Articulating Black Latinidad: Fosters Black Latinx Identity in Community-Based Educational Spaces

• In Event: Youth Cultures of Collaboration and Community Empowerment

Abstract

Through an ethnographic study of a community-based educational space serving girls of color in the New York-Newark metro area, this study examines the Black identity development of Latinx girls, specifically asking how multiple educational contexts produce different forms of racialized identities among Latinx youth. I argue that, unlike the Latinx home and schools, this afterschool program promotes the Black identity development of Afro-Latina girls through the presence of Black youth workers and a curriculum centered on fostering their critical consciousness. This study has important implications for understanding how afterschool programs inform young people's racial identity development and suggests that embracing an Afro-Latinx identity positions Latinx youth to challenge anti-Blackness in their communities and develop a positive racial regard.

Author

• Jomaira Salas Pujols, Rutgers University