The Racial Politics of Social Justice Education and Leadership: Perspectives of High School Students of Color

• In Event: Inverting the Leadership Paradigm: Voices of Youth and Parent Leaders for Social Justice

Abstract

Objectives:
This paper highlights high school students’ of color perspectives on the racial politics of social justice education. For two years the students attended a spring semester class focused on social justice education where they wrestled with topics that even teachers and administrators, were still hesitant to directly address. Students in the class also engaged in youth participatory action research (YPAR) to develop solutions for issues that mattered most to them. For this paper, students of color specifically reflect on the level of discomfort they felt when their White classmates and faculty resisted engaging in race-related discussions.

Context, Methods, and Data:
We present data from the 2013 and 2014 spring semesters of the class. Students’ identities closely matched those of the school, as the class was comparatively diverse in terms of race, sexuality, social class, ethnic, ability, and linguistic identities. Borrowing from qualitative case study approaches (Stake, 1978, p. 7) we conducted 200 hours of classroom participant observations and reviewed artifacts. Additionally, two students of color interviewed five of their peers with similar racial identities to capture their school and classroom experiences. We used the theoretical framework as an a priori for coding, and our second phase of analysis involved identifying prominent inductive codes. Also, this paper is co-authored by university researchers and high school students.

Theoretical framework:
We used research on racial dialogue and politics to inform the analysis for this study. Dialogue about race, racism and white privilege is difficult, but necessary to achieve equity (deKoven, 2011). However, there is never a “safe space” for engaging racial discussions, as this concept is an ideological myth, and in reality only created so that white people can sidestep racial discussions and feel secure and shielded from the discomfort and anger that is necessary for transformative dialogue about race to occur (Leonardo & Porter, 2010). As such, for this study, students of color discuss ways in which their White peers, teachers, and administrators avoided addressing racism.

Results:
Given race was explicit in the curriculum, students of color had a platform to share their personal experiences with racism. Also, White students benefited from students’ of color willingness to share their personal experiences with racism. Yet, though the class was lauded as a model for social justice education, it was still rife with racial politics. For example, White students were strategic in using their racial privilege to derail racial discussions and resisted examining racism in their YPAR projects. Also, there was no movement from administrators to address racial inequities, and the action that did occur was a superficial, race-neutral approach. Students expressed they were tired of school adults not taking their work seriously.

Significance:
Even radical educators can get caught in the throws of institutionalized structures and practices that subject students to “ideological and economic subordination” instead of positioning them for “possibility” and “empowerment” (Giroux, 1986, p. 49). In order for students to have a voice in school improvement, all stakeholders involved must admit there are racial politics that can block students’ efforts.

Authors

• Anjale DeVawn Welton, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Tiffany Octavia Harris, University of Illinois