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Subverting state violence through the art of hood politics: an exploratory study of Black and Latinx students' critical consciousness and political efficacy

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Subverting state violence through the art of hood politics: an exploratory study of Black and Latinx students' critical consciousness and political efficacy

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Content SUBVERTING STATE VIOLENCE 1
SUBVERTING STATE VIOLENCE THROUGH THE ART OF HOOD POLITICS: AN
EXPLORATORY STUDY OF BLACK AND LATINX STUDENTS’ CRITICAL
CONSCIOUSNESS AND POLITICAL EFFICACY
Kenneth W. Rodgers, Jr.
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC ROSSIER SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF EDUCATION
August 2020
Copyright 2020 Kenneth W. Rodgers, Jr.
SUBVERTING STATE VIOLENCE
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COMMITTEE MEMBERS

Committee Chair: Charles H.F. Davis III, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Clinical Education
University of Southern California

Committee Member: Ange-Marie Hancock Alfaro, Ph.D.
Dean’s Professor of Gender Studies and Professor of Political Science
University of Southern California

Committee Member: Alan Green, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Clinical Education
University of Southern California

SUBVERTING STATE VIOLENCE
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Dedication

This work is dedicated to my father, Kenneth W. Rodgers, Sr., who was the shepherd of my foray
into consciousness, education, and political awareness, and who fostered my gratitude for the
creator, family, culture, and history.

SUBVERTING STATE VIOLENCE
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Table of Contents
Dedication .......................................................................................................................... iii
List of Tables ................................................................................................................... viii
List of Figures .................................................................................................................... ix
Abstract ................................................................................................................................x
CHAPTER ONE: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY .............................................................1
Background of the Problem ...........................................................................................2
State Violence ..........................................................................................................6
Hood Politics ............................................................................................................8
Statement of the Problem .............................................................................................10
Purpose of the Study ....................................................................................................12
Significance of the Study .............................................................................................13
CHAPTER TWO: REVIEW OF LITERATURE ..............................................................15
Ideological Whiteness, Anti-Blackness, and Educational Practice .............................15
Academic Implications of Whiteness & Anti-Blackness .......................................19
K-12 Teacher Demographics & Whiteness in Teacher Education ........................22
Curricula & Standards ............................................................................................24
Civics & Resistance Education Policy, Democracy, and Neoliberalism .....................24
What Kind of Citizen? The Politics of Educating for Democracy ........................25
Educating for Democracy: With or without Social Justice ....................................27
Democracy And Demonstration In The Grey Area of Neoliberalism ...................28
Resistance Education & Neoliberalism .................................................................29
Critical Consciousness as a Theoretical Framework ...................................................32
SUBVERTING STATE VIOLENCE
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Historical Contributors & Development ................................................................32
Paulo Freire ...................................................................................................... 32
Frantz Fanon .................................................................................................... 32
Karl Marx ......................................................................................................... 33
Gloria Anzaldúa ............................................................................................... 35
Saidiya Hartman ............................................................................................... 37
James Baldwin ................................................................................................. 37
Operationalization ..................................................................................................39
Political Efficacy as a Theoretical Framework ............................................................41
Intersectionality as an Analytical Framework .............................................................45
Domination and Resistance as Objects of Investigation: Unpacking the Matrix
of Domination Framework ............................................................................... 47
Tools for Analyzing Power Relations: The Domains-of-Power Framework ... 48
Collective Political Behavior and the Politics of Community ......................... 48
CHAPTER THREE: METHODOLOGY ..........................................................................50
Methodology ................................................................................................................50
Data Collection and Analysis Procedures ....................................................................53
Participant Information ................................................................................................54
Participant Interviews ............................................................................................56
Data Analysis .........................................................................................................57
Validity, Rigor, and Trustworthiness ......................................................................59
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Researcher Positionality .........................................................................................61
CHAPTER FOUR: CRITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS FINDINGS ....................................62
Individual Identity & Societal Outlook ........................................................................63
Background & History ...........................................................................................67
Gender Identity ......................................................................................................71
Religion ..................................................................................................................72
Educational Experiences & Societal Outlook ..............................................................74
Curriculum .............................................................................................................79
Individuality ...........................................................................................................84
School Violence .....................................................................................................86
CHAPTER FIVE: POLITICAL EFFICACY FINDINGS .................................................89
School Organizations & Affiliations ...........................................................................93
School Protests, Walk-Outs, and Sit-Ins ..............................................................100
Home, Family & Friends ...........................................................................................104
Societal Issues & Causes ...........................................................................................109
Social Media ........................................................................................................114
Consequences & The Future ......................................................................................117
CHAPTER SIX: DISCUSSION ......................................................................................122
Discussion of the Findings .........................................................................................122
Paradigm Intersectionality & Matrix of Domination Framework .............................123
Critical Consciousness Development ........................................................................125
Displays of Political Efficacy ....................................................................................127
Implications for Practice ............................................................................................129
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Future Research .........................................................................................................131
Conclusion .................................................................................................................132
Closing .......................................................................................................................134
Appendix A ......................................................................................................................148

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List of Tables
Table 1: Kinds of Citizens ………………………………………………………………….26
Table 2: Principles, Practices, and Outcomes of Social Justice Youth Development……44/45
Table 3: Participant Self-Stated Identities …………………………………………………55

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List of Figures

Figure A: Paradigm Intersectionality……....………………………………………………….47
Figure B: Geographic Representation of Participants’ Zip Codes……………………………56

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Abstract

This qualitative study examines the experiences of Black and Latinx youth, the relationship
between their critical consciousness development and political efficacy, and their continual
subversion of state violence. The academic literature has predominately focused on critical
consciousness solely as theorized by Freire, often interpreted through neoliberal entities and
paradigms, thereby minimizing its socialist, anti-colonial, anti-capitalist theoretical origin. The
literature has also gauged political efficacy primarily through traditional metrics of civic
engagement and voting that do not traditionally account for varying displays of organizing,
activism, intentional non-voting, and other forms of resistance. The study investigated systems of
power that converge to shape formal and informal educational experiences of the participants and
capture the ways that they developed their critical consciousness and political attitudes,
behaviors, and beliefs. As a result of 8 in-depth interviews and analyses of Black and Latinx
youth (ages 17-19), snapshots emerged that allowed participants to foreground their experiences
and construct meaning making of their worldviews. The findings of the study reveal the complex
nature of critical consciousness development for Black and Latinx youth and serve as a model
for utilizing critical consciousness and political efficacy as essential frameworks for future study
and analyses. The findings add to the limited literature on the experiences of Black and Latinx
youth concerning the system of education and its relation to critical consciousness development,
political identity formation, and political efficacy. This study aimed to amplify the voices of
Black and Latinx youth in a manner that acknowledges their humanity and agency.

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I remember you was conflicted
Misusing your influence
Sometimes I did the same
Abusing my power full of resentment
Resentment that turned into a deep depression
Found myself screaming in a hotel room
I didn't want to self-destruct
The evils of Lucy was all around me
So I went running for answers
Until I came home
But that didn't stop survivors guilt
Going back and forth, trying to convince myself the stripes I earned
Or maybe how A-1 my foundation was
But while my loved ones was fighting a continuous war back in the city
I was entering a new one
-Hood Politics, Kendrick Lamar, 2015

Hood Politics: Institutionalized, Lying in the White House and getting high, Wardell Milan, 2020
SUBVERTING STATE VIOLENCE 1

CHAPTER ONE: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY

Know whence you came. If you know whence you came, there is really no limit to where
you can go.
-James Baldwin, A Letter To My Nephew, 1962
In My Dungeon Shook, an open letter James Baldwin (1962) wrote to his nephew, Baldwin
emphasized the need to harbor and incorporate a working socio-historical and critical
consciousness framework as a precursor to the manifestation of a future without limitations. The
turbulence of 1960’s America had an astounding impact on the lives of minoritized Black and
brown folx. In an effort to provide nuance and context to this lived existence, Baldwin
encouraged his Black nephew to resist the conditions forced upon his community by the state in
pursuit of the illusion of safety. Baldwin chronicled white America’s positioning of Black
inferiority as a result of being trapped in a history they do not understand. He implored his
nephew to embody radical self-love, understand and harness lessons from history and ancestry,
and to case fleeing from reality as a precursor to changing it.
Black and Latinx youth in the United States continue to live, work, love, resist, learn, disrupt,
and die in a society that does not prioritize their history and humanity. Often relegated and
constrained by stigmas of violence, poverty, and presumed ignorance (Cammarota, Ginwright, &
Noguera, 2006; Love, 2019), these youth face incredible interpersonal and structural challenges
both within and apart from an educational system that actively attempts to stifle their agency.
However, historical precedent and contemporary realities have routinely exposed these recycled
myths throughout school and society. Nevertheless, and despite consistent challenges, Black and
Latinx youth have maintained a profound sense of resistance, awareness, and agency. These
youth have managed to develop an identity within vacuous social and academic structures
SUBVERTING STATE VIOLENCE
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founded on a model that does not prioritize their sense of belonging, intellectual development, or
political efficacy (Cammarota, Ginwright, & Noguera, 2006; Giroux, 2008).
Freire (1970; 2000) writes that all education is political and that teaching is never a
neutral act. The implications of this sentiment suggest both formal and informal educational
experiences may either aid or inhibit the critical consciousness development of Black and Latinx
youth. Fanon (1963) reminds us that what matters is not to simply know the world, but to change
it. Black and Latinx youth have always engaged in efforts to change this world, through various
means, even if they are not traditionally measured and aligned according to hegemonic ruling
class standards.
This study will explore the critical consciousness development and political efficacy of
Black and Latinx youth. The study also seeks to investigate any potential connections between
critical consciousness and political efficacy since the terms are not often connected in scholarly
research. The examination of how converging systems of power shape the educational
experiences of Black and Latinx students will contribute contextual qualities and nuance to what
is already known.
Background of the Problem
The public education system in the United States is rooted in and has evolved from the
perspective of hegemonic whiteness (i.e., dominant white culture (Casey, 2016; Haviland, 2008;
Matias, 2016). This perspective has developed through a continuum of exclusion, segregation,
and the ongoing myth of meritocracy. The impact of this continuum permeates everything from
neighborhood zoning and school locations, school buildings, textbooks and authors, racial and
ethnic demographics (teachers, staff, students, etc.), to the overall curriculum, quality, and
educational experience of minoritized students (Casey, 2016).
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The U.S. education system, and educators complicit in the system, have contributed to
legally sanctioned educational harm and violence rooted in colonialism and white supremacy
(Matias & Zembylas, 2014). Minoritized young people experience trauma through systemic
invisibility within the education system (Gabel, 2001). Communities that have been historically
marginalized constantly face educational issues concerning social and bodily exposure, course
tracking, cultural erasure, and development of their critical consciousness (Sosa-Provencio,
Sheahan, Desai, & Secatero, (2018).
Although Baldwin wrote his letter in response to the brutal experience of Black people in
the United States, the sentiment rings true for other racially minoritized groups. As Chavez and
Dibrito (1999) posit, “racial and ethnic identity are critical parts of the overall framework of
individual and collective identity…Racial and ethnic identity can affect the relationship with
learning that individuals have in their learning environments” (p.39). Chavez and Dibrito (1999)
also take the position that white ethnic groups have experienced learning relative to their specific
cultural norms and have not learned multiculturalism. Because of this they are “more likely to
struggle in multicultural environments” (p.45). This is alarming, in part, because the United
States is a “multicultural” environment consisting of many ethnic cultures and racial enclaves.
Inversely, minoritized students have learned to exist in many racially and ethnically
environments, but will continue to struggle as a result of a white-normed education (Chavez &
Dibrito, 1999). Smalls (2018) furthers this argument, warning that Black lives will continually be
shaped by institutional violence as long as conversations (and resulting practices) between
ideological and global structures neutralize and mask whiteness.
Baldwin invokes an urgent call-to-action for socio-historical discovery as a process to
reject the perilous mindset consequential to the acceptance of mediocrity. For marginalized
SUBVERTING STATE VIOLENCE
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adolescents of color, this critical consciousness can directly influence the development of their
political efficacy and critical action. The systemic issues faced by these students can constrain
their agency and participation in broader societal and political institutions (Diemer & Rapa,
2016).
The political efficacy of Black and Latinx youth is understudied and often situated within
a field of general “youth” voting and civic engagement research. Condon & Holleque (2013),
Debellios (2009), Kahne & Westheimer (2006), Williams, Myers, Hill, & Ratliff (2013) have all
researched youth civic engagement, but have not utilized critical consciousness as a primary
pathway towards the actualization of youth political efficacy. Additional research concerning the
political efficacy, and/or critical consciousness of Black and Latinx youth is also often lacks
intersectional analysis. The integration of an intersectional framework and understanding
complicates the scope of ontologically being Black and/or Latinx. A product of Black feminist
scholarship, Intersectionality resists the notion that identities are unified and exist individually.
Specifically, intersectionality derives that the relationship between individuals and their
oppression must be examined to truly grasp the varying existent experiences, perspectives, and
relationships to interlocking structures and systems of power (Carbado, Crenshaw, Mays, &
Tomlinson, 2013; Cho, Crenshaw, & McCall, 2013; Crenshaw, 1991). Intersectionality frames
race, gender, sexual orientation, and class as analytical categories, as opposed to a mere
repository of identities, to avoid identity-based policy solutions and hold institutions accountable
for their role in shaping politics (Hancock, 2011; Hancock, 2016). Dhamoon (2011) writes,
…consideration when deploying an intersectional type research paradigm is how
to analyze the complexity of subject formations, differences, and vehicles of
power…An intersectional-type framework starts from the premise that each
SUBVERTING STATE VIOLENCE
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process of differentiation and system domination needs each other to function
(p.235).
This is relative to the connections between broader systems of oppression (e.g.,
capitalism, imperialism, and patriarchy) and political/governmental decisions that
materially impact the everyday lives of a nation’s residents.
Although the United States embodies a long history of political activism in response to its
oppressive actions, Giroux (2018) characterizes the mobilization of young people as particularly
prominent under the presidency of Donald Trump -- a presidency which he claims has
contributed to the escalation of political and educational tyranny. Young people have increased
access to digital media and exposure to relevant news and information has contributed to
increased turnout (Moeller, Kuhne, & De Vreese, 2018). Partially responding to violent acts of
domestic white supremacist terrorism, students have mobilized across the country (Giroux,
2018). For instance, Black and Latinx students left out of the national conversation on gun
violence after the Parkland Massacre, have formed collectives such as Good Kids Mad City
(comprised of students from Chicago, DC, and Baltimore public schools), to demand
investments in youth employment, school funding, mental health, and wrap-around school
services (Francisco, 2018).
Under corporate power, authoritarianism, and neoliberalism, education advances lies, racism,
and assaults on critical consciousness (Giroux, 2018). How can educational and pedagogical
practices be connected to the resurrection of historical memory, new modes of solidarity, a
resurgence of the radical imagination (Giroux, 2018)? How do Black and Latinx students
experience education, politics, and consciousness given the converging systems of power at
work?
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State Violence
The use of state violence in maintaining oppressive systems, constructs, policies, and
practices has been well documented historically. State violence maintains an active function
within many institutions prevalent in the individual, familial, and communal lives navigated by
Black and Latinx youth. This study situates education and the institutions that embody and
uphold it as vessels of state violence. The advocacy and resistance of Black and Latinx youth is
heavily informed by a multitude of experiences in both in and outside of school. Both formal and
informal (experiential/environmental/social) education are considered in the development of
their critical consciousness and political efficacy.
State violence is defined as,
the use of legitimate governmental authority to cause unnecessary harm and suffering to
groups, individuals, and states. State violence stems from the desire of official state actors
to reach the organizational goals of a state or governmental agency. The goals may be
implicit or explicit and are often related to building or preserving hegemony and control,
racial and ethnic exclusivity, imperialism, or facilitating the accumulation of capital or
scarce resource…(Kauzlarich, 2008).
It is important to note that state violence is not solely a matter of legality or criminality as
defined by the legal system. This means that violence committed by the state may not be cited in
the law, but it can be equally or more harmful. In addition, state violence may be intentional, a
result of commission, omission, or negligence. Kauzlarich (2008) writes,
States and their agents may act in a violent way, such as engaging in a war of aggression,
or they may fail to provide equal protection to their citizens, such as when a group is
excluded from services to the point that their well-being is threatened. Both discrete
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physical acts and overarching governmental policies that amount to negligence can have
cumulative effects on victims and their families. In the case of negligence, for instance,
the lack of proper police protection, medical services, and access to quality education are
correlated with other misfortunes such as unnecessary death and injury, high infant
mortality rates, homelessness, and street crime victimization

State violence is more likely to occur when states have economic and political goals to
attain, the technological and human resources to achieve them, and the ability to operate due to
the absence of a knowledgeable public, threat of negative legal responses, and low risks of media
exposure and accountability (Kauzlarich, 2008). Consequently, “scholars have noted that the
ability of states and state agents to operate in secrecy, appeal to higher loyalties, and deny the
extent of victimization are often associated with the decision to engage in violence and
subsequent defense of the activities (Kauzlarich, 2008).”
Systemic violence in education has been studied in various contexts throughout the early
20
th
and 21
st
centuries. When connecting violence in education with administrative practice,
authority, pedagogy, and families, Epp & Watkins (1997) revealed consequences such as reduced
student confidence, lowered academic achievement, high dropout rates, violent use of force,
normalizing child abuse, labeling, the reduction of human subjects to lifeless unidimensional
objects, cultures of silence, romanticized notions of roles and expectations, and sexual and
various other forms of harassment.
Spirit murder is a form of state sanctioned violence that involves “the denial of inclusion,
protection, safety, nurturance, and acceptance because of fixed, yet fluid and moldable, structures
of racism (Love, 2016).” While appearing less visceral, this death of the spirit, is a death that
intends to humiliate, reduce, and destroy (Coates, 2015; Love, 2016).
SUBVERTING STATE VIOLENCE
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The perpetuation of state sanctioned violence in education, whether through
policy, acts, individual agents, negligence, or continued iteration of harmful ideologies, results
from socialization into Western constructs through schools and institutions. Complacency with
this violence increases with matriculation through the American educational system. This results
in a society where Americans with more education are less likely to find interpersonal violence
justifiable, and more likely to believe that state-sanctioned violence is justifiable (Schnabel,
2018). Findings suggest that schooling socializes students into establishment culture, identity,
and interests characterized by libertarianism and authoritarianism, thereby legitimating ruling
authority and sate sanctioned violence (Schnabel, 2018). These findings also suggested that
Black and Latinx Americans are more likely to believe interpersonal violence can be justified but
less likely to believe in necessary war, further supporting the notion that acceptance of state
sanctioned violence is enacted by the dominant ruling class and subsided by standards of
whiteness within American institutions (Schnabel, 2018).
In an effort to subvert the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual violence in all
institutions, and more specifically the system of education, Black and Latinx youth constantly
adapt, struggle, and resist the implications of this violence in an effort to liberate themselves.

Hood Politics
Subverting violence in the name of freedom is a practice with historical roots that date
back hundreds of years. The subversion of state violence through the art of hood politics
reframes this historical subversion within the context of the Black and Latinx youth who
participated in this study. Operationally, I utilize the term hood politics to represent a mix of
study and praxis that acknowledges both informal and formal modes of education that shape the
efficacy and consciousness of Black and Latinx youth in this study. The efforts of subversion are
SUBVERTING STATE VIOLENCE
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a result of societal and educational harm that threatens their humanity and results in resistance
and decolonial efforts.
Frantz Fanon posited that decolonization requires the colonized to take, rather than
accept, the condition of freedom (Roberts, 2004). Fanon (1952/2008) urges political theorists to
move beyond paradigm of instrumentalism writing, “No attempt must be made to encase man,
for it is his destiny to be set free. The body of history does not determine a single one of my
actions. I am my own foundation. And it is going beyond the historical, instrumental hypothesis,
that I will initiate the cycle of my own freedom.”
Saidiya Hartman similarly warns of domains of enclosure, such as the ghetto, where the
inevitable consequence of conditions is death. For Black women, Hartman posits that escaping
domains of enclosure and fleeing organized terms (that make sense of women, worker, student,
citizen etc) display practices of fugitive feminism and exhibit the anarchy of colored girls
(Hartman, 2018). Existing as ungovernable and unassimilable, Black women embody anti-state
practices that characterize them as nothing short of treason (Hartman, 2018).
Fred Moten (2018) captures the complexity of framing enclosures, fugitivity,
Blackness, Fanon, and resistance, writing:
What’s at stake is fugitive movement in and out of the frame, bar, or whatever
externally imposed social logic—a movement of escape in and from pursuit, the
stealth of the stolen that can be said, since it inheres in every closed circle, to
break every enclosure. This fugitive movement is stolen life and its relation to law
is reducible neither to simple interdiction nor bare transgression. Part of what can
be attained in this zone of unattainability, to which the eminently attainable ones
have been relegated, which they occupy but cannot (and refuse to) own, is some
SUBVERTING STATE VIOLENCE
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sense of the fugitive law of movement that makes black social life ungovernable,
that demands a paraontological disruption of the supposed connection between
explanation and resistance (p.142).

