Socializing Towards Citizenship: A Search for Civic Education Curricula that Will Yield Higher Levels of Political Participation and Civic Engagement for Urban Black Youth
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2013
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Haverford College. Department of Political Science
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Thesis
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Award
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eng
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Abstract
Systemic and structural discrimination in American cities, which is responsible for enclaves of crime, poverty and subpar education, have not only produced a generation of despondent individuals with limited feelings of agency, but also a generation that can only conceive of this lifestyle and mentality as normal. Much like the institutions of discrimination, in place that maintain this reality, the psychological damage done to youth of color living in inner‐city communities, particularly black youth, is cyclical. Therefore, teaching urban black youth in inner‐cities to practice civic engagement by passively observing older generations of black folks, and “giving back to the community” as adults (Charles 2005), will no longer suffice as effective ways of combating many real and dangerous issues taking place in their communities. Additionally allowing urban black youth to accept being systemically pathologized in politics will not improve levels of political participation (Cohen 2012). On the contrary, it will only makes them feel further politically alienated and make them desire, even more, to stay out of urban politics. Many of the problems black youth encounter in inner‐city communities are political, so they need to be taught how to create sustainable and meaningful social change locally. This thesis contributes to a much larger and needed conversation on active citizenship and youth empowerment for urban youth in general but specifically urban black youth in inner‐cities. In this thesis, I examine the capacity for different civic education curricular models to raise levels of civic engagement and political participation for urban black youth. By assessing different theoretical approaches to civic education, the aim is to find ways to combat attitudes of apathy and community disengagement among urban black youth, and hopefully empower them to tackle the structural inequalities they face, living in inner‐city communities.