Peace out to revolution! Activism among African American youth

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to explore new forms of activism among African American youth in the post-civil rights America. Dramatic educational, economic, political and cultural transformations in urban America, coupled with decades of unmitigated violence, have shaped both the constraints and opportunities for activism among black youth and the communities in which they live. The central argument throughout this article is that intensified oppression in urban communities (job loss, unmitigated violence and substance abuse) has threatened the type of community spaces that foster revolutionary hope and radical imaginations for African American youth. Restoring hope requires a radical healing, which is a dramatic departure from radical identity politics of the 1960s and 1970s. Radical healing involves building the capacity of young people to create this type of communities in which they want to live. This article argues for an alternative framework to understand black political and civic life among youth.

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