class, race, and gender were used to examine class differences within groups.

Path analysis revealed the following: (1) among adolescents with both low and high socioeconomic status, GOC had significantly less family support than their peers; (2) surprisingly, despite the fact that GOC had significantly less family support than their peers, they were not more likely to experience symptoms of anxiety and depression.

Research limitations include cross-sectional data and limited measures. However, this study adds to the understanding of adolescent mental health and mental health of vulnerable adolescent populations. This is important because mental disorders, particularly anxiety and depression, are increasing in prevalence among American youth, and youth with multiple social disadvantages may be more likely to experience them.

GOC, regardless of their socioeconomic backgrounds, were at a marked disadvantage regarding their perceptions of social support, a known buffer of anxiety and depression. Yet despite this disadvantage, GOC were no more likely to experience a mood disorder than their peers. These findings suggest the following: (1) family support may have less of a protective effect on the mental health of GOC than their peers; (2) GOC may be using other resources to protect their mental health; and (3) as mental health patients, GOC require unique interventions.

In the United States, Black preschoolers are suspended at disproportionately high rates when compared to other groups. This chapter examines the causes behind the so-called “school-to-prison pipeline,” including the psychological predilection to not label a Black child’s behavior as “bad” but to label the child that way. We offer a personal narrative to ground our research in an approachable, anecdotal fashion in an attempt to remind researchers, policymakers, and educators that this is not just about statistics, although those are included as well. However, behind every statistic is a real child with a real family who is plagued by this pipeline. Furthermore, the personal narrative also sheds light on the overwhelming pressure and stress that simply comes from being Black, and raising Black children, in an America dismissively considered “post-racial.” Finally, and importantly, this chapter explores ways in which changes can help prevent the exploding Black prison population and investigates ways in which that change can functionally take place. It is not enough to acknowledge an ongoing injustice is occurring; we must fix it, no matter how uncomfortable that fix is or how challenging.