Battling for human rights and social justice: a Latina/o critical race media analysis of Latina/o student youth activism in the wake of 2006 anti-immigrant sentiment.

• Date: 22 March 2008
• Author: Velez, Veronica,Huber, Lindsay Perez,Lopez, Corina Benavides,de la Luz, Ariana,Solorzano, Daniel G.
• Published date: 22 March 2008
• Author: Velez, Veronica

Introduction

I'm here because my parents don't have legal status.... All of us have to fight for the rights of immigrants ... [and] all of us have to do our part--Patricia, eighth-grade student, quoted by Soto in the San Diego Union-Tribune, March 30, 2006. IT SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN SURPRISING THAT YOUTH WERE CENTER STAGE AS POLITICAL actors responding to the recent attacks against human and civil rights in the United States. Like generations of youth activists before, participants in this movement challenged anti-immigrant sentiment and used powerful methods to ensure that their voice would be heard. Whether they walked out of school, organized sit-ins, conducted educational forums, or contributed to voter registration initiatives, Latina/o youth (1) activists flexed their capacity to politically participate in the ongoing immigration debate. At that time, their concern focused on House Resolution (H.R.) 4437. (2) Combined with deaths at the border, (3) abuse at the hands of smugglers and unscrupulous employers, and the division of immigrant families, this bill was another attack against Latina/o immigrants. It became the rallying cry for many, who mobilized in the spring of 2006. In their own way, Latina/o youth responded to these attacks, concerned about their own futures and those of their friends and family. For Latina/o youth who chose to mobilize, many of whom are children of immigrants or are immigrants themselves, their actions were deeply personal. As one high school student commented to a Washington Post reporter, "this is the beginning of a new life. We're going to fight. If our mom or dad gets deported, we feel that pain too" (Shapira, 2006).

Beyond the legislative debates and mass marches, another central story line emerged during this coverage: Latina/o youth are causing serious unrest and disturbances in communities throughout the country. In one San Antonio newspaper, it was reported that "for many people, the sight of a nationwide phenomenon of students taking the streets is disrespectful, aggravating, and insulting" (Clack, 2006). Adding to this negative portrayal, media depicted youth as "uninformed" about the issue and "acting out" simply to cause trouble and skip school. Research has noted that negative images such as these have strong influential power, often becoming so imbedded in the minds of audiences that they become difficult to contradict (Gilliam and Bales, 2001). Indeed, the media's portrayal of Latina/o youth as "truants" and "troublemakers" recast an exercise of their constitutionally granted freedom of expression into undesirable and even criminal behavior. By associating these negative images and characterizations with the face of Latina/o youth, media outlets essentially racialized (Omi and Winant, 1989) their portrayals and opinions of them. Consequently, any analysis of these manifestations of youth activism must center on race. A race-based analysis affords us a lens to better understand the racialized images of Latina/o youth activism that dominated mainstream media and enables us to better understand the activism itself as an effort to dismantle the type of racist nativism (4) directed at Latina/o immigrants.

This study utilizes a Latina/o Critical Race Theory (LatCrit) framework to understand the central role of race and racism in this Latina/o youth activism. Our objectives are twofold: to give this activism the merit and complexity it deserves and to challenge the negative portrayals of Latina/o youth activists by the mainstream media. Using content analysis of newspaper articles, we argue that the efforts by Latina/o youth activists in the spring of 2006 were multifaceted, conscientious expressions of concern for social justice and human rights. (5) Their actions did not stem from a "desire to skip class," as many media outlets alleged. The activism was oriented toward a more inclusive notion of social justice, (6) defined as the desire and struggle to dismantle the structures of inequality that perpetuate racist nativism and other forms of subordination. It also seeks to secure human rights for all peoples. We hope our analysis will initiate research and policy-oriented discussions for understanding and promoting Latina/o political participation, especially among youth.

The substance of this study is important because as the number of Latinas/os continues to rise in the U.S., there is a pressing need to find ways to politically engage Latina/o youth and offer viable, effective paths to promote their civic engagement. This is also crucial to the development of a concerned and socially conscious citizenry. If we see civic engagement as a necessary component of a global citizenship, (7) then efforts to support political agency in Latina/o youth become critical to their formation as citizens. As we continue to find ways to effectively address emerging issues that affect our national and global community in the new millennium, such actions in support of Latina/o youth, as citizens, are even more necessary and urgent.

This can only be done if Latina/o youth are viewed as important, positive contributors to social movements and if genuine attempts are made to open up collaborative spaces for moving forward across generations in efforts for human rights and social justice. Neither their young age nor their legal status as "undocumented immigrants" (8) prevented many Latina/o youth activists from mobilizing for a more inclusive and socially just society in the spring of 2006. The purpose of "citizenship" for improving society has many shared understandings. Yet given the legal constraints on enactments of citizenship based on age and "legal" status, these efforts by Latina/o youth are radical acts that help us to reconceptualize citizenship in theory and practice. Consequently, acts such as walking out of school, organizing educational forums, or documenting and sharing personal experiences become catalysts for finding more effective ways to portray and include Latina/o youth as key agents and citizens in efforts for human rights and social justice.

We hope our study can begin a more productive conversation concerning how best to foster future activism from the political potential and capacity Latina/o youth have recently demonstrated. In this sense, we concur with Youniss et al.'s (2002: 124) rationale for examining youth civic engagement because "the study of civic competence and its development has become central to the appraisal of youth and the understanding of the fate of evolving political order in the 21st century." As Latina/o youth prepare themselves to become the political participants of tomorrow, we must ask ourselves whether we are doing all we can to genuinely acknowledge their concerned expressions today. We hope this study will begin to critically expose and analyze the oppressive barriers that affect, inform, and frame Latina/o youth activism.

Theoretical Frame: Latina/o Critical Race Theory (LatCrit)

We have adopted LatCrit as our theoretical lens to examine the recent experiences of Latina/o youth activists and the framing of their efforts by the print media. This approach emerged from the legal framework of Critical Race Theory (CRT), which seeks to explore and deconstruct race-neutral or color-blind ideologies within historical and cultural contexts in an effort to challenge racial and/or ethnic subordination (Delgado Bernal, 2002). Although originating in the field of law, both CRT and LatCrit have crossed disciplinary borders. Within the field of education, for example, these frameworks provide educational researchers with a lens to explore the role of race and racism in the educational experiences of Students of Color (9) and, in the case of LatCrit, Latina/o students.

LatCrit is not incompatible with CRT. According to Valdes (1996: 26-27), "LatCrit is supplementary, complementary to [CRT]. LatCrit ... at its best should operate as a close cousin--related to [CRT] in real and lasting ways...." As a related framework, LatCrit holds the same traditions and purpose of CRT, but was developed to explore issues relevant to Latinas/os when CRT fell short analytically. For Elizabeth Iglesias (1997), the main limitation of CRT is one of scope. CRT's preoccupation with a black/white paradigm often narrows its ability to adequately answer questions about the role of race and racism, as well as other forms of oppression, in the lives of Latinas/os, Asian Americans, and other Communities of Color. Thus, LatCrit, as one branch of CRT, has become an important theoretical lens for educational scholars to more fully examine how multiple forms of oppression based on immigration status, language, culture, ethnicity, and phenotype intersect to shape the identities and experiences of Latina/o students and their families (Solrrzano and Delgado Bernal, 2001).

Within education, LatCrit has further evolved, as Solorzano and Yosso (2001: 479) point out in their definition of a LatCrit theory in education:

A LatCrit theory in education is a framework that can be used to theorize and examine the ways in which race and racism explicitly and implicitly impact the educational structures, processes, and discourses that affect People of Color generally and Latinas/os specifically. Utilizing the experiences of Latinas/os, a LatCrit theory in education also theorizes and examines that place where racism intersects with other forms of subordination such as sexism and classism. LatCrit scholars in education acknowledge that educational institutions operate in contradictory ways with their potential to oppress and marginalize coexisting with their potential to emancipate and empower. LatCrit theory in education is conceived as a social justice project that attempts to link theory with practice, scholarship with teaching, and the academy with the community. LatCrit theory in education is transdisciplinary and draws on many other schools of progressive scholarship. Using...