Moten (2018) asks, “What’s the relation between explanation and resistance? Who bears
the responsibility of discovering an ontology of, or of discovering for ontology, the ensemble of
political, aesthetic, and philosophical derangements that compose the being that is neither for
itself nor for the other (p.142).”
The desire to engage in this discovery and find another way of being in the world is
essential to the art of hood politics. In the context of this study, ‘hood’ is used as a shortened term
for neighborhood by many participants and myself. It invokes sentiments of community,
struggle, and transcendence. The term ‘hood politics’ signifies fugitivity and the struggle for
freedom endured by Black and Latinx youth in the study who live in various parts of Los
Angeles. The impetus to decolonize and engage in subversive methods of resistance is captured
through the way the youth live and show living. This surfaces in their analytical prowess,
political engagement, acts of protest and resistance, the power in naming, and their desire to
transcend. This is also prevalent in how Black and Latinx youth produce, engage, and curate art
music, and culture.
Statement of the Problem
Although there have been very few studies on youth that center critical consciousness, some
researchers have utilized the theory to develop scales, metrics, and other means of quantifying
the critical consciousness of young people (Diemer & Rapa, 2016; Diemer, Rapa, Park, & Perry,
2017; Watts, Griffith, & Abdul-Adil, 1999). However, critical consciousness research is often
SUBVERTING STATE VIOLENCE
11
sanitized within a neoliberal education structure and this has diluted the theory of practice from
its liberatory origin.
Existing research studying examining whiteness and anti-blackness in education establishes
the perilous impact on the culture and failures of the educational system (Dumas, 2015; Ladson-
Billings, 2001; Linley, 2017; Milner, H.R., IV , & Howard, T.C., 2013; Picower, B, Pewewardy &
Almeida, 2014; Preston, 2007; and Utt, 2018). This research has thoroughly examined the
consequences of racism and education on Black and Latinx students. What is less known,
however, is the role of Black and Latinx students as political agents. This study will investigate
the political agency of Black and Latinx youth in connection to their critical consciousness.
While previous studies have focused on the implications of racism within education policy,
teacher preparation, student behavior, student learning and testing, and school disciplinary
actions, the role of schools in developing critical consciousness among Black and Latinx students
remains relatively unknown (Craw, 2019). Previous studies did not aim to examine potential
preventions or consequences to the critical consciousness development of students.
Black and Latinx youth are often considered to be uninformed, disengaged, and/or
apolitical (Cammarota, Ginwright, & Noguera, 2006). Viewed as byproducts of unworthy
schools and communities, their political efficacy is consistently measured by whether or not they
participate in electoral politics (i.e., voting and elections). This notion persists, despite evidence
suggesting 50% of all eligible young people (ages 18-29) voted in the 2016 national election and
31% voted in the 2018 midterm election (Youth V oting, 2019). This data shows some of the
highest youth turnout in the last 25 years. However, research exercising this narrow perception of
political engagement and efficacy does not capture the various ways that Black and Latinx youth
experience political life in the United States. For example, alternative displays of political
SUBVERTING STATE VIOLENCE
12
efficacy include activism, intentional non-voting, community service, etc. Additionally,
Ginwright (2010) repositions the ability to care and heal in the face of oppressive systems,
trauma, divestment, and negligence of Black and Latinx communities as a political act
achievable through a strong sense of critical consciousness.
Given the particular sociopolitical moment to which Giroux (2018) has alluded, and the
relative dearth of contemporary research on alternative forms of political engagement and
efficacy, additional research that explores the liberatory development and political praxis of
critical consciousness among Black and Latinx youth is needed. This requires an investigation of
the education system as influenced by ideologies of whiteness and blackness. Political efficacy
research has been limited in scope, especially for students of color. In addition to this, political
efficacy research is rarely connected to critical consciousness. Educators adhere to the claim that
we are educating the future, but research is needed to assess the needs and contributions of all
students. This study questioned what the role of teachers and schools are in the process of critical
consciousness and political development and what to account for when things come in from
outside of class. As members of a society that is heavily politicized, the educational experience
of Black and Latinx students deserves holistic and thorough consideration.
Purpose of the Study
This purpose of this study was to understand the educational experiences of Black and Latinx
youth regarding the relationship between their critical consciousness development (critical
reflection and critical action) and their political efficacy. The study also explored systems of
power that converge to shape the formal and informal educational experiences of Black and
Latinx students, with particular emphasis on the system of education and its continued
maintenance and perpetuation of whiteness and anti-blackness. The theories involved in the
SUBVERTING STATE VIOLENCE
13
explanation and analysis of this study are critical consciousness, political efficacy, and
intersectionality. This study aimed to amplify the voices of Black and Latinx students in a
manner that acknowledges their humanity and agency. The following research questions are
guiding this proposed study:
1. How do Black and Latinx youth perceive the role of their educational experiences in
shaping their political attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs?
a. More specifically, in what ways do Black and Latinx youth perceive how their
own critical consciousness shapes their political attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs?
2. How do Black and Latinx youth describe navigating intersecting systems of oppression in
relation to their political attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs?
Significance of the Study
Previous explanations of the role of critical consciousness, anti-Blackness, and
hegemonic whiteness in education have focused heavily on curriculum and pedagogy. However,
a connection between the development of critical consciousness and the displays political
efficacy for Black and Latinx youth needs to be further explored. Therefore, this qualitative
study will broadly contribute to the growing body of literature related to Black and Latinx youth
education and political and civic engagement. More specifically, this study will contribute
theoretical and practical understanding of the relationship between critical consciousness and
political efficacy for Black and Latinx youth. Furthermore, given the recent resurgence of youth
political engagement and the educational shift towards culturally sustaining (Paris & Alim, 2018)
and decolonial practices in education, this study contextualized the educational experiences of
Black and Latinx K-12 students in the current sociopolitical moment. Lastly, this proposed study
is intended to be used as a means for education practitioners, parents, and policy makers to
SUBVERTING STATE VIOLENCE
14
understand the importance of prioritizing (and continuing) the work of developing critical
consciousness. In particular, this study will situate the pedagogical imperative for developing
critical consciousness as a part of Black and Latinx youth’s broader struggle for their liberation,
from intersecting systems of power within schools and beyond.
Organization of the Proposal
Chapter 1 offered an introduction to the topic and empirical problem with which my
proposed dissertation is concerned. Next, Chapter 2 provides a review of existing research on the
issues embedded within the research questions. More specifically, Chapter 2 focuses on literature
regarding critical consciousness, (hegemonic) whiteness, anti-Blackness, resistance education
and pedagogy, and political efficacy. Critical consciousness theory is also detailed and
operationalized as the guiding theoretical framework, within which political efficacy is discussed
as a conceptual framework. Then, in Chapter 3, I discuss the methodology for the study. This
includes the methodological approach, data collection, and data analysis procedures.

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CHAPTER TWO: REVIEW OF LITERATURE
The literature review for this proposed study will engage four primary areas of research:
racial ideology and educational practice, resistance education and neoliberalism, critical
consciousness, and student political efficacy. The first two areas highlight issues prevalent in the
educational and lived-experiences of Black and Latinx youth. In particular, the literature
concerning the structural impact of whiteness and anti-Blackness on education is explored
through research on education policies, practices, and students. The literature engages with
resistance education in order to establish means by which educators and policy makers have
approached civics education in schools. Critical consciousness functions as the theoretical
framework and works to connect student’s socio-historical development to their agency and
struggle for liberation. Political efficacy serves as the conceptual frame and centers the political
beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors of Black and Latinx youth. Lastly, I explore the use of Paradigm
Intersectionality (Dhamoon, 2011; Hancock, 2011) as a heuristic to help make sense Black and
Latinx students’ political efficacy.
Ideological Whiteness, Anti-Blackness, and Educational Practice
Who we are, our identities, as educators and learners cannot be considered separately
from our histories and our cultures
-Kress, 2008

The American educational system actively functions as an oppressive,
dehumanizing mechanism of control and indoctrination into the American project for Black and
Latinx students. The properties of the educational system, encompassing policy, pedagogy, and
policing, are neither historically nor presently independent from the ideology of white supremacy
and anti-Blackness, the culture of whiteness, and the exploitative nature of capitalism (Casey,
2016; Leonardo & Porter, 2010; Matias, 2016). Scholars and activists have contributed to
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various bodies of work that detail the various ways in which these systems and ideologies have
continued to subjugate black and brown students. The literature relative to this study depicts the
implications of the American education system on racially minoritized student populations. The
influence of our educational system on the emotional, mental, academic, physical, and spiritual
development of Black and Latinx students is historically prevalent and damaging. The critical
consciousness development and political efficacy of these students are influenced by the
education they receive. Racial socialization and the epistemology of whiteness and anti-
Blackness are anchored in education history, policy, and pedagogical practice. It is important to
briefly establish the historical and current condition of American education on Black and Latinx
students as study will attempt to gain an understanding of the degree of influence and how that is
manifested in their political beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors.
White supremacy is a historically-based, institutionally-perpetuated system of
exploitation and oppression of continents, nations and peoples of color by White peoples and
nations of the European continent; for the purpose of maintaining and defending a system of
wealth, power, and privilege (Martinas, 1994). Often utilized as a mechanism of social control,
white supremacy and the practice racialization has fostered and emboldened an alliance between
poor and ruling class white peoples (Pewewardy & Almeida, 2014). The construct of race
emerged in the United States “as a means for reconciling chattel slavery - as well as the
extermination of American Indians - with the ideals of freedom preached by Whites in the new
colonies” (Alexander, 2010, p.23). Baldwin (1984) states:
America became white - the people who, as they claim “settled” the country became
white - because of the necessity of denying the Black subjugation. No community can be
established on so genocidal a lie (p.3).
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In this quote, Baldwin characterizes both the assimilation into hegemonic
whiteness and the underpinning anti-Blackness that propagates white racialization, white
supremacy, and the culture of whiteness. Baldwin then proceeds to position the ascription to
whiteness as a moral choice, given that the premise of “white” as a race is socially constructed
and exists as an attitude, pervasive in our culture. (Kivel, 1996) characterizes whiteness as a
learned behavior that is multidimensional, complex, and systemic. Whiteness dictates that those
in positions of power decide who is racialized as white, therefore whiteness is relational and
fluid. It is maintained systemically largely because it provides a structural advantage in our
society. Whiteness is fundamental to oppression as it often exists in an unconscious state,
especially to those who benefit from it (hooks, 1994). This study’s investigation of Black and
Latinx students will require an analysis of hegemonic whiteness prevalent in their education,
assimilation into white systems, and how that may contribute to their political attitudes, beliefs,
and behaviors.
Multiculturalism and neoliberalism work to maintain white supremacy and continually
recycle antiblackness into academic and educational discourse, as well as enact violence on black
people (Alexander, 2010; Dancy, Edwards, Davis, Royal, & Hill, 2018, Dumas, 2015; Spring,
2010; Utt, 2017). For example, Dumas (2015) stated that education policy is a cite of anti-
Blackness:
Fundamentally, it is an acknowledgment of the long history of Black struggle for
educational opportunity, which is to say a struggle against what has always been (and
continues to be) a struggle against specific anti-Black ideologies, discourses,
representations, (mal)distribution of material resources, and physical and psychic assaults
on Black bodies in schools (p.16).
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Black Critical Race theory positions anti-Blackness as a central component of the socio-
historical, economic, and cultural dimensions of human life and therefore exists in tension with
neoliberal-multicultural imagination (Dumas & ross, 2016). Often disguised at a paternalistic act
of love, anti-Black racism reaffirms white normativity within institutions (Gordon, Menzel,
Shulman, & Syedullah, 2017). Further analysis beyond racism questions the relationship between
Blackness and the possibility of humanity in society (Dumas & ross, 2016).
Afro-pessimism theorizes that Black people exist in a structurally antagonistic
relationship with humanity which removes the possibility of human social recognition (Dumas,
2015). It is important to note that white supremacy and anti-Blackness can also be (and often are)
perpetuated by non-white identifying peoples and groups. The relation to/and acquisition of
power are more readily attainable the further one distances themselves from blackness. This
notion has been reinforced through the myth of meritocracy, assimilation, and Americanness. The
human-ness and citizenship of Black people has never truly been acknowledged in the space
between slavery and our current times. The institutional violence that continues to subjugate
Black people and Black bodies is still an enduring reality of life (Day, 2015; Ladson-Billings
2001). Due to this, afro-pessimists theorize that Black people are unable to attain civil and/or
human rights within the current structure and framework of society (Dumas, 2015; Dumas &
ross, 2016). The systemic implications are inescapable. Wilderson III (2010) likens Black
existence in societal structures to the human need to breathe air in order to sustain life; “it is to
say we must be free of air, while admitting to no other source of breath” (p.338).
The relationship to/with/from whiteness for Latinx and Chicanx people is arguably more
complex given the legal, political, cultural proximity and socialization throughout history.
Bebout (2016) states that critical whiteness studies have been predominantly developed and
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theorized within a Black-white binary and does not necessarily account for other communities of
color. Smith (2006) distinguishes three pillars of white supremacy based on identity and
oppressive tactics; slavery/capitalism, colonization/genocide, and orientalism/war. The pillars
acknowledge that diverse communities are oppressed differently through a system of white
supremacy and that communities of color can participate in the oppression of others through
supporting white supremacy and anti-Blackness of a different pillar. For example, Mexican
Americans have been legally classified as white but are often considered socially non-white,
revealing the potential for both domination and subjugation within each of the three pillars
(Bebout, 2016). When examining the how Black and Latinx youth navigate intersecting systems
of oppression, the three pillars will help to provide a clear analysis of historical connections, as
well as establish any connection to political beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors.
Academic Implications of Whiteness & Anti-Blackness
Teachers and administrators are the stakeholders primarily responsible for student
academic evaluations, placement and sorting. Wanzo reports that Black students are labeled
emotionally disturbed at twice the rate of their white peers and more than twice as likely to be
placed in special education (Wanzo et. al 2014). When examining race as a factor in the
treatment of students, there is evidence that African-American students are subject to differential
treatment from teachers at school. The results of surveyed students which report that teacher
expectations for students was higher for African-American students (3.38) than white students
(3.33), while white students report higher scores on average for teacher fairness and caring (3.02)
to African-American students (2.98) (Hinojosa, 2008).
According to the Department of Education, Black and Latinx students make up 37% of
students in high schools, 27% of students enrolled in at least one AP course, and 17% of students
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receiving a qualifying score of 3 or more on an exam (2014). This problem is magnified when
considering the limited access to schools that offer advanced and honors courses. A quarter of
high schools with the highest percentage of Black and Latinx students do not offer Algebra II; a
third of these schools do not offer chemistry. Fewer than half of American Indian and Native-
Alaskan high school students have access to the full range of math and science courses in their
high school (Department of Education, 2014). This evidence highlights the gender gap and
educational attainment issues in the U.S., which is most dramatic among racial and ethnic
minority groups (Lopez, 2003).
Black students are more likely than their white peers to be suspended, expelled, or
arrested for the same kind of alleged misconduct at school. This is evident in the data stating that
in 2003, Black youth made up 16 percent of the nation’s juvenile population but accounted for
45% of juvenile arrests (Kim, 2010). For these reasons, it is evident that there is a connection
between teacher perception and bias, school/student discipline practices, and legal repercussions
that disproportionately affect Black students.
White educators can resist white supremacy and build an antiracist paradigm by
combating whiteness and its impact on education and pedagogy (Johnson, Rich, & Castelan
Cargile, 2008). White fragility, good intentions, privilege, color blindness, and a deficit
educational and racial ideology all act as barriers to constructing an antiracist education system
(DiAngelo, 2017; Howard, 2017; Johnson, 2006; Linley, 2017; Preston, 2007). This act requires
separation from the individualist/capitalist notion that transcendence is a personal choice and that
educators are somehow separate from the social structures that reproduce harm (Johnson, Rich,
& Castelan Cargile, 2008).
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Duncan-Andrade examines methods that classroom teachers can work with marginalized
student populations of color to improve curriculum and instruction practices. These educators
distinguished themselves as exceptional urban educators through traditional barometers (test
scores), critical pedagogy standards, critical reading of the world and their world, and an
individual collective agency for social change. Findings indicated that these educators operated
from an equitable vantage point, which resulted in successful learning and growth for the
students. Duncan-Andrade suggests that “we can know what makes effective educators. We can
name the characteristics of their practices. We can link those characteristics to increases in
engagement and achievement (Duncan-Andrade, 2007).” This study culminated in the
development of five pillars used in the classrooms of effective urban educators. The pillars are
critically conscious purpose, a sense of duty to students and the community, preparation, Socratic
sensibility, and trust (Duncan-Andrade, 2007). The incorporation of the pillars into the education
of teachers of minoritized students is the objective and primary means of increasing student
achievement.
Is the critical consciousness development of Black and Latinx students hindered by the
hegemonic whiteness present in the American system of education? To what degree does the
institutional violence enacted upon Black and Latinx students determine their political efficacy?
These are some of the epistemological questions that this proposed study intends to explore.
Although whiteness and antiblackness are prominent forces in society and education, it is
important to note that the framing of this study acknowledges that critical consciousness is
developed through formal and non-formal education. The school site is one factor, but family and
life experiences present other influences for how we see the world we live in. This study
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acknowledges the institutional forces at work, but aims not to strip the individual agency away
from Black and Latinx students and people.
K-12 Teacher Demographics & Whiteness in Teacher Education
White students are less than half of the K-12 population, but teacher education programs
turn out 80% majority White teacher cohorts (U.S. Department of Education, 2016). In 2002, the
U.S. teaching force was 82% White. Teacher education programs present social justice and
culturally responsive oriented curricula as part of their missions, visions, and outlook, but teacher
education faculty (including adjunct faculty) are about 78% White (Milner, H.R., IV , & Howard,
T.C., 2013).
Teacher awareness of bias and cultural differences can improve the occurrence of
disproportionately harsh discipline and suspension protocols on African-American students. The
self-reported experiences of high achieving and low achieving Black males can vary according to
the cultural beliefs and biases of the teacher (Davenport, 2009). Specific cultural and contextual
factors may influence teachers’ perceptions, which influence students’ behavior in classrooms.
This may result in teachers perceiving their students with certain biases and preconceived
prejudices (Yarell-Harris, 2003). Recommendations include discussion of racial bias in teacher
preparation programs (as well as in schools) and preparation of white teachers for teaching
students of other races (Bell, 1996).
When contextualizing critical whiteness within education, Matias (2016) argues that
repressed forms of violence will be constant in education since the teaching force, curricula,
policies, and teacher education pipeline are white-dominant and if that is disrupted then white
performative anger, avoidance, guilt, and dismissal can occur.
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The pervasiveness of whiteness functions as a barrier that prevents teachers from
engaging in transformative social action and social-action multicultural education (Haviland,
2008). The critical outlook presented frames three characteristics of whiteness. Whiteness is
powerful yet power-evasive, whiteness uses a wide variety of techniques to maintain its power,
and Whiteness is not monolithic (Havliand, 2008). This research works to breakdown the
privileges associated with Whiteness as a pervasive worldview. Utilizing the term WED “White
Educational Discourse” in the study, Haviland found that white supremacy, race, and racism are
evident in the approach, teaching, and actions of white progressive teachers and teacher
educators (Haviland, 2008). The year-long study collected data directly from teachers in middle
and high schools.
Through a study of 1,275 teachers in two large urban school districts, Sleeter (2017)
found that 95% of teachers said they were familiar with the concept of culturally responsive
pedagogy, but when asked about how they interpreted low achievement, those same teachers
selected factors relative to students and their homes (such as attendance, poverty, and
motivation), as opposed to factors relative to pedagogy. White resistance and fatigue from talking
about race was prevalent among
1
white teacher candidates (Picower, 2006; Sleeter, 2017).

1
I capitalize "Black" because "Blacks, like Asians, Latinos, and other 'minorities',
constitute a specific cultural group and, as such, require denotation as a proper noun" (Crenshaw,
1988, p. 1332 n. 2, citing Mackinnon 1982, p. 516). By the same token, I do not capitalize
"white", which is not a proper noun, since whites do not constitute a specific cultural group.
Also, I use “Black” and “white” out of a dedication to centering the leadership, authority, and
truths of the people I am writing about – particularly when they are marginalized – and in the
United States the Black press and many Black writers use Black and white” (Kapitan, 2016).

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Curricula & Standards
The proportional demographic dominance of white teachers also shapes the curriculum,
pedagogy, and frameworks that maintain hegemonic whiteness within the education system.
State certification policies, such as the California Subject Examination for Teachers (CSET) in
studies found that there are few references to minoritized groups, no references to Latinx people,
and that students with degrees in ethnic studies had trouble passing the CSET (Kohli, 2013). Test
requirements for teachers aid in keeping the teaching profession predominantly white, reinforce
white dominance, and maintain Eurocentric curricula, but do not necessarily serve as a barometer
for good teaching (Sleeter, 2017). A mixed-methods empirical study of social studies textbooks
and standards in California and Texas found that the standard white canon intellectually and
materially privileges and benefits white students, and calls for reform of the curricula and
standards (Utt, 2018).
Civics & Resistance Education Policy, Democracy, and Neoliberalism
In the age of Trump, education has lost its alleged role in cultivating an informed, critical
citizenry capable of participating in and shaping a democratic society

-Giroux, The Public In Peril, 2018

Civics education is a highly-contested issue in the United States. Whether taught
explicitly in government/civics courses or alternatively through various lessons and standards
embedded in social science and history curriculums, perceptions of citizenship, democracy, and
civics have a profound impact of teaching and learning. California has worked to emphasize
civics in education. The California Task Force on K-12 Civic Learning issued the Revitalizing K-
12 Civic Learning Blueprint for Action report in 2014. The objective was to assess the civic
learning landscape and craft recommendations to ensure that all California students gain the
civic knowledge, skills, and values they need to succeed in college, career, and civic life. The
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committee responsible for the support believes that a comprehensive civics education is
necessary to prepare students to participate in our democracy. This section of the literature
review will discover what the effects of the implementation of state civics standards and
curriculum on teachers, students, and their democratic citizenship.
What Kind of Citizen? The Politics of Educating for Democracy
Westheimer and Kahne (2004) have studied the underlying beliefs of policy makers and
educators who have traditionally been in pursuit of programs than increase and improve civic
education. Although the presumed shared goal of policymakers and educators has been to
“strengthen democracy through civic education”, the researchers found that individual
perceptions of citizenship drastically differ. The usage of terms such as patriotism, citizenship,
and democracy are used with a supposed common understanding, but this research works to
provide insight to its various nuances. Historically, the “narrowly and ideologically conservative
conception of citizenship embedded in many current efforts at teaching for democracy reflects
not arbitrary choices but, rather, political choices with political consequences” (Westheimer &
Kahne, 2004).
This literature surmises that perceptions of citizenship in a democratic society can be
categorized into three groups; traditional, progressive, and advanced. Traditionalists focus on the
mechanics of government and traditional social science content. For example, traditionalists
emphasize fundamentals, such as how a bill becomes a law. Progressives also value that
knowledge and perspective, but focus greater efforts in areas concerning civic participation, such
as voting. Advanced citizenship, constitutes elements from both progressives and traditionalists,
but also questions tensions between pluralism and assimilation. In short, the spectrum existent
between traditional and advanced citizenship begins with traditional conservative outlooks on
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education and gradually continues into liberal outlooks that question structural and societal
constructs. The study determined that the personally responsible framework of education is
littered with conflicts between character ideals and democracy (Westheimer & Kahne, 2004).
The findings (Table 1) suggest that programs reflecting participatory citizenship do not develop
students’ abilities to analyze and critique root causes of social problems (Kahne & Bower, 2016).
Curriculum designers must pay specific attention to both participation and justice.
Table 1
Kinds of Citizens

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Educating for Democracy: With or without Social Justice
The debate over the role of education in democratic citizenship education is contentious
and controversial. Carr (2008) and Giroux (2008) pit neo-liberal trends in education against the
interests of progressive movements of historically marginalized groups. This results in the
juxtaposition of one version of education that reinforces competition and capitalism against an
alternative version that takes considers cultural capital and social justice (Carr, 2008).
The findings of the study revealed vast differences between faculty and student
perceptions of democracy in the United States. Faculty members were critical of the electoral
process, voting, financial incentives and politicians, and dissatisfaction with the two primary
parties. Students tended to have a more positive outlook on American democracy. Faculty
members believed that their own educational experience was not democratic, highlighting the
impact of special interest groups and power structures on curriculum and education. When
considering social justice issues, the faculty stated that social justice is important, but that it is
difficult to sustain and practice within American democracy. Students were concerned with
potential indoctrination by their teachers (Carr, 2008).
Carr (2010) concludes that teaching about democracy and social justice requires
educators to create authentic experiences for students to debate and grow. The implications for
teacher practice outlined in the article urge teacher education classrooms to address a variety of
issues. These include the overemphasis on classroom environments as opposed to substance and
purposes, the relationship of curriculum and field studies, and the emphasis on syllabus content.
Teachers should address controversial topics in the classroom as a vehicle for teaching civic
skills and democratic engagement (Kahne & Bower, 2016). Carr states that teachers should
“refuse to take a neutral posture that is antithetical to the needs of the working class” (2008).
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A reframing of teachers as public intellectuals could incite a theoretical shift in education
policy and practice within a democracy and without neoliberal dehumanizing discourse (Mirra
and Morrell (2011). This model advocates for teachers to act as civic agents within with local
communities in an effort of solidarity and collective work to create social change.
Democracy And Demonstration In The Grey Area of Neoliberalism
Neoliberalism can be defined within both capitalism and socio-cultural happenings.
Goddard and Meyers (2011) working definition states that “the ideology of neoliberalism touts a
shrinking governmental role is social affairs, as well as a strict adherence to free market
principles…individuals are now more active in securing themselves against the crime risks of
others and against the risk of their own victimization” (p.653). Chomsky (2017) characterizes the
neoliberal era as one where social solidarity is undermined through policy. West (2017) argues
that neoliberalist ideology is one that advocates for diversifying access to middle-class social
status as opposed to attacking the structures that uphold capitalism itself. Sosa-Provencio argues
that critical consciousness can work to repair the disconnectedness and invisibility minoritized
students often experience within Eurocentric, socially reproductive, market-driven schooling
(Dimer & Rapa, 2016). However, this socio-political action can then be used an instrument for
liberation beyond the neoliberal educational system.
Goddard and Myers (2011) conducted a case study at Free Los Angeles High School, a
school developed for students impacted by criminal justice system. The school was designed to
combat school punishment policies and systemic issues facing Los Angeles Black and Latinx
students. The researchers framed their study in the context of neo-liberalism and
responsibilization. The implementation of these strategies into this community school provides a
self-identified progressive approach for implementing standards, curriculum, and developing
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citizens. Free Los Angeles is a community school developed for students who have been
impacted by the justice system. The school outwardly rejects disciplinary practices that
criminalize students of color. Instead of focusing on rehab interventions and coping, the school
teaches students to analyze social and structural forces behind their life issues and how to change
them through social movement organizing. Ultimately, Free LA attempts to link personal change
and social change.
The case study contains excerpts from various observations and interviews within the
organization. Teachers praised the fact that “everyday curriculum” was not being taught.
Students are taught their own culture and social movement history. This at times intersects with
conflicts and protesting against the education system. Students are encouraged to become
politically active and grow awareness for the power structures impacting their own neighborhood
and lives. The findings of the case study suggest that the failure of mainstream education and
neo-liberal practices provide the foundation for schools like Free LA that disrupt the dominant
educational policy. Goddard and Meyers suggest that community based schools should have
partial control over state policies and that community members may be able to create
democratically run organizations that argue for social change while addressing community needs
(2011).
Resistance Education & Neoliberalism
Schools are responsible for ensuring students have the ability to develop a critical
understanding of themselves and their democratic society. Labaree (2012) identifies the
hypocrisy of the magical belief/expectation that schooling can somehow simultaneously improve
society and promote access by preserving advantage and privilege. The neo-liberal alignment of
education to market values and worker production centers education within a political realm void
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of democracy and reduces education to an instrument of the carceral state that warehouses and
disposes of young people (Giroux, 2018). This alignment allows for the perpetuation of harmful
ideologies and customs with education including, antiblackness, whiteness, patriarchy, albeism,
homophobia, transphobia, sexism, classism, Islamophobia, xenophobia (Love, 2019). Giroux
(2018) poses the following questions given the carceral state of education:
In the present moment, it becomes particularly urgent for educators and concerned
citizens all over the world to protect and enlarge the formative cultures and public
spheres that make democracy possible. The attack on the truth, honesty, and the ethical
imagination, makes it all the more imperative for educators to think dangerously,
especially in societies that appear increasingly amnesiac—that is, countries where forms
of historical, political, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but
celebrated. All of which becomes all the more threatening at a time when a country such
as the United States has tipped over into a mode of authoritarianism that views critical
thought as both a liability and a threat (p.689).

