Youth Dialogue Circles: Exploring Racial Identity for Healing and Social Change

• In Event: Praxis for Racial Justice: Undergraduates as Activists and Engaged Scholars

Abstract

Our praxis project engaged a group of high school students in dialogic circles on topics related to their social identities. The project was born out of our own lived experiences (as a white woman with ADHD and a Black, queer woman with ADHD), and the belief that marginalized youth lack humanizing spaces to explore their identities, especially in educational settings which often reproduce harmful existing conditions. Grounding our project is the belief that dialog can be revolutionary, but only when it views its participants in their fullness and provides access and opportunities for others to do the same.
In spring 2023, Author 1 conducted a series of five dialogue circles, each centering a different aspect of identity and belonging. The five 60 minute circles took place at the youths’ high school and covered the topics of family, beauty, gender, social class, and race/intersectionality. In fall 2023, Author 2 conducted a series of six dialogue circles about identity, also at the same school site, but with a different group of youth. These circles were created with a commitment to community, accessibility, and the 3 Rs of the Indigenous concept of relational accountability: reciprocity, respect, and responsibility.
Each of us collected data during the dialogue sessions through observational field notes, audio recordings and transcripts, and student artifacts. Author 1 focused her research on her own facilitation of the sessions as a white, middle-class undergraduate, grappling with the impact of my own racial, educational, and class identities alongside those of my participants. Findings suggest that radical dialogic work within existing institutions comes with many challenges, but reflexivity and humility on the part of the facilitator are some of the main determinants of a program’s ability to be truly radical. Author 2 focused her research on whether and how dialogue can be a tool for disrupting the impact of identity-based microaggressions. The discourse data suggest that the youth participants both resisted and reinforced negative stereotypes about their racial identities. When they reinforced negative stereotypes, they drew upon dominant cultural and media representations. The youth participants were able to analyze societal problems, including racism, but in a language different from our own or from academia’s.

The significance of our praxis project is in illuminating the role of young adults (high school-aged participants and college undergraduates), and the centrality of identity-based storytelling and healing in racial justice. It also shows the ways in which a praxis project can be sustained over time, by differently positioned undergraduates (Author 1 as a white woman, and Author 2 as a Black woman), raising insights and questions not just about collaboration, but legacy and sustainability.

Authors

• Bea Gerber, Clark University

• Anisa Gilmour, Clark University