“You Would Not Believe What I Have to Go Through to Prove My Intellectual Value!” Stereotype Management Among Academically Successful Black Mathematics and Engineering Students

Abstract

Stereotype management is introduced to explain high achievement and resilience among 23 Black mathematics and engineering college students. Characterized as a tactical response to ubiquitous forms of racism and racialized experiences across school and non-school contexts, stereotype management emerged along overlapping paths of racial, gender, and mathematics identity development. Interviews revealed that although stereotype management facilitated success in these domains, the students maintained an intense and perpetual state of awareness that their racial identities and Blackness are undervalued and constantly under assault within mathematics and engineering contexts. With age development and maturity, the students progressed from being preoccupied with attempts to prove stereotypes wrong to adopting more self-defined reasons to achieve. The results suggest that stereotype threat is not deterministic.