Anti-Racist Yoga and Juvenile Justice-Involved Youth

My name is Dominique Branson, and I am a graduate student entering into my fourth year in the Department of Linguistics at Pitt. I am interested in the intersection of race, criminal justice, and African American Language (AAL). Specifically, my research focuses on the ways in which AAL-users, typically Black Americans, experience unfair legal outcomes on the basis of their language use. More recently, I am investigating the use of particular discourse structures by lawyers during criminal court trials that perpetuate an anti-Black status-quo in the courtroom. In addition, I am also studying the ways in which Black girls’ language use is connected to their over-representation in the juvenile justice system via the School-to-Confinement Pipeline—more specifically how their use of language, which works to create their adolescent, feminine identities, is misinterpreted to advance societal perceptions of Black girls as “loud, rowdy, and ghetto” (Crenshaw, Ocen & Nanda, 2015) and, subsequently, “criminal.”

This summer, through the Humanities Engage Initiative, I am working as a research assistant with the Juvenile Justice-Involved Youth (JJIY) project in UPMC’s Division of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine. The JJIY project component that I have primarily focused on so far is the Enhancing Resiliency program, which utilizes integrated, anti-racist yoga to help students involved in the juvenile justice system learn strategies to make positive choices and, ultimately, recognize that their lives can make a difference in the world. While I assist with the day-to-day functions of the project, such as coordinating and facilitating yoga sessions via Zoom, I am also working with division chief Dr. Elizabeth Miller (University of Pittsburgh’s School of Medicine) and Dr. Sara Goodkind (University of Pittsburgh’s School of Social Work) to research the relationships between juvenile justice, race, and gender in Pittsburgh. The work is an extension of our previous research, along with that of Dr. Junia Howell and Dr. Leah Jacobs (as well as many brilliant undergraduate students in various programs across the university) on gender and race inequalities in Pittsburgh across health, income, employment, and education. Given my previous role working alongside Dr. Miller and Dr. Goodkind, I was able to reconnect with them about opportunities to engage in a summer immersive to continue our research.

This summer, we intend to synthesize the data from the Division of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine’s equity report to create accessible, one-page summary documents of the larger report, but also supplement the data with qualitative data from students involved in the juvenile justice system. For me, this involves interviewing students involved in the JJIY project to discuss how they have been impacted by the Enhancing Resiliency yoga program as well as their experiences prior to their involvement with the program. During the 2020-2021 academic year, I plan to use these interviews to conduct a linguistic analysis and investigate the strategies used by Black girls who are involved in the juvenile justice system to construct their identities. I intend to demonstrate the ways in which their use of language can be misinterpreted by teachers, administrators, and other school personnel and, also, to advocate for Black girls’ freedom to express their identities through language without being criminalized and punished.

Dominique Branson
Linguistics
July 27, 2020
 

For my reflections post-immersive, please see Language and Black Girls’ Experience in the Juvenile Justice System.

Learn about all the Summer 2020 Immersive Fellows and their experiences with their host organizations.