Students for Ethnic Studies: Towards Disrupting and Divesting Whiteness Through YPAR

Abstract

This dissertation shares the story of a youth participatory action research project working to ensure that Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian American, Pacific Islander, and multiracial youth voices remain at the heart of a growing ethnic studies program in a suburban school system in the Pacific Northwest. After realizing the degree to which the ways of being in and with the world for our research group were rooted in whiteness, we adapted San Pedro’s Culturally Disruptive Pedagogy to our project as we sought to disrupt and divest ourselves of whiteness. Our story covers the processes, conversations, resources, and tensions that filled our disruptive efforts. The fields of Critical White Studies, Critical Race Theory, Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy, and Settler Colonialism guided the project’s aims, methods, and analysis. Our project sheds light on the possibilities and opportunity the addition of Culturally Disruptive Pedagogy can have for youth participatory action research.