Hope, Healing, and Care: Pushing the Boundaries of Civic Engagement for African American Youth

The existing literature on youth civic engagement presents two challenges. On the one hand, insofar as it fails to account for class and ethnic differences, current theory generally conceptualizes youth civic and political participation too broadly. Much of the focus is on conventional civic engagement, which Westheimer and Kahne (2004) describe as citizenship through individual acts of volunteering and the like. On the other hand, insofar as it does not account for the ways in which historical, community, and social forces shape civic activities, current theory frames civic participation too narrowly. The singular focus on citizenship forms of engagement overlooks other civic activities such as protests, hunger strikes, and civil disobedience. These forms of civic engagement address issues related to injustice and are directed toward social change.