“Never give up. Fight for what you believe in”: Perceptions of how Latina/o adolescents can make a difference.

Abstract

Objective: Latina/o adolescents have been described as less likely to participate in volunteer and civic activities relative to other youth. The present study elicited Latina/o youths' own views of how they can make a difference in their communities. Method: Latina/o high school students (N ϭ 686; one third males; M age ϭ 16.3, SD ϭ 1.2) responded in writing to the open-ended question, "How do you think that Latina and Latino young people can make a difference in our communities?" Data were analyzed using thematic analysis. Results: Four categories (community, education, advocacy, and culture) emerged from the data, with 2 to 7 themes within each category, reflecting diverse and robust pathways by which Latina/o youth believe they can make a difference. We explore these results with respect to types of civic engagement, sociopolitical development, and manifestations of the components of critical consciousness: critical reflection, critical agency, and critical action. Conclusions: Assessment of Latina/o youth civic engagement should be expanded to better reflect Latina/o youth agency, contributions, and assets. In particular, educational persistence and cultural pride may be seen as forms of resistance reflective of sociopolitical civic engagement (Checkoway & Aldana, 2013). Responses manifest components of the developmental asset of critical consciousness. Schools and communities should recognize, affirm, and support the pathways by which Latina/o youth contribute and build their efficacy for such engagement.

Critical consciousness in children and adolescents: A systematic review, critical assessment, and recommendations for future research.

“…Others have used qualitative methods to better understand how critical consciousness manifests by examining the perspectives of youth. For example, in a recent qualitative study exploring the perceptions of Latinx youth about what they can do to make a difference in their communities, McWhirter, Gomez, and Rau (2019) found that responses from youth were aligned with themes related to sociopolitical development and critical consciousness, including speaking out to address injustice, fighting against racism and discrimination, and fighting for equality, among others. The authors characterized participant responses and related themes as manifestations of critical consciousness, specifically in terms of critical reflection, critical agency, and critical action.…”

Showing Up: A Theoretical Model of Anti‐Racist Identity and Action for Latinx Youth

“…Latinx youth's sense of agency may also take collective forms. McWhirter et al (2019) elicited high school Latinx youth's voices through the administration of an open-ended question by asking youth how they believed Latinx young people could make a difference in their communities. Findings indicated that youth believed that Latinx youth could engage in their communities through community efforts that support others which may include others in the Latinx community, advocacy that involved speaking out, fighting for equality and against racism, taking pride in their culture, heritage, and language, challenging stereotypes about Latinx people, and pursuing education that advance their own and families lives and the larger Latinx community.…”

“…Given foundational questions about the ways in which marginalized people develop sociopolitical processes about issues that negatively impact their lives (Freire, 1974), resulting developmental theory and research has primarily focused on Black, primarily African American, youth’s development of these processes (Anyiwo et al., 2021; Hope et al., 2020). However, there is emerging research focusing on Latinx youth and young adults (Bañales, Mathews, et al., 2019; Constante et al., 2021; Diemer & Rapa, 2016; McWhirter & McWhirter, 2016; McWhirter et al., 2019; Pinedo et al., 2021) and youth of color broadly (e.g., Anyiwo et al., 2020; Mathews et al., 2020). Despite these advancements, there is limited theoretical and empirical work that deconstructs within‐group differences in Latinx youth’s critical consciousness development, especially critical racial consciousness.…”

“…Recognizing the cultural, institutional, and structural elements of racism allows youth to make structural attributions about the causes of racial disparities, or the ability to locate the root causes of racial issues or disparities in institutional or structural factors, as opposed blaming individuals’ intelligence, effort, or motivation as causes for racial disparities (Bañales, Aldana, et al., 2019, Bañales, Marchand, et al., 2019; Neville et al., 2013; Watts et al., 2011). Research indicates that some low‐income Latina women who are immigrants make structural attributions to explain the causes of poverty and wealth (although individual attributions to explain the causes for poverty and wealth were more common; Godfrey & Wolf, 2016) and that Latinx youth display a critical analysis of institutional racism (McWhirter et al., 2019).…”

Systems of Oppression: The Impact of Discrimination on Latinx Immigrant Adolescents’ Well‐Being and Development

“…Despite being perceived as less likely to participate in civic engagement than their peers, Latinx youth report a variety of ways they can make a difference in their communities, including engagement with communities, advocacy, maintaining cultural pride, and educational persistence (McWhirter et al., 2019). Experiences of discrimination have predicted critical action (Tyler et al., 2020), suggesting youth are motivated to dismantle oppression.…”