Engaging "Taboo" Topics: Learning From and With Girls of Color About Issues of Power

• In Event: Moscone Center West Roundtable Session 12
  In Roundtable Session: Disrupting Systems and Structures: Youth and Community Action for Liberation, Resistance, and Transformation

Abstract

Objectives
On a daily basis, school policies and practices silence, punish, and push out youth of
color for reasons such as asking too many questions (Morris, 2016), wearing their hair in braids
and/or natural hairstyles (Lattimore, 2017), or speaking their home languages (Irizarry, 2011). At
the same time, youth of color engage in acts of refusal that challenge white supremacist
narratives that pathologize their ways of being and knowing. This critical qualitative study explores what is possible when we begin to view “the righteous indignation in young people as a strength rather than something deserving of punishment” (Duncan-Andrade, 2009, p. 188). More specifically, this work centers the knowledge and experiences of girls of color that were participants in Power, Identity, and Privilege (PIP); a course taught at a New York City based non-profit committed to social justice, activism, and leadership. In particular, the following questions were examined:
How do girls of color describe and make sense of their experience as participants in a course about Power, Identity, and Privilege (PIP)?
What do girls of color identify as important learning goals related to issues of power, identity, and privilege in schooling and their everyday lives?
Theoretical Framework
The concept of figured worlds accounts for the development of shared ways of knowing and being that are fostered in particular environments and communities. Holland et al. (1998) describe a figured world as a site (material/immaterial) that,“…take[s] shape within and grant[s] shape to the coproduction of activities, discourses, performances, and artifacts” (p .51). PIP operates as a figured world where participants and instructors individually and collectively re/define the modes of engagement through spoken and embodied discourse.
Methods
In recognition that youth “possess expert knowledge about the conditions of their lives” (Irizarry & Brown, p. 64), this study utilizes a youth participatory action research (YPAR) approach. The youth participant-researchers involved in this study are five high school girls of color that were former PIP participants. The youth participant-researchers and I worked collaboratively to develop protocols, facilitate, and analyze focus groups with former PIP participants.
Findings
Three themes emerged through an analysis of the focus groups: 1) The need for a praxis of transparency and vulnerability between students and teachers when teaching and learning about issues of power, identity, and privilege; 2) Opportunities to share and explore multiple and overlapping identities as central to examining the operation of power in their everyday lives; 3) Taking space and making space as a communal practice that honors the lived experiences of girls of color.
Significance
This study centers girls of color and their knowledge, experiences, and desires to learn about and participate in ongoing struggles for justice, equity, and liberation. In doing so, this work contributes to educational practice, theory, and research concerned with the cultivation of critical, culturally sustaining (Paris, 2012), and humanizing learning environments.

Author

• Tashal Brown, University of Rhode Island