Ghetto Kids Gone Good: Race, Representation, and Authority in the Scripting of Inner-City Youths in the Urban Debate League

Abstract

Representations of black youths in both the news media and popular culture articulate and/or maintain race, class, and gender-based ideologies that demonize inner-city black youths. This essay interrogates the news media representations of educational reform efforts targeted at minority youths. The Urban Debate League (UDL), a non-profit education program targeted at inner-city youths of colar, serves as a case study for this investigation. Since the program's inception, media outlets have been drawn to the program as a human-interest story. I argue that the scripting techniques deployed by the news media rely on the use of racial stereotypes designed to scapegoat poor youths of color in an effort to redeem UDL students through their successful participation in the non-profit program. How news organizations script the bodies and life experiences of UDL participants may offer a critical space from which to interrogate race, gender, and class ideologies as they operate within educational discourse through news media representations.