Treat a Cop Like They Are God: Exploring the Relevance and Utility of Funds of Gang Knowledge Among Latino Male Students

Abstract

Latinos represent 20% of the more than 1 million gang-associated youth in the United States. This study explores how gang associated Latino males use their funds of gang knowledge to navigate their urban schools and communities. The findings highlight how Latino males build relationships and exchange information with each other, endure and persevere during juvenile incarceration, how youth interact with law enforcement, and how youth advance their status in gangs. Educators must learn how to anticipate and support gang-associated Latino males to understand their social worlds they bring into schools.

Hustle in Higher Education: How Latinx Students with Conviction Histories Move from Surviving to Thriving in Higher Education

“…Giraldo (2016) shows how these students use their knowledge developed from participating in gangs and being imprisoned to combat microaggressions in higher education. One limitation of this perspective is that students are not contributors to campus communities but rather defending themselves against hostile structures (Huerta & Rios-Aguilar, 2021).…”

Difficult funds of knowledge as pedagogical resources for critical consciousness development

“…In their work with middle and high school youth in continuation schools, Huerta and Rios-Aguilar (2018) discovered students possess and utilize funds of gang knowledge – including “strategies to engage law enforcement and methods to ease the transition into juvenile hall facilitates” (pp. 8-9) – and other “varied forms of knowledge as a survival tool on the streets, in communities where youth routinely spiral into a prisonization process” (p. 2).…”

Supporting Black and Latino boys in school: A call to action

“…Simply put, Black and Latino boys have a great deal of wisdom to share. When teachers, administrators, school counselors, and other educators recognize that these students possess deep funds of knowledge (Huerta & Rios-Aguilar, 2018), and when they seek to learn more about the various forces that shape these students’ lives — including not just the challenges they face but also their values, interests, ambitions, cultural traditions, family histories, out-of-school learning opportunities, and more — they are better able to leverage those resources both in and out of the classroom (Howard et al, 2019).…”

“…Published research about Black and Latino students often has real consequences in the world, whether it challenges educators to rethink old assumptions or reaffirms what they’ve always thought about those students’ values, abilities, academic interests, and motivation to succeed in school (Kinloch & San Pedro, 2014; Paris & Winn, 2014). For far too long, the default has been to focus on these young men’s supposed deficits, while overlooking their knowledge, ambitions, and skills (Huerta & Rios-Aguilar, 2018), which often allow them to persist and succeed even in classrooms that offer less than fruitful conditions for learning and social development. Going forward, then, we urge our fellow scholars to aim for a three-dimensional view of the social and cultural lives of young men of color, including the use of asset-based research methods that capture their resources and achievements as well as their struggles.…”