– Authors find that their fight for future selves was not—for them—with the national narrative about women of color in STEM but with local school narratives that negatively positioned students of color more broadly and remained silent on issues of gender, the intersection of gender and race, and the implications for STEM.
– High school success in STEM came as a hopeful but potentially fragile byproduct of struggles to differentiate themselves from people like them (other Blacks, Latinas, the poor).
– School discourses emphasized broad academic disparities by race and class, not by gender or STEM.
– Both schools emphasized the need for increased opportunities for students, and both took steps to offer more advanced STEM courses and to encourage students to take them.
– These young people did not portray themselves as engaged in a struggle with a historical discourse about women in STEM. Rather, their struggle was with racial and class discourses at school that positioned them differently than they were or wished to be.