Schools are sites of sociocultural production and of struggle whose goal should be to
establish new discourse that transcends the school walls (Giroux, 2001). In an effort to reposition
schools as battlegrounds for emancipatory interests, Giroux advocates utilizing radical pedagogy
to form a new public sphere that organizes around the material and ideological conditions that
resist oppression (2001).
Abolitionist teaching requires the tearing down of old structures and ways of thinking and
forming new ideas, interactions, and resistance. Abolitionist teaching warns that abolitionist
spaces do not allow whiteness to enter and also do not “spirit-murder” dark children (Love,
2019). This sentiment speaks to the potential emotional, spiritual, and existential ramifications
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that can manifest from harmful educational experiences enacted on black children. Love (2019)
theorizes that abolitionist teaching is not an approach, but a new way of seeing life and the world
while resisting, agitating, and disrupting injustice, with the ultimate goal being freedom.
Body-Soul Rooted Pedagogy works with critical consciousness through six tenets. These
include the development of education as a political construct, the realization of schooling as a
tool for decolonization and empowerment, centering epistemologies/multiliteracies of
marginalized groups, fostering critical frameworks that navigate oppression, engage in social-
action pedagogy, and build hope and well-being. These tenets embody the premise of political
efficacy and critical action (Desai, Sheahan, Sosa-Provencio, & Secatero, 2018).
Buen Vivir/Live Well pedagogy draws heavily on Latin American revolutionary praxis to
address the complication of lived social realities (Jaramillo & Carreon, 2014). Theorized through
a decolonial perspective on collective knowledge and the strengthening of class consciousness,
Buen Vivir pedagogy critiques capitalism and neoliberalism while insisting on radical
questioning and the construction of knowledge through dialogue (Jaramillo & Carreon, 2014).
Sociopolitical development theory (Watts, Griffith, & Abdul-Adil, 1999), Ginwright’s
social justice youth development theory (Ginwright & James, 2002), empowerment theory
(Speer & Peterson, 2000), and Zimmerman’s notion of sociopolitical control (Zimmerman,
RamírezValles, & Maton, 1999; Zimmerman & Zahniser, 1991), also frame how marginalized
people develop and understanding of their social conditions, manage within a construct of socio-
political control, and resist oppression. These pedagogical approaches all work to disrupt the
status quo in education and allow for new possibilities in educational practice.

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Critical Consciousness as a Theoretical Framework
Critical consciousness theory is used as a heuristic in this study in order to help guide the
types of questions asked in the interview. My role as the researcher has worked to make sense of
this theory that may or may not be named by participants. Political efficacy is part of Freire’s
critical consciousness framework; however, the verbiage is not always explicit. Defining and
identifying this concept accurately are essential to the study. The following section will denote
the theorists and theories that have contributed to the nuanced operationalization of critical
consciousness for the purposes of this study.
Historical Contributors & Development
Paulo Freire
Paolo Freire’s theory of critical consciousness functions in two forms. The first form,
critical reflection, requires oppressed groups to analyze their socio-historical development and
social conditions (Freire, 1970/2000). This holistic understanding of one’s existence in society
implores the learner to rigorously question the nature of their lived existence as informed by
societal constructs, expectations, and limitations. The second form, critical action, harnesses the
learning gained from the preceding analysis and utilizes it to actively transform structures that
enact oppression (Freire, 1970/2000). This orientation towards structural social change
undermines the consequence of oppression as perpetual domination.
Frantz Fanon
Freire’s post-Marxist political philosophy informed his writing and his theory. Critical
consciousness theory was inspired through Freire’s study of the Anti-Colonial, Pan-African
Revolutionary, Frantz Fanon. Freire rewrote the Pedagogy of the Oppressed specifically to quote
and incorporate Fanon (Horton & Freire, 1990). Scholars have long debated the specific political
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characterization of Fanon, who engaged heavily with Marxist theory. Both Fanon and Marx
considered revolution as the inevitable outcome of the capitalist system (Forsythe, 1973).
Fanon’s studies included those of Marx, Engles, Lenin, Mao, and Trotsky (Cherki, 2006).
However, Fanon’s utilization of Marxist theory was infused with an analysis and inclusion of
race struggle and anti-blackness as observed through his work as a psychotherapist and his lived
experience as a French West Inidan Black enduring racial subjugation (Forsythe, 1973).
Karl Marx
Marxist theory, developed by Karl Marx, advocates for the self-emancipation of the
proletariat (working class) against the oppression and domination of the bourgeoisie (ruling
class) through revolutionary means and the dismantling of the capitalist state (Comninel, 2019).
Marx categorized this class struggle as inevitable and through an analysis of historical and
dialectical materialism, alienation argues for an economic, social and political dictatorship of the
proletariat between the eradication of capitalism and the establishment of communism (Casey,
2016; Marx & McLellan, 2000). Marx also warned against false consciousness, in which the
proletariat idealistically aligns with the bourgeoisie out of desire for power and wealth (Casey,
2016). There are various interpretations and iterations of Marxism and post-Marxist ideologies
that have been both theorized and practiced since his death by revolutionary leaders of countries,
activists, academics, philosophers, etc. Critical consciousness theory is one of many theories that
evolved out of these interpretations.
Robinson (2000) classified traditional Marxism as a Western construct based on
European society and customs and authored a collection of radical interpretations called Black
Marxism, which draws heavily on the work of Fanon and other revolutionaries of the African
diaspora. Postcolonial theory also channels Fanon in order to escape the limits of imperialism by
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decolonizing consciousness. Go (2018) utilizes postcolonial theory to center de-colonialist
discourse, cultural processes of empire, and the psychological impact of racial hierarchies, which
he claims Marx treated as epiphenomenal.
According to Marx’s alienation theory, the exploitative nature of capitalism extracts more
value from laborers than what they receive in wages (Marx, 1959). Marx describes a process by
which workers are become alienated first from their activity and then from their humanity.
Marx’s approach to alienation theory situates exploitation as a method taking the fruits of labor
from workers and alienation as a method of robbing workers of their being (Hudis, 2015). Fanon
believed racism to be the highest expression of alienation. This approach is more ontological, as
it emphasizes the psychological impact of alienation, as opposed to Marx’s emphasis on
economic impact. In Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon (1952/2008) states:
There is a zone of nonbeing, an extraordinarily sterile and arid region, an incline stripped
bare of every essential from which a genuine new departure can emerge...Man is not only
the potential for self-consciousness or negation. If it be true that consciousness is
transcendental, we must also realize that this transcendence is obsessed with the issue of
love and understanding (p. xii).
Fanon describes dis-alienation as the process of transcending alienation (Hudis, 2015).
Fanon frames this transcendence as a possibility through the development of self-consciousness,
understanding, and ultimately, love. The inclusion of radical love and consciousness as a
foundational part of liberation is why Fanon is often politically characterized as a Marxist
Humanist. It is in this humanist spirit that Fanon coins the French term ‘conscienciser’ when he
urges that the oppressed ‘consciousnessize’ [verb] their unconscious and enact social change
(Fanon, 1952/2008).
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W.E.B. Du Bois famously used the term double-consciousness to describe the feeling of
his identity being segmented into different parts, thereby causing disharmony (Du Bois,
1903/2007). This tendency to view oneself through others’ eyes depicts Du Bois’ experience of
living as a Black American. Fanon recognizes this double consciousness as a problem for victims
of colonialism, but advocated for the radical solution of transcendental ‘conscienciser’ as part of
the remedy in the struggle for liberation.
Freire’s adoption of Fanon’s ‘conscienciser’ appears in Pedagogy of the Oppressed as the
Portugese term ‘conscientização’, or the process to raise somebody’s awareness (Kress & Lake,
2013). Freire (1970) states:
Conscientization refers to the process in which men, not as recipients, but as
knowing subjects, achieve a deepening awareness both of the socio-cultural
reality which shapes their lives and of their capacity to transform that reality
(p.27).
Freire cautions that one should not simply view critical consciousness as an increase in
awareness. Once we realize we are oppressed, we are then obligated to liberate ourselves from
the circumstances of oppression. If this was to merely happen in our minds, the structures would
still continue. Freire distinguishes that critical consciousness is a foundational component of a
process that requires historical commitment to make changes and engage in critical action to
transform the circumstances that cause oppression (Kress & Lake, 2013).
Gloria Anzaldúa
Anzaldúa also wrestled with the double-consciousness she witnessed plaguing mestizas.
Advocating for a “new consciousness” she envisioned mestizas creating new selves and
envisioning the world in a different way (Anzaldúa, 1987). Anzaldua frames the acts of
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resistance to the attempted dehumanization and erase of culture by the hegemonic class as
counter-stance and reactionary. She argues that challenging structural ruling conventions
acquiesces to and reaffirms the oppressed/oppressor paradigm because the reactions are limited
and dependent on the hegemony the people are reacting against (Anzaldúa, 1987). Although the
resistance refutes cultural domination, Anzaldua states that engaging in that constant process is,
“no way of life” (Anzaldua, 1987, p.100). She advocates that to develop new consciousness, one
must relinquish themselves of the binary oppressor/oppressed paradigm and adopt a worldview
that is tolerant of contradictions and ambiguity; one that views from below, above, and around
societal constraints without feeling pressure to explicitly categorize oneself through the dominant
culture’s eyes, thus resisting double consciousness. In an effort to achieve this new
consciousness, the first step must be to take inventory and acknowledge what baggage and
responsibility one has inherited from their ancestors (Anzaldúa, 1987). This necessitates an
honest and thorough look at history and a willingness to be vulnerable in the process of
deconstructing oneself and one’s culture. Anzaldúa (1987) reinforces the two forms (steps) of
critical consciousness and critical action theorized by Freire and describes the inward struggle
that must occur before the change in society:
The struggle is inner: Chicano, indio, American Indian, mojado, mexicano, immigrant
Latino, Anglo in power, working class Anglo, Black, Asian - our psyches resemble the
bordertowns and are populated by the same people. The struggle has always been inner,
and is played out in the outer terrains. Awareness of our situation must come before inner
changes, which in turn come before changes in society. Nothing happens in the "real"
world unless it first happens in the images in our heads (p.109).

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Saidiya Hartman
This study is grounded in elements of decolonial, postcolonial, socialist, and Marxist
theory, but accounts for Hartman’s (2018) notion that Black women’s’ radical anti-state struggles
are illegible to grids of Marxism and Black radical historiography. Historically, Marxism looks
for traditional signs of agency, using examples of worker and worker struggles. Hartman
accounts for a consciousness that is embodied through radical acts in daily life. This is
consciousness is not derived from theory and formal education, but arises out of the need for
survival. It is shown in efforts fugitivity, anarchy, and mutual aid and a desire for being
ungovernable and unassimilable (Hartman, 2018).
James Baldwin
Some philosophers have presented that critical consciousness exists as an innate part of
human development that is stifled by societal constraints and expectations placed on children.
Baldwin (1963b) argues that humans are social animals and cannot exist without a society, but
that same society uses the education of children to perpetuate its aims. This exposes a paradox
where the child’s development of consciousness causes the child to examine and question the
very society in which they are being educated. Children are not inherently attuned to the notion
that examining and drawing conclusions based on their surroundings (society) can be dangerous.
For this reason, their critical consciousness is filled with large volumes of unfiltered intake
concerning the world around them. Baldwin believes that most adults allow themselves to be
deceived, and as a consequence, actively deceive their children into believing that these
conclusions are inaccurate as a way to escape from the harsh reality of living in this society
(1963b). The development of critical consciousness is proven to be particularly challenging
because of these influences on the child. Baldwin positions the difficulty of critical
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consciousness development as analogous to discovering oneself to be at war with society and
having no choice but to engage and change it (1963b). When explaining how he would position
teaching children in A Talk To Teachers, Baldwin (1963b) frames the child’s inherent critical
consciousness as something that should be harnessed by society to show them that the world, and
thereby their consciousness, can truly belong to them:
Just as American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful and more terrible
than anything anyone has ever said about it, so is the world larger, more daring, more
beautiful and more terrible, but principally larger – and that it belongs to him. I would
teach him that he doesn’t have to be bound by the expediencies of any given
administration, any given policy, any given morality; that he has the right and the
necessity to examine everything… America is not the world and if America is going to
become a nation, she must find a way – and this child must help her to find a way to use
the tremendous potential and tremendous energy which this child represents. If this
country does not find a way to use that energy, it will be destroyed by that energy (p.5).
If a society is successful in indoctrinating children to abide by its own destructive
constructs, Baldwin cautions that the society is destined for peril. Therefore, it becomes the
responsibility of the conscious individual (and groups) to engage in critical action to examine,
resist, and change society.
The structural nature of neoliberalism, whiteness, capitalism, mass production, and their
impact on our education system have converged to dilute the pedagogical interpretation and
application critical consciousness theory. For example (Diemer & Rapa, 2016) conducted one of
the few existing empirical studies centered around critical consciousness and political efficacy,
but loosely define critical consciousness as a theory to provide marginalized people with agency
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to overcome social constraints. Other studies such as Watts, Griffith, & Abdul-Adil (1999) and
Diemer, Rapa, Park, & Perry (2017) have utilized critical consciousness theory but have
restricted their working definitions solely based on Freire’s interpretation without
acknowledgement of the revolutionary origin.
Critical consciousness theory is not concerned with attaining the illusion of progress
within a capitalist framework. It encourages oppressed people to gain liberation through
transcendence of structures, which means that adapting and navigating existing structures is
neither the premise nor goal. For this reason, it is important to note the political stance of the
authors in order to clearly establish that critical consciousness theory has historically been
embedded within the call for revolution and liberation. For instance, in The Wretched of the
Earth, Fanon (1963) states:
The combat waged by a people for their liberation leads them, depending on the
circumstances, either to reject or to explode the so-called truths sown in their
Consciousness by the colonial regime, military occupation, and economic exploitation.
And only the armed struggle can effectively exorcize these lies about man that
subordinate and literally mutilate the more conscious-minded among us (p.220).
Here, Fanon conveys the gravity by which critical consciousness was theorized,
treasured, and actualized by the philosophers who contributed to shaping the history,
functionality, and popularization of the term. Fanon was not attempting to glorify violence, but
rather highlight the decolonial and liberatory possibility (Leonardo & Porter, 2010).
Operationalization
Freire, Fanon, Anzaldúa, DuBois, Hartman, and Baldwin all adopted versions post-
Marxist, socialist frameworks to derive at their theories of consciousness. Although theoretical in
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nature, their frameworks elicit a supreme liberatory call to action. Du Bois (1903/2007) reveals
the state of double consciousness and the impact that it has on the psyche. Fanon (1952/2008;
1963) contextualizes the transcendent nature of critical consciousness cultivated through radical
love and manifested in political, social, physical, and spiritual revolution. Anzaldúa (1987)
acknowledges ancestral baggage in order to transcend the binary oppressed/oppressor contract
while tolerating the ambiguity that will come as a result of our inner struggle. Baldwin (1963)
empowers us to maintain what is inherent while working to ensure that the adults of our society
do not subject ourselves and our (future) children to social peril. Freire (1970; 1970/2000)
delineates the forms of critical consciousness and critical action while simultaneously providing
a roadmap for pedagogical implementation. He also reminds us that all education is political and
that teaching can never be neutral. In essence, these characterizations reveal how critical
consciousness is operationalized in the methodology and analysis of this study and findings.
The possibilities of critical consciousness are endless. Recent non-direct and nonlinear
extensions include analysis of relationships that can emerge from the chaos of critical reflection
and critical action. Brown’s Emergent Strategy (2017), emphasizes the relationships necessary
towards connecting critical reflection and critical action. She uses the teachings and learnings of
Margaret Wheatley, Grace Lee Boggs, and Octavia Butler to center relationships as critical
connections throughout the process of change. The endurance of chaos can help to facilitate a
vision that binds groups together in the process of liberation. This includes the concept of
dialectical humanism which ushers in a hope that people can adopt a position that they
previously did not agree with (Brown, 2017).
Some theorists have asserted that critical theory is overly optimistic and based in fantasy,
resulting in cruel optimism (Berlant, 2011). Berlant stresses that studying socio-historical
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development of society (developing critical consciousness) fosters a false sense of optimism in
response to oppression (2011). Berlant finds this optimism cruel because it threatens potential
cycles of disappointment and depression when certain expectations are not met.
Within education research, the Critical Consciousness Scale has been used in an attempt
to quantitatively measure marginalized people, analyze their social and political conditions, and
analyze any critical action that may step from it (Diemer, Rapa, Park, & Perry, 2017).
Respondents answered questions using a six-point Likert scale and the results were separated
into three primary areas; critical reflection, perceived inequality, and critical action (Diemer et
al., 2017). Due to the usage of the scale in a purely quantitative manner, qualitative analysis
would aid in better understanding the specifics behind the thinking of the respondents and the
connection to critical consciousness.
Political Efficacy as a Theoretical Framework
Political efficacy is most closely related to critical action as described in Critical
Consciousness theory. After students have honed established a sense critical consciousness, they
move to challenge and transform structures of oppression. Most studies involving political
efficacy do not utilize critical consciousness theory. However, the potential political efficacy,
attitudes, and behaviors of students differ depending on how they see themselves in the world
through a critically conscious lens. This study will review critical consciousness as it relates to
the political efficacy of Black and Latinx youth.
Situated within democratic theory, political efficacy traditionally refers to, “the
expectation that those in positions of authority will be responsive agents with whim citizens can
engage effectively” (Owen, 2016). Bandura (1997) defines efficacy as choices, behaviors,
actions, and persistence to continue a pursuit. (Owen, 2016) reframes Bandura’s definition of
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political efficacy within a political context to the extent to which people believe they can
influence political affairs. The term political efficacy was first used within the study of political
science in 1954 when Campbel (1954) writes:
“...the feeling that individual political action does have, or can have, an impact on the
political process, i.e., that it is worthwhile to perform one's civic duty. It is the feeling that
political and social change is possible, and that the individual citizen can play a part in
bringing about this change” (p.187).
Most discourse is based on the likelihood of voting as a display of civic engagement and
political efficacy. For example, Debellois (2009) found that the highest indicator of voting as an
indicator of political efficacy was volunteerism in high school, as opposed to activism.
Minoritized youth living in urban or inner-city communities appear to be the most disengaged
from political happenings and therefore vote disproportionately less due to increased risk factors
such as being Black, Latinx, immigrant, or growing up in poverty or single-parent household
(Debellis, 2009). Inversely, students with advantaged backgrounds are more likely to become
and remain politically active (Sohl & Arensmeier, 2014). (Condon & Holleque, 2013) analyzed
data from the Children of the National Longitudinal Study of Youth and found that general self-
efficacy has a positive effect on voter turnout, particularly for young people from low
socioeconomic-status families. Politically inexperienced young people base a part of their
political efficacy on observations of older family and community members participation (Condon
& Holleque, 2013; Serek, Lacinoca, & Macek, 2012). For instance,“Youth who contacted a
public official, given money to a candidate or issue, talked with family and friends about a
political issue, worked with a neighborhood on a political issue, and attended a protest or
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demonstration results were more likely to exhibit increased attitudes of political efficacy”
(Williams, Myers, Hill, & Ratliff, 2013).
Concerning political efficacy, schools have a responsibility to help students’ capacity to
engage with politics by enhancing political equality and support for minoritized students. (Sohl
& Arensmeier, 2014) found that classroom and teaching play a larger role in enhancing the
political efficacy of students than the school social environment. (Kahne & Westheimer, 2006)
find that emphasizing efficacy actually promotes a paradox where young people feel active
politically, but do not have a true understanding of governmental policies and market structures
and create social problems.
In a study of Los Angeles Latinx high school students (Bedolla, 2000) found that
(1) All the respondents have a strong ethnic identity but vary in their degree of identification with
the immigrant sectors of their community; (2) most, especially the females, are not interested in
formal politics; (3) the respondents felt voting was important but did not feel confident about
their ability to participate effectively; (4) the more socioeconomically disadvantaged felt more
positive about the community's ability to use non-electoral activities to solve problems.
(Williams, Myers, Hill, & Ratliff, 2013) studied 1,589 youth ages 15-21 and
disaggregated participants into categories of political efficacy, political cynicism, political
alienation, and political participation. Political cynicism denotes a strong distrust of government
and government officials. For example, in 2005, only 28% of California high school seniors
agreed that the government cares about what they and their families need (Kahne & Westheimer,
2006). Political alienation is a specific learning process, where one perceives government
officials negatively due to one’s material conditions which structure social and political reality
(Williams, Myers, Hill, & Ratliff, 2013).
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Ginwright (2002), rationalizes political participation through organizing within a context
of advancing towards an inclusive democracy. Ginwright (2002) developed social justice youth
development (Table 2) as a way to “examine how urban youth contest, challenge, respond to, and
negotiate the use and muse if power in their lives” (p.35).
Table 2
Principles, Practices, and Outcomes of Social Justice Youth Development

