Good Trouble, Necessary Trouble: Expanding Thinking and Research on Youth of Color’s Resistance to Oppression

This special section focuses on resistance and activism among youth of color, and is the last installment of a four-part special series on “Dismantling Systems of Racism and Oppression during Adolescence.” Using diverse methods, nine papers and two commentaries shed important light on youth of color’s resistance to racism and other forms of oppression and identify factors that inform the development of sociopolitical actions. In this introduction to the special section, we synthesize four main contributions of this collection of work. Specifically, this special section offers an expanded conceptualization of youth resistance, advances sociopolitical development theory, provides new models and insights into anti-racist identity and action, and examines schools as sites of oppression and resistance.