Symbolic Violence in Schools: Interrogating Multiple Layers of Violence that Impact Urban Students of Color

• In Event: 153 - Section on Children and Youth Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 04. School Policy and School Reform

Abstract

This paper draws from community violence and youth violence research that establishes the physical and emotional harm low-income youth of color face as a result of criminal violence present in their communities. Beyond observable violence at the individual level (e.g. drive-by shootings), this paper accounts for institutional and structural moments of violence, which may be invisible and subtle, but nevertheless can influence the schooling experiences of urban students of color. Using a school culture theoretical frame, this paper compares the school culture between two urban high schools within the same district, one that is perceived as failing and the other as successful. This paper examines how symbolic violence in schools (SVS), a theoretical construct I develop, can emerge. I define SVS as a mode of thinking that places blame for academic deficiencies and violent behavior on students. SVS includes racialized, gendered, classed, and sexed processes that work together to control, dehumanize, and relegate students of color to the margins. Moreover, SVS denies the web of systems that inflicts violence in the everyday experiences of students on the margin. Relying on observations, collected artifacts, and semi-structured interviews, this paper proposes the conditions that give rise to SVS, what SVS looks like when it emerges, and what conditions make an experience violent. Ultimately, this paper examines how issues of inequitable school resources and zero-tolerance-exclusionary discipline shape school culture, in ways that also allow for SVS to emerge.

Author

• Yanira Madrigal-Garcia, University of California, Davis