Exploring the Testimonios of Latinx Undergraduates at a Predominantly White Institution

• In Event: 43.020 - Women of Color Modalities of Meaning-Making: Endarkened Feminist Knowledge Production in Education

Abstract

Connected ways of knowing are expressed and revealed in different spaces and through different means of communication. Testimonio is deeply rooted in oral cultures and storytelling, which has been used to expose and centralize the voices of human rights struggles (Delgado Bernal, Burciaga, and Flores Carmona, 2012). Testimonios are personal narratives of marginalized voices,they assist students to push against the margins, revealing resistance and resilience for social justice transformations and hopeful changes within the Latino community (Peréz Huber & Cueva, 2012). Further, as a Chicana feminist mode of meaning making, tesimonio works to expose injustices, disrupt silences, and build solidarity among Students of Color (Delgado Bernal et al., 2012).

The purpose of this presentation is to understand and highlight the experiences of Latinx students, particularly the ways in which they navigate Predominately White Institutions (PWIs) through their ways of knowing, their testimonios. Latinx undergraduate students are positioned in relation to the White dominant student population at PWIs, which, in many ways silences their voices and thus maintains an educational space of Whiteness. The authors uses the term “educational spaces of Whiteness” to refer to the ways in which Whiteness is practiced in the academic institution, such as, through curriculum, faculty, student representation, and the overall space, physically and metaphorically. More so, educational spaces of Whiteness refer to the spaces that Predominately White Institutions create and re-create Whiteness (Gusa, 2010). Within this context, the author believes that there is a power of testimonio, and power in story that is able to connect people in a way in which one is able “to bear witness to experiences and struggles of those beyond our own realities” (Peréz Huber, 2009, p. 648). These narratives are of the past and thus, powerful spaces that though may have been marginalized also have the potential to become spaces of hope and resistance (Smith, 2012).

Drawing on data from a qualitative study, the author uses testimonio as a methodology to further understand the positionality of Latinx students, testimonio, and navigating spaces. The findings demonstrate how students positioned themselves as distant from the university and understood educational spaces of Whiteness to be spaces of financial access and white student serving. As such, Latinx students navigate the spaces through community support and avoiding unwelcoming spaces throughout the larger institution. Using Testimonio as both a theoretical and methodological offed a deeper understanding of the challenges students face at PWIs and situates them in relation to “collective experiences marked by marginalization, oppression, or resistance” (Delgado Bernal et al., 2012, p. 363).

Author

• Adrianna Gonzalez, National-Louis University