Youth as evaluators:
Race and ethnicity in metropolitan Detroit through the eyes of its youth

"People in my neighborhood don't like to leave it...most parents don't want you to hang out with other races. I had a White friend, but as I grew up my parents got on me because of it. I think parents just want you to hang out with the same kinds of kids. Not that they are racist-but I assume it is because parents may think the other races are bad." —Student participant, Youth Dialogues Project, Detroit, MI

DETROIT, MI—On a summer afternoon in the nation's most segregated metropolitan area, 75 young people who usually gather in groups divided by race and ethnicity are coming together to confront the stereotypes that color their lives.

Strangers to each other, they arrive from the city's most blighted neighborhoods as well as from the nearby college town of Ann Arbor. Schools and organizations across greater Detroit have sent them, invited to join an interracial dialogue organized by the University of Michigan's Program for Youth and Community with funding from the Skillman Foundation, using an approach which was developed with support from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

Nervously, these teenagers exchange the messages they have heard: White arrogance, Latinos forming gangs, Arab Americans concealing terrorism, African Americans doing drugs, Asian Americans consumed by academic achievement.

Some disavow the stereotypes. Others wrestle with them.

"I mean, just this year, I found out that 'A-rab' was a racist word," one student admits.

Later, five high school and University of Michigan students huddle at a coffee shop, poring over a pile of interview transcripts to evaluate and draw lessons from these dialogues.

Deputized as analysts by the larger group, these young people seek quotes and evidence for their pressing questions: What's it like to grow up in metropolitan Detroit? How do these young people think about race and ethnicity? How effective are the dialogues in altering preconceived ideas? How do participants view the future of race and ethnicity in metropolitan Detroit?

When the seven-week dialogue program finishes at the end of the summer, the young people will produce a bound report of their findings and recommendations.

Youth as evaluators "Youth have a strong sense of justice, which makes it especially beneficial to involve them in evaluation research," says Barry Checkoway, a professor of social work at University of Michigan and the director of the Program on Youth and Community, which sponsored the dialogue project. "We need their eyes, perspectives, and energy," he asserts. "Involving youth in evaluation demystifies the process, shares power, and lessens the gap between the researcher and the community, between youth and adults." For almost a decade, Checkoway and others have built a small but sturdy movement of young people engaged in evaluating community programs, especially programs designed to serve youth like them. In the process, participants learn the basics of social science research as well.

"Early in the project we had to do a presentation at a retreat for the dialogue groups. It forced us to focus and develop our main message, to figure out what was most relevant, what was important, what we were getting out of it and what we wanted people to get out of our final report." Read the full interview with youth evaluator Ellie.

"We began this evaluation as a team of high school, college and graduate students, diverse across age, gender, race, and ethnicity," the Detroit research team writes in the introduction to its report. "Over the course of the summer, we came into our own as evaluators." Rather than working from a template, the team created its own evaluation design:

We developed a plan, created questions, and set up contacts in each of the communities. We visited each of the communities and interviewed young people. We examined photographs, discussed common themes, and analyzed results. We learned about how young people experience race and ethnicity, how they think about diversity, and what they learned during the dialogues.

The young people collaborated and revised at every step, creating eight drafts of their interview questions. They divided responsibility for different sections of the report, then critiqued each other's writing and the corroborating evidence selected. They worked together on conclusions, recommendations, and the final look of the report. While one student focused on copyediting, another tackled finishing photos.

Many answers, more questions

Race and ethnicity does matter to young people growing up in metropolitan Detroit, these youth researchers concluded. It impacts every aspect of their lives: their attitudes, their schools, their communities, their aspirations.

The youth dialogues did create important opportunities for interaction across racial, ethnic, and community lines, the team found. "There were some young people who had never had a sustained conversation with someone different from themselves," the student evaluators observe. "Even a few had never held a conversation with someone of a different race or ethnicity, and it was a big deal to talk to someone different. Some of the young people had also never been to other communities and so traveling to the city, the suburb, or across town was a new experience."

The evaluation team also had suggestions to strengthen the project. Increase the number of intergroup dialogue sessions, it advised. Create groups based on communities, not race. Begin the project by having participants first research race and ethnicity in their own school and neighborhood. Help participants start intergroup dialogues of their own. Include time during the intergroup sessions for participants to "chill." Add a tour of each community to the program.

As the youth researchers marshaled answers to their framing questions, however, they surfaced new concerns. Studying the journals young people kept of the experience, they kept coming across the ways class mixed with race in the stories of participants. The role of class in Detroit segregation had gone unexamined, they decided. They also worried that the dialogues' positive impacts might diminish once the youth returned to segregated settings, questioning what might make changed attitudes lead to changed behavior. They queried the role of schools in combating institutional racism, when the origins of segregation lay outside the schools.

As much as they learned about such larger issues, these youth evaluators said that their work taught them just as much about themselves.

"Being part of the evaluation was totally overwhelming," noted Ellie, 17. "But it was a good kind of overwhelming. Growing up white in a black community, I've always paid close attention to the way races interact, and what role race plays in every type of relationship. With this project, I was able to compare the perspectives of other young people with my own. I learned more than I can say."

Click here for the final evaluation report, "Creating a New Beginning: Youth Speak Out on Race and Ethnicity in Metropolitan Detroit."

See also two excellent guides by Barry Checkoway and Katie Richards-Schuster: "Youth Participation Guide for Participatory Evaluation with Young People" and "Facilitators Guide for Participatory Evaluation with Young People". These guides were prepared with support from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

Return to "It's hip to be deep: Making writing essential to teens' lives."