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Research shows that gang-associated youth are less likely to complete high school and earn a postsecondary educational credential. However, scholars have not determined "why" gang youth do not persist into higher education. This ethnographic study aims to focus on the narratives of 13 Latino high school young men to understand what college knowledge they possess. We found the students have aspirations to pursue postsecondary education degrees or credentials; however, they receive minimal information and support from school personnel to build the needed college-going behaviors and information to plan and prepare for higher education.

Through the rise of global commodity chains, consumer demand in China and the USA has given rise to the extraction of natural resources in the Congo Basin. The Chinese market for high-valued animal products such as elephant ivory and pangolin scales has encouraged poaching, exploitation and trafficking of these goods in Africa. Chinese demand for other African commodities, however, remains less well known. Using data across a 15-year period (2001–2015), we analysed the relationship between Chinese timber imports and tree-cover loss in the Congo Basin. Tree-cover loss was measured via remote sensing and the value of imports was obtained from official trade statistics. Results indicate that the total accumulated export of wood from Congo Basin countries to China doubled between 2001 and 2015, with 50% of exports originating from Cameroon and the Republic of Congo. We found a positive relationship between measures of Chinese logging and the loss of tree cover in the Congo Basin. Further investigation of the timber products market showed that US demand for Chinese-made furniture was positively correlated with Chinese timber imports from the Congo Basin. These findings suggest that US demand for furniture encourages Chinese economic actors to harvest timber from Congo Basin forests. Our results help to illuminate the complex environmental and economic drivers surrounding trade and deforestation and can help inform consumers about more sustainable ways to purchase wood products from one of the world's preeminent biodiversity hotspots.

Although a number of recent studies suggest that climate associated shifts in agriculture are affecting social and economic systems, there have been relatively few studies of these effects in Africa. Such studies would be particularly useful in Central Africa, where the impacts of climate warming are predicted to be high but coincide with an area with low adaptive capacity. Focusing on plantain (Musa paradisiaca), we assess whether recent climate change has led to reduced yields. Analysis of annual temperature between 1950 and 2013 indicated a 0.8°C temperature increase over this 63-year period - a trend that is also observed in monthly temperatures in the last twenty years. From 1991 to 2011, there was a 43% decrease in plantain productivity in Central Africa, which was explained by shifts in temperature (R2=0.68). This decline may have reduced rural household wealth and decreased parental investment in education. Over the past two decades, there was a six month decrease in the duration of school attendance, and the decline was tightly linked to plantain yield (R2=0.82). By 2080, mean annual temperature is expected to increase at least 2°C in Central Africa, and our models predict a concomitant decrease of 39% in plantain yields and 51% in education outcomes, relative to the 1991 baseline. These predictions should be seen as a call-to-action for policy interventions such as farmer training programs to enhance the adaptive capacity of food production systems to mitigate impacts on rural income and education.

This article examines college-going identity construction for Black, Latino, and Asian American and Pacific Islander high school students. The authors use Marcia's (J Personal Soc Psychol 3(5):551-558, 1966; in: Delson (ed) Handbook of adolescent research, Wiley, New York, 1980) ego identity statuses perspective to examine how students develop their college-going identities to consider their post-high school pathways. We draw on focus groups interviews with 153 Black, Latino, and Asian American Pacific Islanders students enrolled in 10 urban and suburban high schools in California. The findings show the importance of being somebody, not quitting before establishing a career or graduating from college, joining the military as a pathway to finance postsecondary education, and the internal pressure to pay for higher education. The significance of this paper challenges the dominant narrative of young men of color not invested or interested in higher education, but highlight how the young men of color negotiate their agency in constructing their ideas and making decisions based on how various tensions and aspirations shape their goals after high school.

Immediately after President Obama's successful campaign, many hypothesized that the United States had entered a post-racial era. This study uses critical race theory to examine how high-achieving Black and Latinx college students make meaning of and navigate affirmative action policy discourses in an era of colorblind racial politics. Semi-structured interviews with 46 alumni of two race-conscious college access programs illustrate how participants employ a race-conscious framework that affirms the reality of race-conscious policies. Their discourse addressing race, intersectionality, and equity disrupts colorblind ideology. Connecting our analysis to the current social landscape, we argue intersectionality offers a framework for engaging politics of accountability. In the conclusion, we conceptually distinguish between post-racial era conditions and post-race (or post-racist) aspirations.

Research shows that gang-associated youth are less likely to complete high school and earn a postsecondary educational credential. However, scholars have not determined "why" gang youth do not persist into higher education. This ethnographic study aims to focus on the narratives of 13 Latino high school young men to understand what college knowledge they possess. We found the students have aspirations to pursue postsecondary education degrees or credentials; however, they receive minimal information and support from school personnel to build the needed college-going behaviors and information to plan and prepare for higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Black males are scarce on White campuses. Still, they experience hypervisibility and are targets of hypersurveillance. This study used focus groups and semi-structured interviews to examine the experiences of 36 Black male students attending seven "elite" historically White Research I institutions. Two themes emerged: (a) anti-Black male stereotyping and marginality and (b) hypersurveillance and control directed at Black men by Whites. Participants reported stereotyping and increased surveillance by police on and off campus. They also reported being defined as "out of place" and "fitting the description" of illegitimate members of the campus community. As a result, students reported psychological stress responses symptomatic of racial battle fatigue (e.g. frustration, shock, anger, disappointment, resentment, anxiety, helplessness, hopelessness, and fear). The study finds the college environment was more hostile toward Black men than other groups, exemplifying Black racial misandry.

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The use of affirmative action admissions practices in U.S. colleges and universities has been a source of contentious public debate and legal battles since the policy's inception in the 1960s. The legal challenges to race-conscious admissions will continue for the foreseeable future, including renewed court scrutiny on specific universities' policies ("Fisher v. University of Texas" at Austin et al., 2013). Although the benefits that arise from a diverse student body are well-documented, it is less clear how that process occurs within the classroom. Using rich qualitative data from a national sample of 203 law students, this study examines classroom-level diversity, consequences when it is absent, and necessary conditions for activating the educational benefits. From the students' perspective, structural diversity in the classroom is a necessary prerequisite for more enlightening, interesting discussions, which promote better learning outcomes. However, the mere presence of diversity does not necessarily educe these benefits, the diversity must in fact be "activated" (Marin, 2000). Therefore, we find faculty members have the responsibility to create spaces for diverse viewpoints to be heard and to facilitate discussion so all students benefit. We call for training to help faculty take on these roles, along with other implications for policy and practice, concluding that U.S. law schools must do a better job incorporating racial diversity in teaching, learning, and practice, or they will have failed to address a compelling national interest.

In this article, Uma Jayakumar, Rican Vue, and Walter Allen present their study of Young Black Scholars (YBS), a community-initiated college preparatory program in Los Angeles. Through in-depth interviews and surveys with twenty-five middle- and higher-income Black college students, they document the positive role of community in facilitating college access. The authors show that students' perceptions of YBS's support of their college aspirations are qualitatively different than perceptions of their schools' support. The authors theorize that YBS participants embrace college-going as an act of resistance to deficit-based narratives regarding the racial achievement gap and social reproduction. By drawing on students' experiences, they put forth a new model of a liberatory college-going process for students of color that leverages community cultural wealth and promotes transformative resistance.