These Are the Breakdowns, Breakups, and Breakouts: A Decolonial, Critical Race Mixtape of THUGLIFE and the Homies Empowerment Community High School for Oakland Success (HECHOS)

• In Event: Sacred Knowledge and Decolonial Love: Applied Principles of Ethnic Studies Pedagogy

Abstract

The history of “research” on communities of Color reveals motives seeking to objectify, pathologize, and dehumanize its “subjects” in ways that singularly portray them as damaged, lacking, and/or evil (Fanon, 1963; Patel, 2016; Smith, 1999; Tuck, 2009). Given this history and multitudes of researchers exploiting such “knowledge” for personal gain without reciprocity, communities of Color may view “research” as a dirty word (Smith, 1999). Similarly, youth gangs have been researched by thousands, but few have worked towards eradicating gang violence (Duran, 2008). Such research contributes towards the demonization (Acosta, 2014; Cruz & Benson, 2019) of youth in gangs.

This scholarship seeks to dismantle that tradition by visibilizing (Patel, 2016) and theorizing in the breaks (Paperson, 2017; Patel, 2016) ruptured by the problematizing, visibilizing, reframing, and reimagining needed to design the forthcoming school, Homies Empowerment Community High School for Oakland Success (HECHOS). This particular story of HECHOS, which centers the needs, experiences, and aspirations of gang involved, affiliated, impacted and/or formerly incarcerated youth, applies both portraiture (Lightfoot-Lawrence & Davis, 1991) and testimonio (Delgado Bernal, Burciaga, & Flores Carmona, 2012) to produce a counter-narrative of not only school design, but also of the students who are most pathologized and criminalized. Decolonial (Reyes, 2019), Critical Race (Brayboy, 2005; Solórzano & Delgado Bernal, 2001; Dumas & ross, 2016) and Ethnic Studies Pedagogies (Tintiangco-Cubales, et. al., 2014) are “mixtaped” to analyze the school design process and emerging design to surface desire-based (Tuck, 2009) counter-stories that humanize and heal. These frameworks act as process, practice, and condition to examine how coloniality has normalized Western ways of being and becoming as well as work in reciprocity to recenter Indigeneity, honor sacred knowledge and “street wisdoms,” and call for the abolition of white supremacy, capitalism, and damage-centered research.

Grounded in critical race methodology (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002) and decolonizing research paradigms (Patel, 2016; Smith, 1999; Wilson, 2008), this PRAXISioner research investigates, what is the sacred nature of the values, principles, precious knowledge, and process that centers decolonial, critical race, and indigenizing Pedagogies in the design of the Homies Empowerment Community High School for Oakland Success (HECHOS)? What school design emerges, and how does it aim to reframe T.H.U.G.L.I.F.E.? What testimonios illuminate how design team members engage with and experience the design process? How does the work of HECHOS contribute to the overall political project of its mother organization, Homies Empowerment? Data collected includes testimonio, photos/videos, institutional documents, informal conversations, and reflective memos.

Rooted in revolutionary love (Duncan-Andrade & Morrell, 2008) while building on gang sensibilities and Indigenous epistemologies, a pedagogy of problematizing, visibilizing, reframing, and reimagining assessed to redefining these four intersecting identities of the HECHOS student: hustler, healer, warrior, and scholar. The sacred knowledge that emerged from work highlights tremendous growth areas that the field of “school reform” has yet to address. It is in these collaborative approaches to reimagining those most pathologized and criminalized, that we can move towards “The Hope U GIve Little Infants Frees Everyone.”

Author

• G. T. Reyes, California State University - East Bay