That Makes It Seem Like We're Criminals: Latino Boys and Banishment at Californiatown High School

• In Event: Critical Geographies of Space in Education: Hopeful Spaces Within Oppressive Places

Abstract

Invoking the concepts of the adultification and vilification of male youth of color (Ferguson, 2000; Morris, 2005; Rios, 2011), banishment (Beckett & Herbert, 2009), and critical geography (Clarke, 1997; Gregory and Urry, 1985; Lieberg, 1995; Owens, 1997, 2014), this paper explores the racialized and gendered contours of banished spaces in a school known as Californiatown High School (CHS). The banishment, or forced spatial segregation, of people from the larger community to smaller, designated spaces has become a key strategy of the state to control, manage, and punish those deemed as deviant or criminal (Beckett and Herbert, 2009). In schools, youth who are perceived to be deviant or criminal are frequently banished from high-prestige educational spaces and opportunities to low-prestige spaces, or removed from spaces of educational opportunity altogether. Still other youth access high-prestige spaces, specialized educational opportunities and have a high degree of socio-spatial freedom. At CHS, a moral panic of Latino boys becoming violent gang members lead school adults to map, surveil and control Latino boys’ use of campus spaces. By contrast, white and female students who were discursively constructed as innocent, responsible and trustworthy experienced a high degree of socio-spatial freedom.
This study considers the relationship between banishment spaces, discourses of otherness, and practices of student discipline. It examines the social and discursive construction of Latino boys as Norten͂o and Suren͂o gang members and the ecology of fear (Pinnow, 2013) surrounding this designation. The lens of critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1989; van Dijk 1993, 2008) illustrates the ways in which race, class and gender intersected to create hierarchies of space and place at CHS (Tuck and McKenzie, 2015).
Data for this paper is drawn from a three year ethnographic study of student discipline practices and policies at CHS. It includes observational field notes of six school administrators, a school resource officer (SRO), teachers, campus supervisors and other school agents. The observed activities include conferences with students and parents about student behavior, and the supervision of banished spaces and students. Additional data include annual interviews with adult participants, de-identified student discipline and police contact data, and of photographs of campus spaces.
An understanding of youth banishment has particular urgency for Latino youth who are the nation’s second largest student population. Moreover, banishment as a form of punishment has become a barrier to the academic, economic and social advancement of Latino youth (Arcia, 2006; Fabelo et al., 2011). This paper will help school adults to conceptualize socially just discourses, and practices that provide Latino male students with access to high-prestige spaces, specialized educational opportunities and socio-spatial freedom equal to their White and female peers.

Author

• Mariama Gray, California State University - East Bay