Experiences of Central California Latino Male Youth: Recollecting Despair and Success in Barrios and Schools

Abstract

This study examined the community and schooling experiences of Latino male youth (ages 14–24) in the California Central Valley. Seven semi-structured focus groups (n = 35) were conducted with Latino youth regarding how factors related to health, safety, and education affected their lives. Latino Critical Theory was used as a framework to explain how the disparities described by Latino youth are part of larger social and academic inequalities. Findings showed that the Latino youth have unique race-, gender-, and class-specific experiences related to structural inequalities. The study concludes with recommendations for policy and practice that can help improve Latino youths’ lives primarily by addressing structural inequalities in their communities and schools. Strategies for how community and school leaders can address the Latino youth disparities are provided.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We acknowledge the support of the California Endowment and Cassandra Joubert of the Central California Children's Institute, at Fresno State. We also acknowledge the support provided by Alicia González of the California Endowment.

Notes

¹ Latina/o, a term used by U.S. residents of Spanish-speaking ancestry to express ethnic pride (C. M. González & Gándara, 2005), is used to (a) indicate females and males and (b) refer to people from Spanish-speaking countries, regardless of race (U.S. Census Bureau, 2011c). Latino is used when specifically talking about males.

²Although Latino Critical Theory is based on five original tenets, only three are used in our work. The two not included were commitment to social justice for historically oppressed groups and the use of interdisciplinary perspectives to gain interdisciplinary understandings. We felt that, although commitment to social justice did not apply to how the youth in our study explained their conditions, it was used to conduct this research from the beginning, as the purpose for this research is to address social justice for Latinos. Based on our commitment to attaining social justice for Latino youth, our research has since led to other projects with the Latino community leaders that assisted us in this study, and these community–university relationships have the purpose of addressing social justice for Latino youth in the schools. The second tenet not used, interdisciplinary perspectives, we felt did not apply to this work that mainly draws on literature from the field of education.

³For purposes of this research, three major health categories or issues were selected upon review of the literature. In fact, each one of these covers large areas of physical and mental health that are broadly covered because effects of health on education was only one of the relationships we looked at. Therefore, a choice was made to broadly cover these areas so other areas (i.e., community safety) that (in)directly affect education could also be reviewed.