Creating Affirming Spaces for Black Youth: A Mental Health Model

• In Event: Interrupting Anti-Blackness: Imagining the Possibilities

Abstract

Objectives:
This presentation provides insights on navigating K-12 schooling as an African American athlete and scholar. As a graduate student in Clinical Mental Health, I now work as a mental health counselor to Black and Brown youth. Drawing first from my own experiences, I will lay a foundation for Black youth development and the ways that educators and institutions can create affirming spaces that support the mental health and development of Black youth.

Perspective(s)or theoretical framework:
Family pressure to succeed in school, academic reticence (including imposter syndrome), pressure to attain athletic vs. academic excellence, and teachers with persistently low expectations all shaped my K-12 learning experiences. Like me, other Black students must navigate generalized anti-Blackness in schooling (i.e. schools that neither center them culturally nor promote their academic success), psycho-social phenomena including imposter syndrome (intense thoughts of unworthiness and fraudulence) and stereotype threat (the risk of confirming a negative stereotype about one’s group) as part of managing life in US schools (Steele & Aronson, 1995; Collins, et al., 2020). I draw from these models as I discuss the ways I both experienced schooling myself and how I work with youth in schools now.

3. Methods, techniques, modes of inquiry
I employ ethno-autographic techniques, using critical race and multicultural counseling theories as lenses through which to “re-remember” my experiences as a K-12 student and interpret my work with Black youth in the STEAM Academies listed above (as a near-peer mentor).

As a practitioner, I have amassed techniques that help create Black affirming spaces and support the mental health of Black youth including cultural authenticity, culturally-centered interventions, and re-interpretation of student behaviors as responses to trauma of which racism is one form. Employing asset-based constructs such as post-traumatic growth (Evans, et al., 2016) provides a lens that counters anti-Blackness and empowers Black youth. I model how each of the above can be utilized with youth.

Data sources, evidence, objects, or materials
I will share successful examples of culturally appropriate, asset-based counseling techniques and interventions that have shifted the experiences of Black youth.

5. Results and/or substantiated conclusions or warrants for arguments/point of view:
When it comes to the success of Black youth, schools fall short in numerous ways:
- They are not centered on the cultural practices and norms of Black people.
- They do not actively promote or celebrate Black academic success, but actively promote and celebrate Black athletic success.
- They do not see racism as a form of trauma that shapes the realities of Black youth.

Considering the breadth of harm Black youth face, explicit exploration of mental health supports designed explicitly for them is more than warranted.

6. Scientific or scholarly significance of the study or work:
The current mental health crisis is well-known in the educational community. Post-Covid, supports for youth are needed now more than ever. Add to this the general threat to well being towards LBGTQ members of the community (which seem to be intensifying), there is no doubt that Black-affirming responses to youth mental health are needed.

Author

• Marques Spencer, University of San Diego