Young Men Of Color Research Articles

Never Post-Racial: The Persistence of the Dual State

Following the riots of the 1960s in major U.S. cities and the 1968 Kerner Commission Report, some public administration scholars initiated a limited focus on race themes in public administration. Today, mass incarceration serves more purposes than the kettling and destruction of young men of color or capital accumulation through the private prison complex and real property appropriation. Through linkages to immigration and terrorism, race is now resurgent as a key signifier of state legitimacy. The Black Lives Matter movement now heightens the urgency for public administration scholars to renew examination of enduring themes of race and public service (Blessett, Gaynor, Witt, & Alkadry, 2016). Although there is substantial scholarship produced by critical race theorists on the role that race has played in forming and sustaining institutions in the United States (cf. Delgado & Stafancic, 2013), with few exceptions (Alkadry & Blessett, 2010; Stivers, 2007) mainstream public administration scholarship has not closely examined how historic influences reproduce racialized social stratification in the United States. This article identifies how institutional practices in the United States emerge from and serve “dual state” practices and commitments founded on and devoted to recapitulating a racialized social contract.

Will Obama's My Brother's Keeper and Similar Initiatives Have a Positive Impact on Low-Income Students?

ABSTRACTBarack Obama's My Brother's Keeper is designed to narrow persistent gaps that boys and young men of color confront often and to help all young people achieve their potential in college and career. An important part of this initiative is comprehensive mentoring that supports students in schools and in communities. Because ethnic-minority students have extremely low graduation rates in high school and college, an essential question is addressed: Can My Brother's Keeper and similar initiatives with a mentoring component be effective in helping minority students to achieve success in elementary and secondary schools and in college?

Supporting Young Men of Color as Survivors of Crime and Violence.

Supporting Young Men of Color as Survivors of Crime and Violence.

Integrating positive youth development and clinical care to enhance high school achievement for young people of color

Purpose – High school completion is one of the strongest predictors of health and well-being. There is increased public attention on the challenges faced by young people of color and educational achievement. In particular, young men of color must navigate myriad stressors which often undermine their mental health, as well as their academic performance, including likelihood of graduation from high school that fare worse in academic outcomes than their female counterparts. The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of Step-Up, a positive youth development and mental health promotion program, created in collaboration with young people of color on their high school achievement as measured by grade point average (GPA). Design/methodology/approach – This exploratory pre-post study employed multivariate analysis of data drawn from a sample of 212 youth of color to examine student’s GPA before their involvement in Step-Up and the number of Step-Up groups they attend in the first year could improve their high school achievement. Findings – Results revealed an association between students participation in Step-Up, specifically having at least ten life skills group contacts, and significant increases in GPA. Research limitations/implications – High school achievement is measured by GPA, which might not be a clear indication of achievement since grades are not truly comparable across schools. The exploratory pre-post research design of this study, and the lack of control group, limits any references to causality but the descriptive changes in GPA demonstrate a statistical significance of Step-Up group participation and improved high school achievement. A potential next step is to design an experimental study that includes psychosocial and developmental mechanisms while examining the treatment effect of Step-Up vs students receiving standard of care. Practical implications – Programs that aid young people of color in increasing their GPA should acknowledge the multitude of stressors that youth in urban environments encounter by creating interventions targeting multiple ecological contexts. These preliminary analyses suggest how programmatic supports that are collaboratively designed with youth, such as Step-Up, may yield promising results in improving young people of color high school achievement. Social implications – To better serve adolescents experiencing serious academic and behavioral health challenges, there needs to be programs that offer intensive, short-term mental health support in school settings. Given the widespread risk factors that adolescents and particularly young men of color are facing, Step-Up is informed by both the developmental assets framework and the social development model and aims to provide youth with opportunities for prosocial interactions and additional resources to combat multiple stressors. Since successful completion of high school is associated with better outcomes as young people transition to adulthood, programs that are developmentally timed to allow for an optimal protective factor during the high school years is necessary. Originality/value – This research contributes to the knowledge base of the importance of providing mental health supports in school settings and may contribute to studies examining the academic achievement of young people of color in school settings.

Missing the moral: Excited delirium as a negative case study of a moral panic

This article examines Excited Delirium, a controversial medical explanation offered as an explanation for a variety of in-custody deaths. It appears to fit all essential criteria to incite a moral panic, featuring a powerful moral entrepreneur playing off of well-established fears of drugs use and psychosis, with a classic folk devil in the form of young men of color. Yet Excited Delirium has failed to provoke a widespread response, raising the question of how a phenomenon that meets all the classic criteria can fail to incite a moral panic. I argue this stems from the entrepreneurs involved failing to present themselves as sufficiently moral, their campaign to medicalize the phenomenon meeting an unreceptive medical field, and their broad conception of Excited Delirium too easily facilitating strong counter-narratives. This study uses Excited Delirium as a negative case to demonstrate several important factors to consider in the development of moral panics.

Our Brother's Keeper and Health: Kaiser Permanente's Investments to Improve the Health of Boys and Young Men of Color

Our Brother's Keeper and Health: Kaiser Permanente's Investments to Improve the Health of Boys and Young Men of Color

Development of Boys and Young Men of Color: Implications of Developmental Science for My Brother's Keeper Initiative and commentaries

Development of Boys and Young Men of Color: Implications of Developmental Science for My Brother's Keeper Initiative and commentaries

Born Sinner, Fashioned Divine: The Criminalization, Commodity and Creativity of Young Black Males

This article explores how a community struggling to survive systemic marginalization may imagine a liberating future. Black scholars have pressed the realm of science fiction in efforts to interrogate how Black youth may construct a sense of worth from Afrodiasporic experiences to the world for a promising Black future. The Nashville Team of the Children's Defense Fund explores the relevance of Mark Dery's cultural criticism for young Black males who find themselves cradled in a school-to-prison pipeline that in twenty-first-century American society not only functions as an oppressive and death-dealing institution, but also an extremely lucrative financial enterprise. Drawing from Black religious philosopher Victor Anderson and his philosophy of race, the Children's Defense Fund Nashville Team will explain how we engage narrative and the arts in assisting young men of color to reconstruct identity from foundational positions of unrestricted space and interactions in order to imagine new possibilities.

The Production of Difference and Maintenance of Inequality: The Place of Young Goan Men in a Post‐Crisis UK Labour Market

AbstractThis article examines the ways in which young migrant men are constructed as potential employees in a British town where service sector employment, often on a casual or precarious basis, dominates the bottom end of the labour market. Low‐wage jobs in many British towns are now constructed as feminized, low waged and demanding personal skills of empathy and servility. In this context, young men, and especially young men of colour, including recent in‐migrants, are at a disadvantage, constructed by employers, agencies, co‐workers and customers as less eligible workers than ‘locals’. We use the experiences of young men from Goa as a lens though which to trace the ways in which expectations and experiences when looking for employment produce a hierarchical division of labour in precarious jobs at the bottom end of the service sector.

‘Gone, leave, go, move, vanish’: race, public space and (in)visibilities

This chapter is a discussion of the various ways Canadian-born young men of colour (aged 17–26) experience (in)visibilities in the public spaces of the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). I begin this chapter by analyzing the different ways ‘visibility’ and ‘invisibility’ have been conceptualized in the scholarly literature, including literatures on homelessness, public space, and race. Invisibilities include ‘invisible homelessness’ as well as material invisibilities in which young men of colour both purposefully and accidentally navigate public spaces in ways that affect whether they are seen or unseen and by whom. This research emphasizes the contingency and indeterminacy of varying (in)visibilities. Despite the various ways they move between visibility and invisibility in public spaces, young men of colour experiencing homelessness maintain an explicit presence in urban street spaces. Understanding their experiences of (in)visibility in urban space helps us understand the geographies of race and racism in the GTA and in North American cities more broadly.