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Intersectionality as an Analytical Framework
Paradigm intersectionality is an additional analytical framework that I will use to help
understand how students experience overlapping and intersecting oppressions in addition to their
political attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs. Paradigm intersectionality builds on intersectionality
theory, but it moves us away from the “…sisyphean battle to prove that race, gender, and age
matter in politics…paradigm Intersectionality attempts to incorporate two shifts in understanding
how analytical categories, as social constructions with material effects, can interlock and shape
phenomena (Hancock, 2012).” Holistically, paradigm intersectionality reconstructs how power
is established and organized. Ultimately, it is an analytical framework for issues of social justice.
Paradigm intersectionality provides a shift from a conversation usually surrounding identities
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and acknowledges that the politics surrounding the identities are often catalysts for larger issues.
This lens of intersectionality abandons the “additive-binary-zero-sum calculus” that often
reduces individuals to assessments of privileges, as opposed to disadvantages (Hancock, 2012).
The relationship of Black and Latinx existence to power is an important part of the study and
paradigm intersectionality will aid in a thorough analysis of these dynamics.
Paradigm intersectionality incorporates a five-prong approach to analysis. The prongs are
Categorical Multiplicity, Categorical Intersection, Time Dynamics, Diversity Within, and
Individual-Institutional Relations (Hancock, 2011). Categorical multiplicity acknowledges that
race, gender, class, and sexual orientation are identities that shape each individual life in this
society and can represent various threats to systems of power. Categorical Intersection
recognizes how the categorical multiplicity of an individual results in different experiences of
oppression within systems of power. Time Dynamics refers to the notion that privileged group
membership is fluid and has changed throughout history. It recognizes that minoritized groups
have made progress throughout history. This challenges the defiant ignorance of groups who do
not acknowledge that progress has occurred and of groups with power who do not acknowledge
that some progress is enough or complete (Hancock, 2011). Diversity Within deals with
intersecting categories produce subgroups and different political agendas, and therefore further
exposes power relationships and structures in American politics. Lastly, individual-institutional
interactions positions race, gender, class, and sexual orientation as constructs carried out at
individual, group, and institutional/systemic levels. This comprehensive framework entails a vast
scope of individual existence within systems represented in Figure A (Hancock, 2011). Paradigm
Intersectionality provides an analysis of the critical consciousness development and political
efficacy of Black and Latinx youth that is holistic and pushes beyond interpersonal dynamics.
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Figure A.Paradigm Intersectionality
When considering political efficacy, intersectionality can resist neoliberalism when
coupled with participatory democracy as a means of problem-solving, praxis, and activism
(Collins, 2017). Within this context, Collins (2017) distinguishes multiple options for the use of
intersectional analysis:
Domination and Resistance as Objects of Investigation: Unpacking the Matrix of
Domination Framework
I. Outlines the relationship between intersecting systems of power, domination, and
political resistance. How has political theory understood the concept of domination?
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Colonialism, postcolonialism, imperialism, heteropatriarchy, capitalism,
nationalism, racism, and neocolonialism are historically constituted forms of
political domination. The matrix refers to the cultural, social, or political
environment in which something develops. Intersectional analysis of this matrix
will show how domination and resistance coexist and how this shapes the critical
consciousness and political efficacy of Black and Latinx Youth.
Tools for Analyzing Power Relations: The Domains-of-Power Framework
I. This heuristic device examines intersecting systems of power and resistance to
oppression. The four main elements are structural domain of power (banks, schools,
government agencies, etc.), disciplinary domain of power (rules, public policy,
surveillance), cultural domain of power (social institutions and practices that justify
social inequalities such as social media, journalism, school curriculums), and
interpersonal domain of power (experiences individuals have within intersecting
oppressions.)
Collective Political Behavior and the Politics of Community
I. Community helps to theorize collective behavior. “At its core, people practice
behaviors of submission and resistance to social hierarchy in communal settings of
shared, patterned ideas and practices. Liberal democracies point to individual
citizenship rights as the bedrock of democratic politics, presenting promises of
personal freedom to those who leave the structures of various collectives behind.
Yet social inequality means not only that individuals from oppressed groups cannot
exercise these rights, but they are unlikely to gain these rights without collective
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action (p.27)” The community construct details power relations as people live and
describe them, showing political behavior.
Although there were many ways to apply intersectionality and its various applications
and components as an analytical framework, the analysis of this study utilized the most relevant
and appropriate strategies after data was collected.

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CHAPTER THREE: METHODOLOGY
The previous chapter detailed the theories, terms, and the literature used in the study. This
chapter focuses on the methodology of the study. This phenomenological study examined the
educational experiences of Black and Latinx youth, how those experiences inform their
development of critical consciousness, and the relationship between critical consciousness and
student political efficacy. In addition, the study considered the roles of hegemonic whiteness,
anti-Blackness, and other intersecting systems of power in relation to the critical consciousness
and political efficacy of Black and Latinx youth. This chapter outlines the methodology, sample
population, data collection, and analysis procedures used in the study.
Methodology
This study is rooted in a qualitative approach in which I, as the researcher, employed a
process orientation to see the world in terms of people, situations, events, and processes that
connect how some situations and events influence others (Maxwell, 2013). Maxwell (2013)
outlines the intellectual goals for which qualitative study is suited, which include understanding
meaning of events and experiences; understanding contexts within which participants act and the
influence it has on their actions; understanding the process by which events and actions take
place; identifying unanticipated phenomena, and developing causal explanations. These
processes can aid the generation of results that can be understood by researchers and participants,
helping to improve existing policies and/or programs and engaging in community-based research
(Maxwell, 2013). This process orientation focuses on specific situations and people and
contributes to the intellectual goals of understanding meaning. Put differently, the focus on
process not only engages what and how events and behaviors taking place, but in how
participants make sense of them and how their understanding influences their behavior.
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The study employed a phenomenological perspective in order to capture the participant’s
experience of the world. Phenomenology focuses on descriptions of what people experience and
how they experience what they experience (Patton, 2002). The phenomenological method
focuses on interpretation of events and not solely the events themselves. In my role as the
researcher, I reflected upon my own preconceptions about the data, and attempted to suspend
these in order to focus on grasping the experiential world of the research participant. Transcripts
were coded in considerable detail, with the focus shifting back and forth from the key claims of
the participant, to the researcher's interpretation of the meaning of those claims (Moustakas,
1994).
The aforementioned intellectual goals of qualitative research were well suited for the
study of critical consciousness and political efficacy. In particular, the primary goal of this study
was to understand how Black and Latinx students process orientation operates in relation to their
critical reflection and critical action. To understand the role of these students’ educational
experiences, both in school and its social contexts, demands a rigorous investigation of their
actions, lifeworlds and contexts, and meaning-making. As a secondary goal, the findings from
this study are intended to aid in improving the political education experiences of the Black and
Latinx students through documenting replicable narratives of critically conscious and politically
efficacious youth. Therefore, qualitative methods were best suited for this proposed study.
Narrative Epistemological Scope
Husserl asserted that noetics is a rudimentary science that should be centered around
phenomenological epistemology (Berghofer, 2019). Noetics investigates how beliefs, thoughts,
and intentions affect the physical world. Husserl stated that at its core, phenomenology has to be
epistemology. He writes, “epistemology is the discipline that is supposed to make all scientific
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knowledge reach final evaluation of its definite knowledge content, to make all scientific
knowledge reach ultimate foundation and completion. In this sense, all philosophy depends on
epistemology (Berghofer, 2019).” This study, which was phenomenological in the higher
abstract sense, and also therefore epistemological, worked to identify and construct a meaning
making and holistic understanding of participant worldviews as related their critical
consciousness and political efficacy. In order to do this, some narrative inquiry methods were
utilized in participant interviews. Narrative inquiry is epistemological in character, studying and
centering the lives of individuals (Cresswell, 2014).
The formation of the research questions examined and centered the lives of Black and
Latinx youth. In an effort to “the union in a particular person in a particular place and time of all
that the person has been and undergone in the past and in the past of the tradition which helped to
shape the person” (Connelly & Clandinin, 1987, pp. 131). Wertz (2011) distinguishes that it is
not the parts that are significant in human life, but how the parts are integrated to create a whole,
which is meaning. Key elements of this approach include living, telling, retelling, and reliving
(Clandinin, 2013) in which narrative participants tell their stories. Connelly and Clandinin (2000)
suggest that humans are storytelling organisms who, individually and collectively, lead storied
lives. Thus, the study of narrative is the study of the ways humans experience the world.
Allowing space for some narrative inquiry methods within the study enabled participants to
explore their critical consciousness and political development through the inclusion of stories
and reliving organically within the semi-structured interview protocol.
“Narrative inquiry shares with Marxism an explicit grounding in ontological
commitments as well as the goal of generating scholarship that transforms the ontological
conditions of living” (Clandinin & Rosiek, 2007). Wortham (2000) explored how people can
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construct their life stories against accepted norms to overcome oppression and begin new
directions in their lives and the lives of others. Given the explicit derivative history of critical
consciousness theory and its roots in Fanonian epistemology and practice, the incorporation of
narrative inquiry aspects within the study enhanced the depth of research and methodology.
Research Questions
The following research questions guided the study.
1. How do Black and Latinx youth perceive the role of their educational experiences in
shaping their political attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs?
a. More specifically, in what ways do Black and Latinx youth perceive how their
own critical consciousness shapes their political attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs?
2. How do Black and Latinx youth describe navigating intersecting systems of oppression in
relation to their political attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs?
Data Collection and Analysis Procedures
Participant Selection
The study utilized mixed purposeful sampling. Patton (2002) states that purposeful
sampling requires information-rich cases for in depth studies. Information rich cases allow the
researcher to learn about issues of central importance. Purposeful sampling is also particularly
useful for gaining a greater insight of theoretical concepts, such as critical consciousness.
Purposeful sampling also allows for triangulation, flexibility, and meets multiple needs (Patton,
2002).
Patton (2002) also cautions that qualitative study design should be flexible and emergent
as one may need to adjust the sample as fieldwork unfolds. The sample size for this study was
eight participants. In terms of criteria, all prospective participants were Black and/or Latinx
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youth (ages 17-19) and a student currently or formally enrolled in a high school located in Los
Angeles. I sought individuals who embody the theoretical construct of critical consciousness and
who also wrestle with their political attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs.
Network strategy helped to gain access to participants who fit the criteria for the study
(Maxwell, 2013). Utilizing qualitative methods, empirical generalizations will not be drawn from
this study. However, information rich studies and cases yield high-quality detailed descriptions,
shared patterns, have significant impact on the development of knowledge, and yield critical
information about critical cases (Patton, 2002).
Participant Information
This study employed a semi-structured interview protocol (see appendix __) in order to
collect qualitative data. This process yielded a diverse data set composed of the various lived
experiences contextualized by the participants. The participants were comprised of Black and
Latinx students between the ages of 17-19 in Los Angeles. They are of various genders,
sexualities, religious affiliations, and schools throughout the city. All participants will be referred
to with pseudonyms in order to maintain their anonymity and confidentiality. The participants
self-identified within a socio-economic range of poor to middle class. However, for factors that
will be explained throughout the findings, the actual income level of their families was generally
lower than described. Three participants identified as cis-women and three identified as cis-men.
One participant identified as non-binary and another as gender-fluid. Four students identify as
straight, one as gay, two as bisexual, and one unidentified. Four identified as Black and four
identified as Latinx. Two participants are non-religious, one is agnostic, two are Christian, one is
Christian (non-practicing), and one was raised by a Christian parent and a Muslim parent, but
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prefers to practice Islam. All participants are United States citizens; however, some have parents
that either are not citizens or have recently obtained citizenship.
Table 3
Participant Self-Stated Identities
Name Gender Sexuality Race Class Religion
Ana Cis-Woman Bisexual Latinx Middle None
Cedric Cis-Man Straight Black Middle Christian
Rafael Cis-man Bisexual Latinx Poor Agnostic
Rodrigo Gender-
Fluid
Gay Latinx Low-Middle None
Shay Cis-Woman Straight Black Low-Income Muslim/Christian
Avery Non-Binary N/A Latinx/Native Low-Income Muslim
Mary Cis-Woman Straight Black Middle Christian
(Baptist)
Kevin Cis-Man Straight Black Low-Middle Christian (non-
practicing)

The participants attended the following public and public-charter high schools: Dr. Maya
Angelou Community, Hamilton, Synergy Quantum Academy, Palisades Charter, and Susan
Miller Dorsey. The schools cover a broader physical distance and enroll students of varying
socio-economic and racial diversity. Student educational experiences differ accordingly and will
be presented in this chapter. Geographically, the participants all live within 10 miles of one
another in the neighborhoods of South Central, Watts, South Robinson, Westchester, and
Crenshaw. Figure B visually shows the geographic zip codes of the participants:
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Figure B. Geographic Representation of Participants’ Zip Codes
Data Collection
Interviews adopted the constructivist model outline by Clandinin & Rosiek (2007). This
requires that the content is co-constructed to maintain intentions of narrators, that identity of
researcher is considered in research design, that power is shared between the researcher and the
narrator (Clandinin & Rosiek, 2007). The methods for the interview process ensured that
participants were selected who represent the population, that interviews, observations, and
conversations were semi structured, and that the analyses were structured and open-ended
(Clandinin & Rosiek, 2007).
Participant Interviews
Patton (2002), states, “We interview people to find out from them those things that we
cannot directly observe”. Qualitative research principally acknowledges the value of the
individual perspective. Interviews provide researchers with an opportunity to delve into
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someone(s) stories to find this meaning. In-person interviews were scheduled with each
participant with a duration of 50-120 minutes. All interviews were audio-recorded, supplemented
with detailed notes taken by the myself (as the researcher,) and transcribed verbatim for
subsequent analysis.
The developments, circumstances, and experiences of the participants helped to ascertain
their evolving critical consciousness and political attitudes. Interpretation of living stories
allowed for questioning, change, tension, and threads (Clandinin & Huber 2010). In order to
adhere to the prescriptions of the mixed phenomenological and narrative approach the interview
process was open and fluctuated between semi-structured questions and participant stories. This
allowed for the greatest flexibility when participants were probed for more information
(Maxwell, 2013). The interview utilized a semi-structured interview protocol to ensure
consistency and empirical focus across participants. Aside from solely providing structure, the
protocol method further allows for building conversations that offer the researcher opportunities
to hone in on certain areas of focus or intrigue with each participant. Guided interview methods
can result in a rich and meaningful process for all participants (Patton, 2002). The gathering of
living stories is emergent and allows the researcher to gain an organic and unfiltered
understanding of the participants’ experiences. Given the age of the participants, for many it was
their first time being professionally interviewed and this interview method presented opportunity
for greater comfort throughout the duration of the interview.
Data Analysis
The key concepts and frameworks for the study determined the interview questions and
the analysis. Critical consciousness, political efficacy, and paradigm intersectionality are
important frameworks to the study. It was necessary to assess how and when stakeholder(s)
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applied this framework when answering the research questions. The identities of all participants
altered their relationship to power and how they negotiated power.
After the interviews were complete, they were transcribed and individually analyzed.
During the interview analysis “it is possible to interpret relations between external (social)
contingencies and internal (individual and self-reflective) experience. Often this includes an
examination not only of the participant’s social experience but also of multiple truths and shifting
identity positions” (Clandinin & Rosiek, 2007). The process of analysis involved piecing
together data, making the invisible apparent, and determining the significance of a variety of
events (Wertz, 2011). The interview data analysis required emplotment, which dictates that the
most representationally foregrounding characteristics from the many events of a life lead towards
ending, resolution, and analysis (Wortham, 2000). The main storylines that emerge were
identified through the use of propositional and subsequent cues as they are embodied in
interactional events. Both the content and narration are important. This methodology involved
the identification of patterns by participants and the analyst. Abstracting between referential and
non-referential cues was also part of the analytical process.
The data was organized according to the principle that the process should be inductive
and comparative (Corbin & Strauss, 2008). The primary method for data analysis involved
engaging with the research questions and making obvious connections between responses from
interviews that may have directly addressed those questions. This organization of raw data into
categories helped to develop A priori codes for the codebook, which were structured using open
coding. After the category construction, categories were named in methods that were responsive
to the research (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). In keeping with phenomenological methodology,
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quotes and metaphors used by participants were used in theme titles or descriptions to further
root the analysis directly in their words (Brocki & Wearden 2006).
Validity, Rigor, and Trustworthiness
Maxwell states that validity, “…refer to the correctness or credibility of a description,
conclusion, explanation, interpretation, or other sort of account…does not imply the existence of
any objective truth” (2013). Acknowledging the validity threat, or ways that the researcher might
be wrong, is important to reconcile at the beginning of the study. The interview questions were
structured with the validity threat in mind to ensure the credibility and trustworthiness of the
study. Researcher bias can be a threat to validity. Researcher bias involves the selecting of data
that is already in alignment with my existing theories, goals, etc. During the data collection and
analysis phase, I extracted and coded the interview data with a lens of impartiality and integrity.
This is similar to the concept of plausibility and lack of plausibility that force the researcher to
examine both logical conclusions and look for patterns that may not be so easily seen (Miles,
Huberman, & Saldaña, 2014).
Lincoln & Guba (1986) formulate that there are other non-technical factors that can
ensure validity. All stakeholders should be empowered at the conclusion of an evaluation and all
ideologies should have a balanced chance of expression (Lincoln & Guba, 1986). In order to
accomplish this, this study incorporated ontological and educational authentication. Educational
authentication implores researchers to not only achieve mature and authentic constructions, but
that they also appreciate the constructions made by others. This demands an increased
understanding of the political and social nuance within the context of the study and its
participants. To fully actualize educational authentication, researchers should offer an
opportunity for gatekeepers to be educated on perspectives and value systems that are present in
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their context. In the context of this study, this will mean engaging with stakeholders in the school
community after completion of the research (Lincoln & Guba, 1986). Ontological authentication,
however, centers on the individual and group raised conscious and experiencing of the world in
pursuit of a more developed construction (Lincoln & Guba, 1986). For this study, ontological
authentication may include enhanced appreciation and/or realization of complexities involved in
the critical consciousness development and political efficacy of the participant and/or researcher
(Lincoln & Guba, 1986).
The trustworthiness of the data is connected to the trustworthiness of the researcher
(Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). Rigor is not only part of the research process, data collection, and
analysis, but it is also inextricably connected to the paradigm that the researcher inherently
brings (or does not bring) to the table. When analyzing data, as the researcher I remained
cognizant that information was filtered through my theoretical position and therefore attempted
to double check work and decisions.
Limitations
The global health crisis of COVID-19, sometimes referred to as the Coronavirus, sparked
in the United States during March of 2020. A state of emergency resulted in national school and
business closures. Although the majority of my data was collected before this, second round
interview could not occur due to the drastic alteration in participant schedules, health, and
wellbeing. My circumstances and responsibility as an educator also increased and shifted
dramatically during this time.
The aim of this study was to be as comprehensive as possible. There were, however,
limitations that arose throughout the course of study. The opportunity to analyze the data and
then engage in second interviews with the participants would have provided for increased
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follow-up and depth of analyses. A more rounded, holistic depiction of participant processing
may have been enhanced if participants were able to potentially photograph, document, and or
journal their experiences, resistance, and political efficacy.
During the interview process, and more specifically the exploration of participant
identities, the mental, emotional, and physical ability and disability status of the participants was
not documented for each participant. Due to the semi-structured protocol, incorporation of
narrative methodology, and inability to engage in second round interviews, follow-up became
infeasible for this study.
Researcher Positionality
This qualitative study will attempt to generate just research, characterized by Fine (2018)
as the investigation of counter-stories, counter-narratives, and counter-evidence to contribute
towards the global movement for justice and collective inquiry. In an effort to achieve this, my
positionality and role as a researcher must be taken into account. My research is not separate
from who I am in relation to the study. Living as a cisgender, able-bodied man, reared by a Black
father and Puerto Rican mother, heavily informs my worldview when studying the constructs of
gender and race. My professional career as a musician and educator affords access to and with
students, peoples, communities, educational institutions, curricula, etc. This has allowed for
rapport and trust building with those stakeholders, but has also honed my scope and paradigm.
My political and ideological orientation as socialist and anti-capitalist shapes my commitment to
research and scholarship that transform the ontological conditions of living. This positions my
research and analysis as an intervention that works to change the material conditions that
underlie oppressive social conditions (Clandinin & Rosiek, 2007).
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CHAPTER FOUR: CRITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS FINDINGS
As discussed in the literature review, political attitudes, behaviors, and efficacy
are all manifestations of consciousness. The theorists referenced in the literature review
established a stage of critical reflection in which one’s socio-historical development and outlook
is developed and interrogated. Through decolonial thought, dis-alienation, and/or the rejection of
false consciousness and/or ancestral baggage, the outcome is an increased awareness. All
participants embarked on different pathways to this awareness raising, but it was a constant and
important part of their own paradigms and foundational to their political attitudes, behaviors, and
efficacy. Therein lies the logic of the usage of critical consciousness as the theoretical framework
for this study. Chapter four and Chapter five engage both research questions but are separated by
themes and particular phenomena of interest.
RQ1 asks how Black and Latinx youth perceive the role of their educational experiences
in shaping their political attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs. More specifically, the question seeks to
ascertain the ways in which Black and Latinx youth perceive how their own critical
consciousness as an artifact of their educational experiences shapes their political attitudes,
behaviors, and beliefs? Research question two asks how Black and Latinx youth describe
navigating intersecting systems of oppression in relation to their political attitudes, behavior, and
beliefs. It became clear throughout the interview process that all participants were making
intentional connections between the trajectory of their critical consciousness development and
their navigation of various systems of oppression. In this chapter, I will discuss my findings
relative to participant critical consciousness development, particularly critical reflection.
Freire’s critical action is the second stage of critical consciousness that focuses on oppressed
folx transforming structures that enact oppression. Findings relative to critical action will be
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discussed in Chapter Five. Chapter Six will focus on the findings concerning political efficacy
(i.e., attitudes, behavior, and beliefs).
In this chapter, findings specifically related to participants’ development of critical
consciousness will be presented and are organized by categorical themes. Findings are separated
into two broad categories, both of which I discuss in relation to participants’ societal outlooks:
individual identity and educational experiences. These categories collectively provide a snapshot
of the major areas of life prevalent in critical consciousness development as well as represent the
areas and spaces where the participants have spent the majority of their physical, mental,
emotional, and spiritual time. The categories of individual identity and educational experiences
also represent the key spaces that inform answers to research questions.
Individual Identity & Societal Outlook
I had to literally shut out that person because it wasn't okay to be that here.

