Youth Finding Themselves Through Ethnic Studies

• In Event: Youth-Centered Education Through Youth Perspectives on Wellbeing and Futures

Proposal

We are living in regressive times. Rights and battles once won and taken for granted are being stripped. Vaccines that once eradicated diseases are now met with skepticism and disingenuity under the guise “I need to do my own research”. The sanctity of voting has deteriorated with severe voter suppression in conjunction with gerrymandering and the stripping of the Voting Rights Act by an activist conversative Supreme Court. Civic leaders now get to choose their electorate; rather than, voters being able to elect their public servants. Within education, from the CRT manufactured hysteria to the relentless whitewashing of curriculum to removing Diversity, Equity, Inclusion (DEI) offices at major universities to book bans to the constant attacks on LGBTQ+ communities, students are clearly told whose stories, histories and voices matter, and which groups should be silenced, erased.
On June 29, 2023, the Supreme Court effectively ended affirmative action in their ruling to end race-conscious admissions in higher education, while still allowing legacy admission and race-based consideration for military institutions. In her dissent, Justice Brown Jackson critiqued the court for being “lured into interfering with the crucial work…institutions of higher learning are doing to solve America’s real-world problems” as well as noting “that racial diversity in higher education is only worth potentially preserving insofar as it might be needed to prepare Black Americans and other underrepresented minorities for success in the bunker, not the boardroom” (Jackson, 2023). In other words, keep sending BIPOC people to the battlelines and restrict access to higher education and higher paying professions. It is the same ideology that wants BIPOC students to dribble and pass a ball, but not sit in a classroom.
Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to examine the learning experiences of students who took ethnic studies (ES) classes and discuss what they viewed were the benefits of such courses. This paper illustrates the strengths of ethnic studies courses and how they are beneficial to all students, in particular BIPOC and marginalized youth. Even when BIPOC and marginalized students succeed in racist, colonialist, hetero/sexist, classist, ableist, xenophobic and homophobic classroom spaces, they remain disengaged and disconnected. More importantly, this paper unapologetically highlights how to reimagine education when BIPOC and marginalized identities, experiences, histories, and knowledges are prioritized.
As a framework to analyze this project, I utilize Critical Race Theory (CRT), which is multidisciplinary and challenges dominant ideologies by emphasizing experiential knowledge of communities of color by privileging their experiences and conditions, and helping to analyze and reveal the ways in which race, class, gender, and other forms of oppression intersect (Yosso et al., 2009). CRT scholars have long held the value of “experiential knowledge” of BIPOC communities because of their unique experiences, insights, voice and valuing the faces in the bottom (Bell, 1992; Matsuda, 1993). Within ES, storytelling and counterstorytelling foregrounds White supremacy, settler colonialism, erasure, slavery, subjugation of the Southwest, and the othering of Asians. By being unafraid and unapologetic, storytelling and counterstorytelling brings to the forefront genocide, land dispossession, and BIPOC exploitation that explains systemic and structural inequities.
I am utilizing a “critical race methodology”, which focuses on the stories and experiences of students of color (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002) via various of methods of storytelling: family histories, biographies, scenarios, parables, cuentos, testimonios, chronicles, and narratives. Within a critical race methodology, Solórzano & Yosso discuss three types of storytelling such as personal/narrative, other people’s stories/narrative and composite stories/ narratives. The main sources of data for this study were virtual and in-person semi-structured interviews with 40 youth representing different high schools in a large urban school district in the Southwest. Approximately, half the students identified as female and male. Inductive analysis and the constant comparative methods were utilized to systematically code data, develop categories, and address issues of connectedness (Saldana, 2016).
ES courses are affirming spaces where students feel at home, forge strong relationships with their teachers, become community leaders, (re)learn and (re)member ancestral knowledge, (re)cover lost histories, and gain a positive sense of self. As one student shared, ES courses helps you “leave the class with a really different experience and a really new understanding of the world and your history”. For students in ES classrooms, a sense of belonging and school connectedness occurs when their histories, cultures, traditions, ancestral knowledge, and languages are valued. Their teachers created a space for convivencia (Galván, 2001) by creating community with students. Through convivencia, they built relationships with their students as well as shared their vulnerabilities. In doing so, it crystalized student-teacher bonds. They also exemplified critical, authentic care (Sosa-Provencio, 2019; Valenzuela, 2010).
In conclusion, for the majority of BIPOC youth, their experience in schooling, learning and education is often dehumanizing and spirit-murdering (Love, 2019). In contrast, ES classrooms became spaces where students were exposed to their histories, traditions, and ancestral knowledge, nurtured their mind-body-spirit, and stressed humanizing, emancipatory education.

Author

• Shiv Desai, University of New Mexico