Pathways to College for Young Black Scholars: A Community Cultural Wealth Perspective

Abstract

In this article, Uma Jayakumar, Rican Vue, and Walter Allen present their study of Young Black Scholars (YBS), a community-initiated college preparatory program in Los Angeles. Through in-depth interviews and surveys with twenty-five middle- and higher-income Black college students, they document the positive role of community in facilitating college access. The authors show that students’ perceptions of YBS's support of their college aspirations are qualitatively different than perceptions of their schools’ support. The authors theorize that YBS participants embrace college-going as an act of resistance to deficit-based narratives regarding the racial achievement gap and social reproduction. By drawing on students’ experiences, they put forth a new model of a liberatory college-going process for students of color that leverages community cultural wealth and promotes transformative resistance.