This study provides information about youth attitudes toward violence, struggles, and resilience in high-poverty urban U.S. communities of color.
To counteract scientific racism, promote epistemic justice, and support youths’ goals of demonstrating they are not “all gangbangers,” this study reports data from a cross-age mentoring program about youths’ beliefs about aggression, attitudes towards violence and gangs, stress experiences, and goals expressed in field notes and letters. Youth participating in the intervention as mentors and mentees were revolted by societal racism, community violence, and police assaults. Centering youth voices in a participatory cross-age mentoring program in urban high-poverty communities, this paper addresses three problems in knowledge about youth of color experiencing low-income: 1) Misrepresenting youth as disproportionately violence-prone, 2) minimizing stressors youth experience, and 3) ignoring youths’ goals. Those knowledge problems can be framed as a contemporary form of DuBois’ construct of “scientific racism.” Most of the 549 control group and intervention youth strongly repudiated violence and gangs. They reported many more stressors than any U.S subculture and regarded racism and obstacles against exiting poverty as tightly interwoven and formidable. Unlike privileged youth, for these youth the central element in their resilience was survival, framed as collective struggle. Demonstrating their cultural wealth, mentors and mentees aspired to academic and personal competence and sought closeness and collective uplift. To match youths’ needs and goals, intervention providers and researchers should focus on developing positive social networks, provide survival resources and stress management, support youths’ academic and employment goals, and afford youth maximal participation and self-expression.