Susan L. Groenke, Marcelle Haddix, Wendy J. Glenn, David E.
Kirkland,
Detra Price-Dennis, and Chonika Coleman-King
Disrupting and
Dismantling the
Dominant Vision
of Youth of Color
I
t is certainly a good time to re-
think adolescence/ts. The murders
of Michael Brown, Tamir Rice,
Renisha McBride, Trayvon Martin,
and Jordan Davisand too many othersmake
it quite clear: certain social constructs of adoles-
cence/ts get certain adolescents killed. As English
language arts (ELA) educators, we despair over the
loss of young livesboth literally, through their
physical deaths, but also figuratively, as we know
that too many youth of color1 experience symbolic
deaths through miseducation and dispossession in
todays public schools. The work of contemporary
researchers focused on adolescence reminds us that
those privileged in definitions of adolescence are also
privileged in frameworks of education; those who
are ignored in those definitions are also ignored in
school. But who gets to be an adolescent and who
doesnt? Whose adolescence matters in school and
in life? Perhaps more importantly, who gets to live?
Who gets to be human?
These are questions we began to ask when
seeking ally relationships that we know are criti-
cal to sustaining us through despairing timeswe
reached out to each other in cyberspace to chat and
to collaboratively re-think our views of adolescence
and our current pedagogical practices with begin-
ning ELA teachers. As scholars whose research
and pedagogy focuses on critical views of race, we
have used multicultural2 and urban3 young adult
literature (YAL) in our work with beginning ELA
teachers to challenge and refine knowledge of and
dispositions toward teaching students of color (see
Glenn, To Witness and Testify, Developing
Copyright 2015 by the National Council of Teachers of English. All rights reserved.
EJ_Jan2015_01_B_022-080.indd 35
In this article, ELA and
urban teacher educators
who have been long-time
advocates for and users of
young adult literature in
their work with beginning
English teachers re-think
the cultural constructs of
black and brown
adolescence that undergird
the genre and guide their
work.
Understandings of Race; Groenke and Maples;
Groenke, Maples, and Henderson; Haddix and
Price-Dennis).
Yet, we worry that we have not been sensitive
enough to the adolescent construct itself and won-
der if more critical views of adolescenceincluding
how race is tied to representations of adolescence
might inform our use of YAL with beginning ELA
teachers. In what follows, we intersperse the work
of scholars who inform our current work with
excerpts from our cyber-chat to share the tensions
we are currently experiencing as ELA teacher edu-
cators who are re-thinking adolescence in the hopes
of re-imagining new, humanizing pedagogies in
teacher education.
Who Is the Adolescent?
We draw on the work of Jennifer Vadeboncoeur and
Lisa Patel Stevens to understand that adolescence is
a social construct, informed by discursive practices
that are always implicated in relations of power. As
Vadeboncoeur and Stevens explain, the popular dis-
course that adolescence is a developmental life stage
marked by storm and stressfirst articulated in
the early 1900s by the American psychologist G.
Stanley Hallbuttresses a theory of adolescence
that is based upon the discourses of individuality and
natural development that were, and still are, at the
forefront of social beliefs (7). Nancy Leskos work
demonstrates how Halls ideas about individuality
and natural development were grounded in racist,
gendered, and colonial understandings of the child
as a savage, or primitive, in need of Western rule
English Journal 104.3 (2015): 3540 35
12/23/14 3:20 PM
 Disrupting and Dismantling the Dominant Vision of Youth of Color

(34). Ultimately, Hall (considered

by many the father of adolescence)
believed adolescence to be a life
stage necessary for evolution from
savage to human, and believed only
well-to-do white young males
through exercise, team sports, sepa-
ration from females, and curriculum
emphasizing patriotism, loyalty, and
service (think Boy Scouts)could
make racial progress and thus
develop their full humanity.
Despite the problematic ideo-
logical underpinnings of the West-
ern adolescent, this belief that
adolescence is a distinct life stage,
marked by predictable behaviors, iStock/Getty Images
persists. Margaret J. Finders, who
has documented this discourse at
work in traditional and nontraditional school set- discursive roles available to (some) youth, they are
tings, explains that it assumes 1) adolescents sever viewed as deviant and abnormal, as sub-human. As
ties with adults; 2) peer groups become increasingly we discuss in our chat, these beliefs hold dangerous
influential social networks; 3) resistance is a sign of and tragic consequences for youth of color:
normalcy for the adolescent; and 4) romance and sex-
ual drive govern interests and relationships (Gotta Chonika: How might perceptions of [Tray-
105). Finders explains that such beliefs inform teach- von Martin and Jordan Davis] as adolescents
play into their killings?
ers interactions with adolescents and their pedago-
gies, often to the detriment of youth who hold little David: Interesting, because with youth of
power in schools or society. As Finderss work shows, color, especially young men of color, the pre-
when socioeconomic class subjectivities intersect sumption of adolescence is deleted. There
are no children here, right?
with gender and race/ethnicity subjectivities, these
popular discourses about adolescents benefit some Chonika: I wonder if the presumption of
and silence others, and ultimately constrain the roles adolescence is deleted or if their adolescence
all adolescents and their teachers can enact in schools means something different. . . . I wonder if it
means that they are more likely to be deviant
(see also Finders, Just Girls).
during adolescence. If an old black man was
We would add that these discoursesand wearing a hoodie or a younger boy, would the
their attendant definitions of normalcy for teen- presumption of criminality be the same?
agersget unevenly distributed for youth of Urban education scholars like Howard C.
color. As an example, when youth of color resist Stevenson [see Cassidy and Stevenson] have
or rebel against the status quo in or outside of argued that black males in particular arent
school, they become criminalspublic enemies, seen as children, but I think when you layer
menaces to society. Similarly, youth of color dont that with the idea that adolescence is gener-
have normal curiosities about sex or natural sex ally a time where young people act out, its
drives; instead they are hypersexual, oversexed, magnified for kids of color.
their desires base and carnal. And youth of color Susan: Is adolescence a privilege?
dont have peer groups or caring adults in their David: Adolescence is privileged for some
lives: they have gangs. but not all. The point here is the uneven dis-
Thus, youth of color dont truly get to be tribution of the label as well as the centrip-
adolescents. Instead, if and when they enact the etal cultural gravity of the concept that

