By Michael V. Singh
What does it mean to call upon men of color (MOC) teachers to perform a “culturally relevant” manhood for boys of color? And how might (mis)framings of culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP) become intertwined with problematic expressions of race, gender, and sexuality?
In recent years, there has been considerable effort to recruit more MOC to the teaching profession. In part, these efforts are meant to improve the educational lives of boys of color, who struggle to find culturally relatable educators and role models at school. In the greater educational imagination, much of the value associated with MOC teachers is connected to their ability to be “culturally relevant” to struggling boys of color.
Despite the popularity of this strategy, there are increasing concerns about the racial and gender logics circumscribing how a culturally relevant manhood is imagined and performed. MOC teachers are often problematically framed as heroic saviors for “bad boys.” Furthermore, research shows MOC teachers are frequently asked to perform the role of hyper-masculine disciplinarian and can themselves perpetuate toxic notions of masculinity. Other critiques center around what bodies are imagined to be ideal role models for boys. Researchers point to the ways cisgender, heterosexual, and conventionally masculine men are implicitly or explicitly posited as the norm.
As a Latino man who is an educator and critical race and gender scholar, I am interested in how the notion of cultural relevancy impacts the lives of teachers. For several years, I have been conducting life-history interviews with Latino men teachers to learn how race, gender, and sexuality impact their experiences as Latino men teachers. In my article, “Toxic Masculinity Masking as Cultural Relevancy: Latino Men Navigating Heteropatriarchal Expectations of Manhood in the Teaching Profession,” I look at the ways Latino men teachers navigate heteropatriarchal narratives and expectations associated with their teaching and gender performance. The findings from my study describe the ways Latino men feel called upon to signal cultural relevancy in ways that reproduce hegemonic and toxic masculinity.
In 1995, Gloria Ladson-Billings introduced the term culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP) to describe an approach to teaching that attends to and utilizes the cultural assets that students of color bring to school. While early theorizations of CRP were staunchly rooted in a systemic critique of oppression, the term itself has become popularized and broadened. Unfortunately, CRP is often detached from its critical roots and (mis)used to generally describe the ways a teacher or lesson may culturally resonate with students. This was the case in my study, where teachers reported encountering superficial, stereotypical, and compromising discourses around cultural relevancy and their performance of Latino manhood.
My article has three main findings:
First, participants felt administrators and fellow teachers often expected them to perform the role of disciplinarian in ways that were “culturally relevant” to troublesome Latino boys. This included explicitly disciplining in Spanish and using their body as a form of surveillance. Here, being a culturally relevant Latino male teacher was reduced to the archetype of the macho patriarch—an image rooted in racist stereotypes that paint Latino men as hypermasculine and aggressive disciplinarians of their family and community.
Second, participants shared that being positioned as a culturally relevant role model for Latino boys came with gendered expectations from students, who sometimes desired their teacher to embody a hegemonic manhood. Being framed as the “cool” Latino male teacher by students came with an imagined sexual power and ability to physically dominate others. Also, some students assumed their fraternal bonds would lead to misogynistic language being permitted in the classroom. The teachers in this study also acknowledged the possibility, and even temptation, to gain cachet with their students by allowing them to believe they were the epitome of dominant manhood.
Third, participants also shared strategic ways they navigated heteropatriarchal discourses of cultural relevancy to disrupt and queer the image of the Latino man teacher. This included using insider knowledge to identify and deconstruct systems of racism and heteropatriarchy in their students’ everyday lives. Teachers also drew from their lived experiences to develop lessons that challenged popular notions of Latino masculinity and expanded the ways culture, gender, and sexuality could be expressed in their classroom.
Overall, this research complicates how and why MOC teachers are asked to perform a culturally relevant manhood and underscores the need for a sustained gender critique in the conversation on MOC teachers.
About the Author
Michael V. Singh is an assistant professor in the Department of Chicana/o/x Studies at the University of California, Davis. He received his Ph.D. from the Berkeley School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of “Toxic Masculinity Masking as Cultural Relevancy” in the Summer 2024 issue of Harvard Educational Review.