NEWSLETTER

Society for the History of Children and Youth

NEW COLUMN

CHILDREN AND YOUTH OF COLOR
Miroslava Chávez--Garcia, ED., University of California Davis

This Issue: BUILDING AN ON-LINE COMMUNITY OF SCHOLARS

Greetings! This is the inaugural column focusing on children and youth of color in history and in contemporary society. The idea for hosting such a forum on the SHCY newsletter came to me after writing about my experiences with teaching a course on race and juvenile justice--one of my primary fields of research--and realizing that little had been written on delinquent youth of color in history or on youth of color in general (see SHCY Winter 2008 newsletter). More importantly, I thought that having such a space on the newsletter would allow for the development of an online community focusing on the variety of historical experiences of youths of color in the United States.

The purpose of this column is to bring together scholars, students, and others interested in understanding and exploring the experiences of youth of color in history, namely African American, Native American, Mexican American, and Asian American youths and how their lives intersected with the larger American society. It seeks to highlight the diverse experiences and regional differences among youth of color as well as how race, ethnicity, class, culture, gender, and sexuality have shaped the lives of these young people. It also expects to examine how young people of color negotiated the various structural constraints shaping their lives and that of their families and communities. In other words, how did African American children and youth endure, survive, and thrive in slavery and reconstruction, given the brutal nature of both regimes? What were the experiences of Native American youth in federal boarding schools, which attempted to strip them of their cultural heritage and human dignity? How did young Chinese boys and girls carve out a space for themselves in communities--in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries--that were constantly under assault by the white or Euro-American majority? How did “Mexican schools” in the early twentieth century both create a sense of belonging and community for Mexican American children in the southwest and also work to segregate and disenfranchise them from the larger society? And, how did Japanese American youth cope with forced relocation and internment in the World War Two period? Addressing these and related questions is central to our understanding of the broader experiences of youths in the United States and to our knowledge of history in general. Without doing so we are likely to make generalizations that lead to a distorted view of youth of color in the past and of their role in society in the present.

The goal of the column is also to publicize recent work in the form of books, articles, dissertations, master’s theses, newsletter or newspaper columns, websites, and conference presentations. It is also a space to suggest future areas of research and collaboration. In short, it is place to advertise and communicate the latest news on the study of youth of color in history and, hopefully, generate a sounding board for feedback on issues affecting our research and writing. For instance, a major issue most of us encounter in researching and writing the history of youth of color are finding sources that provide a window onto the historical experiences of youth of color, most of whom have been marginalized socially, economically, politically, and culturally. Finding shreds of evidence that speak to their everyday realities is a serious challenge and we must find creative ways to identify such materials in order recover their history. Oral histories, as some have discovered, provide an alternative and potentially fruitful avenue for documenting and preserving that history. I recently attempted that trade when I interviewed three former juvenile offenders and wrote an essay about my experiences doing so. Though my attempt to publish that work in an oral history journal has been challenged—forcing me to rethink my approach and my framework—the work has taught me invaluable lessons about listening and learning from subjects and finding ways to capture their histories, even with the sordid and sad details.

Studying youth of color is important to the project of history and contemporary society, I argue, for it challenges our understanding of what is means to be a “child” or “youth” and what it means to have a “childhood,” as most of us know those terms are culturally specific and socially constructed. Child saving organizations of the nineteenth century, for instance, catered to specific racial/ethnic young males and females and often left out African Americans, Native Americans, Mexican Americans, and Asian Americans, depending on the region of the United States. By studying youth of color we can get at a more nuanced understanding and accurate representation of the range of experiences of children and youth in the United States.

I, along with the SHCY editor(s), invite everyone to share their work, interests, and ideas about youth of color in history. The strength of the column will come from the readers and those who choose to contribute. Please send your feedback, suggestions, and ideas to Miroslava Chávez-García at chavezgarcia@ucdavis.edu.  Lastly, if you are interested in putting together a column on some aspect of youth of color send along your  topics of interest. 

I also have a small yet growing group of folks interested in putting together panels for the upcoming conference in Berkeley in the summer of 2009.  Please contact me if you are interested in connecting with other potential panelists.