K–16 Youth Identities, Leadership, and Academic Excellence: Disrupting a Politics of Whiteness Along the Educational Pathway

• In Event: 60.072 - Toward Ethnoracial, Linguistic, and Geopolitical Justice: Heritage Communities, Cultural Politics, and Community-Engaged Research

Abstract

Over the last nine years, university faculty, graduate students, teachers/educational leaders and community members have sought to create three university-community partnerships aimed at creating a K-16 pathway to higher education. The youth participants in partnership activities consist of students from underrepresented communities and have ranged in age from five years old to college-aged. In creating spaces for their identity formation, leadership development and academic preparation, a politics of whiteness has often times prevented success and challenged sustainability of this community-engaged scholarship. This manuscript discusses the strategies and mechanisms that have been employed to disrupt the normative, deficit-based discourses and practices that often times dominate educational settings and hinder the success of students of color. Set in the mountain west region of the U.S., we outline the three separate community-based partnerships that provide academic, racial/ethnic identity formation, and college access programming for historically underrepresented students. The spaces that are fostered challenge how "underperforming" and "uneducated" Latinas/o students and their families can be prepared for higher educational success. In challenging these majoritarian perspectives we address how the Westside Pathways Project creates spaces of transformation and how such transformation disrupts dominant culture, views, and educational politics throughout institutions founded on and based in principles of Whiteness. Finally, we address how the spaces of transformation encourage, liberate, and foster positive ethnic identity for students of color through a culturally relevant curriculum, youth research projects, and college access strategies from students as young as kindergarten through high school.

Authors

• Enrique Aleman, The University of Texas - San Antonio

• Eden Cortez, University of Utah