She Doesn’t Even Act Mexican: Smartness Trespassing in the New South

• In Event: Roundtable Session 11
  In Roundtable Session: Educational Issues and Possibilities in New Immigrant Gateway States: The Case of North Carolina

Abstract

Historically, Latin@s have experienced deficit thinking as it relates to their perceived academic abilities (MacDonald, 2004; Valencia, 1997). In North Carolina’s emerging Latin@ population, there is a dearth of research on the identities of academically successful Latin@ students in the state. This paper examines the politics and discrimination associated with claiming a “smart identity” in the new south by documenting the experiences of a high-achieving Latina high school student.

According to Hatt (2007), students of color are often positioned in a way that leads to their self-perceptions about not being smart. To be considered smart, one has to perform identities that meet whiteness and middle class cultural capital standards (Carrillo, 2010; Ford & Harris III, 1994). K-12 schools interact with a set of discourses that lead to specific ideas related to ability and disability and are tainted by the intersections of areas such as power, class, gender, race, and ethnicity. Hatt (2007) also argues that status and opportunities are highly contingent upon how smartness is defined. Maria (pseudonym), the participant in this paper/presentation, helps to identify some of these issues and tensions. The trespassing in this case consists of disrupting white-Asian American smart space and negotiating the regional definitions of brown bodies and their perceived abilities and “justified” place.

This paper is based on interview data collected as part of the Southern City Mentorship Program (pseudonym) evaluation during the years, 2011-2013. I focus on one high school student who was a participant in the program. I was part of interview team that was made up of graduate students and UNC Chapel Hill faculty. We conducted interviews of mentors, mentees, parents, and collected documents, attended training sessions, and had follow-up discussions with some of the administrators of the program. Maria’s “trespassing” into AP classes and to her overall stellar academic performance, exposes the contradictions and discrimination that exists within a liberal community and in a “high performing” high school in North Carolina.

While scholars and interested stakeholders have alluded to the tremendous growth of the Latin@ population in North Carolina, few documented studies have been published from the point of view of Latin@ K-12 students. This work contributes to the dearth of research in this area and points to the need for developing teachers that are sensitive to these issues. Similar to other work that has explored how to desegregate notions of who is smart (Carrillo, 2013; Valdes, 2003), this paper makes a contribution to this end within the North Carolina context.

Authors

• Juan F. Carrillo, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill

• Esmeralda Rodriguez, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill