There's Being Woke and Being Woke

• In Event: Risks of Care: Examining the Implications of Relational Dynamics in Youth Participatory Action Research Projects

Abstract

Objectives
Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) utilizes research as a tool to promote social change, foster critical consciousness, and produce transformational, emancipatory learning since youth are engaged in social activism (Cammarota & Romero, 2009; Irizarry, 2011; Mirra, Filipiak, & Garcia, 2015; Morrell, 2004; Scott, Pyne, & Means, 2015; Tuck, 2009). My YPAR study with Leaders Organizing 2 Unite & Decriminalize (LOUD), which are comprised of formerly incarcerated youth, supported these findings as well. LOUD youth articulated how the juvenile justice system (JJS) systematically targeted and criminalized black and brown bodies (Alexander, 2011; Stevenson, 2014) through their research. However, what I became more interested in was deconstructing what it meant to be woke (i.e., critical consciousness). LOUD members were critical youth advocates who engaged in social action; alternatively, they also unveiled behavior that was counterproductive to being woke such as cyberbullying, drug abuse and misogyny. As a result, I had to grapple with these crucial questions: What does it mean to be woke and how do we sustain it?

Theoretical framework
The reproduction-resistance binary has been at the center of educational studies work, but has done little to discuss resistance “as a fluid and dynamic construct” (Dimitriadis, 2011, p. 649). Tuck & Yang (2011) provide four key areas of examining resistance: the everyday, cultural, youth development and transformative resistance (Ginwright, Cammarota, & Noguera, 2005; Solorzano & Bernal, 2001). They explain how resistance theories have become teleological in that they fetishize progress and do not consider how these theories are messy, unfixed and always taking shape. I utilize this perspective to highlight the volatility, chaos, and unpredictability of what it means to be woke.

Methodology
I have been co-facilitating LOUD meetings once a week with 8-10 youth (Latinx, black, and Native American) for three years. Each meeting is audio recorded, transcribed and coded. In addition, I write ethnographic fieldnotes for each meeting. Furthermore, each youth participated in three semi-structured interviews. Inductive analysis and the constant comparative method is utilized to systematically code data and address issues of connectedness (Huberman & Miles, 1998).

Findings
Throughout this study, LOUD youth displayed transformative resistance by testifying to legislators, presenting at conferences, and employing research to create a socially just JJS. Simultaneously, I have witnessed some LOUD members hiding that they were smoking marijuana and drinking at a conference, engaging in cyberbullying that was homophobic and misogynistic, and continued to be involved in criminal activities while professing to have changed. It was this precise messiness and unpredictability that challenged romanticizing YPAR, activism, and critical consciousness. Moreover, it had me asking if my participants who I love were ever really woke and what stopped them from being fully woke?

Scholarly Significance
Roy (2004) stated that nothing is more crucial today than the debate about strategies of resistance. YPAR has been seen as a panacea to help marginalized youth create social change. However, I argue what we need is to shift the focus to sustaining change, maintaining being woke and supporting critical on-going self-reflection because transformative resistance is never final and always dynamic and intersectional.

Author

• Shiv Raj Desai, University of New Mexico