Latinx Male Youth in Suburban Schools: Understanding Race, Discipline, Opportunity, and Survivorship

• In Event: 28.034 - Behind the "Discipline Gap": Racialized Experiences of School and Classroom Discipline

Abstract

Objectives

Despite efforts to improve the schooling experiences of Latinx male youth, these students continue to be targets of what Rios (2011) calls the “youth control complex.” In schools, adults’ propensity to control the lives of Latinx males contributes to deficit-based approaches that paint them as “troublemakers, hoodlums, anti-school, and even dangerous” (Torres, 2017, p. 546). In so doing, rather than empower their students, adults deny their knowledge and skills (Howard et al., 2017). While much of the research on Latinx male high school youth takes place in urban communities, this study examines the experiences of males who attend high school in a suburb outside of Chicago, Illinois. This paper highlights the importance of centering students’ critiques of school as an entry point into affirming and embracing Latinx males as meaningful sociopolitical actors who have meaningful and practical solutions for everyday life in school.

Theoretical Framework & Methodology

I position the brown body as the center point of my analysis. Cruz (2011) argues for the importance of discussing the brown body in terms of “representation, social control, and the constructions of normality,” therefore better understanding how the brown body is “regulated and governed in schools” (p. 664). I talk with Latinx male youth about their perceptions of how they are treated by the adults and peers in their school and analyze how youth embody their treatment and its relationship with school. Drawing from plática-centered methodology (Fierros & Delgado Bernal, 2016), this qualitative study is based on three pláticas with three Latinx high school male youth. Plática methodology de-centers the interview approach, by maintaining a conversational and informal focus approach that positions participants as knowledge producers (Fierros & Delgado Bernal, 2016).

Findings

Participants of the study were under dual disciplinary systems in their school. Latinx males were the most common recipients of disciplinary measures in their school. One participant explained that “school is prison. I’m in the cage, isolation in the small room, steel doors and cameras.” In cases when Latinx males were not subject to disciplinary measures, they were policed academically. Latinx males were constantly being told by adults that, because of their troubles outside of the classroom, they were unworthy of the academic opportunities their school possessed. Discourses of meritocracy and deservedness punished Latinx males by placing them always under the watchful eye of adults. At times, participants embodied personas of resistance that brought upon them more surveillance; at other moments, they sought to disprove racial stereotypes by excelling academically.

Scholarly Significance

This study complicates traditional notions of discipline by factoring the ways Latinx youth embody discipline measures and academic policing they undergo in their suburban school. The findings of the study align with what other male youth of color experience in urban schools, while highlighting the unique and contradictory role that opportunities and resources play in shaping the experiences of Latinx males. It closes by pointing to the ways in which schools can re-shift their relationships and practices.

Author

• Gabriel Rodriguez, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign