Antiessentialism in the Lives of Young Men of Color

• In Event: 34.035 - Funds of Knowledge, Community Cultural Wealth, and Forms of Capital: Strengths, Tensions, and Ethical Considerations

Abstract

The changing demographics of US schools require a careful and ethical analysis of how to best serve the needs of nondominant students. Important frameworks have been pivotal in offering practitioners and researchers analytical tools to better understand students’ lived experiences, cultural ways of knowing, and sociocultural realities. Drawing from research with high school aged, young men of color, this paper will document how these young men’s ways of knowing, funds of knowledge, community cultural wealth, and forms of capital, are complex, multi-faceted, and dynamic. Our findings discovered the salience of three key themes in their day-to-day realities: 1) stories of migration, 2) the ever presence of race, and 3) dynamic notions of masculinity. Each of these themes offers an anti-essentialist approach of how we understand the evolving identities of young men of color. These findings lend themselves toward the development of reimagining of how discourses and research on non-dominant populations can be responsive to the complex and evolving lives of today’s youth.

Author

• Tyrone C. Howard, University of California - Los Angeles