– Avery

A comprehensive understanding of the individual's existence in a society requires that the
individual question the nature of their lived existence and connection with societal constructs
(Freire, 1970/200). This requires introspection into one’s identity formation and positioning.
The participants in my study all engaged in conversations concerning when, where, and
how they first became aware of their identities. Race, gender, and sexual are the identities that
the various participants in my study articulated as most important. For example, all of the Black
participants stated that race was the identity they found most salient. Many of these struggles
stemmed from educational isolation and tokenism as being one of the only Black students in a
classroom. For Black participants in my study, these were reported as their first remembered
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engagements with the systemic prevalence white supremacy, pervasive nature of whiteness, and
anti-Blackness. As Kevin explained, his realization came from viewing class photos:
I learned about being Black really early, probably kindergarten because I was the only
Black person really from my class. I didn't notice it until I saw the pictures because all
my friends were white. Nobody really saw a color until we went on a field trip and I saw
a picture standing next to everybody. Everybody else was white. Anybody else looking at
the group is like everybody is white and I'm the Black.
Similarly, Mary shared her experiences of being a singular representative of her racial
group. However, Mary’s perspective added the extent to which her ability to persevere and
persist despite her loneliness in the classroom, stating, “I was one of the only Black kids. I guess
it taught me to build a thicker skin. It taught me that I am very capable, I just have to work a little
bit harder.” Shay, whom now identifies as Black but is from an immigrant family originally,
echoed her peers. Although her classroom experience is what brought her into contact with the
notion of Blackness as an identity and how having a Black social group would have been helpful
as she navigated primary school:
I knew I was Black. No, I'm not going to start with that. I knew I was African [laughs] by
the household I grew up in. I realized I was Black once I had been to the classroom. I'll
say elementary, I would always be the only Black girl. It's been that way for a long time
until I went to high school. I've realized that me being alone wasn't enough and that I
would've wanted more that looked like me in the classroom and more that looked like me
teaching me. That's when I realized, like, "You're Black.”
Cedric also acknowledged the construction of race and the conflict that exists between his
identity as perceived by hegemonic white culture and institutions, such as the police. A child of
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Belizean immigrant parents, Cedrick identifies as African American or Black racially, and
understands he is perceived as such, but also centers his Belizean cultural heritage. He stated.
“I'm Belizean, but I'm African American. If police officers pulled me over right now, they're
going to class me under African American so I am African American, but at heart I'm Belizean.”
In this way, Cedric alludes to the complexity of racial and ethnic demarcations, in part due the
power the state yields in determining racial identity classifications, even if imprecise or
inaccurate.
For the Latinx participants, their identity salience differed across gender and sexual
categories in which race was not always considered the most prominent for them personally. In
particular, two participants stated gender was most salient, another stated sexuality as their
grounding identity, and only one participant felt race was the identity of which they became most
aware of early in their life. Each Latinx participant offered nuance in understanding that 1) they
are not monolithic, and 2) based on their lived experiences and environments, race and ethnicity
were not always most salient for them.
Ana, whom struggled to affirm her full multi-ethnic heritage, did talk about challenges of
navigating her identity given familial circumstances and the perceived communal prejudices by
Mexicans against Salvadorans. Although her father is Mexican, her mother is Salvadoran. Ana
recalled how she was socialized to internalize intra-communal prejudices as means for
navigating a mostly Mexican cultural environment growing up in Los Angeles,
My dad taught me to suppress my mom's ethnic identity. She's Salvadoran. I am too, but
in the Latino community, people hate Salvadorans, so it's better to say that you're just
full-on Mexican…My dad's Mexican and he was just like, No, just say you're Mexican.
You’re not associated with them because then they're going to hate you or whatever."
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Then I was like, No. I just started embracing that side. I have to embrace who I am and I
can’t hide any part of me.
For Avery, however, gender was at the center of her identity exploration. Having
primarily attended primary school with other students of color, she did not express racialized
isolation, but instead struggled with gender conformity within a cis-hetero-patriarchal
educational structure. Access to social media and the internet in middle school provided an
understanding of transgender teen suicides, which helped her question gender constructs.
Specifically, Avery recalled how their socialization around gender norms and performance
limited their ability to even question who they felt they were destined to be:
You're fed this idea. You're given these genitals and that's what you are. I never knew
that you could challenge that because I felt like if you feel differently in your head and
that's just in your head, but I didn't know that that could be valid until--the internet does a
lot and the internet really brought out those feelings that you're valid, and there's spaces
for you, and so I was really exploring that.
This sense of validity that Avery garnered through exposure empowered them to engage
in the gender transition process when they were in the seventh grade. However, this was abruptly
shortened due to institutional interruptions beyond her control. This, coupled with parental
backlash forced them to internalize and suppress their gender identity. She remembered,
I was actually in the middle of transitioning from female to male in seventh grade, but I
had to flee the city that I was in to escape child services and police trying to get custody
of me. When I moved back here, my mom was not okay with that. I had to go back in the
closet and present as female. I feel like that really stunted the development of sexuality
and my gender. I was really confused for a long time and I really just stopped thinking
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about it, because I had to literally shut out that person because it wasn't okay to be that
here.
Similar to Avery, Rodrigo’s gender and sexuality journey also resulted in various stages
of questioning gender performance, masculinity, and societal influence. Although Rodrigo noted
recognizing an attraction to boys since he was in kindergarten, his sexuality remained closeted
until high school. Like Avery, Rodrigo’s identity exploration was stifled and his closeted status
prolonged due to a combination of home and institutional prejudices and ideations of western
gender norms. When negotiating his gender and sexuality Rodrigo recalled,
I guess I put on this really masculine persona, and even though I wasn't so manly and
macho, but it was definitely more on the masculine side of the gender spectrum. Once I
had done that, it would’ve been difficult to try to come out as gay, because I guess I
associate gay people with effeminacy, being effeminate. I already had all these guy
friends. I remember being young and saying, "Well, I'm going to grow up and be straight,
this is my life?" I would think that. Thankfully, that's not the case, but that is what I
struggled with a lot of the time.
Race, gender, and sexual identity were the most prevalent identities that the participants
recalled grappling with in relationships with family and peer groups. These defining moments
serve as catalysts to the critical consciousness develop of the participants.
Background & History
Being Black has a whole new meaning. This is your background. This is your history.

– Kevin

With age and experience, the perception and solidification of participant’s identities have
influenced the way in which the participants not only label themselves, but in how they build
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socio-historical connections within their worldview. This not only increases awareness but works
towards decolonizing consciousness. Participants begin to center and resist the cultural processes
of empire and the psychological impact of hierarchies that have caused alienation from humanity
(Go, 2018; Marx, 1959).
Rafael engages in this process by purposefully affirming his heritage verbally,
...Latinx, but more importantly Chicanx. I feel recently, I've come to the
conclusion that although I am Latinx, it's important to acknowledge my Mexican roots
and heritage. Whenever I present myself to anyone that's part of the Latinx community, I
try to say that I'm Chicanx to not take that part away from me.
Kevin recalled coming into his Blackness and the urgency to grow an understanding and
love for his history and therefore himself.
As I got older and I started understanding things more and I started hearing things
more, that's when it was like, "I'm Black. I’m going to have to deal with this." Being
black has a whole new meaning. It's not just, Black, that's the color of your skin is Black.
This is your background. This is your history. This is what you've got to be about. You've
got to act this way.
Kevin’s class analysis also progressed to a level of added nuance in factoring
neighborhood dynamics, access to basic needs, and proximity immediate danger. He said,
I would say higher up in the lower class or lower-middle-class because I don't
have money but I have enough to wear. I have a roof over my head. I have a car. I have
food in my stomach. I have clothes. It's not like I'm living at the bottom of the bottom. I
live in Inglewood. I can walk the street at night but I'm not in the trenches where bullets
are coming through my window or anything.
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Kevin was housing insecure for part of his junior year of high school and his
experience with his grandmother and living circumstances served as a foothold for his
consciousness, class analysis, and eventual efficacy.
Then 11th grade came around and my life changed. The lease went up on me and my
dad's apartment. We moved back to my grandma. My grandma and my dad weren't
getting along, so she kicked us both out. I had nothing to do with the issues, but it was-- I
guess I was guilty by affiliation or whatever. She kicked me out too. I like really changed
my perspective on the world a little bit because that was my grandma, so it's like if you're
willing to kick your grandson out like. That helped me learn nobody owes you anything.
No matter who they are or what they can do for you, they don't owe you shit. That's my
grandma. I'm her grandson. I'm homeless, but she don't have to let me stay in her house.
If I didn't go get myself some food, I wasn't eating. If I didn't have a job, ain't got money
and could afford to put clothes on my back, I wasn't going to have no new clothes. It was
just things like that that really helped me to change the way I live and look at the world. I
took my goal-- No I took my dream and put a date on it and made it into a goal. I took my
goals, broke it up into steps and made it a plan. I took my plan and backed it into action
and try to make it into a reality.
This class divide is also prevalent in his long daily school commute from Inglewood to
Pacific Palisades. He stated, “They have money. I'm driving from Inglewood, living in the hood
or whatever and then going and seeing that. You start to see the differences and then you start to
wonder why. Kevin attributes most of his candor to his family’s consistent practice of honesty
and truthfulness. He recalled, I would say it was about all of them [family]. I can't tell you
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exactly who helped me with what but because when I didn't know something I'd ask and they
would tell me the truth. That's the biggest thing. They always told the truth.”
Rafael’s first semester of college provided a window into class and socio-economic
perspectives on money and belonging.
I was always aware of my low-income status. It wasn't until I got here that it was
amplified. 25% of Bucknell's student population is part of the top 1%. There is just a lot
of wealth and a lot of privilege that comes with that wealth that people don't
acknowledge. It wasn't until I was able to interact with those people in class and within
my hall that I was like, "Wow, this is a real thing." When I talk about my household
income with someone who has parents that make over three figures, the reaction on their
faces, it's almost like it's unfathomable for them. That's how I know that people aren't
aware how wealthy they are, and at the same time they're not aware of others and of the
lives of lower income people.
Avery’s socio-historical understanding has developed as they have investigated more
about Native and Mexican history and family background after viewing their father’s tribal
tattoo. They have recently been grappling with the historical violence and genocide enacted upon
Native people. In an effort to connect with other Native people and groups, Avery attended the
Unthanksgiving Alcatraz Celebration and Sunrise Ceremony.
My dad has a tribal tattoo with a significant leaf on it. I always ask him about that, and
he says that a lot of history is erased, a lot of history has been burned, a lot of people
had been killed. There's a couple of things that he knows, and there's a couple of things
that he's proud of. Even though I don't know a lot about it, I'm trying to expand my
knowledge and really live by what he tells me.
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Experiences with peer groups and institutions caused the participants to reconcile their
individual lives experiences with the lives of those they encounter.
Gender Identity
When I hear male and I put myself in that or people identify me as that, it feels very
powerful and I don't want to be that.

– Rodrigo

Rodrigo’s critical consciousness was heavily influenced by the observed relationship and
intersection of gender, sexuality, and power. His understanding of the institutional and systemic
power and the resulting influence on his home and family was captured when discussing the
undocumented status of his family. His consciousness was elevated when he began to observe
that his Mexican cultural identity had structurally oppressive consequences for his family. He
recalled realizing the responsibility and weight of the government when realizing his parents
could not visit his grandparents in Mexico because of their undocumented status.
I was like, "Oh, this is the reality." It was when I realized that my mom couldn't
go see my grandfather, because she was undocumented. That's so messed up. How could
you not see your parents?" I thought that was very inhumane. How couldn't the
government allow that? ...That's when I started I guess identifying more with Latinx, but
realizing the implications of coming from a family like mine.
Rodrigo developed a more rounded perspective on the relationship of gender and began
to identify as gender-fluid a year ago. Structurally, he begins to make the connection between
state power and patriarchy, as relative to his own identity.
Definitely grew up with the binary system, it's like always perpetuated, man,
woman, anything and you still hear it today like he, she. I thought it was either one or the
other. Then once I started learning more about gender and its flexibility, I was like, "This
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is interesting.” Because I guess I've always identified as a male, because it's just a label I
thought I should put into or something, like gay man or something. It was probably a year
ago that I started thinking about it. I learned about the term gender-fluid and I think I
connected with it more, because I do like to cross through the spectrum and I feel I could
identify more with being gender-fluid than male. When I hear male and I put myself in
that or people identify me as that, it feels very powerful and I don't want to be that.”
Rodrigo’s desire to denounce the power associated with cis-heteropatriarchy and
desire follows Andaluza’s (1987) resistance to double consciousness and the notion that
oppressed folx should transcend binary paradigms and model a worldview of ambiguity in order
to achieve a new consciousness.
Religion
What's said in the Bible goes. He's like, I shouldn't get an abortion because It's not my
body, It's not my own.
-Ana

All of the participants grew up in homes with some degree of religious influence.
However, only three currently practice on their own. Their religious upbringing has informed
their worldview and how they resist.
Home dynamics reinforced constructs that caused Ana to begin to analyze the impact and
on her personhood and outlook. Fundamentally religious household practices have shaped Ana’s
sexuality and gender performance expectations, which has caused distress. She reflected,
I'm still afraid of l telling my parents about me potentially being bi or showing an
interest in a woman because of religious associations with it. I don't think I'd have the
heart to tell them…My parents are very like, "You're a woman, do this…”He perpetuates
a lot of toxic masculinity. I told him once as a joke, what would you do if I'm gay, or
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something? He got really mad at me. My dad has a very traditional mindset. It's like
what's said in the Bible goes. He's like, I shouldn't get an abortion because it's not my
body, it's not my own. I think, for him, his rule book is the Bible. He's like, "Whatever the
Bible says goes." I think that's affected my relationship between my parents and me, or
specifically my dad and me because we always clash, because I'm not religious but he is.
Similarly, Rafael felt that his relationship with religion and God was tainted by his family
experience. His parents converted to Christianity when he was in elementary school and he
believes that led to their eventual divorce. He stated, “I felt my relationship with God was ruined
via my interactions with my parents and members of their communities. I do believe in higher
power and I do believe that there is something out there, but I just don't think it's the God that so
many people worship.”
Shay’s father is Muslim and her mother in Christian. She has recently fully
transitioned solely into Islam and this has caused issues in the home, despite her mother
marrying a Muslim man.
He would take me to the mosque a lot and during Ramadan, we'd fast. He taught me how
to pray. He would give me to the women in the mosque and we would pray. We're
separated within the area. That's my Muslim identity...I felt that Islam was the right
religion for me...I felt like the beliefs that I believe in are tied to what Islam teaches
rather than what Christianity teaches.
Avery has recently converted to Islam. They gained exposure through attending Black
Lives Matter meetings as an ally.
I've been going to some of those meetings with her...Some of our friends are
telling me about rejecting this white man's religion. I'm like, wow, that's really deep...I
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just really want to look into it and see if it resonated with me. From what she told me and
from what I'm reading, I really think it is.
Mary’s religious identity informs how she moves through the world. It wasn’t until
recently when Mary realized how growing up in a religious household influenced her,
Religion didn't become something super important to me until the past two years.
Religion teaches you values, morals teaches you to value yourself, so I guess that that's
always played a small part in my identity because that's how I understand the world and
myself.
Cori has attended a Baptist church on 52nd street since he was 12 years old and
summarized his practice briefly and powerfully, “I go to church and pray. That’s all.”
The interpretation of religion and its function in the households of the participants has
functioned as an oppressive force for some and a freeing force for others. The following section
will discuss the participant experiences within the system of education.
Educational Experiences & Societal Outlook
It's always in the back of my mind that I know I'm not being looked at the same,

-Mary

As previously discussed, societal institutions (e.g., schools) uphold and transgress
ideologies prevalent in the dominant culture. Intersectionality investigates interrogates these
ideologies (and structures) as relative to individuals and their unique lived experiences at the
intersection of overlapping systems. Critical consciousness is the theoretical framework for this
study because of the capacity that the theory has to understand the meaning-making process of
our world in the eyes and experience of the participants.
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The system(s) of education is one that all participants have spent the majority of their
lives interacting with. For some participants, particular classes and educators have aided in
crafting participants' critical consciousness. For others, resisting school practices and policies
served as the catalyst for their development. All participants, however, lamented the struggles
prevalent in the U.S. education system and advocated for some version of improvement, change,
and/or abolition. As discussed in Chapter Two, the nature of my study deals with the broader
epistemological questions as extensions of my research questions. Implicitly, their epistemic
concerns question 1) how the critical consciousness development of Black and Latinx students
may be affected by the hegemonic whiteness present in the U.S. education system of education,
and 2) to what degree does the educational violence enacted upon Black and Latinx students
determine their political efficacy (Mustaffa, 2018)?
The findings of student critical consciousness relative to their education and schooling
recognize that the State often enacts violence through the educational institutions and its various
apparatuses. Participant paradigms have been heavily shaped by experiences in schooling and
this section seeks to present those findings.
All participants have experienced marginalization within the school system. For the
participants who attended schools in which they were the racial minority, they faced issues with
race that often went unaddressed by the system and those who maintain it. Kevin, attends a high
school that is predominantly white. Although there are Black students, he is the only one in his
senior AP courses.
It's one thing to be Black, another thing to be the only Black person in the class. Sitting
here, there's other black people, it's normal, but sitting in AP Lit or AP Lang I'm the only
Black person in that class. You see how other people think or little stereotypes that they
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hold. Maybe not consciously but subconsciously and they'll let that be known on
accident.
He recalled an incident that took place in a study group at a white classmate’s house,
Tobey has a pretty nice house like up in the hills somewhere. His house was messy. Hey
Kevin, does this look like a house from the ghetto? “He didn't know he was saying that
but it's like, "What made you ask me and what makes you think I know what a house in
the ghetto looks like? This is what you think of me. You think I'm just some kid from the
ghetto like I just know what any ghetto house looks like. Another time, in AP math class,
a classmate calls Kevin a “nigger.” There is a culture of this going unaddressed at the
school with recourse
Kevin addressed the white student who said it directly,
I was sitting in Math, because the bell had just rung I'm packing my stuff up, talking to
my other friends and this kid is walking out the door to leave and all I hear is "nigger",
but it was kind of like, "What did you just say?". We were walking in the opposite
direction towards each other. I stopped him. I was like "hey." I was like, "I heard what
you said. Don't try to play with me. I heard you. What made you think that was okay? He
was like something, something." I was like, "I don't play that shit." I smacked him. He
was like, "all right bro" and he just walked away. I didn't smack him hard to where I just
smacked the shit out of him. But I smacked him. I couldn't just let him walk away. So
many times students have said something where something should have been done. They
just got looked at funny and they kept on going about their day.
In another classroom experience, Kevin’s non-Black English teacher discussing usage of
what she called “African American vernacular.” The teacher asked if any students speak this way
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and Kevin’s comfortability was intensified as he was the only Black student in the classroom.
Kevin described the dynamics between himself, his teacher, and his classmates,
Of course, I raised my hand like, "Yes, I've used it before." Everybody gave a giggle like,
"Of course, he's the only Black kid." You're the only Black kid, everyone knows I'm the
only Black kid. If anything about race is brought up or anything about slavery or
anything, there's this tension in the room. I can feel it. When certain things are said and it
can be taken one way or another, I feel eyes look at me…If I see too many eyes look at
me. I just mind my business but if it's a couple of eyes, I look back. I remember this kid
looked at me. I looked back at him. I was like, "What?" He didn't know-- He's was like,
"I don't know." He knew what he was doing. I knew what he was doing, but just the fact
that I brought a level of consciousness to it, he didn't know what to do.
Throughout his time at the school high school, Black students have experienced incidents
of white supremacy and anti-blackness. There was one act of violence, where these white
students took a picture of a Black girl, drew a noose around her neck and posted it on Snapchat.
In another act of violence, students carved KKK into a tree.
Kevin: It's nothing like where they're like "fuck you" or anything like that...It's just like
things that you find about or hear about that they're doing behind closed doors and it
makes you look at them differently. Not treat them differently but you just keep that
mental cue, like this is what they're about.
Mary’s experience in high school exposed the harm that can come from authority
silencing her attempt to defend herself in an educational setting. She learned to accept the notion
that there would always be deterrents that make her feel inadequate.
He was very openly Republican. When Trump was elected, he ran around the school
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with a big American flag and had his MAGA hat on. I remember once in class, he said
something that was very disrespectful about Black and brown children and their
opportunities regarding schooling...He was trying to imply that Black and brown students
weren't as intelligent but had the same resources as white students which is just incorrect.
Then I tried to argue with him about it and I was told to be quiet by my teacher. I feel like
that, regarding race, just solidified, "Okay, I'm just going to have to work harder. I'm
capable but there are kids like this who are always going to try to deter me and tell me
that I'm not doing enough or I'm not enough in an educational setting. It's always in the
back of my mind that I know that I'm not being looked at the same. It just pushes me to
go further and like I said to remind myself I can do it. I just have to work harder.
In elementary school, Shay’s isolation built resulted in strong sentiments of anti-
blackness and self-hate. She stated,
Honestly, school taught me to hate my identity. For the longest time, being the only black
girl in class was terrible. It was a terrible experience not having anybody to relate to. had
to prove myself a lot in order for the staff to see in their eyes that I was a "good kid, good
child". That was really traumatizing. The teachers would give very little attention to
people of color in the classrooms. I know usually I'd be the one sitting in the back or I
had to ask to sit in the front or to be moved in the front.
When Shay entered a majority Black high school, her entire experience was different.
They care. [chuckles] The teachers care a lot about me, about our grades, about
the students...I surrounded myself with Black people...Honestly, I feel like I'm
getting the learning that I need. They care about where I'm going. I know all my
teachers' names, they know me, they know about my story. I feel valued
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everywhere. Honestly, they make me feel like I'm going places. They tell me that
every day. They're like walking affirmations. Every single day, they're like, "I'm
proud of you. You're going to make it."...That interaction was completely different
than when I stepped onto campus at John Burroughs [middle school] where it'd be
like, you have to be proper or you had to speak differently, code-switch.
Cori attends school that is majority Latinx, but has a substantial Black student population,
as far as Los Angeles Unified District Schools are considered. Black teacher inaction with issues
concerning Blackness is something he heavily criticized along with the lack of support for Black
teachers.
I don't feel support from them. It's only a couple. I honestly feel like if you're
African-American, African-American students should feel that type of- you
should want to push your culture more than any other culture. You know what I'm
saying? If you're an African-American teacher. That's just how I see it. Not to pick
a side or anything, just when it comes to teaching-wise, I don't care if you're going
to pick a Mexican over me to be the starting point guard...I don't care about that. I
care about teaching-wise. If you're going to be an African-American teacher you
should push the African-American culture more than any of it. That's how I feel.
Curriculum
You have to be careful because you never know if what we're reading is serving greater
hegemonic forces.

