Reimagining Suburbia: Youth of Color, Family, and Community Activism for Educational Justice

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This interdisciplinary panel brings needed attention to the study of resistance and activism in demographically changing suburban schools and communities. Specifically, panelists illuminate how youth of color, families of color, and community members mobilize for educational justice in and out of school settings. The five critical qualitative research studies that comprise this session highlight how students and community members make sense of racialized suburban spaces across the U.S. and, more importantly, how they enact varied forms of resistance and activism. Collectively the papers explore the constraints, tensions, and possibilities of how those positioned on the margins of suburban schools and communities resist the white, middle-class vision of suburbia and forge new visions for more affirming and just experiences.

Sub Unit

• Division G - Social Context of Education / Division G - Section 5: Inquiry, Transformation, and Communities

Chair

• Gabriel Rodriguez, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Papers

• "Livonia Is Just All Racism": Locating Racial and Spatial Histories in Black Families' Educational Agency - Dana Gabrielle Nickson, University of Washington

• "They're Not Going Through It Alone": Building Asian American Youth Power in the Suburbs - Eujin Park, Stanford University

• Resisting Niceness and Civility: Youth of Color Activism in Suburban Des Moines - Gabriel Rodriguez, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Politics of Silencing: Social Ostracization and the Threat of White Anger on Girls of Color - Dinorah Sanchez Loza, The Ohio State University

• Educational Spaces at the Nexus of Black and Brown Families' Suburban Place-Making - Hanora Tracy, Tulane University

Discussant

• Linn E. Posey-Maddox, University of Wisconsin - Madison