ABSTRACT
Sharing what I learned about Ohio Magnet School (OMS) and experiencing the almost unavoidable reinscription of urban stereotypes made clear that there was no way out of the entanglement of discourse, history, and representation. The next section identifies some of the larger discursive frameworks circulating within social science research that I argue fix and contain urban student identity. The goal here is to begin a process of deconstructing the frameworks of disadvantage, deprivation, and risk that hold sway so that the analysis can work against the tendencies for their unacknowledged sedimentation. I believe that disrupting the damaging discourses of urban identity is imperative in attempting to do ethical work with these students. To start from the very place that reinscribes stereotypes about their educational engagement further contributes to their marginalization.
