The (good) trouble with Black boys: Organizing with Black boys and young men in George Floyd’s America

ABSTRACT

Youth Organizing as a tool for social change has helped to not only change material conditions in some respects, but it has also equipped youth with the critical tools needed to engage in long term social movement building. As a result, youth activists and organizers have been able to increase investments in the highest needs communities, gain access to college, and even defund and abolish school police. In the political moment of COVID-19 and the global fight to address anti-Black racism, how have Black boys and young men engaged in the fight for their own lives? Building upon critical frameworks in education, I chronicle how Black boys and young men engage in Black Transformative Agency, which I define as an axis of processes that Black boys and young men adopt to both politicize their peers and transform anti-Black racism in their communities. For educational practitioners, youth workers, and the like, Black Transformative Agency can be a useful framework for engaging politically activated Black youth in their schools and their communities.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional resources

1. City Rising - Youth And Democracy (Aired October 20, 2020). https://www.pbs.org/video/city-rising-youth-democracy-xkjbp5/

This resource focuses on the importance of youth organizing, and how young people use organizing as a tool to build self confidence and fight against their own dispossession. The documentary chronicles youth organizers in different areas across California, including Los Angeles.

2. Campaign for Black Male Achievement and Candid - Legacy Database https://bma.issuelab.org/?coverage=&author=&funder=&publisher=&wikitopic_categories=&keywords=&pubdate_start_year=1&pubdate_end_year=1&sort=&categories=

This database chronicles over 250 reports about programs, interventions, and projects connected to Black male achievement. The database includes projects and articles both before and after the launch of Barack Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper Initiative.

3. Carey, R. L., Akiva, T., Abdellatif, H., & Daughtry, K. A. (2020). “And school won’t teach me that!”Urban youth activism programs as transformative sites for critical adolescent learning. Journal of Youth Studies, 23 1–20.

In this article, Carey et al. (2020) highlights the impact of social justice youth development on young people, and the critical skills they learn in youth activist spaces. Drawing upon an analysis of six different youth activist spaces, the authors highlight the growth of self, social, and global awareness, in addition to the development of technical skills such as using technology or conducting research.