-Mary

As expressed in the literature review, political theory espouses that schools enact
domination as cultural domains of power through curriculum, policy, etc. (Collins, 2017). The
preservation of hegemonic whiteness within curriculum, policies, and schooling contributes to
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the maintenance of this cultural domain (Casey, 2017). All of the participants expressed strong
dissent with the content and conditions of learning and schooling. Their methods of resisting the
standards and mandates will be outlined in chapter five. This section will show findings on how
the participants’ critical consciousness aids their analysis of systems of education. This was
particularly evident with participant insight into humanities curricula and pedagogy, school
funding and resources, and school rules and policies.
Mary’s frustration lies with the lack of depth and perspective in high school education.
She questions what and who is left out of the curriculum and content and cautions that students
should be aware of sources and interpretation of knowledge and knowledge production. Mary
believes that the result is that students are not given a proper foundation to function properly in
society.
I think that history is really complex in itself because it's so broad, and there's so much
that goes into it. I think that obviously, in high school, they do have to condense
education. When you have to condense a subject, you have to ask yourself, what is left
out? If I'm talking about the story of Vietnam, and I'm taking stuff out, what am I leaving
out and why and who does that serve? I think that you'll find with a lot of high school
education, they teach you- not the bare minimum, but the bare minimum. We have to be
so careful about where we receive our information from and who it was funneled through
because that definitely changes what is said. You have to be careful because you never
know if what we're reading is serving greater hegemonic forces...What they teach us, I
don't think is enough to really function properly.
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Mary compares her first year of college coursework to high school coursework and this
reinforces her positioning that high school education is inadequate. She provides an example of
how her politics, consciousness, and distrust of government were elevated through this learning.
They teach us the exoskeleton of something that we should know the full thing about.
For example, last semester, I took a class on the politics and culture of the 1960s which
really fired me up. That's really what has me- all this energy to do something because that
class is what taught me like, "It doesn't take a superhero like MLK to come and make a
change. It takes people like you and me who realize there's an issue and speak up against
the issue. That's how change is made. The power is always with the people. Taking that
'60s class, I learned- I was like, "I can't trust the government at all." That's literally- and
it's so crazy because I never thought that school would teach me that, but I'm like, "You're
telling me that we had concentration camps in Vietnam that were called Operation Ranch
Hand. You're telling me that we killed all of their crops. You're telling me there wasn't
just Agent Orange, there was Agent Blue, and Green and all kinds of stuff." The
government literally lied. They lied about our progress in the war.
Rafael expressed similar concerns about the school's role in not preparing students for
society through not providing complete information. He believes internalized whiteness
reinforced through pedagogy can result in students’ susceptibility to further oppression.
I feel like schools-- in some ways, education doesn't actually educate people, and doesn't
give them all the information they need to know to be successful or to interact with other
people successfully. Again, it's just the whitewashed history that's been embedded within
by people of color. That's like making them more susceptible to being oppressed and not
fighting back. In the future, as they [students] grow older and mature, not doing anything
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about it.
Rodrigo attended predominantly Latinx schools his entire life and did not have much
exposure to content relative to his culture. Rodrigo echoes Kress’s (2008) notion that educators
and learners cannot be considered separately from our histories and our cultures. Rodrigo’s
critical consciousness is working to repair the disconnectedness experienced within the
Eurocentric curriculum through interrogation of his assimilation into the American project
(Diemer & Rapa, 2016).
I remember fifth grade still learning about the British and I was like, "Oh, this is cool."
Like we strongly identified as American and now I'm like, "Oh."I don't like how there's
no ethnic studies classes or Chicano studies class at the school. I wish there would be
Chicano study classes all over LA because just the area is very predominantly Latinx and
Chicano. There's an important Chicano history and I think what's important to
be...acknowledged…. Eurocentric. Their curriculum, how it's designed for people and
very colonial...practices like the SAT and standardized testing. Educate more people on
race and teach the other perspectives of history from Black and brown people.
Rodrigo recalls that his AP US History class was one exception to his education
experience. This shows how having teachers of color who are willing to expand beyond
traditional standards and curriculum can help to aid critical consciousness development. When
asked if any classes helped with his identity formation, he responded,
AP US history, definitely. Just because of the topics that we were engaged with, that
had more to do with my identity and my peoples. Well, you would include like Latinx
authors. It was mostly Black and Brown authors, and then the intersectionality scale and
then the gender theme that we went over...I guess that really showed me a new
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perspective and a new outlook on identity.
Kevin’s discontent with his educational experience is also related to societal preparation.
However, he frames his argument from a lack of financial literacy and practicality.
We're learning how to find the area of a cylinder, how to identify an isosceles
triangle, but people are graduating high school, don't know how to pay taxes,
don't know how to write a check, they don't know how to manage their money,
they don't know how to budget. Life skills we literally need, we don't have. We're
learning shit that's really not going to help us in life in general. It's cool to know,
it's cool to have that knowledge, it's cool to be good at geometry or whatever, but
it's shit just really won't apply to life.
Shay has enjoyed her high school, the culture of blackness and acceptance, and the care
she receives from her teachers, despite attending a heavily underfunded school. Although she
thinks the curriculum is interesting, she is frustrated that it does not help her pass AP exams. Utt
(2018) lists one of the implications of institutional racism and curriculum are the material and
intellectual benefits afforded to white students. Shay’s experience exposes the systemic severity
of education, where in specific settings, students may learn engaging and relevant content but
suffer materially from testing structures that remain unchanged.
I feel like it's [curriculum] enough for what they have because our school is really
underfunded. We have books that are ripped up, handed down for like three, four years
ago...I get frustrated because I know what they're teaching is not going to help me pass
the exam. I'm seeing all my other friends, they're getting these new shiny books that are
AP written, helping you pass the AP test, and helping you pass this and stuff. For what
they have and what they're teaching, I think it's working. It's really good. It's a good
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curriculum, I learn sometimes. I get frustrated because I know what they're teaching is
not going to help me pass the exam, because what they have on the exam is what these
other schools are teaching, not what Dorsey is teaching. Sometimes I have to teach
myself. Go home, do the extra work, do the extra practice in order to get the grade that's
equivalent to others, which is completely unfair. I took one AP test, AP World History and
I failed. I don't know why I failed, because although I had a great teacher and she gave
me all-- Other kids passed her class, but then those other kids had to get other resources. I
didn't do the same. I didn't fully do the same. I thought that if I did [get other resources], I
would've aced that. I would've aced the exams.
Individuality
I went to a high school that I feel doesn't value individuals

– Rafael

Rafael believes his high school celebrates individual student success and heroic
individualism and that this overlooks the majority of the student population who is marginalized
and in need of support, resources, and access.
I went to high school that I feel doesn't value individuals. Although they make an effort to
build a community and uplift the people who are being successful, it's at the expense of
the majority of the student population, which isn't doing well, because either they haven't
been given the resources to do well or don't have that motivation, or don't have people
supporting them.
Rafael recognizes the importance of community in supporting one another in a
collaborative manner that is open and respectful to individual paths and happiness.
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It taught me that I need to be grateful for the people I've had in my life, because they're
one of the many reasons why I'm successful or I've been successful this far, and I'm in the
position I am now. Also, not to look down on other people whatever they choose to do,
because I feel like everyone's journey is different, happiness is attained in different ways.
Avery’s understanding of institutional hypocrisy was heightened through experiences
when they were discouraged from voicing concerns for minoritized students.
I think schools say that they're about inclusivity. A lot of people push activism but when
it happens at school, I've noticed that I've been discouraged. I'm fortunately standing up
for mixed or Black students because actually at the beginning of the school year, they
tried to suspend me for reporting police brutality happening to two Black students. They
were being arrested on campus and I recorded the video, I very loudly stated who I was,
what my role is in the student body but also that my role in that moment was as an
activist protecting those two students. The next day, the school psychologist took me out
of class and took me to the assistant principal's office. She took me out for 30 minutes
and at the end of it was like, "You broke a rule by reporting police on campus and you're
also too emotional to be here, so I'm going to send you out." I got out of that gratefully
through my friends at the ACLU. I'm really fortunate to be in the position where I am, I
have two lawyers on speed dial all the time and I know my rights.
In another instance, Avery felt patronized by the principal's response to them speaking out
and protesting around the city. In this interaction, the principal reiterates that the school is not an
institution that will be tolerant of criticism and/or disapproval, thereby reinforcing the power and
domination of the state.
The principal said to me when he was talking about what I was doing, he's like, "I see
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you are making your public comment after school at night. I really love that you are
outspoken and that you talk about something. You know your rights and everything," but
then he also said, "That is where you can do that. This is not the space to do that."
School Violence
You got no idea what's going on that pushes them towards this School-To-Prison
Pipeline, which is a whole route of tragedy.
-Mary

Shay’s is critical of the means by which institutions perpetuate violence and anti-
blackness. She describes the pressure her school places on students to assimilate and through
code-switching and language usage. To her, this comes at the expense of her and her classmate’s
comfortability in spaces.
I feel like Dorsey's a really great school, it's immersed in culture, but as soon as we got
an opportunity to go to like this big college, "Oh, you guys got to act right. You all can't
be doing this, this, this, or that. No cussing, no none of this, no throwing up, nothing."
Like we have to code switch in order to make others feel comfortable, instead of us
being comfortable in their spaces. I feel like code-switching is such an annoying thing.
Why do I have to change the way I speak in order to make you comfortable? Why do I
have to change myself what I've grown up with my own identity in order to make you
feel like, "Okay, I get to have this job," or "I get to have this position." Why does that
have to matter? It's so ignorant.
Shay connects her personal experience to wider practices of discrimination in education
and how that contributes to the school-to-prison pipeline. This analysis of interlocking
systems of expression displays her critical consciousness development.
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I think the school system does a lot with that, like even with the-- I believe it was the
Willful Defiance policy, in which students were suspended for leaving classrooms
willfully. I think that was crazy because-- It will be over something like, "She doesn’t
want to take her scarf off," or "He doesn't want to take his hat off." You have no idea
what's going on under that hat, or head, or scarf. You got no idea what's going on. That
pushes them towards this school-to-prison pipeline, which is a whole route of tragedy...I
think school systems, they unknowingly perpetuate it.
Avery also struggles with institutional policies and expectations regarding the school-to-
prison pipeline and respectability politics.
I am our School's Student Body Vice President. I feel a lot of pressure on me to be
cordial, to be correct, to be respectful but me being who I am for the past-- I've been in
Student Deserve since fifth grade. This has been who I am for like a really long time.
Now being in this new role where it's like, " Avery is part of Student Government, Avery
has to be careful." That's why in the school, I don't think it was that big of a deal, but
school admin thought it was a really big deal when I defied them by reporting police on
campus.
Avery identified school dress code policies that they found to be objectifying and was
removed from her position in student government when addressing their concerns.
I say announcements like three times every week in the morning and are school
just code it like the way it's said, I feel like it really objectifies young Black girls. I
changed it and without writing on it and they told me to off for that. It was just one word
that made the language I think more sensitive and they took me out for it...It was like no
provocative shirt open and then for the young men they make me say something about no
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head rags, durags. I forgot what I did but I changed the word provocative to something
else because I feel that's really objectifying and sexualizing.
Conclusion
As iterated in the literature review, the institutional violence that continues to subjugate
Black people and Black bodies is still an enduring reality of life. This also heavily impacts
Latinx students and their school communities. Fanon positions the transcendence of the
alienation experienced by the participants in the education system as possible through the
development of consciousness and expressions of radical love (Hudis, 2015). The findings show
that the participants display a heavy outpouring of love for their cultures, peers, and
communities. Baldwin (1963b) theorizes that a society uses the education of its children to
achieve its goals and the participants show an unrelenting dedication to continuing their
understanding of this process and a precursor to resistance. Their critical action or resistance to
what was learned through their critical reflection will be explored in chapter five.

