Accepting Responsibility for the Concentrated Debt: African American Youth Address Schooling and Neighborhood Effects

• In Event: Residential, School, and Classroom Racial Stratification and Its Impacts on Educational Outcomes

Abstract

How do we obtain racial and economic justice for African American students so they can thrive academically, economically, socially, and emotionally? This paper introduces the term concentrated debt to move the discourse away from deficit framing and toward capturing the lived experiences of African American students attending under-resourced schools and living in devalued and disinvested areas as they make meaning of there homes, schools and communities. Findings from a Baltimore City case study suggest that the concentrated debt has led many youth to feel betrayed, devalued and not protected by the larger society’s failing to provide adequate resources in there schools and there communities. Youth, therefore, produce there own Black placemaking where they are valued and feel like they belong.

Author

• Richard Lofton, Johns Hopkins University