Neoliberal Racial Systems at Hill Valley: Challenging Color- and Class-Blind Ideologies of Control

• In Event: Dual Language Education and Neoliberal Reforms: When a Bilingual School Becomes a School of Choice

Abstract

Objectives
Researchers (Lewis, 2003; Cervantes-Soon, 2014) have discussed the inherent tension between bilingual policy makers’ desire for two-way dual language bilingual education (TWBE) to challenge inequities in schools and the tendency for TWBE schools to prioritize the needs of their White, middle class families. This paper describes some of the key neoliberal racial systems at Hill Valley and how these systems were challenged by working class Latino families at the school. The research questions guiding this study were: (a) How did working class Latina families advocate for a more equitable TWBE programs? and (b) How did these families resist the dominant racial and class ideological systems mediating schooling inequities?
Theoretical framework
This study uses racial and class systemic theory (Feagin, 2013) to analyze how the school’s TWBE program contributed to the community’s intergenerational White wealth accumulation. This framework describes residential and school spaces as contested racialized ideological corporate systems (Weiner, 2005) that promote class and color-blind ideologies (Bonilla Silva, 2014). Working class Latino families’ community organizing systems are analyzed as critical ideological systems within dominant ideological systems of control (Valdes, 1996).
Methods & Data
This study use data gathered from an ethnographic study conducted between 2009 and 2011 in which the researcher served as a volunteer community organizer at this school working with families and faculty as part of a team that worked with participants collaboratively to meet community and school goals. The researcher used field notes, documents, interviews and focus groups to gather ethnographic data during the two-year study. Participant feedback and reflective field notes further informed the study (Carspecken, 2013).
Results
In 2009, working class, Latino families had formed their own critical ideological space when dominant ideologies of control limited working class, Latino participation in the school. In 2010, neoliberal racial ideologies led to the perception of a crisis at Hill Valley when market-based ideologies informed district leaders that the Latino school should be closed due to lowering student enrollment. When the district threatened to close the school, families engaged with bilingual teachers in their alternative critical ideological space by envisioning a TWBE program which would serve the needs of their children and continue to provide a space for Latino families to be part of school decision-making. Despite these efforts, when school administrators created a TWBE proposal based on school choice ideologies, this proposal failed to challenge neoliberal, racial ideological systems of control so Latino families’ desires often continued to be ignored. After these changes, most working-class Latino families stopped engaging with the school.
Scholarly Significance
This study adds to understandings of how working-class families critically engage with TWBE programs and the systemic challenges they must overcome to have greater decision-making powers over the schooling of their children. Even though the families lost this battle, the way they organized and talked about their power was a space of hope and should offer insight to other communities organizing against White Supremacist, neoliberal impositions.

Author

• Christopher Milk Bonilla, Texas State University - San Marcos