36 January 2015

EJ_Jan2015_01_B_022-080.indd 36 12/23/14 3:20 PM

 Susan L. Groenke, Marcelle Haddix, Wendy J. Glenn, David E. Kirkland, Detra Price-Dennis, and Chonika Coleman-King
almost always pulls back toward hegemonic
notions of being adolescent (normed).
Susan: Is part of the norm that adolescents
rebel against their parents? Or is this an
assumption from a privileged view?
David: I would say assumption from the
privileged view . . . and also part of a master
narrative of angst that plays into a system of
privilege. Not all youth enjoy parents to
rebel against.
Chonika: Its definitely from a privileged
and white-centered view. Adolescence from a
Western perspective is often used to justify,
but not punish, risky behavior for white kids,
but the same protections of adolescence are
not offered to kids of color.
As Chonika and David suggest, one conse-
quence of the uneven distribution of the adolescent
label is that some youth get to act like teenag-
ers and others dont. As we know, for too many
youth of color, acting like teenagers can result
in increased surveillance, tracking into remedial
courses and special education at school, school sus-
pensions, incarceration, and loss of life.4 The deaths
of Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, and Jordan
Davis confirm this, as does the school-to-prison
pipeline that funnels youth of color out of pub-
lic schools and into juvenile and criminal justice
systems.5
Troubling Our Use of Multicultural and
Urban Young Adult Literature (YAL)
We see an urgent need, then, to trouble our use of
YAL in the preparation of beginning ELA teach-
ers. We are long time advocates of multicultural
and urban YAL and have worked to reposition mul-
ticultural and urban YAL as texts central to the
teacher education curriculum for several important
reasons. First, we know that YAL can expand read-
ers worldviews and can provide a multiplicity of
voices and perspectives that are typically absent in
teacher preparation. This is important, as we know
that nearly 85 percent of all secondary teachers are
white, monolingual native English speakers, many
of whom have had little, if any, training in working
with culturally and linguistically diverse learners;
many of whom benefit from white privilege; and
EJ_Jan2015_01_B_022-080.indd 37
many of whom hold deficit-oriented beliefs toward
young people of color.
As we suggest in our next chat excerpt, how-
ever, YALor, at least, the YAL we have used (e.g.,
Sapphires Push, Walter Dean Myerss Monster) and
how we have used it in our work with beginning
teachersmay have its limitations:
Wendy: When my students talk about male
teens of color (in the context of the novels we
read and discuss), they often hold two seem-
ingly opposing perspectivesthese kids
have to grow up so fast because of their dif-
ficult circumstances and these kids dont
have the support systems that help them
grow up successfully.
Chonika: And that they arent loved. In a text
like Monster the beginning teachers dont focus
on the love and support of the family, they
focus on the pieces that reinforce stereotypes.
Im not sure if its not that other elements
arent there, but again, what they notice.
Susan: Right, Chonika. They are surprised
by Steves mom and dadthat Steve comes
from a good family.
Chonika: One theme I see across adolescence
for youth of color is that they take on more
adult responsibilities, but to our students
that does not seem like adolescence because
its not their version of adolescence.
Wendy: Agreed, Chonika. This assumption
of greater responsibility is often portrayed as
a burden resulting from material concerns.
Marcelle: In essence were talking about
imagining adolescence in the lives of black
and brown children. So is the first step . . . to
have our preservice teachers (and ourselves
teacher educators) unpack and understand
the label/construct of adolescence and who is
included/excluded and why?
David: Marcelle, I think you are right. A
critical reflection on the term might liberate
it from certain assumptions and make mani-
fest the ways it plays into particular markers
of privilege.
Wendy: David, you have me wondering if a
critical reading of texts that feature a normed
vision of adolescence might help debunk its
power and open readers to considering
alternatives.
English Journal 37
12/23/14 3:20 PM
 Disrupting and Dismantling the Dominant Vision of Youth of Color
Marcelle: You cant just do this work by
adding on multicultural/urban lit, for exam-
ple. Its the normalized, white privileged,
heteronormative, standard English ways
that we dont call out.
Wendy: And as a white teacher educator, I
admit to finding myself normalizing the
white tradition in literature and positioning
ethnic traditions as other.
Our conversation in this excerpt suggests that
if we are to disrupt commonly held assumptions
about adolescence/ts, we must both trouble the
adolescent label and examine raced understandings
and representations of adolescence. As Wendy and
Marcelle explain, failure to do both can result in the
continued normalization and privileging of white
constructions of adolescence, both in YAL and in
life.
Finally, in our chat, David pointed out that
the genre of YAL itself is problematic in our work:
David: The idea of YA lits (literatures writ-
ten by adults for youth and privileged by
education institutions) might raise other
concerns, especially in that they might disre-
gard youth interests. YA texts are a hege-
monic textuality, different from the texts
that youth produce and consume as part of a
myriad of youth cultures.
David: Missing from this conversation is how
groups of youth define themselves . . . how
these definitions rarely enter teacher education.
Detra: The narratives [of youth of color] are
realand the discourses that circulate in
our society and create space for these narra-
tives to be realhave to be acknowledged
and actively dismantled.
Marcelle: Imagine in the lives of the young
people we lost if someone (1) viewed them
as human and (2) listened to them.
David: [We need] a profit pedagogy of
listening.
Here David suggests that because the YAL
genre is not produced (and not always consumed) by
youthespecially youth who see the genre as school-
sanctioned or non-representative of their lived expe-
riencesit cannot speak for youth or accurately
represent youth and youth cultures. Combined with
38 January 2015
EJ_Jan2015_01_B_022-080.indd 38
this tension for us is the troubling fact that the youth
of color in YAL may be the only youth our beginning
teachers ever get to know. As such, to our beginning
teachers, youth of color remain simple fictions whose
life experiences dont require their engagement once
the reading is done. Perhaps more troubling is that
the deficit perspectives many beginning ELA teach-
