Racialized Boundaries and Belonging: How Latinx Youth Create Community in a Suburban High School

• In Event: 63.032 - Constructing Communities of Belonging: Understanding Latinx Youth's Sense of Race, Space, and Place in Schools

Abstract

Objective
This paper examines how 19 Latinx youth attending a well-resourced and predominately white suburban high school outside of Chicago, Illinois make sense of the racialized spaces they traverse in their school and how they construct counter spaces of belonging. We cannot understand how Latinx youth experience their schooling without having a firm understanding of the places they inhabit and contest. I explore the ways race, class, and gender inform the ways in which racialized boundaries in school (e.g., classrooms) are transgressed by Latinx youth.

Theoretical Framework & Methodology
This paper seeks to bridge the gaps between spatial theory (Lefebvre, 1991; Massey, 2005; Soja, 1996) and borderland theory (Anzaldúa, 2012; Lugo, 2008) by exploring the ways race and racism shape how Latinx youth traverse racialized school boundaries by contesting white spaces and constructing community amongst themselves. The relationship race plays with space and place is understudied by social geographers. As McKittrick (2006) notes space is fluid and contested and is “accentuated by racist paradigms of the past and their ongoing hierarchical patterns” (p. xii).

My data are drawn from a two-year critical ethnography at a predominately white and well-resourced high school in Chicago, Illinois. This project is student-centered and positions Latinx youth as creators and holders of knowledge (Delgado Bernal, 2002). Moreover, my methodological stance engages in humanizing research practices that are committed to dialogic consciousness raising and building relationships with participants rooted in dignity and care (Paris, 2011). I shadowed (Rios, 2011) 19 students through participant observations in and out of their classrooms, conducted 19 semi-structured interviews, and analyzed artifacts (e.g., student work).

Findings
I find that Latinx students are highly aware of the segregated nature of their school. This separation has created a context in which white students possess ownership of the school and occupy space in ways that push out Latinx students. As a participant remarked, “I hear them say our school is diverse, but who are the ones that are in charge? It’s all white people.” In navigating white spaces within their school Latinx youth are often erased or surveilled by white students. As a participant wrote in an essay, “white students are often surprised to see me walk into my AP classes.” Latinx youth carve their own path in cultivating community amongst themselves in two ways. They sustain community through unstructured spaces in school (e.g., hallways) that they themselves have, but also in structured spaces (e.g., classrooms, clubs) where educators have purposefully created an environment of belonging and actively work toward challenging white privilege and affirming the identities of Latinx youth.

Significance
If educators are to re-imagine how schools can work for Latinx youth, they must not lose sight of the sociocultural worlds of students (Carter, 2012). The ways in which Latinx youth create cultures of belonging for themselves offer insights into how educators and researchers should think about belonging. The ways Latinx youth traverse racialized borders not only demonstrate their resilience but a path toward de-centering whiteness in schools.

Author

• Gabriel Rodriguez, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign