Chapter 6: Critical Youth Development: Living and Learning at the Intersections of Life

This experience as a young youth worker disrupted my narrative of hope and shook me to the core. I had entered the youth development field believing that every problem could be solved with copious amounts of hope and enthusiasm. Instead, the real world has disrupted that narrative time and again and revealed the harsh realities young people face and the environments in which they face obstacles. I was angry, heartbroken, and lamenting the loss of a potential unfulfilled.

Years later, as a seasoned youth worker, I mourned the death of Tamir Rice and Rekia Boyd at the hands of police. As with James, I was left to make sense of the circumstances that created these tragedies and came to realize these incidents were symptomatic of structural racism, that is, racism embedded in and reinforced by many of our institutions including schools, law enforcement, and media (Fulbright-Anderson, Lawrence, Sutton, Susi, & Kubisch, 2005). I have also come to realize that my understanding of these and many other incidents emerged because of a lifelong journey to explore my race and gender identity and the sociological structures that impact people of color and whites as well. In this chapter I delve into the principles, theoretical frames, and strategies that can explore and address these phenomena. I am defining this approach as Critical Youth Development (CYD), which will be described in the next section. It is my belief that this approach to working with youth can be used to understand and, to some degree, mitigate the impact of how social institutions negatively impact youth.