Tri�Squared Qualitative and Mixed Methods Analysis of Perceptions of the Effectiveness of the Student Athlete Leadership Academy [SALA]: A Character Development and College Preparatory Program for Young African American Men

This paper outlines the major dimensions and overall effectiveness of the Student Athlete Leadership Academy (or“SALA”). SALA is a character development and college preparatory program designed for middle grades studentathletes. The focus of this paper is to provide information about year 1 of SALA. At the same time the paper willcontextualize SALA within the spectrum of discussions regarding Teacher Education and its ability to address the needs ofyoung African American men. The data analysis for this study highlights participant responses regarding the overalleffectiveness of SALA through the careful examination of : qualitative focus group responses on issues related to SALAcurricular implementation and lessons learned; and a Tri–Squared analysis of participant perceptions of overall SALAprogram effectiveness. The goal of this research investigation is to provide a community–oriented and based programthat can be developed into a replicative model. This model can be then be offered to other communities seeking toprovide meaningful experiences designed to directly address the unique issues and specific needs of young AfricanAmerican men and young men of color.

The Association of Ethnic Pride With Health and Social Outcomes Among Young Black and Latino Men After Release From Jail.

The goal of this study was to understand whether ethnic pride among young, incarcerated Black and Latino men was associated with successful community reentry. We interviewed 397 Black and Latino men 16 to 18 years old in a New York City jail and then again 1 year after their release to determine the relationship between participants' sense of ethnic pride during incarceration, and substance use, violence, recidivism, and education/ employment after release from jail. Participants with higher ethnic pride scores were less likely to engage in illegal activities and be reincarcerated. Ethnic pride was also associated with feeling safe in gangs and positive attitudes toward avoiding violence in situations of conflict. Ethnic pride was not associated with substance use, education, or engagement in community-based organizations post release. This study demonstrated that ethnic pride might be a source of strength that young men of color can harness for successful community reentry after release from jail.

High School Equivalency as Counter‐Space

This chapter is based on the findings of an ethnographic study of an urban General Education Development (GED®) program and suggests that, for some marginalized African American and other young men of color, adult education programs are counter‐spaces (Yosso, Ceja, Smith, & Solorzano, ) of spatial justice in opposition to previous negative school spaces. The chapter is framed from the perspective of critical race theory.

A New Normal: Young Men of Color, Trauma, and Engagement in Learning

This chapter will center on the continuing impact of systemic and persistent educational trauma experienced by Black and Latino males and how trauma affects their current learning. The young men's counterstories from a phenomenological study and documentary are included.

Programming Errors: Understanding the Constitutionality of Stop and Frisk as a Program, not an Incident

This essay takes seriously the relevance of law enforcement effectiveness and the role of empiricism to understanding the constitutionality of the police practices at issue in the Floyd case and urban police practices more generally and also recasts the debate a bit. A critical, but obscured, issue is the mismatch between the level of analysis at which the Supreme Court articulated the relevant test for constitutional justification of a stop and frisk in Terry v. Ohio , and the scale at which police today (and historically) engage in stop and frisk as a practice. To put this more succinctly, while the Court in Terry authorized police intervention in an individual incident when the police officer possesses probable cause to believe that an armed individual is involved in a crime, in reality stop and frisk typically is carried out by a police force en masse as a program. Although the constitutional framework is based upon a one-off investigative incident, many of those who are stopped, the majority of them young men of color, do not experience the stops as one-off incidents. They experience them as a program to police them as a group, which is, of course, the reality. That is exactly what police agencies are doing. Fourth Amendment reasonableness must take this fact into account. I make an argument here about how we should approach this issue.

