Youth Movement: Building on the Assets of Community for School Reform

I'm not racist or anything, but we heard that a Mexican kid was going to jump a black dude, one of my friends, so all the black kids went after him, and it turned into a big fight between us and the Mexicans.--Jason, (1) 11th-grade African American male student at East Oakland High School. It's always the same mayates (a black insect) causing all the fights ... well, who knows, all black people look the same.--Nayalie, a 12th-grade Mexican female student at East Oakland High School. Introduction THROUGHOUT THE 1990s, VIOLENCE BETWEEN LATINO AND AFRICAN AMERICAN students occurred frequently at East Oakland High School (EHS), located in a low-income district of Oakland, California. Tensions between the two groups had been so pervasive for a number of years that many students viewed segregation and violence as facts of everyday life, as expressed by an African American student: "It's always been like this and there is nothing that could be done." Similarly, Tatiana, a Mexican American student who has been involved in several conflicts with African Americans, stated: "Me pegaron otra vez. Ya va como cinco veces. Me estoy acostumbrando." (They hit me again. It's now happened like five times. I am getting used to it.) Realizing that interracial tensions among youth were reaching an extreme in the East Bay, leaders from nonprofit agencies created Youth Movement (YM), a university, community, and school collaborative designed to develop multiracial student teams to lead school-based reform efforts in the prevention and reduction of youth violence in the targeted high schools. The collaborative selected EHS as a site for a YM team, consisting of up to 10 students from various ethnic backgrounds (but mostly African American and Latino) and an adult coordinator. YM's strategies for change included leadership development of team members, advocacy, community education, and organizing. In early October of 1998, interracial violence between African American and Latino youth peaked when an African American student stabbed a Latino student on campus. The stabbing appeared to be related to episodes of violence between African American and Latino students that occurred during the previous week. As a result, the police increased their presence in and around the school and did not allow students to leave or enter campus during school hours (SFGate, 1998). YM at EHS launched a school change campaign and focused on various strategies to reduce interracial tensions. The goal of the campaign was to mobilize students and staff to support a student center and oversee the implementation of additional resources and programs. YM's work resulted in noteworthy successes; however, the team encountered challenges and obstacles in establishing peace between the ethnic groups. Traditionally, counselors and practitioners working within educational settings have approached problems such as violence at the individual and group levels. These interventions may include bullying education and training, conflict resolution, and expulsion and suspension policies .Although the people implementing these practices may acknowledge the historical, social, and economic context in which violence occurs, they rarely make this the foundation of their work. Moreover, research in the field of community psychology contends that such approaches do not result in long-lasting positive change because they are fundamentally limited and unsustainable (Perkins, Hughey, and Speer, 2002). The field of community psychology, adopting a social capital framework, integrates historical and contemporary racial and social class dynamics, both theoretically and practically. A social capital lens of analysis provides insights into how counselors and practitioners working in schools can rethink their ways of addressing violence and other long-standing issues that plague inner-city schools and communities. Through an ethnographic account (2) of a community organization's efforts to address interracial violence at Eastside High School in Oakland, this article attempts to reveal how such interventions can be developed and implemented. …