Abstract

In this article, the author asserts that a group of poor white middle school young women in the postindustrial urban Northeast are living among high concentrations of domestic violence. Many of these females are constructing futures characterized by jobs and self-sufficiency. As their narrations indicate, such plans are fueled by the hope that by living independent lives as single career women, they will bypass the domestic violence that currently rips through their own and their mothers' lives. By not critically exploring the issue of violence against women in classrooms, the author argues that schools become implicated in the silencing and “normalizing” of abuse. This analysis is one piece of a large-scale ethnographic study in which the production of identities among poor white urban girls and boys is explored.