Texts as Mirrors, Texts as Windows

AbstractDiscussions of culturally relevant and “boy” literature stress the importance of offering readers occasions to see themselves in texts. However, young men of color have had few opportunities within this discourse to reveal their own experiences with literature. Rather than make presumptions about how texts serve as mirrors to them, as members of collective groups, this study examines the ways in which two adolescent Black boys at an urban single‐sex school find relevance in what they read.

Racial vibrations, masculine performances: experiences of homelessness among young men of colour in the Greater Toronto Area

This article explores the connections between race, masculinity and urban space in the lives of Canadian-born young men of colour (aged 17–26) who have experienced homelessness in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). It is based on ethnographic research including 40 interviews and eight ‘Where-I-Live-Tours’ of the city by the author and participants. This study explores the intersections between racial emergences and masculine performances in the lived experiences of homelessness, drawing connections between spatial representations and material experiences. It utilizes the concepts of affect and ‘racial vibrations’ to show how race emerges differently in different areas of the GTA. There exists a constant racial ‘vibe’ in the suburban areas of the GTA, whereas there is a vibrating whiteness that obscures racial events in downtown Toronto spaces. In both cases, the emergence of race contributes to continued oppression based on the intersections of racialized masculinities and homelessness.

In It for the Long Haul: Exploring Gender Dynamics in Former Prisoner-Family Relationship

This article contributes to the growing body of literature on the role of families of origin in the reentry of former prisoners by focusing on a group of young men of color recently released from prison. Our in-depth interviews with young men and selected family members highlighted the ongoing importance of their family relationships for providing important emotional and instrumental support. These relationships also are gendered. In relationships with female relatives, the former prisoners’ primary role was to be there for the women in the family and thereby demonstrate their love of family and their commitment to desistance from crime, while the women provided them care, advice, and emotional support. In relationships with young male relatives, the former prisoners took a more active role, attempting to mentor the young men so they would avoid the same problems or steer their lives in a more positive direction. This article is one step in exploring how family relationships and gender dynamics function in the lives of returning prisoners.

Rap on Trial

In criminal proceedings across the United States, rap music lyrics are being introduced as evidence of a defendant’s guilt. In this article, we draw attention to this disturbing practice, what we call “rap on trial,” and explore its context, describe its elements and contours, and consider its broader significance. We first offer historical context, demonstrating that although the widespread use of rap lyrics in criminal trials may be a relatively recent phenomenon, it resides within a long tradition of antagonism between the legal establishment and hip-hop culture, one that can be traced back to hip-hop’s earliest roots. We then offer examples of recent cases in which rap music has been used as evidence in trials against amateur rappers, almost all of whom are young men of color, in order to illustrate the specific ways that prosecutors present the music to judges and juries, as well as to highlight the devastating effects it can have on defendants. In the final section, we consider the elements of rap music that leave it vulnerable to judicial abuse and the artistic, racial, and legal ramifications of using this particular genre of music to put people in jail. We conclude with recommendations for further research in this area, pointing out specific areas where scholarship would most effectively expose what it means to put rap on trial.

Rap on Trial

In criminal proceedings across the U.S., rap music lyrics are being introduced as evidence of a defendant’s guilt. In this essay we draw attention to this disturbing practice, what we call “rap on trial,” and explore its context, describe its elements and contours, and consider its broader significance. We first offer historical context, demonstrating that although the widespread use of rap lyrics in criminal trials may be a relatively recent phenomenon, it resides within a long tradition of antagonism between the legal establishment and hip hop culture, one that can be traced back to hip hop’s earliest roots. We then offer examples of recent cases in which rap music has been used as evidence in trials against amateur rappers, almost all of whom are young men of color, in order to illustrate the specific ways that prosecutors present the music to judges and juries, as well as to highlight the devastating effects it can have on defendants. In the final section, we consider the elements of rap music that leave it vulnerable to judicial abuse, as well as the artistic, racial, and legal ramifications of using this particular genre of music to put people in jail. We conclude with recommendations for further research in this area, pointing out specific areas where scholarship would most effectively expose what it means to put rap on trial.