ers hold may stay firmly in place once the reading of
a YA novel is complete.
To counter these troublesome consequences
of our current use of YAL in teacher prepara-
tion, David suggests we need a profit pedagogy
of listening. What would such a pedagogy look
like?6 First, it would seek out youth voices. Youth
have not been silent in the wake of the deaths of
Michael, Trayvon, and Jordan, but we wont hear
their voices in mainstream media. Instead, youth
have created tribute Facebook pages and tribute
songs and responded to the deaths of their peers
through social media. As example, Miles Ezeilo, a
young Black male teenager, used his blog to share
his reflections on the murder of Jordan Davis:
Im not a thug in any way, shape, or form. I
get good grades, I try to use manners when I
need to. . . . But I know that that doesnt mean
a thing to someone who is threatened by me. By
the skin Im in. Because racists and even regular
people who let stereotypes push their fear dont
see me as a complete individual with good home
training and good morals. All they see is dark
pigment walking down the street and theyre
ready to pull the trigger.
The skin our youth are in reflects life-and-
death matters. Youth need to know we are aware
of and understand the fear and anger they experi-
ence on a daily basis. Youth need to know we desire
to work in solidarity with them to combat racism
and other forms of institutional and structural
oppression at work in our society, especially in our
schools.
We can communicate this desire by talking
to youthasking youth for their perspectives on
issues, and asking them to tell us about their expe-
riences of adolescence. Questions to facilitate such
conversations may include the following:
What are stories people tell about adoles-
cents? Who writes these stories? Who ben-
efits? Who is silenced? Who is harmed?
12/23/14 3:20 PM
 Susan L. Groenke, Marcelle Haddix, Wendy J. Glenn, David E. Kirkland, Detra Price-Dennis, and Chonika Coleman-King
What does the label of adolescence assume
and do? When we use the label, what are we
assuming about the people who we think fit
this label, and those who dont?
How is adolescence depicted in this text
(e.g., story, song, movie)? Does this depiction
of adolescence feel true to you? Why or why
not?
What if adolescence is a fiction for youth of
color? Do youth of color get to be teenagers?
Does adolescence look/feel the same for youth
of color as it does white youth?
We feel these questions could be asked of
YAL by teens and teachersboth fiction that pre-
sents a normed white experience of adolescence, and
fiction that claims to present an urban and/or mul-
ticultural experience. When the stories dont feel
true to teens, we can encourage them to write the
stories that do.
Finally, we also think we could start includ-
ing more nonfiction (e.g., memoir) that functions as
critical witnesses on our course reading lists. Tif-
fany Ana Lpez offers the term critical witnessing to
describe the process of being so moved or struck by
the experience of encountering a text as to embrace
a specific course of action avowedly intended to
forge a path toward change (205). She furthers
that critical witnessing [spotlights] the conditions
that brought the story into being, and insists that
an event is pivotal and in need of expanded context
and critical address (206).
Students in Susans summer young adult lit-
erature course had strong responses to Luis J. Rodr-
guezs memoir Always Running: La Vida Loca: Gang
Days in L.A. In the memoir, Rodrguez recounts his
adolescence as a poor Latino kid who turns to gangs
for self-protection and self-confirmation, and ulti-
mately comes to understand the cycles of poverty,
racism, and violence that motivate gang culture.
Lpez suggests that Rodrguez positions himself as
a critical witness, sharing stories of survival and
healing . . . and offering [his] writing as a vehicle
toward personal and social change (205).
Susan isnt sure if her students fit the descrip-
tion of critical witnesses yet or not, but she
can attest to the powerful conversations that sur-
rounded the class reading of the text. Students were
angry and did not feel they could easily walk away
EJ_Jan2015_01_B_022-080.indd 39
from the text. As one student responded, Once
you know this, you cant un-know it. Another
student responded, I have to
re-think everything I thought Youth need to know we
I knew about gangs and the are aware of and
people who join them. Pow- understand the fear and
erful responses indeed. anger they experience on
Ultimately, we under- a daily basis.
stand that multicultural and
urban YAL is necessary in teacher preparation and
the ELA classroom. We want our studentsall
studentsto see themselves in the texts they read.
As Walter Dean Myers explained in a New York
Times article, he wrote about youth of color because
he wanted to make them human in the eyes of
readers and, especially, in their own eyes. I need
to make them feel as if they are part of Americas
dream, that all the rhetoric is meant for them, and
that they are wanted in this country.
One would think we wouldnt have to work
so hard to humanize youth of color in 2014. Maybe
we have too much fiction in YAL. Maybe we havent
done enough to disrupt what we (and authors and
publishers of YAL) think we know about adoles-
cence/ts. Maybe it is time to consider how race
matters in adolescence. Maybe when we are will-
ing to assume competence and complexity, when all
teenagers get to be teenagers, when we are willing
to get to know Michael and Trayvon and Jordan in
life, not just in deathmaybe then we will know
youth of color in all their humanity, as substance,
not shadows (Sims).
Notes
1. In this article, youth of color refers to youth who are
not white: the phrase is meant to be inclusive, representing
solidarity among those who have been historically margin-
alized by race. It serves as a preferable replacement of minor-
ity (which often implies a subordinate connotation) and
non-white (which implies a deficit perspective).
2. In our work, we draw on the Cooperative Childrens
Book Centers (CCBC) definition of multicultural literature
as books by and about people of color (Multicultural
Literature).
3. We draw on the work of Marcelle Haddix and
Detra Price-Dennis to define urban young adult literature
(or urban fiction or street fiction) as the genre of novels
whose plots, characters, and settings focus on everyday life
in contemporary urban neighborhoods (255).
4. Chicago activist and teacher educator Erica R.
Meiners explains the prison industrial complexa multifac-
eted structure that encompasses the economic and political
contexts of the multibillion-dollar corrections industry
English Journal 39
12/23/14 3:20 PM
 Disrupting and Dismantling the Dominant Vision of Youth of Color

