Youth of Color Social Movements for Racial Justice: The Politics of Interrogating the School-to-Prison Pipeline

Youth social movements for racial justice, especially against police violence, are on the rise. And this broader policy landscape is reflective of how youth are addressing racism in policing in their local context. Therefore, by drawing upon scholarship related to Black Radicalism, activism, and social movements, this study examines how youth of color activists are fighting against the overpolicing of their schools and communities in two specific contexts: Wake County, North Carolina and Chicago, Illinois. This study demonstrates how context shapes youth of color social movement building, that youth are strategic in how they employ activism, and ultimately adults can either impede or help advance youth’s demands for justice.

Identity and Agency in Informal Science Education Through the Lens of Equity and Social Justice

Learning and becoming are understood as emergent from participation in practices at the intersection of formal and informal science education. What learners value, engage in, and transform is understood as entangled with who they have been, think they are, and yet aim to become, calling for an intersectional lens to any analysis of learning and identity in science. Who one is and can become in science, given recognition by others as a science person, is political and a product of intersecting patterns of racism and sexism, to name two key dimensions, which are not additive but instead form a symbiotic relationship. Intersectionality foregrounds the structural, political, and representational of an oppressive system at work and is a lens essential to an equity- and social justice–driven conceptualization of science education at the intersection of formal and informal educational venues. Critical transdisciplinarity facilitates the unpacking of what science is and what kind of science a science person engages in, and it can move studies beyond paralyzing ideologies and meritocracies that undermine full participation in science by youth of color, for instance. Engagement with intersectionality, critical transdisciplinarity, and the political can make rightful presence a shared goal to work toward among science educators and researchers, a much-needed commitment in the informal science education field. Community-based educational spaces (CBES) challenge deficit discourses of youth and, instead, aim to build on youths’ funds of knowledge and identities through empowering practices. Identity work is approached through a grounding in practice theory, which calls for a focus on the figuring of worlds, lives, and identities. Becoming somebody in science is presented as a creative act by youth, who challenge what science is and who can become somebody in science. Actions by youth can make evident desirable identities that result in the “thickening” of their affinities with science, a process also charged by emotions. That is, intersectionality can be experienced as emotionally taxing, while agency and transformation by youth may result in positive emotions. A mobile view of learning and identity in science, captured by the notion of wayfinding, calls to attention hybridity, intersectionality, and critical transdisciplinarity. That grounding can move the study of learning and becoming in science beyond a binary vision of formal and informal science education while also making it political. A deeper commitment and engagement with social justice work in studies of learning and identity in CBES, a process well captured by the notion of rightful presence, could become a common goal to work toward in the vast field of science education, both formal and informal.

Surviving the Strain of Youth Organizing: Youth and Organizational Responses

Youth of Color in the United States are often leaders in movements for social justice. Evidence suggests that organizing has a positive macro-therapeutic effect on the mental health of young organizers; however, they can also experience strain and become targets of the very systems they are trying to change. In a community-based participatory action research study, three organizations that train youth of Color in organizing in Brooklyn, New York City held focus groups with youth and adult staff. The focus groups examined the strains experienced by youth organizers and the strategies adult partners use to prepare organizers to maintain hope and well-being. Findings suggest four key emergent strategies: (a) provide an emotional homespace to process the rub between worlds, (b) actively shape the long view on systems change, (c) increase self-care skills and emotional preparation for organizing, and (d) promote healing by building leader(full) communities.

From the Local to the State

Chapter 6 examines the campaign by Voices of Youth in Chicago Education (VOYCE) to pass SB100, the strongest state law at the time designed to combat the school-to-prison pipeline. It highlights the role of high school students in leading a struggle for their own liberation. It identifies key elements of VOYCE’s organizing strategy—elements that groups used across the country: personal storytelling to bring a human face and moral force to policy campaigns; participatory action research to demonstrate the systemic nature of racial inequities; and alliance building to provide greater resources to organizing efforts led by those most impacted. It also shows how the SB100 campaign emerged through an interaction between authentic, bottom-up concerns of VOYCE youth of color and national-level learning from the experiences of organizing groups across the country.

“School’s a Lie”: Toward Critical Race Intersectional Pedagogy for Youth Intellectual Activism in Policy Partnerships

Equity-oriented school improvement driven by neoliberal policies focuses attention on a narrow range of inequities. Such policies fail to achieve substantive transformations that address educational constraints experienced by multiply-marginalized youth of color. We engage a critical race and intersectional feminist examination of our pedagogy in a youth voice initiative designed to facilitate multiply-marginalized youth of color participation in district policy partnership. Our analysis presents practices that were consequential for supporting youth intellectual activism in policy conversations. We propose a model for critical race intersectional pedagogy that relates these practices and underlying ideological principles to supporting expansive transformative policy partnerships.

Case Studies in Social Death: The Criminalization and Dehumanization of Six Black and Latino Boys

To fully grasp the systems of oppression youth of color must navigate, educators must consider their experiences outside as well as inside the classroom. This paper adds to the small but growing body of literature across fields highlighting how Black and Latinx youth are simultaneously positioned by schools and the justice system as criminals that must be contained and removed from school and society. This paper argues that the concept of social death, which refers to social suffering as a result of criminalization and dehumanization, helps contextualize the process by which carceral oppression manifests in students’ lives. Based on an interview study with thirty adults who were first incarcerated as adolescents, this paper focuses on three Black and three Latino male participants’ experiences with social death in schools and their neighborhoods.