"We Have the Power to Make Change": Asian Immigrant Youth Struggling Against School Violence

• In Event: 52.035 - Contemporary Youth Activism: Advancing Social Justice in the United States

Abstract

This paper documents the impact of immigrant youth activism on institutional policies and practices related to school violence in a large northeastern city. The youth-led community struggle around an incident of extreme racial violence at a neighborhood comprehensive high school in December 2009 laid bare the institutional racism of the local school district and instigated a city-wide dialogue around school violence. The scale of the assault and the unexpected resistance and response by the Asian immigrant youth, here less than two years, precipitated a series of public hearings and several investigations on the part of the local Commission on Human Relations and the State Human Relations Commission. As a result of a civil rights complaint to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and also a complaint with the State Human Relations Commission, the youth succeeded where adults had failed, in forcing institutional changes at the local and national level.

Through interviews and focus groups with youth leaders, adult allies, school personnel, and community organizers and an examination of archival documents, the author traced how this specific example of youth activism led to institutional reforms such as new racial/gender harassment and anti-bullying policies, more stringent reporting requirements of serious incidents, diversity training, and the adoption of the federal consent decree for this case as a national model for situations of school violence. The theoretical frameworks included critical organizational theory—in particular, the concepts of intra-organizational contradictions and the dialectical cycle of resistance, change, and institutionalization; and also Freirean social theory—in particular, the concepts of critical consciousness, praxis, and “reading the world and reading the word.” These conceptual frameworks helped illuminate how a multi-pronged approach, including community organizing, media work, and legal challenges, and the affordances of intergenerational support from allies and youth autonomy contributed to the youths’ success.

The significance of this project lies in its contribution to the scant literature about first generation immigrant youth. Moreover, it shows the potential of youth agency in challenging the hegemonic practices of an educational bureaucracy and common stereotypes that depict recently arrived Asian immigrant youth as quiet, passive non-native speakers of English. It also demonstrates the positive impact that acquiring critical consciousness and engaging in social justice practice can have on the youth activists themselves as well as their communities. Given that many grassroots movements are often sealed within the “buried histories” of communities of color, this work documents for contemporary and future readers the account of a significant struggle within the Asian American movement as well as the youth activist movement.

Author

• Mary Yee, University of Pennsylvania