Legal Mobilization in U.S. Schools: The Paradoxes of Race and Rights Among Youth

Abstract

In this article, we analyze racial and ethnic similarities and differences in youth perceptions of rights violations, and advance a new model of legal mobilization (which includes formal, quasi-, and extralegal action) to understand how youth respond to rights violations. Slightly more than half of the 5,461 students in our sample reported past rights violations involving discrimination, harassment, freedom of expression/assembly, and/or due process violations in disciplinary procedures. Students, irrespective of race, are more likely to take extralegal than formal-legal actions in response to perceived rights violations. Self-identified African American and Latino/a students are significantly more likely than white and Asian American students to perceive rights violations, and are more likely to claim they would take formal-legal action in response to hypothetical rights violations. In the face of perceived rights violations, however, African American students are no more likely than whites to take formal-legal action and Latino/a students are less likely than whites to take formal-legal action in response to perceived past violations. We draw on in-depth interviews with youth and adults to explore the interpretive dynamics underlying these survey findings, especially with respect to how race and ethnicity relate to cultural schemas of law that youth draw upon as they define and respond to rights violations.