ABSTRACT
Cathy Cohen analyzes the contested and conflicted space occupied by Black youth, along with the political consequences of being young and Black. Cohen’s analysis examines the responses of Black youth to each phenomenon and then goes further, to unearth both the internal and external structural questions related to each subject area, or how the effects of individual agency vis-a-vis the institutional impacts compare with each other. Cohen breaks down the intragroup Black dynamic in which Civil Rights generation Black elites are often privileged as spokespersons for Blackness and, most often, parrot the deficit thinking of the White supremacist patriarchal capitalist establishment, creating a moral panic. Cohen’s work is a tremendous contribution to amplifying the voices of young Black people, elevating their conditions, and presenting the interactions between political structures and individual agency. The election of Barack Obama has contributed notably to the increased political engagement of Black youth.