relies on discourses of youth of color as violent and unedu-
catable public enemies (20).
5. For more detailed description, see What Is the
School-to-Prison Pipeline?
6. See Kirkland (2011, 2013) for more on a profit
pedagogy of listening.
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the Mask: Hypervulnerability and Hypermasculine
Aggression among African American Males in an
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5374. Print.
Ezelio, Miles. Jordan Davis: Thoughts from a Black Teen-
ager. Blog: Miles Ezelio. 28 Feb. 2014. Web. 13 May
2014.
Finders, Margaret J. Gotta Be Worse: Literacy, Schooling,
and Adolescent Youth Offenders. Re/Constructing
the Adolescent: Sign, Symbol, and Body. Ed. Jennifer
A. Vadeboncoeur and Lisa Patel Stevens. New York:
Peter Lang, 2005. 97122. Print.
. Just Girls: Hidden Literacies and Life in Junior High.
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Glenn, Wendy J. Developing Understandings of Race:
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. To Witness and Testify: Preservice Teachers
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Cyberspace: Preparing Preservice Teachers to Facili-
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rooms. English Education 45.3 (2013): 24783.
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Kirkland, David. Listening to Echoes: Teaching Young
Black Men Literacy and the Distraction of ELA Stan-
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. A Search Past Silence: The Literacy of Young Black
Men. New York: Teachers College, 2013. Print.
Lesko, Nancy. Act Your Age! A Cultural Construction of Ado-
lescence. London: Falmer, 2001. Print.
Lpez, Tiffany Ana. Reading Trauma and Violence in U.S.
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Making of Public Enemies. London: Routledge, 2007.
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Rodrguez, Luis J. Always Running: La Vida Loca: Gang
Days in L.A. New York: Simon, 1994. Print.
Sims (Bishop), Rudine. Shadow and Substance: Afro-American
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Susan L. Groenke (sgroenke@utk.edu) is associate professor of English Education and director of the Center for Childrens and
Young Adult Literature at the University of Tennessee. Marcelle Haddix (mhaddix@syr.edu) is the deans associate professor
and director of English Education at Syracuse University and directs the Writing Our Lives project, a program geared toward
supporting the writing practices of urban youth within and beyond school contexts. Wendy J. Glenn (wendy.glenn@uconn
.edu) is associate professor of English Education at the University of Connecticut and senior editor of The ALAN Review. David
E. Kirkland (davidekirkland@gmail.com) is associate professor of English Education at New York University and author of A
Search Past Silence: The Literacy of Young Black Men. Detra Michelle Price-Dennis (dmp2192@tc.columbia.edu) is assistant
professor of Elementary and Inclusive Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. Chonika Coleman-King (ccolem21@
utk.edu) is assistant professor of Urban Education at the University of Tennessee and author of The (Re)Making of a Black
American: Tracing the Racial and Ethnic Socialization of Caribbean American Youth.

READWRITETHINK CONNECTION Lisa Storm Fink, RWT

If there is anyone in the world of childrens and young adult literature who could have been described as a living
legend, its Walter Dean Myers. Tune in to this podcast episode from ReadWriteThink to hear how his own experi-
ences as a reader shaped his approach to storytelling, what he sought to offer young people through his writing,
and the thinking behind a select handful of his novelsbooks that incorporate concepts as varied as magical real-
ism, the social contract, and oral histories with our nations war veterans. http://bit.ly/1rWQ5Mr

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