New Terrain in Youth Development: The Promise of a Social Justice Approach

Abstract

Toward a Social Justice Model of Youth Development POPULAR NOTIONS OF URBAN YOUTH HAVE LED THE PUBLIC TO BELIEVE THAT YOUNG people create more problems than possibilities. This idea is most evident in public policy that tends to view them as delinquents, criminals, and the cause of general civic problems. For example, in California, the passage of the Juvenile Justice Crime Bill (Proposition 21), which allows courts to try juveniles as adults, and other similar measures across the nation demonstrate how public policy reflects a fear of urban youth. Central to these initiatives is the notion that young people, particularly urban of color, are a menace to society and therefore need to be controlled and contained. The get tough on youth crime discourse has turned our attention from the powerful social forces and structural barriers that create and maintain problems to explanations of group behavior. As a result, researchers and practitioners have not paid serious attention to the impact of racism, the influence of poverty, and the effect of unemployment and instead have favored explanations of urban problems that focus on individual and! or group pathologies. The limits of current development models are bound by an inability to examine the complex social, economic, and political forces that bear on the lives of urban youth. A discussion of these forces is particularly important for who struggle with issues of identity, racism, sexism, police brutality, and poverty that are supported by unjust economic policies. For example, in 1997, although minority represent only 34% of the U.S. population, they comprised 62% of incarcerated youth. Additionally, African American are six times more likely to be incarcerated and receive longer sentences than do their white counterparts. Youth of color bear the brunt of discriminatory sentencing practices, and they have few educational and economic opportunities. In California, for example, Proposition 187 attempts to deny undocumented immigrants public benefits; Proposition 209 bans affirmative action policies; Proposition 227 bans bilingual education; and Proposition 21 gives courts greater authority to se ntence youth, as young as 14, as adults. These state actions seriously impede the life chances that once were available to urban of color. (1) This assault on of color treats individuals, families, and communities as the causes of their own problems and does not adequately address the most significant problems facing urban youth. Policymakers, educators, and workers must pay greater attention to how young people navigate racism, poverty, and unemployment in their communities. To understand these challenges, we must look beyond the narrow parameters of individual, family, or community behavior. Developing effective policy requires a thorough examination of the larger economic, social, and cultural forces that bear upon the actions, behaviors, experiences, and choices for urban youth. This article presents a development model that demonstrates how these extrinsic societal forces significantly influence the day-to-day lives of urban and argues that our knowledge of their experience must be developed in three ways. First, the lives of urban are conceptualized within the terrain of the changing political, economic, and social landscape where they and their families struggle for economic survival, sustainability, and mobility. Second, we recognize how urban define, negotiate, and struggle for their identities in oppressive environments. Third, we explore how they, with an awareness of social justice, respond to forces that deem them powerless, develop a sophisticated knowledge of the root causes of social problems, and generate unique ways to contend with the larger political forces. We argue that an effective approach for working with urban is through a social justice framework, which accounts for the multiple forms of oppression encounter and highlights th e strategies they use to address inequities plaguing their communities. …