Fabricating Difference in a Working-Class Latino School: Producing Urban Elite Latino Students

• In Event: Roundtable Session 19
  In Roundtable Session: Power and Resistance in and out of School Settings

Abstract

Using critical race theory as a framework, I use counter-storytelling alongside theory to underscore informal schooling practices in my working-class Los Angeles Latino neighborhood that contribute to the formation of a group of students that I label as ‘The Urban Elite Cohort’. They are a homogeneous group along race and class that develop structured social hierarchies resulting in students’ ability to affirm “white” privilege allowing them access to advantageous relationships and opportunities that grant them educational success. The focus on these students serves to: 1) identify schooling practices that fracture cultural group identities, and; 2) showcase the ways in which schools are implicated in producing advantageous habitus for hand-picked Latino students while gatekeeping “undesirable” students from obtaining academic success.

Author

• Minerva S. Chavez, California State University - Fullerton