Caitlyn Blankenship's YDEV MA

Identity: Power, Privilege and Intersectionality How does whiteness and white supremacy culture impact the youth and educational spaces that you inhabit? What does it look like? Feel like in your body and movements? How does it sound? Taste? Slip by or call out? There are SO many ways whiteness and white supremacy culture impacts youth and educational spaces around me. For the purpose of my reflection here and the one that is on my mind the most; I will focus on the characteristic of "Progress is Bigger/More and Quantity over Quality" ( White Supremacy Culture Characteristics [website] (Tema Okun)). Whether working with youth from a community organizational stand point or an OST program, I find myself constantly frustrated with the bigger is better idealism that forces us to focus on quantity rather than the true impact and quality of programs. "An organization that assumes the goal is to grow - add staff, add projects, or serve more people regardless of how well they c...

Why do we do what we do?  To my surprise, social justice youth development was NOT my dominant ideology. However, because civic youth development was not available under our options, I chose my second most dominant, being social justice youth development. I checked out the three websites given and selected the first mission, summary etc. that stood out to me. First was http://www.ariseducation.org/ , ARISE, the Alliance of Rhode Island Southeast Asians for Education. I was especially curious for this program because I have a couple of student who are members. One of the first quotes that struck me was, " ARISE combines leadership training with community organizing to mobilize Southeast Asian and other Rhode Island youth of color for education justice." This resonated with me because, I also believe in youth leadership and serving BIPOC youth. "Education justice" also lingers because it is something that I wrote about recently when thinking about my values and identi...

Exploring Your Practice How have dominant culture and ideology informed my perception of self and others? How can I utilize my lived experiences to better serve youth and the larger community? I have recently been struggling with what it means to be a white, privileged woman in a position of power as it relates to working with youth in Rhode Island; especially BIPOC youth and even adults. Having grown up in a very diverse community, even recognizing that I am white and have power, has been a journey in itself. As the video Power of Privilege and Oppression touches on, white is so much the norm of our society that it is invisible, thus bringing this invisible thing to light has been both challenging and rewarding. It was difficult for me in my work to learn that the black youth who did not already know me, were afraid of me. During this past summer, for the first time in my life, I was met with crippling fear and hostility from youth and their families for being white. Fear so strong, ...