Flipping the Script: Analyzing Youth Talk about Race and Racism

Abstract

In this article, we examine how youth in one urban high school talked about race and racism while participating in a curriculum that introduced the analytic lens of story types (stock stories, concealed stories, resistance stories, and counterstories) to look at race and racism and engage these issues through storytelling and the arts. We draw on data from observations and focus group interviews to examine student‐initiated themes and conversation as the curriculum unfolded. In particular, we look at the use of language, particularly racialized jokes and name calling, to consider how such talk functions to create social and rhetorical spaces where youth of color can express and critically analyze the particularities of their lived experiences of race and racism in a contemporary “color‐blind” context that asserts race no longer matters. [urban education, youth development, racism, resistance].