Isle teens in trouble for violence sound off against ‘jacked up’ system

The names of the students and their schools have been changed to protect their privacy, but their voices are compelling and their frustration clear.

“Jacked Up and Unjust,” a new book by University of Hawaii professors Katherine Irwin and Karen Umemoto, focuses on teens at two Oahu high schools who have been repeatedly suspended for fighting — a group whose opinions tend to get short shrift.

The professors got to know the students in weekly small-group counseling sessions on campus, where the kids had a chance to vent about the stress points in their lives and what set them off. The book distills nine years of research, including interviews with more than 90 teens and 60 adults.

“It could be anywhere in Hawaii,” said Irwin, a professor of sociology at UH Manoa, adding that anonymity is standard in her field. “These are problems that cut across schools and cut across neighborhoods.”

The authors dig into the root causes of the behavior, including the students’ perception that the system is “jacked up,” or rigged, against them. The attempts to lash out, however misguided, often reflected an effort to right wrongs they feel powerless against, the professors found.

“It’s not senseless and morally impoverished violence,” Irwin said in an interview. “It’s standing up and saying, ‘No more,’ but in a wrong way that only leads to more trouble for them and their families.”

The authors subtitled the book “Pacific Islander Teens Confront Violent Legacies,” to refer to the legacies of colonialism, militarization, racism and sexism they see playing out in the lives of the youth, many of them of Native Hawaiian, Samoan and Filipino ancestry.

“I think we need to look back on ourselves as a society when we look at the behaviors of the youth,” said Umemoto, a professor and chairwoman of the Department of Urban and Regional Planning. “This book puts the issue of youth violence in the context of American societal and state violence.”

Separate “lunch bunch” sessions, guided by school counselors, were held for boys and for girls, and their perspectives diverged in some ways. Many had experienced trauma at home, including abuse, extreme poverty or absent, addicted or incarcerated parents.

The girls complained about being held to impossible standards, having to handle the bulk of the household work, from caring for elders to younger siblings, while feeling disrespected at home and at school.

“They are told they don’t fit this feminine ideal model of beauty, so they are harassed constantly for being too big, too dark-skinned, too ‘ugly,’” Irwin said.

“The work around the house is endless, and it’s all on the shoulders of girls in the family and they feel very, very upset about it,” she said. “There are double standards where ‘boys will be boys’ but girls really have to watch themselves. And so they lash out.”

Irwin added, “Our program is a space to talk about it. It’s OK to be angry. Yes, it’s not fair. What can we do about it that’s constructive?”

While the boys usually escaped most domestic chores and had more independence, they felt demeaned outside the home and viewed as ignorant or dangerous just because of their ethnicity, the authors found.

“They saw the U.S. system as inherently unfair, that they didn’t have the opportunities other people had,” Irwin said. “They felt disrespected and demoralized. That really runs counter to the national narrative of the pathological inner-city hyper-violent male. We didn’t find that.”

“A lot of times their violence was about combating injustice on a very personal scale,” she said.

Umemoto cited the case of a young man who took a swing and hit his stepmother after she had repeatedly criticized his mother, who was unwell. Two weeks later police arrived on campus, and he was arrested and put into foster care because his parents didn’t want him anymore.

“That’s one of the shortcomings of the juvenile justice system,” Umemoto said. “It does not provide a space for a child to say, ‘I’m sorry. Can you forgive me, can we work this out?’ in a more formal and guided and supported way.

“There is a lot of anger and frustration that’s festering, and there’s a need for the kinds of skills like conflict resolution, hooponopono and other culturally rooted forms of relationship mending.”

Despite the odds, many youths’ stories ended on a hopeful note, with guidance from compassionate adults at school and in the community. Having a weekly chance to talk with mentors and each other about what they were going through helped shift trajectories for students in the “lunch bunch” program.

Participants wound up with better attendance, academic and disciplinary records than matched cohorts with similar demographics and records who weren’t in the program, Irwin said.

“One of the greatest things that happened was they are more likely to report at the end of the year that there is someone at school who cares about them,” she said.

“Pure punishment, like arresting someone, didn’t really work,” she said. “But a chance to sit with someone they respected and who listened to them, the chance to talk it through really helped reframe scenarios for them.”

The book, published Aug. 30 by the University of California Press, is aimed at both a local and national policy audience. The research was funded with less than $10,000, part of a violence prevention grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The professors and school counselors volunteered their time with the “lunch bunch.” Irwin continues to take part, while Umemoto is focusing on juvenile justice reform.

As the Black Lives Matter movement spotlights racism and injustice on the mainland, the authors hope that their book, in its small way, helps amplify the voices of teens in Hawaii who feel marginalized.

“Their lives matter,” Irwin said. “And we all need to listen.”