The Spectacle of Chicanx System-Impacted Youth: Racial Microaggressions and the Journey Toward Lives Well-Lived

• In Event: Sunday Roundtable Session 11:25 am
  In Roundtable Session: From At-Risk to Bien Educados: The Educational Experiences of Latino Men (Table 6)

Abstract

The study examines culmination of how racial microaggressions operate as a form of symbolic violence mediating the educational trajectories of Chicanx students. A critical race feminista approach is used to analyze the oral histories of five former system-impacted youth, now in their adult years. This approach illuminates the significance how racialized male bodies become discursive sites exposing how Chicanx males specifically are both neglected and over-surveilled in schools. The paper concludes by shifting the story past crisis-centered frameworks that perpetually frame nondominant communities as damaged. Instead, the resilience, resistance, and refusal of these Chicanx participants demonstrate how they come to “live a life well-lived” drawing from the strength from their families, their communities, their faith, and their desires

Author

• Maria C. Malagon, California State University - Fullerton