Exploring Black and Latinx Youths’ Experiences of Discrimination Within Gun Violence Prevention Organizing Spaces

To bring attention to gun violence within urban neighborhoods, Black and Latinx youth have joined both community-based and nationwide gun violence prevention organizations. Using an intersectional, youth agency lens, this study will explore and shed light on Black and Latinx youth gun violence prevention organizers’ experiences of racism and discrimination within organizing spaces. This study will explore how these experiences affect youth’s civic engagement, and offer recommendations for educators, policymakers, and community-based and national-level gun violence prevention organizations. Everyday racism and discrimination may change racial minority youths’ civic engagement as a healthy coping response (Hope & Spencer, 2017). However, no existing research has explored how experiences of racism and discrimination within organizing spaces may shape youth’s civic engagement, particularly Black and Latinx youth who are taking action to improve their own communities and may be responding to personal tragedies due to gun violence. This study will allow our team to analyze the type of discrimination youth experienced and how it affected their civic engagement, which is a critical research question to address racial injustice within social movements that center dismantling systems of oppression.