"I Want You to See Us as a Person and Not as a Gang Member or a Thug": Young People Define their Identities in the Public Sphere

Through an examination of the voices of youth in a city council meeting as they speak out against the passage of Proposition 21, this paper identifies the diversity among urban youth identities. Many studies have focused on explaining youth's deviant coded behavior, but have given little attention to ways in which youth engage in dialogue with authorities. This paper demonstrates that the youth contest their racialized identity, as reflected in California's anti youth politics as well as in mass-media depictions, by drawing on discourses regarding education, family values, and concern for each other's welfare. I argue that urban youth do not always position themselves in opposition to mainstream society, in their attempts to contest racial hegemony, but construct civic identities.