This paper examines a youth oral history project conducted by/with/for immigrant youth of color and educators. Designed as a longitudinal five year project of critical participatory action research and youth oral histories, we sought initially to document generational experiences of schooling inequity, aggressive policing, housing precarity and immigration struggles. As a research collective we then confronted and chose to interrogate how COVID19, uprisings and activism, and remote learning affect youth of color. In our analysis we “discovered” the power of culturally responsive and sustaining education as a framework to cultivate critical consciousness and civic engagement. With an epistemic commitment to “no research on us without us,” decolonizing methodologies and research for social action, we review in this article our theoretical frameworks, epistemic commitments, methodologies, our ethical praxis and our evidence-based activism, as we explore the intimate details of critical participation as core to anti-racist developmental science.
Adams-WigginsK.Taylor-GarciaD. (2020). The Manichean division in children’s experience: Developmental psychology in an anti-Black world. Theory and Psychology, 30(4), 485–506.
2.
AnandB.FineM.PerkinsT.SurreyD. (2002). Keeping the struggle alive: Studying desegregation in our town. Teachers College Press.
3.
Antrop-GonzalezR.De JesusA. (2006). Toward a theory of critical care in urban small school. International Journal of Qualitative Studies, 19(4), 409–4433.
4.
AppaduraiA. (2006). The right to research. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 4(2), 167–177.
5.
AronA.CorneS. (Eds.). (1996). Writings for a liberation psychology. Harvard University Press.
6.
AyalaJ.CammarotaJ.Berta-ÁvilaM.RiveraM.RodriguezL.TorreM. E. (Eds.). (2018). PAR Entre-Mundos: A pedagogy of the Americas. Peter Lang.
7.
AyalaJ.FineM.MendezM.Juarez MendozaA.Garcia RiveraJ.FinesurreyS.VilledaA.TheluscaH.MenaV.AzzamK.GallettaA.HoustonA.jonesv.MungoD. (2020). ENCUENTROS: Decolonizing the academy and mobilizing for justice. Qualitative Inquiry. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800420960161
8.
BrownT. M.RodriguezL. F. (2017). Collaborating with urban youth in address gaps in teacher education. Teacher Education Quarterly, 44, 75–92.
9.
CoatesT. (2015). Between the world and me. Random House.
10.
CookeB.KothariU. (2001). Participation: The new tyranny. Zed Publishers.
11.
DrameE.IrbyD. (Ed.). (2016). Black participatory research: Power, identity and the struggle for justice in education. Palgrave Macmillan.
12.
Du BoisW. E. B.ApthekerH. (1985). Creative writings by W.E.B. Du Bois: A pageant, poems, short stories and playlets. Kraus International.
13.
FernandezJ.LanghoutR. (2014). A comunity with diversity of culture, wealth, resources and living. American Journal of Community Psychology, 53, 122–133.
14.
FineM. (2017). Just research: Expanding the methodological imagination. Teachers College Press.
15.
FinesurreyS.LesterC.FineM., & School in the Square Research Collective. (forthcoming). Just care. In VasudevanV.GrossN.NagarajanP.Clonan-RoyK. (Eds.), Complicating qualitative research in school settings in the United States: Critical care-based methodologies. Bloomsbury Press.
16.
FinesurreyS.RodriguezA.ContrerasA.LamA.FineM., & The S2 Alumni Research Collective. (forthcoming). “The protests made me feel so proud of us”: Racial literacies and bearing witness to the movement for Black lives. In IrbyD.AndersonC.PayneC. (Eds.), Becoming somebody. Teachers College Press.
17.
FutchV.FineM. (2014). Mapping as method. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 1(1), 42–59.
18.
GinwrightS.CammarotaJ. (2002). New terrain in youth development: The promise of a social justice approach. Social Justice, 29(4), 82–95.
19.
GuishardM.HalkovicsA.GallettaA.LiP. (2020). Toward epistemological ethics: Centering community and social justice in qualitative research. Society for Qualitative Inquiry in Psychology. www.sqip.com
20.
HaleC.CallaP.MullingsL. (2017). Race matters in dangerous times. NACLA Report on the Americas, 49(1), 81–89.
21.
KelleyR. (2003). Freedom dreams: The Black radical imagination. Beacon Press.
22.
KirshnerB.GinwrightS. (2012). Youth organizing as a developmental context for African American and Latino adolescents. Child Development Perspectives, 6(3), 288–294.
23.
LacV.FineM. (2018). The good, the bad and the ugly: An autoethnographic journey on doing participatory action research as a graduate student. Urban Education, 53(4), 562–583.
24.
MosleyD.NevilleH.Chavez-DueñasN.AdamesH.LewisJ.FrenchB. (2019). Radical hope in revolting times: Proposing a culturally relevant psychological framework. Social Personality Psychology Compass, 14, 1–12.
25.
OutleyC. W.BlythD. (2020). Race, anti-racism and youth development: From awareness to sustained action. Journal of Youth Development, 15(5), 1–15.
26.
ParisJ.GenishiC.AlimH. (2017). Culturally sustaining pedagogies. Teachers College Press.
SmithL. T. (2012). Decolonizing methodologies. Zed.
30.
TorreM. E. (2009). Participatory action research and critical race theory: Fueling spaces for nos-otras to research. The Urban Review, 41(1), 106–120.
31.
TorreM. E.AyalaJ. (2009). Envisioning participatory action research Entremundos. Feminism and Psychology, 19(3), 387–393.
32.
TuckE.YangK. W. (2012). Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education and Society, 1(1), 11–40.
33.
WattsR. J.DiemerM.VoightA. (2011). Critical consciousness: Current status and future directions. New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, 2011(134), 43–57.
34.
WattsR. J.GriffithD.Abdul-AdilJ. (1999). Sociopolitical development as an antidote for oppression: Theory and action. American Journal of Community Psychology, 27(2), 255–271.
