Understanding Latina/o Identity and Community in a White and Well-Resourced Chicagoland Suburban High School

• In Event: Promising Scholarship in Education: Dissertation Fellows and Their Research

Abstract

Latina/os are changing the landscape of suburban schools. Yet, the dominant paradigm in studying Latina/o youth is through an urban lens. This research reconsiders this approach by distinguishing between urban and suburban. By recognizing the distinction, there is an opportunity to present a more accurate and nuanced understanding of what Latina/o students experience, think, and how they respond to their schooling. Moreover, this research decenters traditional deficit approaches of understanding Latina/o youth by focusing on the sociocultural issues impacting their lives, allowing for a more comprehensive analysis of how these factors (e.g. racism) impact young people in school. Student participants attend a suburban high school in Chicagoland that is predominately white and well resourced. There is no denying that schools with more means such as some suburban communities can provide more resources for their students but just because there are ample resources does not mean that all students experience them equitably (Lewis & Diamond, 2015; Lewis-McCoy, 2014; Shiller, 2016). Latina/o students experience their schooling differently. Latina/o youth traverse different academic and social terrains that challenge their identity performances. By performances I mean the ways youth embody the identities they are born into and how they enact different ones given where they are located and who they are with. Through a critical ethnographic approach, this study examines how 19 Latina/o youth respond to both whiteness and their Latina/o peers to better navigate their academic and social worlds. Situated within this context, my research seeks to address two focal questions: first, how do Latina/o youth at Shields High School (pseudonym) negotiate and perform their identities (e.g., race, class, gender, language, citizenship); and second, what are the ways in which Latina/o youth build and maintain community in their school? My research finds that Latina/o youth are dexterous in the types of identities they perform, but whiteness plays a critical role in creating the context for enacting varying modes of silence. Further, youth are acutely aware that they need to “play the game of school” to receive the opportunities and resources their school possesses. Any departure from that renders them as ungrateful and subject to critique and policing. However, youth possess resilience and innovative agency to create a community for themselves. Examples include reclaiming spaces in their school and resisting whiteness by displaying their culture in ways that are meaningful to them through their language and fashion. I argue that Latina/o youth enact identities and carve out spaces of their own in ways that subvert white supremacy and deficit-based ascriptions and practices rooted in meritocracy, gratitude, and respectability.

Author

• Gabriel Rodriguez, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign