Youth Agency and Resiliency: A Case Study of "Si Se Puede" Church in Mexican Chicago

• In Event: 53.081 - Roundtable Session 21
  In Roundtable Session: 53.081-4 - Positionality on Trial: Examining Global Tensions of Privilege While Performing Humanizing Research With Minoritized Populations

Abstract

Many educational researchers and/or affluent faculty from the university’s ivory tower often impose a cultural deficit theory when studying a social phenomenon, such as the social identity, academic failure, and discipline behaviors of “school kids/street kids” (Flores-González, 2002). In many studies, minority students “are often the objects of our educational research and yet are often absent or silenced within this discourse” (Fernández, 2002, p. 46). In this paper, I share my reflections, dilemmas, and tensions on developing, accessing, and writing about an ethnographic case study on my neighborhood and local (non-denomination) church in Chicago. In order to gain a deeper understanding of the educational experiences of students of color from Chicago Public Schools, I utilized Critical Race and Latino Critical theoretical tenets to analyze students’ counterstories. In an effort to challenge to the dominant narrative that often blames school failure on young Mexican males as the “Latino threat” (Chavez, 2008) or young Black males as “menaces to society,” I decided to document the different forms of students’ resiliency inside and outside of a church (Ek, 2008) as youth strive to achieve their “barrio dreams” (Davila, 2004) in “Mexican Chicago” (Arredondo, 2008).

Ultimately, my research goal was to fulfill “LatCrit praxis” (Yamamoto, 1997) where I can bridge theory with practice in my own neighborhood. In doing so, I attempted to achieve what Cisneros states, “they will not know I have gone away to come back. For those ones I left behind. For the ones who cannot out” (1983, p. 110). I also built on the work of Freire (1973), Giroux (2001) and Darder (2002), where I consciously take the “intellectual responsibility” to treat the study’s participants as self-determined agents of change and as experts of their own lived experiences.

Initially, the primary issue I encountered in gaining access to the local Chicago high school was having my research proposal to document classroom observations rejected by the principal. I then resorted to my alternative plan of volunteering at the local church in order recruit participants and interview students about their subjectivity in light of the zero tolerance policy. Moreover, gaining access to the “Si Se Puede” Church was not an obstacle because I created strong relationships with key gatekeepers who served as youth mentors and religious leaders at the church.

In short, the results offered are based on individual interviews, focus groups, and peace and prayer circles with Boys and Men of Color. I primarily focused on “restorative circles” that were held pre, during, and post basketball, softball, boxing, and football events inside and outside the church. Here, I archived the different forms of marginalization, resistance and perseverance that youth demonstrated as they were rejected from the local high school, public parks, and other community spaces. The findings revealed that even though many Boys and Men of Color were excluded from educational and social services, some youth remained hopeful and resilient agents of change in relation to creating their own spaces and networks to access educational, social, and recreational opportunities.

Author

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