Occasional Paper Series #53
I’ll Walk Out if You Walk Out: A Comic on How Students of Color Utilize Racial Micropolitical Literacy in Their Everyday Lives
by Josephine H. Pham and Angel Trazo
Urgent demands to change a world impacted by racial injustice, gun violence, police brutality, and climate change may seem impossible and feel out of reach. What could happen if the day-to-day realities and political dreams of youth of color were taken seriously as critical resources for growing racially just futures? How might collective attention to the seemingly ordinary practices of youth of color transform how youth, educators, and scholars learn, study, and live educational justice?
Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) is a promising method and pedagogical approach that centers youth as agents of social change who engage in inquiry-based learning about critical issues in their communities and come up with research-based solutions for social transformation. Though YPAR is typically treated as participation in formal activities and learning environments, we advocate for an expansive view of YPAR that considers everyday practices in mundane life to be essential for building just and thriving futures. Specifically, we assert that the ingenious practices of youth of color can amplify possible inquiries and solutions for a racially just and harm-free world and, when nurtured, can expand collective actions and imaginations for social change.
To illuminate the palpable nature of YPAR in the everyday, we co-created a comic about a real-life narrative of students of color from Southeast Los Angeles, California, and how their organic and deliberate activities for social change occurred and unfolded in everyday classroom life.
Through a racial micropolitical literacy framework, we describe the inventive ways youth of color expanded educational possibilities for racially just futures on a daily basis, and how these practices culminated in collective action on the day of a national student-led walkout.
Josephine H. Pham is an assistant professor at University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research examines micro-interactional processes of social reproduction and social transformation in everyday educational contexts, with an emphasis on the learning, knowledge, and practices of teachers of color. Collaborating with other scholars, practitioners, and artists, she is also creator of Mai Pedagogy Project, combining research with creative expression to communicate complex scholarly findings and critical perspectives related to educational justice.
Angel Trazo is a doctoral student in cultural studies at University of California, Davis. Her dissertation explores the origins and implications of Asian Baby Girl (ABG) subculture—as both an Asian American youth culture and viral “ABG aesthetic” on social media. She is the author and illustrator of the children’s book We Are Inspiring: The Stories of 32 Inspirational Asian American Women (2019).