Journalism as Activism: Youth Counter-Narratives to Equity Resistance Campaigns

• In Event: Friday Roundtable Session 4:55 pm
  In Roundtable Session: They Didn't Know We Were Seeds: An Exploration of School, Community, and Family Efforts to Raise Critical Consciousness (Table 2)

Abstract

Using narrative theory and approaches to counter-storytelling, this study examines youth narratives regarding contemporary equity resistance in Loudoun County, Virginia and Carmel, Indiana- two distinct, but related sites with significant anti-equity adult agitation. Adult stakeholders and parents claim that equity initiatives are anti-American, erase white identity, and promote discomfort for white students, but such claims stand in opposition to imagining educational spaces free of racial injustice. Appropriating an activist tradition of journalism as a resistance, high school newspaper writers from both sites dispelled common conservative myths about the prevalence of critical race theory in classrooms and offered robust analyses of who and what they perceived to be the real challenges within and alongside adult campaigns against equity reforms.

Authors

• Andrene Castro, Virginia Commonwealth University

• April Weber Hewko, Virginia Commonwealth University

• Kevin L. Clay, Rutgers University

• Genevieve P. Siegel-Hawley, Virginia Commonwealth University

• Kim Bridges, Virginia Commonwealth University