Navigating Intersectionality and Positionality Within Black and Latinx Youth Organizing Spaces

• In Event: Power, Intersectionality, and Solidarity Within Youth and Community Organizing

Abstract

This paper examines intersectionality and positionality of youth organizing (YO) groups as they campaign around community and educational justice. Studies have shown the particular value of YO for Black and Latinx populations (Ginwright & Cammarota, 2007; Kirshner & Cammarota, 2012) but there is limited knowledge of how, in BIPOC spaces, people without white privilege but who have other privileges (able-bodied, man, cishetero, etc) show up for one another. The research questions are 1) how do youth organizers negotiate their positionality in terms of privileges and vulnerabilities? and 2) how do youth organizers show up for each other when addressing issues that do not affect everyone the same?

Youth organizing (YO) draws from community organizing (Conner, 2011), and positive youth development (Lerner, et al., 2005) frameworks. Many YO groups locate their roots in the civil rights, Black Power, Chicano, farm worker, and other movements led by people of color (Kirshner & Ginwright, 2012) and many employ an explicit critical race lens that supports identity development (Watts & Flanagan, 2007; Rogers, et al. 2012; Warren, et al., 2009).

We draw on a longitudinal, mixed-methods study that follows multiple cohorts of YO participants from their initial recruitment into YO over several years of participation. We work in close partnership with six established YO groups leading campaigns related to youth justice, policing, and environmental justice; each group’s membership is exclusively or nearly exclusively BIPOC youth, with significant representation of undocumented youth and LGBTQIA+ youth. For the current paper, we employ a comparative case study approach (Bartlett & Vavrus, 2016) to analyze more than 60 interview and focus group transcripts and 25 observations to elucidate how BIPOC youth across organizational contexts negotiate positionality, allyship and solidarity.

This study revealed that young people in youth organizing spaces had a sophisticated understanding of their own identities and positionality in relation to their campaigns and others in the group who did not share the same identity. Youth developed this understanding through political education and an established culture of inclusive and safe spaces for multiple identities and finding common ground across difference. With this understanding, youth with privileged identities positioned themselves as “co-conspirators” to give room for youth with identities most affected to be at the forefront. Lastly, youth who were most vulnerable felt empowered and a more solid community formed to effectively address immigration, policing and other topics concerned with racism, homobophia, transphobia, sexism and other lines of power and oppression.

Negotiating solidarity, identity and positionality adds another lens to youth organizing. Young people may work on a unifying campaign but the heterogeneity in these groups are often ignored. This study pulls apart the threads of power and oppression among identities within youth organizing that may help bring young people closer together when working on campaigns. This is not only helpful within youth organizing, but in all spaces when acting in solidarity to fight for justice and equity so that the most vulnerable are uplifted. As Fannie Lou Hamer said, “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.”

Authors

• Hui-Ling S. Malone, Michigan State University

• Sara McAlister, New York University

• Wendy Y. Perez, New York University