“We can be leaders”: minoritized youths’ subjugated (civic) knowledges and social futures in two urban contexts

Abstract

This article problematizes traditional and critical conceptions of civic knowledge and centers minoritized youth voices. We utilize case studies from two critical qualitative studies in two urban contexts to suggest that minoritized youths’ subjugated knowledges are a type of civic knowledge and necessary for youth to imagine agentic social futures. These case studies indicated that youths’ community-based curricular experiences illuminated and tapped into their racialized experiences and embodied knowledge of gentrification, immigration, and racism. As youth expressed and built upon this knowledge, they discussed policy solutions to the injustices they identified, developed a deeper sense of belonging and solidarity with people in their communities, and articulated a desire to “become leaders” and agents of civic and social change. We offer implications for research and call for civic education anchored in the insurrection of subjugated knowledges and youths’ race-conscious imaginations of more just and participatory civic and social futures.

Keywords:

• Civic education
• minoritized youth
• subjugated knowledge

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Because our participants self-identified as Black, Latinx, and Asian American, we use the term “minoritized youth” throughout this paper. We acknowledge that each of these groups experience anti Black, immigrant, and Asian hate and are marginalized by the institutional and structural oppression ever-present in U.S. society.

2 For Kristin’s study, names of location, school, and participants are pseudonyms. For Sophia’s study, the name of the program and participants are pseudonyms. All gender and racial labels reflect how youth self-identified.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kristin A. Sinclair

Kristin A. Sinclair is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Educational Transformation program at Georgetown University. She researches how place- and community based education impacts young people's critical civic engagement, activism, and influence on local education policy. Her research has appeared in Educational Policy and Review of Research in Education.

Sophia Rodriguez

Sophia Rodriguez is an Assistant professor in Urban Education at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her research examines immigration policy and its impact on immigrant youth in K-12 settings, and school-based personnel and educators’ advocacy for immigrant students, and appears in Teachers College Record and Anthropology & Education Quarterly.

Timothy P. Monreal

Timothy P. Monreal is an Assistant Professor of Teacher Education at California State University, Bakersfield. Tim's research centers Latinx teacher identity and subjectivity, Social Studies teaching with an emphasis on Latinx history, and teacher education. He applies and develops post-structural and spatial theories to open up new, more just, potentialities.