Narratives on politically contentious topics, such as racism and gun violence, trigger polarizing attitudes that impede equitable policy solutions while exacerbating patterns of systemic harm against historically-marginalized communities. This dissertation adopts community gun violence as a problem space for conducting a mixed-methods investigation of how to leverage the power of critical consciousness (i.e., understanding how intersecting systems of power influence behavior and societal outcomes) to increase public support for responses seeking to repair inequities and empower affected youth to engage with protective, prosocial behaviors. In Chapter 1, a series of online experimental studies examine how critical narratives on gun violence in some "poor communities of color" can shift racial attitudes and policy preferences across political orientation. Chapter 2 presents the development and experimental results of a critical narrative on youth violence prevention using design-thinking methods. Compared to traditional youth behavior change narratives, the critical narrative seeks to promote protective behaviors by reframing gun carrying as playing into racist narratives and scaffolding community activism as an empowering path to fight back. I evaluate the effectiveness of the critical narrative compared to traditional youth violence prevention narratives among high school students in Chicago and Texas. Results suggest that critical narratives are a promising route to address racialized policy issues by empowering communities by influencing general public policy support and scaffolding youth activism.