Youth Have the Power: Insights from A Black-led Community-based Educational Space

• In Event: Working Toward Adult-Youth Solidarity: Understanding the Possibilities and Challenges in and Out of Schools

Abstract

Purpose:
Youth of color frequently find themselves pushed to the margins in cultivating their educational experiences. As the scholarship showcases, approaches such as youth participatory action frameworks (Cerecer et al., 2013; Walsh, 2018) or leveraging youth voices (Welton et al., 2017) offer numerous benefits for young people in reclaiming agency within their learning experiences. Through partaking in several qualitative approaches, this study examines how adult educators within a Black-led community-based educational space (Baldridge, 2018) leverage and uplift youth voices in their labor.

Framework:
This paper takes up a youth-centric extension of Critical Race Theory (CRT), YouthCrit, that purposefully examines the intersection of adultism and racism that racially minoritized youth navigate (Author & Author, forthcoming). The central arguments of YouthCrit draw upon research centered around youth—youth of color in particular—in various subfields such as critical youth studies, student voice, youth participatory action research, and the out-of-school time field. The authors define the tenets as 1) Racism and adultism are endemic, meaning that the underlying oppressive systems in society perpetually shape the daily experiences and opportunities of racially minoritized young people negatively. 2) How racially minoritized young people are socially constructed and perceived reflects a particular point in time and sociopolitical context (Social Construction). 3) Adults are only willing to support racially minoritized youth's interests and aims for justice if it aligns with their interests (Interest Convergence Principle). 4) It is important to recognize young people's full humanity within all institutions regardless of their identities (Intersectionality and Hybridity of Youth's Identities). Finally, 5) Amplifying Racially Minoritized Youth's Voices, Counternarratives, and Leadership is critical to transformative change for racial justice. Leveraging this theory allows for the capturing and recentering of young people's humanity in youth worker's labor.

Methods & Data Analysis:
This paper derives from a larger critical ethnographic project that examines how a Black-led community-based educational space disrupts mainstream ways of being placed on youth by uplifting youth voices on social issues. I have employed various qualitative approaches (semi-structured interviews, focus groups, artifact collecting, and observational memoing) over the past 12 months to understand the experiences youth workers have to navigate uplifting young people in their labor (Creswell, 2013; Esposito & Evans-Winters, 2021). Interviews and focus groups were 45-90 minutes in length and took place virtually while video-recorded. All conversations were transcribed. Additionally, questions posed during interviews and focus groups aimed to understand the emergent counternarratives youth workers co-construct in the space with young people. The analysis process consisted of several coding phases to craft narratives from the data. Across all stages of analysis, I employ the qualitative software MAXQDA.

Results & Significance:
Research findings showcase the perspectives of youth workers who learn from and alongside youth striving to reimagine schooling within a large, Midwestern city. Furthermore, this study provided insights into the pedagogical approaches of youth workers co-constructing a community-based educational space with young people. In essence, this project positions youth insights as critical in communal learning that frames youth of color in humanizing ways.

Author

• CJ Greer, University of Wisconsin - Madison