Doc Star of the Month: Victor Rios, 'The Pushouts’

Dr. Victor Rios, the lead character of Katie Galloway and co-director Dawn Valadez's The Pushouts, is the first professor to be featured as "Doc Star of the Month." An Associate Dean of Social Science and Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Rios is also the author of five books (titles include Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys; Project GRIT: Generating Resilience to Inspire Transformation; and Human Targets: Schools, Police, and the Criminalization of Latino Youth), not to mention a popular TED Talk. (1.3 million views and counting!)

But this isn't the first time Rios has been the subject of a documentary. Oddly enough, he first appeared on public television 25 years ago, in the Frontline documentary School Colors. Back then Rios wasn’t the sought-after educator portrayed in The Pushouts, a quietly sensitive mentor leading a summer program at YO! Watts, a youth center in South Central LA for 16-24-year-olds who've been "pushed out" of the system and are neither working nor in school. No. Back then Rios was a gang member who, by the age of 15, had three felony convictions to his name and no plans to ever graduate from high school. (A stereotypical bio that the earlier film unfairly played up, according to Rios — and caused him to initially tell Galloway he’d no interest in working with PBS ever again.) 

Fortunately for Documentary, Rios kindly found time in his busy schedule to fill us in on a variety of topics near and dear to his heart — from the "survivor’s guilt" of the formerly impoverished to finally finding vindication onscreen.

The Pushouts premieres December 20 on PBS' VOCES, Latino Public Broadcasting’s arts and culture series.

To read my interview visit Documentary magazine.