Endangered Species: The Hope for Mexican American Male Students in Chicago Public Schools

• In Event: Youth in Revolt: Latina/o Youth Fighting for Their Education

Abstract

This dissertation is an ethnographic study that documents the educational experiences of Mexican Boys and Men (MBM) in a predominately Mexican immigrant neighborhood in Chicago, Illinois. A Chicago Public High School (CPS) and the local community are “analyzed as an account in which young [Mexican American] males have had a history of criminalization and punitive social control” (Rios, 2011, p. 21). The ethnography’s four methods of data collection were individual interviews, focus groups, participant observations, and review of documents for three different research sites. Grounded in my positionality as a university doctoral student and as a community “native/insider” (Villenas, 1996; Delgado, 1998), I audio-recorded the testimonies of twenty current and former male students from Tenorio High School (a synonym) and from the “Si Se Puede” Church (a synonym) in “México town” (a synonym) during the academic-year of 2012-2013. “México town” serves as a case study to analyze how Mexican Boys and Men are (mis)educated by Chicago Public Schools. CRT/LatCrit are the two chosen theories that lead and “explore the ways that so-called race-neutral laws and policies perpetuate racial and/or ethnic and gender subordination” (Delgado, 2002, p. 65).

I document the narratives of disconnected youth in order to learn from students’ “telling stories about school” (Férnandez, 2002) and to “build [a] community among those at the margins of society” (Yosso, 2006, p. 14). I highlight the “counterstories” (Yosso, 2006) of “troubled boys” (Lopez, 2003) who “dropped-out” or were pushed-out of Chicago Public Schools due to the Zero Tolerance discipline policy (Lipman, 2003; Polakow, 2000; Rios, 2011). I archive the different forms of students’ resistance and resiliency inside and outside of school (Ek, 2008) as youth strive to achieve their “Barrio Dreams” (Davila, 2004) and “Sueños Americanos” (Cammarota, 2008) in “Mexican Chicago” (Arredondo, 2008; DeGenova, 2005). Ultimately, I argue that Chicago’s key institutions have a long history of criminalizing Mexican Boys and Men, via Zero Tolerance policies and punitive culture inside and outside of CPS, which directly influences the “drop-out or push-out” problem at Tenorio High School in “México town.”

The three general research questions are aimed to capture the subjectivity of young Mexican male students and to elucidate the macro and micro effects of the zero tolerance culture on the academic success and life trajectories of MBM. The questions seek to document the stories of young Mexican American students in order to debunk the master narrative of “the Latino threat” rhetoric that labels Mexican immigrants and youth of color as “dropping out of school, becoming gang members, and causing problems” (Chavez, 2008, p. 38) and as “dumb, dangerous, and deviant” (Gibbs, 1988, p. 3). The primary research question examines to what extent did the Zero Tolerance discipline policy in and out of Chicago Public Schools influence the MBM “dropout or pushout” crisis? Secondly, how do and how have Mexican American male students experience schooling in light of the Zero Tolerance school discipline policy at THS? Lastly, what were the consequences for Mexican American students in “México town”?

Author

• Miguel Angel Saucedo, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign