Mapping a Youth’s Revolt: Exploring Southern California’s School Racism Riots and the Meaning of Race, 1980–85

Andrew’s paper will focus on the 1980’s attempts of the Ku Klux Klan to recruit high school youth in Southern California’s Inland Empire. Through the use of digital maps, I argue that schools in the region became sites of violent contest over the meanings of race as multiple high schools experienced what I call “racism riots” in their halls. Mapping these high schools with their demographic data showcases them as spaces of multicultural identity formation and why extreme showings of white identity were often met with critical resistance from youth as a part of both their adolescent and identity formations, especially for Black and Latinx youth. Mapping these schools marks them not only as places of violence, but also resistance as pinpointed sites of politicization for Black and Latino students. This paper also calls for understanding the multifaceted ways that neoliberalism affected schools and school reform, as not only in how the state pulled back funding from districts but also how neoliberalism changed social environments in a way that fostered anti-Black and xenophobic attitudes.