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CHAPTER FIVE: POLITICAL EFFICACY FINDINGS
For the purposes of this study, political efficacy was utilized as a theoretical and
conceptual sense-making tool, defined largely by the participants. The operationalization of the
term political efficacy has been expanded to allow for a variety of attitudes, behaviors, and
beliefs that include dissent, intentional non-voting, fugitivity, etc. As discussed in chapter two,
sentiments of political cynicism and political alienation can alter the attitudes, behaviors, and
beliefs of youth. Therefore, the efficacy displayed as a result of these factors ranges widely
through various geographical and ideological landscapes. Participant responses and methods of
resistance differ and are represented across a spectrum ranging from the methods of working
within this system to advance change and equity to advocacy for complete structural dismantling
of systems, ideologies, and practices.
In accordance with RQ2, participant navigation of intersecting systems of oppression in
relation to their political efficacy will be explored in this chapter. As discussed in chapter one,
the socialized acceptance of state violence has been normalized into establishment culture and is
prevalent in all institutions, including education, which functions as a touchpoint for the
convergence and perpetuation of many harmful ideologies. Existing and constantly working to
subvert this reality is something discussed by all participants and takes place at school, at home
(with family), and socially. As discussed in chapter one, Hartman (2018) and Moten’s (2018)
framing of the desire to discover and find another way of being in the world is a fundamental
part of the opalization of the term ‘hood politics’ and in how the participants live and show
living. This is most relative to Freire’s framing of critical action, or the second stage of critical
consciousness that occurs after a solid socio-historical understanding is developed (Williams,
Myers, Hill, & Ratliff, 2013).
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This chapter explores findings concerning the political efficacy of the participants.
Extensions of this efficacy concern the intersecting systems of oppression and the resulting state
violence (re)produced through them. The interviews crafted a composite of the various meanings
of political efficacy as understood and practiced by the participants. This composite incorporates
elements of the intersectional analytical framework outlined in Chapter Two. It is already known
that identities such as race, gender, and age are factors in politics. Intersectionality is not solely
about one’s identity markers but it pushes us to critique power, domination, and its
disproportionate outcome on those most harmed in society. Paradigm intersectionality works to
understand how analytical categories can interlock, shape phenomena, and to ultimately
reconstruct how power is established and organized (Hancock, 2012). Collins’ (2017)
domination frameworks help to examine intersecting systems of oppression and their resistance
to power. The references, quotes, and excerpts utilized in this chapter capture the political
efficacy, resistance, and subversion of state violence exhibited by the participants’ navigation of
intersecting systems of oppression. The sections are organized into displays of this efficacy at
school, within society, and socially with family and friends based on the most salient spaces
students navigate daily.
Voting
As discussed in Chapter Two, political efficacy has traditionally been measured by civic
engagement and voting. Although this study operationalizes political efficacy outside of this
traditional metric, electoral politics still remain a factor in participant discourse and thought
processes. All participants agreed on the importance of voting in local elections. They diverged
when discussing intentional non-voting and on the degree of actualized change that electoral
politics has on our grater society.
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Kevin, for example, wrestled with the paradox of electoral politics as an efficacious
means of engaging in political transformation. Specifically, he questioned whether voting
mattered despite his own belief in its importance. Kevin surmises,
I think it's important, but then again, how much does our vote really count?...I feel like if
I learned more about gov[ernment], it's really is something important to me, of course,
my opinion's going to change. It's going to be most likely, "You should vote. You need to
vote." Until I know enough to really teach somebody and know myself. I'm not going to
speak about it or try to make anybody do anything else.
Similarly, Rodrigo discussed the specific importance of participating in local politics and such
engagement being more immediate toward achieving changes that have an immediate impact:
I would definitely get them to vote for local elections at least or state elections, because
they're much more direct. They're all direct, but those are more direct. I'd be like, "You
have to vote." I would try to persuade them [non-voters] because that will affect them.
Regarding local elections, Avery and Ana shared Rodrigo’s perspective. They also felt very
strongly that the Electoral College should be abolished due to its perceived undermining of the
individual, popular vote. As Ana stated,
For local elections, I think it's important. For the president, I don't think that my vote
even matters because of the electoral college. They're the ones that get the final say.
Usually, most times, they go based off what the popular vote says, but sometimes they go
the other way. Once I turn 18, I don't think I'm going to vote because it might not even go
in my favor.
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Avery and Rafael both are supporters of the V ote at 16 Movement. This movement
advocated that the legal voting age be lowered to 16. Avery feels that they will be strongly
impacted by this Presidential election happening this fall and is frustrated because they won’t be
old enough to vote yet until one month after the election. Avery said, “I'm really scared because I
am impacted. I was impacted by the 2016 election. I feel like I'm going to be impacted by this
election and nothing is in my hands.” Rafael expanded on this notion,
I feel like you should definitely lower the age to 16, like another thing like-- voting laws
are completely bullshit. It just minimizes the number of people of color that are able to
vote, and then definitely influences the elections and it's important…I feel like the major
parties don't have the best interest of people of color in mind at all, or all marginalized
communities. There's no point to me calling myself a Democrat, or Republican, or
whatever. However, I feel like there's some legislation that does, at least in a minimal
way, cater to the needs of some people, so I feel like it's important to vote them.
Avery explained the connection between voting and police brutality on Los Angeles,
If you're a Republican in California or a Democrat in Texas, I feel like you should still
vote next year as your right. but voting for legislation does matter, especially for our Los
Angeles district attorney, Jackie Lacey, she's a black woman. A lot of people have voted
for her, but she has also refused to prosecute killer cops. There have been over 400 cases
of police killing mostly Black, Latinx people and only one cop has been prosecuted.
There's also laws that make it hard for people to sue cops, people to file against cops. It's
really important for people to pay attention to their local elections because that affects a
lot.
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Unlike the other participant’s, Mary was strongly opposed to intentional non-voters.
I feel with that, voting is more than just voting. You having control and acknowledging
that you have some say in what goes on in this country, whether or not it actually does, it
is you acknowledging that you have some control over that. So, I feel like if you don't
vote, purposely, and you think it doesn't help, then you're part of the problem.
School Campus a as Political Incubator
All participants were involved with multiple school clubs and organizations. Not only
were participants active in these spaces, but all were either leaders and/or founders. Participants
were members of student government, student unions, affinity spaces, lobbying groups,
resistance groups, etc. These organizations worked to address a plethora of issues concerning the
safety of students, the resistance of harmful educational policies and practice, teaching and
learning, gender and equality, etc. Participants all acknowledged the significant social and
administrative pushback and hurdles that arose throughout their time in the clubs. Individual acts
of resistance are also accounted for in this section.
School Organizations & Affiliations
We are abolitionists. It's either all or nothing, all or nothing else matters.
-Avery
Kevin stated that the problems with education were not only within his school, but
evident with whiteness and the system of education. He insists that we must move beyond simply
acknowledging that whiteness is a factor and engage in a course of action to decolonize the
curriculum.
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I think education should be different. I don't feel a certain way about my school because I
know it's not only my school specifically, it's a problem in the system. We focus too much
on what the great white men did…We do need to touch on African-American history. We
do need to touch on Latino culture more. It's known, and awareness isn't the problem.
Now it's about action like, "What classes are we going to change or what classes are we
going to add? What class are we going to take away? How can we change the
curriculum?" …White people aren't the only race in the world and white people aren't the
only race that was involved."
In addition to joining his school’s Black Student Union, Kevin worked to found a school
organization to assist Black students with gaining access to resources within a predominately
white school. Kevin also plans to have the group address curriculum with the school
administration.
The purpose is to help Black students to not get lost. If you ask black students at my
school in 12th grade and 11th grade right now about certain classes, they'll have no idea
that those classes are available to them. They have no idea about the resources they have.
It's like, how do we prevent them from getting lost and how do we make sure that they
know they have access to these?
Rodrigo was the leader of the Students Organizing Civic Engagement club at school. The
club worked to educate themselves on electoral politics, specifically regarding charter school
rights.
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It was advocating for different things. One it was I think advocating for charter school
rights, but we would also engage in things like initiatives, like bringing up the Latinx poll
and campaigning.
The group also worked to lead campaigns within school to address things such as the sex-
education curriculum. Rodrigo recalled,
We talked with her [sex-ed teacher] and the LGBT club about having a more inclusive
sex-ed curriculum by including gay sex and lesbian sex overall, because I remember
being in her class and she just talked about like-- it was just penis going into vagina.
In high school, Mary worked with the Feminist Majority Foundation to advocate for
equality through means that were philanthropic. She also was a member of Girls Learn
International, which focused on issues impacting women globally.
The Feminist Majority Foundation had a website that would give us resources to guide
conversations. We would talk about things from like, just natal and prenatal policy to
female genital mutilation. We would talk about everything that affected women globally.
As far as our fundraising, we'd do big sales. One year we held an art show that was
actually very successful. I think by the end of our time at the club, I think we gave them
like $600, $700. That's how much we ended up coming up with.
Cedric is a member of the Black Student Union at his high school. He expressed
frustration with the fact that the faculty advisor of the Black Student Union is non-Black Latinx
because he believes the few Black teachers on campus are not involved. He mentioned that Black
History month is not celebrated. He stated, “Our school is named Maya Angelou and half the
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students don't even know anything about Maya Angelou or about any African American
historical people at all. I can call at least I-10 students in here right now to ask them if they know
anything about Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, and they will just look at me like
I'm dumb.”
When asked why he thought students were uneducated about Black history, he said,
Because they've not been taught at school nor at home. It's not their parents that have to
teach them about African American history but still if you go to school and there's a
world history class, you would think that they would know something about African
American history. I have not heard anything about Black history at this school until last
semester when I spoke up. I felt some type of way that we didn't celebrate Black History
Month here and our school is named after Maya Angelou. I just felt that way. Not like it
didn't for me. I just felt like it's not cool… I just think it's not right that we're forced to
learn about other races and accept the fact that we've got to sit there and listen to what
they're teaching us about the different races but when it's our turn to teach about our race
or anything, it's just we don't get the same energy.
Cedric juxtaposed this with school traditions for Cinco De Mayo, recalling,
We've learned about the Hispanic culture, literally Cinco De Mayo coming around, they
decorate half the whole school, they're energized and everybody put in effort and
whatnot. I learned that from then, the stuff we was taught in Ethics Studies. I learned a lot
about other races. I really liked that though. I have to learn about other stuff, but I just
don't like when it's our turn to teach them about us, they don't even want to pay attention.
It's weird. It's off.
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In order to respond to this deficit, Cedric lobbied for Black History Month celebrations to
occur regularly. He gathered support from individual teachers, counselors, and administrators
and created action plans, events, and volunteer opportunities. However, it was difficult for Cedric
to garner support from other students. “I've been and witnessed in other schools and other
communities that the Black Student Union is doing big stuff. Our BSU is like, "BSU meeting on
Wednesday. Come." They put energy into it but not too much energy. I was expecting more
energy like these other schools.” Cedric attributed this low energy to a lack to students being
fearful and having little faith in themselves.
They don't have any faith. I'll talk for myself. I have faith in it but I just feel other
students don't. feel like they're scared to talk, speak up for what they want. That's what I
feel like it is…. Maybe they just don't know how to explain their self or express their self.
That's number one thing with this generation, nobody knows how to express their self.
Everyone is scared to speak for their self. Everyone is scared to let the next person know
how they feel.
Cedric has worked to being members of the school community into BSU and other
organizations in an effort to rally support for changes in organizing. In an ongoing effort to
support healing and self-care, Cedric employs his prowess as a DJ to expand their cultural
exposure during lunch and at school dances. He makes connections between the African rhythms
in Belizean music and the rhythms in a lot of music that his Black and Latinx peers listen to.
When I DJ, I play a lot of Caribbean music to expand other students' hearing chances, or
whatever, of music. Whatever they hear at home, I try to expand it with Caribbean music.
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They're cool with it. They like it. It's the same music that Hispanic people listen to or
like.
Avery and Shay are both members of the school’s chapter of the Students Deserve
organization at their high school. Students Deserve is and organization that is partnered with
Black Lives Matter, and work to ensure that Black Lives Matter in schools. Shay stated,
They've launched a new campaign where we're trying to end the use of pepper spray on
campus. Those two programs, I feel like much on one are just for more representation of
us Black and brown people. Students Deserve, overall, just wants for the whole child.
They just want us to be treated better in society starting in schools.
Avery framed the efficacy of the organization and her efforts by emphasizing the agency
displayed by students,
Students Deserve is completely student-led. Adults really only help us with
transportation, with money, stuff that only really adults can do, but students lead the
meetings, students in the board members, students are press liaisons. I’m really proud of
myself and all the other young Black and Brown students that are doing this. We focus
around making Black Lives Matter in schools and what that means for us is making
schools a safer place for Black, Brown, and Muslim students. Very recently, we just
ended a policy in our school district that disproportionately searched Black, Brown, and
Muslim students that had really terrible effects and cost a lot of money.
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They proceeded to outline methods of direct action utilized by the group in order to gain
political attention and change policy. This included a button campaign, participation with teacher
strikes, a call for increased resources, and their abolitionist practice.
There was no real support coming from the politicians that were part of it, our board
members. We did a lot of direct action to get them to listen to us and a lot of organizing.
We did a button campaign. It’s like a cute button drawn by a student and had a Black
student with his hands up and around the button, it was like #endrandomsearches. That
was one round of buttons to 3,000 students. Then we did a second one with a different
drawing, same hashtag, same slogan that got out to another 15,000 students across 75
different schools. That really, really blows up and then after, we got a lot of attention but
again, politicians were still not listening to us, Board members were calling us liars,
fabricators, and it was like talking to the wall. When a lot of momentum built up from the
teachers strike and students saw that, like, we saw our opportunity to really get them to
listen to us and show them that teachers' demands are our demands and teacher demands
support student demands. We got our teachers' union to put like end the policy of random
searches from their contract. We got that to happen. Those were influential because when
we won the strike, we also won 28 schools in our school district to be exempted from
random searches. That was really huge but we are abolitionists. It's either all or nothing,
all or nothing else matters. We just gave an official proposal to our Successful School
Climate Committee at the school board and it included really scaling up the community
schools' model which means more fully funded and more resource librarians, college
counselors, psychiatric social workers, and other social workers for students. Let me
think. We're still having conversations about what real school safety looks like and we
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want community, not police, community-based safe passage programs like Dorsey
has…It's really comforting to see Black and Brown people looking at us on our way to
school and instead of police which is often really rampant around here. Dorsey really has
at least three police cars on their campus at all times. We have our own school police
office in the main building, so it's really overwhelming and part of the alternatives is to
focus on community and building relationships instead of intimidation from
administration or police or anything else.
School Protests, Walk-Outs, and Sit-Ins
The consequences of not taking action is if you're privileged enough to not understand
that you're one of the oppressors…You're one of those people that aids in that. I believe
that silence is violence. Again, to take something from Fred Hampton, we should die for
the people. If we're going to die for anything, die for the people.
-Avery
In an effort to model his intersectional outlook and approach to school issues, Cedric
recalled a time where he encouraged Black students to participate in solidarity with a walk-out
organized by Latinx students in response to Donald Trump’s 2016 Presidential election. Students
received a notification from students at Hawkins High School, “all the students got the
notification from Hawkins on the phone like, "We're doing a walkout this time. Just do a peaceful
march." A group of us. We did it. We walked all the way to City Hall.” When they tried to walk-
out school administration locked the gate and would not let students leave.
No, we demanded. The Hispanics [students], they were pushing to get out the gate and
they wouldn't open it. It was all the Black students, the football players, basketball
players, all of them we just joined the movement. We joined the little movement. We
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wanted to help them get out and whatnot. They opened the gate and we all walked to City
Hall. The African American students, did too.
Cedric has also organized student walk-outs in response to police lynching’s, brutality,
and violence. The students have been threatened with detentions and other punishments for
organizing these resistance efforts.
We all went out and had the moment of silence. That, when we tried to do it [walkout],
Maya was like, the staff was like, "You're all going to get detention. We're not going to
want to do the walk-out, this, this and that." It was right after we did that walk-out, the
Trump walk-out.
Kevin has participated in school protests following the 2017 Stoneman Douglas High
School shooting in Parkland, Florida that killed 17 people and injured 17 others. He advocated
for the destruction of the National Rifle Association.
We had a NRA protest at my school. It was kids went out to the quad holding ban the
NRA. The news came down, took some videos, interviewed a few kids. I was saying,
"Fuck the NRA. We got to get rid of them blah-blah-blah." At the end of the day, the
second amendment is real. It's like, maybe the guns aren't the problem it's probably the-
well, not it's probably, it's the people holding them. How do we address that problem? I
fell for it because it was so rifles were killing kids in the school. It was like, "I go to high
school." It was like, "Who just said there can't be a school shooting at my school? If I die
because he had an AK and he swept the whole classroom in one go rather than a pistol
and I could escape. I just felt strongly about that, so I decided to involve myself. If
somebody would have stopped to question me and ask me what I was there for, and why
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I'm against the NRA and ask me, do I know anything about the NRA, I would have had
no idea. It was just the motivation to want to do something, to want to make a change.
He also participated in a separate national school walkout in memory of the lives lost at
Parkland. Kevin has struggled with the disparity between gun issues in his own community and
the anti-gun methods he engages with at his school, located in a more affluent neighborhood. His
organizing efforts are chronicled later in this chapter.
Avery and Shay have organized the student body to rally against police presence on
campus. Their efforts include resisting Los Angeles Unified School District policies, school
administrators, and any actors that contribute to maintaining a police presence in Los Angeles
public schools. They provide analysis of authority and power dynamics against marginalized
groups, while taking into account internalized anti-Blackness and class.
With Black cops, it's doesn't make us feel safer. I go to a majority Black and
brown school, and we have Black police officers, Black administration. It doesn't make
us feel safer if you're still an agent of the state. I always feel like--I always say there's
feds everywhere. There's feds always watching. It doesn't matter who you are, you are a
fed, I always believe that.
Avery helped to organize a student block party during the Los Angeles Teacher’s Union
strike last fall. This led to direct action of students marching around Los Angeles Unified School
District headquarters downtown and engaging in a sit-in.
The week for the strike was like so lit with like protest, we organized our own
student block party. That was really cool. At first, it was a nice cute art and crafts thing
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where we did slam poetry and stuff. It's not really political, a lot of us having fun, but
then it turned into a March around the school headquarters and then a sit-in in front of
their office and in front of the steps we would block people from entering with a huge sit-
in of like 150 students.
Avery has received a lot of pushback from peers at school. Avery engages in discourse
with her peers and models Fred Hampton’s philosophy of action.
There's ignorant people that talk to me about stuff at school. I've been labeled a social
justice warrior in a derogatory way. It's been annoying, but when I come out of those
conversations, I'm like, "You just don't get it. You don't see how everything is connected.
You don't see how all of this is messed up. You don't see how this is going to destroy the
world." The consequences of not taking action is if you're privileged enough to not
understand that you're one of the oppressors…You're one of those people that aids in that.
I believe that silence is violence. Again, to take something from Fred Hampton, we
should die for the people. If we're going to die for anything, die for the people.
Kevin and Mary both attended schools with a majority white student body. These schools
are well funded and resourced. Ana, Rafael, and Rodrigo attend a charter school that has a
primarily Latinx student population. This charter school is Title I but through grants has funding
and resources for student laptops, supplies, and updated classrooms. Cedric, Avery, and Shay all
attend public Los Angeles Unified School District high schools. Cedric’s school has a mixed
Black and Latinx student population. Avery and Shay’s school is majority Black. These schools
are under-resourced. This means that resources and access differ in accordance with the number
of Black students in each school. This is evident in the experiences described by the students in
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the different environment. Perhaps more revealing is the degree and method of resistance shifts
relative to the schools that the students attend, and the resources that they have access to.
Although the participants wield individual anti-capitalist praxes and are in opposition of the
educational system, their frameworks of resistance, critical action, and transcendence swing
more anti-establishment pending the material resources made available to them during their high
school experience. Shay and Avery advocated for the destruction of schooling systems and
policies, and were more likely to consistently and directly challenge and resist school officials
and policies, verbally, with various methods of direct action, and with legal action. Cedric
participated in school walk-outs and protests that were not sanctioned by administration. Ana,
Rafael, and Rodrigo are in different grades but were all members of the Associated Student Body
at different times. The questioned school policies and teacher practices, but were not necessarily
thinking of economic disparities in education due to their access to laptops and resources. Kevin
and Mary’s internal school political efficacy focused on working within mostly already existing
school structures and groups to advocate for awareness and change.
Home, Family & Friends
A lot of immigrant parents say that this is the price to pay for freedom. This is the price to
pay to be in this country. I feel like my mom really believes that, but I'm like, no, it's our
job to dismantle that. It's our job to change that.
-Rafael
The study participants’ displays of political efficacy were not absent of strife in the
relationship dynamics with family, friends, and other social groups. Many participants lamented
over the difficulty in their efforts to teach, motivate, radicalize, and expand the paradigm of those
closest to them. For some participants, balancing their evolving critical consciousness with the
perceived stagnant consciousness of their family and friends was a struggle. Due to this, some
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participants, they focused their energy in spaces outside of the home. Other participants believed
that doing the work of liberation started with their immediate circle and therefore this was
arguably just as, if not more important, than the acts of resistance that they engaged in outside of
the home. Either way, the relationships with those closest to the participants were points of
access that pushed the participants to wrestle with how that shaped their political efficacy.
Accountability was a term used by some participants in the student to describe their role
and work with those closest to them. Kevin summarizes,
I think it's very important. I touched on accountability a lot. Because people understand
the problems and know that there's problems. It's just no one's doing anything, it's a fixed
thing. Because as much as I say gang banging is on and people shouldn't gang bang, what
really matters is what I do when I walk outside and try to tell my hommies not to do that
shit or I try to stop or try to avoid it. It's a matter of action.
Rafael, applies this accountability to his family who are non-Black Latinx and who exhibit
problematic traits and actions. By naming and addressing these instances, he spreads awareness
of wider issues that intersect within his community and family unit. He applies this same
standard to his own actions and self-regulation.
Within my family, I feel a like lot of my cousins-- for example, they feel entitled to say
the N word because they grew up in the hood or whatever. It's just having those
conversations and calling them out, and just making it known that that's not okay. They're
just feeling and being part of anti-Blackness. Just with my dad, just making sure that he's
aware of what other people go through, and just having conversations with him that make
him think about what he says. Because I feel like machista father don't care about the
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effects of what they say, the repercussions, so just keeping everyone accountable and also
keeping myself accountable.
Rafael furthered explained how he worked to deal with his traditional home and family
dynamics.
Households that have like a machista man as the head, and how again, having a man like
that in the house perpetuates-- they force the women in the household to abide to certain
things in society. Society says a woman should be, or they should be doing. Then I've
used two of them, two of the posts, to talk with my sister, and to talk with my mom, and
of course my dad, on the dynamic of our family, and how it's important to just not be so
toxic, and the repercussions of being toxic, and what that means for us.
When asked why he felt the need to hold his families accountable, Rafael spoke of the
privilege he had being raised in the United States specifically by immigrant parents. Through
them he learned hard work, ethics, and the overall importance of education and respect. Given
this, he grapples with what his responsibility is moving forward and in contributing to our greater
society.
It definitely puts my life into perspective. It also puts my contributions and my actions
into perspective. It's like, "What am I actually going to do about this?" I don't necessarily
think it has to be a riot, or a protest only…It's maybe just having a conversation with my
roommate, or having a conversation with my hall mates or bringing it up to any class
discussion, and actually making people aware.
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Mary’s father has been a professor, assistant professor at a high school, and a teacher her entire
life. He taught down the street from his home and believes in communal investment and uplift.
This upbringing has forged Mary’s belief in group and collective efforts.
He's someone who's very big on giving back to his community because he knows that the
power is with the people. Kids at my age, we're the brightest minds, we're the most
willing to change thought. This is where you should be investing. Yes, in my community,
for people who look like me, who are around me. You get a bunch of people around you
who think like you, you can get more and that's how you get a group going and
everything can grow. You can expand.
On the contrary, Avery’s mother has discouraged their participation in protests and other
displays of resistance. The school threatened to suspend them and family and political lives
converged once their mother and ACLU lawyer were involved.
She [mom] is like, "If you get arrested, you'd better call your dad. He'd better drive down
here from San Francisco." My dad is very much supportive. He's just like, "Be safe." He's
really down with it. I had a lot of trouble in junior year with being able to go to these
events because my mom was really concerned about it. When they tried to suspend me
even though I clearly proved them wrong and me and my lawyer came in and were like,
"No, you can't do this to me." What they could do is still call my mom and had principal
and the assistant principal yell at me in front of my mom and phrase it in a way or worse
like, "She did this horrible thing. She was endorsing gang behavior. She was endorsing
fighting." They really blew it up to this large-scale thing. I knew that if I'd just sit there
and let it happen, I could go home in 20 minutes, but it also made me feel really angry
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because I couldn't defend myself. I couldn't tell my mom that this was the right thing to
do.
Avery is also the child of an immigrant parent and when they addressed the impact that
this had on their framing and parental relationship, they observed the politics of assimilation and
acquiescence to the American system,
We had five minutes alone in the office before he got in there. I was trying to
explain to her like, "I did the right thing," but I think she's also affected by-- We learned
this in government class where many people that have lived through this depression or, I
would say, immigrant parents or like older people of color, they're like, "Just live with it."
A lot of the immigrant parents say that this is the price to pay for freedom. This is the
price to pay to be in this country. I feel like my mom really believes that, but I'm like,
"No, it's our job to dismantle that. It's our job to change that." I feel like my mom
believes that I should just ride the waves. I believe that I could be privileged enough to
ignore this. I fully believe that I don't-- Let me say this right. I imagine an alternate
reality where I went through high school not doing this, but it's not fulfilling, and I would
be really disappointed. I'm so glad that I'm a part of this. I'm so glad that I have all of this
knowledge and that I'm still learning more, that I'm bringing this in others' faces.
Avery has found solace, healing, and laughter in their friend groups.
Sometimes I will catch myself doing really deep analysis of things with my friends. We're
hanging out. We're eating ice cream and then, we talk about colonization. We talk about
how all this stuff is messed and it's really interesting. I love this bigger perspective that
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this has given me, and it's made more compassionate. I really love that. I don't think I'd
exchange it for anything in the world.
Societal Issues & Causes
Same with police…if you're a hero I don't see Superman beating up on someone he saved
or shooting anyone that he saved. If you're going to be a hero, be a hero.
–Cedric
In addition to school clubs and organizations, all participants were active in
community organizations and efforts to resist wider structures. The participant efforts were wide
ranging and dealt with issues such as violence, guns and weapons, immigration, climate change,
economics, war, voting, queerness and equity, gender, race, class voting, Latinidad, anti-
Blackness, indigeneity, etc. Mentions of gentrification, police brutality, anti-capitalism, white
supremacy, anti-Blackness, toxic masculinity, communism, socialism, and feminism were
bountiful from multiple participants. In addition to formal organizations and affiliations,
participants resisted through displays of art, music, and culture. Because the participants organize
and are concerned with all of the aforementioned issues and causes this section will highlight the
different modes of efficacy that the participants engaged. This will focus on the how the
participants display their political efficacy and resistance efforts as opposed to each of the
aforementioned individual societal issues listed by participants during the interviews.
Ana’s personal experience with gun violence motivated her to join Students Demand
Action, which is a national organization working to end gun violence. The group proposes strict
gun laws in the United States.
…gun violence affects a lot in my community. My neighbor, he was shot and killed in a
drive-by right next to my house. My tia, she was shot by her significant other. He was a
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domestic abuser. He ended up killing himself. I guess it's the easy access to guns. I guess
in a way the low standards-- No, restrictions. They're not strict enough to actually help
people.
While working with Students Demand Action, Ana has flown to the east coast on
multiple occasions to continue learning and lobby for gun violence related issues. Ana has also
organized local events in her community of South Central to educate, lobby, and discuss these
issues.
I've been able to keep my community aware of how this impacts them. With my group, in
specific, we led a community walk in which we talk to business owners and people on the
street about gun violence and how it affects South LA specifically. I also flew out to
Washington to go to this convention called Gun Sense University in which we saw other
leaders from other chapters talk about their experiences in their community. I got the
chance from my group to fly out to New York City to talk about ways in reducing gun
violence within our own community and get an insight as to how we can do that and get the
support I need to make that possible.
Ana stated that our collective motivation for change should not only start when those we
are closest to are impacted by the issues.
If you don't take a stand or take action, you're probably just going to live in the community
that is susceptible to gun violence, and you might become one of the victims. Until
someone becomes a victim, or you know someone that becomes a victim, that's what drives
people to change, and it shouldn't be that way. That people would want to make change
regardless of where they stand with the issue.
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Kevin has also focused heavily on gun and gang related violence. He contextualized a lot
of the gang issues in his community as products of issues with masculinity, pride, and shame.
I live in Inglewood. I live in gang territory, the Inglewood families. My cousin gangbangs, I
know people that gangbang. I got friends that gangbang. Living that life is just getting an
early expiration date on your life. People are out here they don't want to fight because they
want to get embarrassed, they don't want to lose. They don't want to deal with all of that so
the first instinct is to kill, to shoot. If you can't stop the gun violence, and the violence is
always going to be there, let's at least replace it with something that's not going to end lives.
Killing somebody is not going to make you a real man. I feel like you're a real man if you
can throw some gloves on and whip somebody ass and walk away from that. Anybody
could pull a trigger but who really know how to get down? It's not just gang members
getting killed. Too many innocent people are getting killed. I know people that have been
hit by a stray bullet.
Kevin recalled a personal experience that shaped his efforts to combat gang violence,
My sister's best friend. We were standing in line to go into a party. This dude tried to walk
in in front of us. They didn't let him in. He pulled out a gun and started shooting. My
sister's friend, she's the only one that got hit. No one else at the party got hit. She's the
only one. She got hit one time. She had eleven holes in her. It went straight through her
stomach. It chopped up her intestines and everything so she had eleven holes in her off of
one bullet. Because you didn't get let into a party so it was like, "I'm going to start
shooting?" You could've ended her life. You could've paralyzed her for the rest of her life
all because you wanted to shoot a gun. That's not the only way it can happen. Something
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needs to be done about the violence because all the beefs and the reason for the violence,
all that shit started in the '80s, '90s. All of that shit is old and the people that started the
beefs don't even beef no more or don't even gang bang like that anymore. You're all
carrying on a beef just to be carrying it on.
Kevin works with the Gloves Up Guns Down organization to work on settlings beefs
without gun violence. This method of conflict resolution includes discussion, trainings,
exercises, and boxing. Similar to Kevin, Cedric is concerned with gang activity. He dreams of a
new role for gangs in his neighborhood,
If I had a voice, honestly, I wouldn't put a stop to gang banging, but I would change it. I
would want gang bangers to protect the hoods, protect their area instead of killing each
other. I would want gang bangers that protect us from police. If you're going to claim this
is your hood then take care of the hood. Don't kill no innocent African American or don't
kill no innocent person in general just because they got on red shoes or just because they
got a red hat or just because they got on blue shoes or what not.
Shay and Avery both engaged with Black Lives Matter through attending meetings and
engaging in public direction action initiatives. One of these included a protest to remove Los
Angeles District Attorney Jackie Lacey. Shay recalled,
I went to the Jackie Lacey Must Go rally, and then I also went one official meeting. Both
experiences were great. What they talked about were great. The organizing that they do is
just beyond me.
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Kevin also reckoned with Black Lives Matter from an intersectional perspective,
acknowledging the Black women also subjected to police brutality.
Black Lives Matter because the things that happened to the people that are affected by
that, the same things can happen to me. It used to be you see a police car and be like,
"Damn I hope I don't go to jail." I see a police car I'm like, "Damn I hope they don't kill
me." That's real. As much as you expect it not to happen to you and you assume it can't
happen to you, at the end of the day, that shit very well can happen to you. It's like I relate
to those people. It's Black men being killed and I'm a Black male. Black women are being
killed too. I've seen their moms cry and their sisters cry because I have a mom and a
sister. I can only imagine how they would feel. I feel really strongly about that especially
with things like Blue lives matter coming up and All lives matter. When we say Black
Lives Matter we weren't saying other lives didn't matter too. We were just bringing
attention to the people getting killed. It seems like they made Blue Lives matter or All
Lives matter out of spite. "Since they did this we got to do this." a malicious type of
thing.
Shay noticed intersectional nature of Black Lives Matter Los Angeles meetings.
Their organizing, and the amount of people that actually come to support and how
different they are. There's youth, there's older people, there's Black people, there's white
people that support them too. I think it's amazing. They're all from different areas too.
We've got people from Virginia, people who are originally from LA, everywhere.
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Conversely, Rodrigo attended the Los Angeles Women’s March last year and was
disappointed and the lack of racial diversity that was present. He astutely observed the neoliberal
nature of the march,
It was just celebrating womanhood but it was mostly white women celebrating that and
there were very, very few Black and brown women. The posters they had were towards
Trump administration or little jokes or phrases that they had. They were not in response
of any type of oppression or anything which I thought killed the reason for the protest.
What's the point if you're just come here, make quotes, be smiling while a lot of other
women are facing certain oppressions in this country.
Rodrigo also campaigned for LAUSD School Board District 5 during the school board
election. This consisted of knocking on doors and speaking directly with many of his community
members.
We just campaigned to bring the Latinx vote out because it's a heavily Latinx
neighborhood and it was a Latinx-- Well, since it's a special-election, people don't usually
come out to vote. Then, Latinx people don't usually come out to vote either in those
elections, so a lot of the top candidates were targeting the wide areas.
Social Media
Social media was a large part of the learning, teaching, sharing, and awareness for all of
the participants. Specifically, Twitter and Instagram were the most referenced social media apps.
For some participants, social media was a source of inspiration and access. For others, it was a
vehicle for raising awareness and self-expression. Collectively, social media contributed largely
to the consciousness and political efficacy of all participants.
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Mary used Twitter to connect with peers and increase their awareness. She also has used
social media to connect with social justice organizations and has recruited the ANSWER
Coalition of Los Angeles to come speak at her school.
I'm constantly on Twitter, using my Twitter fingers. It's funny because I'm trying to think
of ways that I can talk to my peers because I'm 19 and most 19-year-olds are not on the
same thing that I'm on as far as trying to fix the world. Because I think that we've become
complacent and we've been taught that we can just trust the government and they'll figure
it out for us, and we can just sit back. I think that the recent years have proved the exact
opposite. I'm making efforts is trying to educate my peers and even adults. Really the
social media has our heads really deep in the sand and we can't really see out of it. I guess
I'm just trying to put people on.
Rodrigo has utilized social media to expand his knowledge of global revolutions and
rebellions taking place in various countries in order to share that with his peer group.
I get a chunk of my learning from social media and understanding of what going on in the
world. Twitter mostly, but Instagram also has it. I would share more because know I'm
political and I know a lot of people don't view things I view online. I thought, "What if I
start reposting these things to just keep more of my followers engaged in grassroots,
engaged in what's happening?" I've actually seen more, a lot of political actions being
taken by students. More people are starting to post more political posts.
He is able to study methods of resistance utilized by oppressed people of color around the
world. He hopes to learn about methods of sustaining resistance methods for long durations of
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time in pursuit of liberation. He recognizes the intersection of race, class, gender, with state
violence,
I like that it's like organized, like people power the movement and it's in Black and brown
countries, something you can identify with. It's cool seeing that…like the ones in Chile.
The feminist movement was also really cool but in Chile, the response to the conservative
government and then all over South America, like I know Ecuador, indigenous people
took over the entire Congress and they had to switch the capital. I know there's protests in
Bolivia. I think that was really cool… In Puerto Rico and Chile, millions of people-- And
across the world. I forgot the other places but I know millions of people came out to
protest. Millions is a lot. Millions I can't believe-- I know I've seen it on social media that
how many people are coming out to protest and it's crazy…how do you like garner so
much people and how much do you garner constant protests?... That's crazy to me. I've
never seen that in my life. Just months and months of protests and like the majority of the
population coming out to protest and I think it's important for me to have a Black and
brown community in this country. Because Black and brown people are affected most by
what the government-- Laws. Are affected by certain laws that the government passes and
the government is mostly white …the policies affect us a lot and we live in some similar
communities.
Sarah has engaged social media for her individual growth and to find local events and
protests. She has found an online Black community that has aided in everything from discussing
hair care to career advice.
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I will learn most of what I've known from social media. Like in terms of just finding
myself, I think social media aids in that. Also getting certain events known around
town…I've learned a lot from building businesses, entrepreneurship, finding career goals,
different websites. It's amazing. Then, I feel like the Black community is really tight-knit
on social media, and so that's what I follow. It's a funny thing. When I was younger, I
used to look up hairstyles online, and so trying to type in braids or something, and then
you had to type in Black girl. There's no need for us to do that anymore, you could just go
on this certain page and it'll teach you how to do it. I think it's really amazing how social
media is just able to do stuff like that.
Rafael uses social media to further his understanding of colorism and toxic masculinity.
Again, it makes you think about like, for example like colorism within the Latinx
community, and the value of acknowledging your heritage and I really appreciate that. Of
course, feminism and how that affects Latina women, especially Latina women within
toxic households. I really appreciate that.
Consequences & The Future
All participants discussed why they believed taking action towards liberation was
important and necessary. This section will provide an overview of participant final thoughts and
reflections as they look to the future.
Rafael and Kevin discussed the consequences of complacent inaction and complacency to
the continued maintenance and regulation
Rafael
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When discussing the consequences of inaction, Rafael stated,
Oppression's going to continue. People won't be held accountable, and people will just be
ignorant. White people, especially white men, white cisgender men will continue to reign
supreme. People won't to be able to fight back.
Rodrigo
I want to run in office for the longest time and have this vision of running as a Democrat
and becoming independent and then being left of the party or not the party, the left in
Congress but I don't know if that will happen but I also want to teach and teach what I've
learned and teach it to students in politics and making them knowledgeable about systems
they're living under just so people can be well more aware.
Kevin
When discussing the consequences of inaction, Kevin stated,
The people doing the oppressing are just going to keep winning and getting the results
they want. Because the people at the KKK rallies, they're there to show, "I'm pro-white,
we're here." It's making us mad and stirring us up and they're getting happy about that.
Then, they really get what they want when they go back to work and sentence somebody
to 40 years for a small marijuana charge or whatever it may be. If we don't take action,
can we just let them win? We're just rolling over taking the L as it is.
Cedric
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Hopefully, I can talk to the next generation. Hopefully I can speak to them and motivate
them to do what they do. Motivate them to never give up. I never gave up. That's why I'm
still here today. Just don't quit. Be positive, do you, always respect your elders.
Ana
One thing that gets me mad is that I've seen men don't believe that they have more rights,
or more of an advantage in the society, which in my eyes is not true. I've seen men's
rights activists, which isn't necessary because they have more of an advantage in the
society, not only because of who they are and how they identify, just because they're a
man. That's it.
Mia
It is of the utmost importance because this country is going to hell in a handbasket. The
fact that there's so many of my peers who aren't doing anything further, emphasize the
fact that I do need to do something. There is no more time to stand away. We have a
white supremacist in office. We have white supremacists who follow behind him and his
ass already you put a bunch of Republicans everywhere else in all of the branches. We're
stuck even after this. It's time to speak up now, right now. Especially, we just spent $2
trillion investing into the military-industrial complex. That should be frightening. That
should have everybody up because there are people who are sleeping on the damn streets
but we just bought how many more missiles, and bombs, and all kinds of shit.
Conceptually, that is the most disgusting thing ever…They don't want us in power.
They're trying to take power, all that kind of stuff. They're making us feel like we're on
opposite sides. All these poor white supremacists, they're on this side with Trump when
they really would identify more with the people on the other side. I think that it's been
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here. It's not surprising. It is what it is, but we can't be complacent and just let people talk
how they want. I feel like, because people are like this, it's our responsibility to also
protect ourselves.
Shay
Black is black. Black is beautiful. Black is amazing. Respect the blackness or get
out. I feel like people should be able to express themselves with their own identity
regardless if it makes you comfortable or not, and that's on that.
Avery
People in my generation live in the generation of change. A lot of stuff is
happening. All these revolutions are springing up all around the world. I want to
say her last name right. Greta Thunberg, she just got the Time award for most
influential person of the year. I think that really embodies how influential young
people are in these movements, in changing the world. Everyone says, "You are
like the leaders of tomorrow," but we're going to be the revolutionized leaders of
tomorrow. We're going to bring actual change where it needs to be changed and
the decision-makers are going to look like us. They're going to look like people in
South Central. They're going to look like people our high schools because they are
the ones that know what the community needs. They're going to be able to fight
for the community
All participants in the study have a vision for a better world. Although they vary in
approach, scope, and praxis, the participants believed that the consequences of inaction were
more severe and that they are committed to continual resistance in pursuit of a better world.
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CHAPTER SIX: DISCUSSION
Discussion of the Findings
The Black and Latinx youth who participated in the study all harnessed varying ranges of
enclosures (Hartman, 2018), upbringings, left leaning political ideologies, methods of resistance,
identities, outlooks, and radicalisms. The participants all endured difficult experiences with their
parents and/or home lives that involved their identity formation and critical consciousness
development. In high school, some participants had a teacher or group advisor that helped to
directly enhance their critical consciousness development. The participants also weathered
difficult experiences in school that helped to jumpstart their radicalization and political efficacy.
All participants encountered far more teachers who upheld traditional beliefs in the system of
education and therefore contributed to the ongoing pervasiveness of anti-Blackness, whiteness,
and state violence manifested in school curriculums, pedagogy, and policies. These and other
factors pushed all participants to initially engage in methods of resistance and political efficacy
first on their high school campuses and later in multiple sites.
All participants garnered increased skepticism of the state throughout their matriculation
through the school system. This can be attributed to a variety of factors that will be discussed in
this section. There were clear differences in the perceived degree of dismantling required of the
state and its structures that aligned with the predominant socio-economic status, racial makeups,
and locations of the high schools that the participants attended. All participants also view their
efficacy as work that extends beyond their intended college major and career choice. This section
will work to identify prevalent findings of the study that help to answer the research questions.

