Reimagining Community-Based Education Spaces: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Black Youth and Youth Workers Disrupting the Youthwork Paradox

Session Type: Working Group Roundtable

Abstract

This working group roundtable explores the concept of the youthwork paradox, a tension in community-based education spaces that holds the potential to disrupt and reinforce racism and deficit narratives about Black youth and youth workers. Drawing on interdisciplinary perspectives including Afro-pessimism, BlackCrit, Black feminist epistemologies, and YouthCrit, panelists examine how CBES can both reproduce and resist anti-Blackness. Through a moderated discussion and interactive concept mapping, participants will interrogate current practices and envision transformative possibilities that center Black agency, cultural knowledge, literacy development, and leadership. This session aims to generate interdisciplinary dialogue that shares emerging insights, identifies best practices, and creates future lines of inquiry to address the youthwork paradox.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Research Focus on Black Education

Chair

• Kaleb Germinaro, University of Illinois at Chicago

Papers

• Considerations for Everyday Youth Workers: Broadening the Community-Based Education Landscape through Black Community Member Engagement - Virginia Downing, University of Kentucky

• Milwaukee’s Speaking: Youth Voices Shaping the Past, Present, and Future - Carl Greer, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Currents of the Wake: A Critical Interpretive Synthesis of the Youth Work Paradox - Ishmael Miller, Arizona State University

• Worthy by Design: Black Girls Cultivating Love and Civic Memory through Literacy - Barrett Rosser, Morgan State University

Session Organizer

• Ishmael Miller, Arizona State University