Emerging Tensions: The Variances and Silences in Survey Research with Youth

Abstract

In the process of organizing to build power through mobilizing young people against displacement from school pushouts, we observed ways in which low-income youth of color have internalized negative ideas about themselves and their communities and how they collectively challenge those ideas. Using Critical Race Theory and critical whiteness studies as a framework, we identify some of the ideologies that we observed in our survey research with youth. Drawing on examples from two youth survey projects that we participated in, this paper considers what young people of color thought they deserved as public goods in spaces that have been racialized under a white neoliberal logic albeit in schooling or community spaces. We then discuss our findings to demonstrate how these ideologies create tensions that must be considered when conducting survey research including any form of YPAR and organizing.