I'm Proud to Be a Chicano! Understanding the Political Consciousness of Suburban Youth

• In Event: To Romanticize or Not To? Collective Struggles of Marginalized Youth and the Politics of Representation

Abstract

In the first meeting of Orgullo Latino (pseudonyms used throughout), an organization dedicated to supporting Latina/o youth at Shields High School (SHS), Esther introduced herself and unapologetically voiced her love for being a Chicana. She told her peers, “I’m proud to be a Chicana and I want others to know that and I want to teach others about my culture.” Esther’s comment serves as a point of entry into understanding the intricacies of not only identity, but the formation of a political actor.

The student participants of my study attend a high school that is predominately white and well resourced in an affluent suburb outside of Chicago. Yet despite, the resources and opportunities SHS has, Latina/o students experience their schooling differently than their white peers. SHS, with a desire to enhance the schooling of its Latina/o students have multiple organizations for students to join. This paper focuses on these organizations (academic programs, clubs) in order to understand how opportunities aimed for Latina/o students serve as potential training grounds for consciousness raising and potentially lead to action.

In order to understand Latina/o youth development I employ Ginwright & Cammarota’s (2002) social justice model of youth development and Solorzano & Delgado Bernal’s (2001) work on transformational resistance. Young people must first understand themselves and learn about historical and contemporary issues before seeking change. Moreover, when young people engage in social justice work it can take multiple forms (Solorzano & Delgado Bernal, 2001). I employ qualitative research methodology by utilizing an ethnographic approach. I shadow students (Rios, 2011) by putting myself as close to their experience as possible in order to attempt to see through students’ eyes. I was in SHS during the course of the 2014-2015 school and I was there daily and spent time afterschool hanging out with students or joining them in their afterschool activities. To make sense of my data, I am coding and categorizing by themes (Bogdan, & Biklen, 2003). Grounded theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) is guiding my coding process.

This work explores preliminary findings of my time spend with Orgullo Latino, along with Rising Stars, a mentoring program for incoming Latina/o freshman, Greenberg Achievers, an academic program intended to support first generation students in hopes of having them attend highly selective colleges, and finally National Hispanic Institute, who has a chapter at SHS. Through observations, interviews, and artifact analysis, I was able to build a complex understanding of how varied opportunities for Latina/o students influenced their political consciousness and actions. The changes the Latina/o population is bringing to suburbia are also reflected in its schools, yet the dominant paradigm in studying Latina/o youth is through an urban lens. My research reconsiders this approach by distinguishing between urban and suburban. There is no denying that schools with more means such as some suburban communities are able to provide more resources for their students, but as Lewis-McCoy (2014) argues just because there are ample resources and opportunities does not mean that all students experience them equitably.

Author

• Gabriel Rodriguez, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign