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Blackgirl face: racialized and gendered performativity in mathematical contexts

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Abstract

While race, class, and gender are often treated as well-defined and static identities within mathematics education research, we explore gender, race and class as performances through the case of a middle school Black girl, Cameryn. Scenes from video artifacts are deconstructed using a hermeneutic process to reveal how Cameryn positions herself as a seemingly disinterested, resistant mathematics student through a façade we call blackgirl face. Blackgirl face not only reflects the particularities of Black girlhood for Cameryn but provides a new conceptual lens for understanding mathematics learning as a performance, requiring and enabling children to simultaneously negotiate race, class, and gender.

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Notes

  1. mainstream mathematics education research and policy refers to that which has relied on traditional theories and models of teaching and learning (e.g., information processing, constructivism, situated cognition) and research approaches (race-comparative analyses or the minimization of race through its absent presence) developed primarily by white researchers and policy-makers to normalize the mathematical behavior of white children.

  2. Once-child is a term used by Ransom (2017) to invoke experiences and memories of childhood.

  3. These are different terms of a rhetorical game of one upmanship in levying playful insults, typically about someone’s appearance or family members.

  4. Spencer (1995) refers to the complexity of Black children developing a suite of adapative and maladaptive responses or coping mechanisms within her model of phenomenological variant ecological systems theory (PVEST).

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Acknowledgements

We extend our thanks to Michole Washington for her efforts in analyzing the video data for this study, as well as the anonymous reviewers whose comments greatly improved a previous version of this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Education, University of Michigan, 610 E. University, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109-1259, USA

    Maisie L. Gholson

  2. College of Education, University of Illinois at Chicago, 1040 W. Harrison St, Chicago, IL, 60607, USA

    Danny B. Martin

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  1. Maisie L. Gholson
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Correspondence to Maisie L. Gholson.

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Gholson, M.L., Martin, D.B. Blackgirl face: racialized and gendered performativity in mathematical contexts. ZDM Mathematics Education 51, 391–404 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11858-019-01051-x

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