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Paradigm Intersectionality & Matrix of Domination Framework
Throughout my discussions with participants in the study, many of them conveyed a
paradigm of political efficacy that represented intersecting and interlocking systems of
oppression (Hancock, 2012). The convergence of the participants’ identity development, their
coming into adulthood, the experiences felt at home, at school, and the in the world, their formal
and informal educational experiences, and their organizing has resulted in the participant’s
ability to recognize, name, and grapple with the ideologies and constructed identities that
determine their relationship to power within society and the institutions they frequent.
The categorical multiplicity and categorical intersection of the participants’ identities is
shown in their threats to systems of power, particularly those prevalent in their educational
experience. All participants were Black and Latinx, but the Black participants (Cedric, Shay,
Kevin, and Mary) were the only participants to experience overt anti-Blackness in their early and
throughout their school careers. The isolation of being one of the only Black students in a space
and grappling with moments such as being called nigger in school had a profound impact on
their critical consciousness and sense of belonging within the educational system. Avery,
Rodrigo, Rafael, and Ana were marginalized both socially and with family due to their varying
gender expressions and/or sexual orientations. Avery described oppressive reinforcements of
school dress codes that not only erased her gender identity, but also heavily criticized the general
sexist nature of the dress code itself. The majority of the participants lived were poor and/or
working class and relied heavily on public transportation to commute to school and/or work.
Kevin drove an hour each way to school each day and was forced to finish high school while
working full time as an Amazon warehouse worker through the global pandemic caused by the
COVID-19 health crisis. These are only a few of the many moments that forced the participants
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to reconcile their categorical multiplicity. Diversity Within (Hancock, 2012) helps to make sense
of the participant’s differing subgroups and political agendas, while exposing power
relationships in American politics. This helps to explain why some participants have more of a
belief in the significance and impact of electoral politics as a vehicle for social change and why
other participants acknowledge that voting in electoral politics may matter in the short term but
advocate complete dismantling of the political system and the creation of something new.
Hancock (2012) states that individual-institutional interactions position race, gender, class, and
sexual orientation as constructs carried out at individual, group, and institutional/systemic levels.
The participants have both intentionally and unintentionally exposed power dynamics in the
homes, educational institutions, work spaces, and in their social circles. This has been in
opposition to the continued wielding of power attained through socially constructed norms that
are reinforced across various mediums and in many enclosures.
Intersectionality can resist neoliberalism when coupled with participatory democracy as a
means of problem-solving, praxis, and activism (Collins, 2017). Collin’s (2017) Matrix of
Domination Framework examines the relationship between intersecting systems of power,
domination, and political resistance. This framework provide space for the coexistence of
domination and resistance. Political theory and domination are historically constituted through
many ideologies including colonialism, imperialism, heteropatriarchy, capitalism, nationalism,
and racism. The political efficacy of the participants against the systems and institutions that
maintain oppression also serve as resistance efforts against the ideologies that replicate within
systems over time. One stark example of this dynamic is shown in the fact that all of the Latinx
students are first generation immigrants, some with undocumented family members, and the
parental assimilatory practices into the American project cause ripple effects throughout the
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household and within the expectations of participant interactions and success within American
institutions. Rodrigo, Ana, Rafael detailed and/or directly names patriarchy, toxic masculinity,
anti-Blackness has contributing factors to the marginalization of their personhood within their
homes. This has turned their homes and relationships with their parents and primary sites of
resistance. Ana connected the imperial spread of Catholicism in Mexico to her father’s statement
that her body was not her own and belonged to God. Additionally, all participants also discussed
the influence of white supremacy and racism on their formal education and on society. The
participants worked to emancipate themselves from the confines of the state violence replicated
in curricula and policies originated on the premises, constructs, and assumptions derived from
dominant ideologies Collins (2017) names. The Matrix of Domination framework and tenets of
paradigmatic intersectionality are embedded throughout the study.
Critical Consciousness Development
As discussed in the literature review, critical consciousness development was
utilized as a theory combining the contributions of a collective group of theorists drawn heavily
from socialist frameworks. Freire’s theory is the most well-known in education circles. His
theory of critical consciousness functions in two forms. The first form, critical reflection,
requires oppressed groups to analyze their socio-historical development and social conditions
(Freire, 1970/2000). The second form, critical action, harnesses the learning gained from the
preceding analysis and utilizes it to actively transform structures that enact oppression. The other
contributors to the operationalization of critical consciousness for this study provide nuance and
context to the terminology and provide more avenues for analysis.
The participants’ socio-historical understanding was experienced through the ways in
which they live and show living. All participants recalled moments where they first began to feel
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how they were marginalized within power structures and institutions. For the Black participants,
their first recollections of their racialized otherness occurred in classrooms when they realized
that their Black bodies and/or selves were isolated or unvalued. Fanon beloved racism to be the
highest form of alienization and urged desalination through increased consciousness (Hudis,
2015). The alienation experienced in these institutions was a constant theme that participants
connected to their inherent distrust in government, their political alienation, and their political
cynicism (Williams, Myers, Hill, & Ratliff, 2013). For non-Black Latinx participants, there first
recollections involved their gendered and/or queered otherness in their households and social
interactions. In both circumstances and over time, these defining moments invoked a sense of
responsibility. With age, experience, and exposure the participants began to witness this
otherness replicated in various settings. The informal education eventually began to surface
within their formal education settings resulted cognitive dissonance and increased skepticism.
As Baldwin (1963) stated, this cognitive dissonance exposes a paradox where the child’s
development of consciousness causes the child to examine and question the very society in
which they are being educated. Baldwin encouraged induvial experience this to work towards
ensuring we do then repeat a process where we subject ourselves and our children (future) to
social peril. Friere theorized that the holistic understandings of one’s existence in society
implores the learner to rigorously question the nature of their lived existence as informed by
societal constructs, expectations, and limitations. This orient towards structural social change
undermines the consequence of oppression as perpetual domination (Freire, 1970/2000). For the
participants, this experience resulted in the cultivation of a continued practice of questioning the
learning from both their formal and informal educational experiences. This was evident in the
fact that every participant heavily criticized the curricula in place at their schools while
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acknowledging its colonial roots and anti-Black premise. Participants also critiqued their school
administrative policies, the design of their school buildings, and began to connect the
respectability politics reinforced within school walls to their parents upholding similar
expectations, and thereby perpetuating similar harm, within their home walls.
Anzaldúa (1987) acknowledges ancestral baggage in order to transcend the binary
oppressed/oppressor contract while tolerating the ambiguity that will come as a result of our
inner struggle. Advocating for a “new consciousness” she envisioned mestizas creating new
selves and envisioning the world in a different way. She advocates that to develop new
consciousness, one must relinquish themselves of the binary oppressor/oppressed paradigm and
adopt a worldview that is tolerant of contradictions and ambiguity; one that views from below,
above, and around societal constraints without feeling pressure to explicitly categorize oneself
through the dominant culture’s eyes. It is important to note that the Black and Latinx youth in
this study elevated their consciousness by breaking binary models and expectations. Participants
refused to code switch and assimilate in order to meet professionalism standards coded in
whiteness, radicalized classmates and peer groups, worked to liberate themselves from binary
gender categorizations, and served in school clubs while working to resist and decolonize
educational policy in outside organizations. Most impressively, the participants worked tirelessly
to educate, facilitate, and create vanguards and collectives that wrestled with their daily lived
encounters with the remnants of the horrors of capitalism, colonialism, white supremacy,
patriarchy, etc.
Displays of Political Efficacy
Freire cautions that one should not simply view critical consciousness as an increase in
awareness. Once we realize we are oppressed, we are then obligated to liberate ourselves from
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the circumstances of oppression. If this was to merely happen in our minds, the structures would
still continue (Kress & Lake, 2013). Fanon (1952/2008; 1963) contextualized the transcendent
nature of critical consciousness cultivated through radical love and manifested in political, social,
physical, and spiritual revolution. It encourages oppressed people to gain liberation through
transcendence of structures, which means that adapting and navigating existing structures is
neither the premise nor goal. Fanon urges that this decolonization processes requires the
colonized to take, rather than accept, the condition of freedom (1952/2008).
The navigation of these systems of oppression are embodied in the participants’ displays
of political behaviors and efficacy. The Black and Latinx youth who participated in the study
worked to liberate themselves from various domains of enclosures while engaging with displays
of resistance. The pursuit of political, social, and spiritual revolutions within individual selves,
social groups, family units, also spilled into school sites, districts, prisons, churches,
neighborhoods, and various other sites of resistance. The participants’ intersectional identities
often forced them to exist in varying states of fugitivity. The more marginalized each participant
was, in terms of their intersectional identities and restricted access to power, the more they were
forced to exist in states of fugitivity. This fugitivity served as the catalyst for them to search for
like-minded collaborators, sites of learning, options and opportunities for furthered anti-state
violence formal and informal education, and sites for healing. Hartman (2018) posits that efforts
at anarchy, mutual aid, and a desire for being ungovernable and unassimilable are tenets that are
ineligible through a Marxist scope, lend themselves to practices of anarchy and mutual aid, and
have been espoused by wayward Black women throughout history. Although the participants are
not all Black women, their lived states of fugitivity are shown in their daily radical acts and stem
out of a need for survival.
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Implications for Practice
This study was important because it documented and amplified the voices and
experiences of Black and Latinx youth who face consistent threats to their humanity, bodies, and
agency through interpersonal and structural means. There is a significant amount of work to be
done in meeting the needs of our youth and responding to their various calls to action. This
section will discuss potential implications for educators, policy makers, and community
members.
Educators
As established in the literature review and study, educational institutions are sites
where state violence in continually enacted upon those most marginalized members of our
society. Even with the best intentions, our actions, lessons, curriculums, and internal policies that
uphold can having lasting impacts on the holistic bell being of Black and Latinx youth. Their
critical consciousness development can be enhanced, but only through a willingness to relinquish
traditional approaches to facilitating learning with students. When our students exist in states of
fugitivity, our political, social, and economic, alignments with our institutions should not prohibit
our ability to engage with the humanity of our students. The stratification of the neoliberal
tendency to reform, modify, and placate to students and communities of color is one that we must
continually resist. Students should not only see themselves reflected in their content and
education, but they need to wrestle with the structures and ideologies that dominate their
movement throughout institutions. Imagining alternative approaches to teaching and cultivating
spaces for students on our campuses that are reflective of them and their needs is a burden we
should collectively shoulder.

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Policy Makers & Government Officials
This study found that the critical consciousness development and political
efficacy of Black and Latinx youth is expressed through means that cannot only be measured by
traditional metrics of civic engagement, community service, and voting. The nature of their
existence and history is such that their political attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs are expressed
through of rich methods in a variety of spaces. Given their increased access, independence, and
direct suggestions in this study, it is recommended that the voting age be lowered in order to
accommodate the voices of youth who work, pay taxes, engage in political discourse, rebellion,
and protest, volunteer, and contribute to our greater society. It is also recommended that their
methods of direct action and resistance should be valued and protected. Their constitutional
rights to engage in these practices should be upheld, reinforced, and protected. School and
district administrators should be held accountable to community and student needs. Laws
concerning curricula, standards, policies, and policing need to be revisited, dismantled, and
rebuilt with communities, students, parents, activists, and scholars who advocate and imagine
new possibilities for education that embody the spirit of the participants and finding from this
study and those like it. Student calls for increased resources, counselors, quality food, nurses,
and supports should be met urgently.
Community Members
This study found that parents and other community members were often responsible for
upholding and reinforcing hegemonic, ruling class, beliefs that are practiced in the same
institutions where their Black and Latinx students attend. Decolonial political education,
facilitated discourse with youth, and collective haling are practices recommended to community
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members. We need to do a better job listening to our youth and holding educators, policy makers,
and government officials accountable for valuing and protecting the lives, bodies, and spirits of
Black and Latinx youth.
Future Research
As a result of the findings in this study, future research is needed to ensure
continued efforts. There have been minimal attempts by researchers to study the direct
relationship(s) between critical consciousness development and political efficacy. This study has
unearthed many relevant findings for Black and Latinx youth in Los Angeles. Similar and/or
replicated studies are needed within the city but also in other cities nationwide. Alternatively,
centralized case studies of specific classrooms and/or schools may reveal specifics that could
only be captured in a semi-controlled environment. There many also be useful data that could be
connected on an international level as well.
More studies on Black and Latinx youth critical consciousness development and
political efficacy relative to specific domains such a parenting, home life, schools with varying
demographics of students/teachers/administrators would likely yield rich results that could begin
to triangulate the degrees of influence. Religion was a factor that came up throughout this study
that requires further investigation as the degree of radicalism of the participants was loosely
aligned with the religious nature of their households. Ability and disability were identities that
were not ascertained for every participant in the study and research inclusive of this nature may
also help to provide scope for critical consciousness and political efficacy. In terms of the
continued trajectory of the participants, studies that explore their college matriculation could
help to ascertain how much they continue to remain political and the ways in which they show
their activism and organizing both on and outside of the campus.
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The socio-emotional toll of student activists and organizers in high school is
needed to ensure that we continually try to generate practices of healing, radical self-care, and
growth that are applicable and useful to Black and Latinx youth. This study was conducted
directly before the COVID-19 global health crisis. Many countries around the world were and
are still engaged in practices of quarantine where communities of color and more specifically
Black communities have been disproportionately affected. During this time, we have also
witnessed national rebellions in response to the continued murder of Black lives by the state.
Student activists have continued to organize, call for the abolition of the police, and resist these
actions. All of this has taken place in a polarized election year. Future research will need to
grapple with what all of this means, how schools and districts respond, and how these events
converge and shape the critical consciousness and political efficacy of Black and Latinx students.
Conclusion
The purpose of this study was to understand the experiences of Black and Latinx youth
regarding the relationship between their critical consciousness development (Anzaldua, 1987;
Baldwin, 1963b; Fanon, 1952/2008; Hartman, 2018; Horton & Friere, 1970/2000) and their
political efficacy (Campbel, 1954; Ginwright 2002; Williams, Myers, Hill, & Ratliff, 2013). The
academic literature has predominately focused on critical consciousness as solely theorized by
Freire, recognized political efficacy primarily through metrics of civic engagement and voting,
and has not examined the relationship between critical consciousness and political efficacy. The
study also investigated systems of power that converge to shape the formal and informal
educational experience of the participants. In this qualitative study, I utilized a phenomenological
process to capture participant what and how the participants experienced their critical
consciousness and political efficacy (Patton, 2002). I interviewed eight Black and Latinx youth
SUBVERTING STATE VIOLENCE
133
participants so as to document their stories, critical consciousness development, and political
efficacy. The participant interviews employed a narrative scope in order to allow participants to
construct meaning making of the participant worldviews and to center their individual lives
(Cresswell, 2014). By interviewing the students, I was able to foreground the lived experiences
of the Black and Latinx youth who are committed to subverting state violence (Kauzlarich, 2008)
through various continual means. This study aimed to amplify the voices of Black and Latinx
students in a manner that acknowledges their humanity and agency. The following research
questions guided the study:
1. How do Black and Latinx youth perceive the role of their educational experiences in shaping
their political attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs?
a. More specifically, in what ways do Black and Latinx youth perceive how their
own critical consciousness shapes their political attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs?
2.How do Black and Latinx youth describe navigating intersecting systems of oppression in
relation to their political attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs?
This chapter discussed findings and themes for both research questions throughout sections
that address the theoretical and conceptual frameworks for this study, critical consciousness and
political efficacy.

SUBVERTING STATE VIOLENCE
134
Closing
At the risk of sounding ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a
great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this
quality…We must strive every day so that this love of living humanity will be
transformed into actual deeds, into acts that serve as examples, as a moving force

-Ernesto “Che” Guevara, From Algiers, for Marcha. The Cuban Revolution Today. 1965

The child in each of us Knows paradise. Paradise is home. Home as it was Or home as it
should have been. Paradise is one’s own place, One’s own people, One’s own world,
Knowing and known, Perhaps even Loving and loved. Yet every child Is cast from
paradise— Into growth and destruction, Into solitude and new community, Into vast,
ongoing Change.

-Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower, 1998
During one conversation with a participant, I was struck with the weight of what it meant
to bear witness to their journey. For the majority of the participants, it was not only the first time
they had been interviewed, but it was the first time that they were verbally processing and
sharing the connections they were making with their humanity, the institutions that try to deprive
them of it, and the ways in which they maintain and resist. The student told me thank you for
listening to their story and it was as if in that moment we both recognized the gravity of what had
transpired. We do not document enough, but there is something particularly powerful about
collecting the incredible displays of tenderness, growth, change, and rage of the youth who are
creating a better world for us to live. I lament living in a world where the natural right to live
freely as Black and Latinx youth is robbed by the state and its violent apparatuses. I find solace
knowing that the love they have for each other and for our future is a force that cannot be
stopped.

SUBVERTING STATE VIOLENCE
135

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Running head: [SHORTENED TITLE UP TO 50 CHARACTERS] 147

[SHORTENED TITLE UP TO 50 CHARACTERS] 148
Appendix A
Semi-Structured Interview Protocol
1. How would you describe yourself? How do you identify? (may need to ask for specifics,
gender, race, religion, citizenship, education level, major, Socio-economic status etc.)
a. When and where did you first become aware of these identities?
b. Who helped you understand your identities better? Family? Friends?
Teachers?
2. What has your experience in school taught you about your identity?
. Where have you learned the most about your identity and your history
a. Where have you felt most valued and appreciated in school? Classes? Clubs?
3. How do currently participate in/contribute to resisting and improving social and political
conditions?
4. What are your thoughts about voting in elections?
a. Do you plan to vote in the future? Why or why not?
b. What political party are you registered (or plant to register) with? If not registered,
why?
5. What social or political movements interest you and why?
a. Have you participated in any protests, rallies, or other events a part of these
movements?
6. How has social media been a part of your learning or participation in these movements?
7. What do you feel are the major social or political issues prevalent in the country?
a. How and where did you learn about these issues?
b. How do these issues affect your daily life? Your experiences in school? Your
community?

8. What is your perspective on these issues and how do you think they can be addressed?
[SHORTENED TITLE UP TO 50 CHARACTERS] 149
a. (If not already addressed directly): What are your thoughts on the current rise of
white nationalism/white supremacy in the United States?
9. Outside of school, tell me about your involvement with local community
organizations/college orgs?
10. Considering where we are as a country, how important is it for you to take action to
change the world around you?
a. What do you believe the consequences of not taking action are to society
staying how it is?
11. Before we finish-up, is there anything you would like to add that we didn’t get a chance
to discuss?

[SHORTENED TITLE UP TO 50 CHARACTERS] 150
[SHORTENED TITLE UP TO 50 CHARACTERS] 151

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Creator Rodgers, Kenneth W., Jr. (author)

Core Title Subverting state violence through the art of hood politics: an exploratory study of Black and Latinx students' critical consciousness and political efficacy

School Rossier School of Education

Degree Doctor of Education

Degree Program Educational Leadership

Publication Date 08/08/2020

Defense Date 06/25/2020

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag anti-Blackness,anti-capitalist,anti-colonial,Black,BlackCrit,civic engagement,civics,Collins,Communism,Crenshaw,critical consciousness,critical race theory, Henry Giroux,curriculum,decolonial,decolonization,democracy,domination,education,efficacy,exploratory,Frantz Fanon,Fred Moten,Freire, Paulo Freire,gender,Gloria Anzaldúa,Hood,intersectionality,James Baldwin,Karl Marx,Kendrick Lamar,Kimberle Crenshaw,Latinx,Marxism,neoliberalism,OAI-PMH Harvest,paradigm intersectionality,patriarchy,political,political efficacy,Politics,Power,Protest,Racism,Religion,resist,resistance,Saidiya Hartman,Schools,sit-in,Social Justice,socialist,state violence,states,subversion,subvert,subverting,walk-out,Wardell Milam,white supremacy,whiteness,Youth

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Davis, Charles H.F., III (committee chair), Green, Alan (committee member), Hancock Alfaro, Ange-Marie (committee member)

Creator Email kenneth.rodgersjr@gmail.com,kwrodger@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c89-362261

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Rights Rodgers, Kenneth W., Jr.

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA