Racialized Citizenship: Latinx Youth Understandings of the Connection Between Race, Language, and Citizenship

• In Event: 28.090 - MTCC Roundtable Session Nine
  In Roundtable Session: 28.090-2 - Black and Latinx Youth Identities in Action: Activism, Affirmation, and Exclusion Within Community-Based Spaces

Abstract

Summary: Within the U.S., minoritized populations are made “other” through a system of constantly shifting racial categories that help maintain power, and social control, within a select dominant group (Bourdieu, 1984; Omi and Winant, 2013; Said, 2003). As it relates to Latinxs, their experience within the U.S. has been a lengthy process of “racialization” within public institutions that is informed by presumed deficits and nativist fears that continue to this day (Menchaca, 1996; Noguera, 2008; Valencia, 1999). Further, Latinx racialization is directly tied to the “Latino threat” narrative which positions them as internal threats to the nation, thus justifying their overt oppression and control (Chavez, 2013).

Considering the re-emergence of the “Latino threat” narrative across the Trump administration and its’ presence within social media and mainstream news, Latinx youth daily face a perpetual onslaught of racism and xenophobia they must navigate as they develop their racial identity and view of the world. Drawing on coloniality of power and LatCrit theoretical traditions, and employing a critical qualitative approach, this presentation will share findings from a paper-in-progress about Spanish-speaking Latinx youth understandings of the connections between race, language, and citizenship within the modern, turbulent socio-political context. Of central concern to this presentation is Latinx youth shared visceral awareness, meaning-making, and response to vitriolic racialized messages they are exposed to across media.

Theories/Methods: The presentation is informed by data collected as part of a larger study that examines Spanish-speaking Latinx youth experience within a community-based educational program/organization and how youth make meaning of the ways language and race intersect to inform their racial identity development and imagination of future possibilities. With the goal of centering student voice and experience to understand their meaning-making process, the study took a critical qualitative approach towards data collection via participation observations, interviews, document analysis, and archival research, all of which were analyzed through an inductive, reconstructive approach (Carspecken, 1996; Thomas, 2006).
Similarly guided by a desire to center student voice and experience within a turbulent socio-political context, the study utilized a theoretical framework informed by coloniality of power and LatCrit (Mignolo, 2007; Quijano, 2000; Solorzano & Yosso, 2002; Yosso et al., 2000). The combined framework centralizes race, takes a long term view of coloniality, and links the ideological, international, and local layers of modernity/coloniality to the experience of Latinx youth.

Findings/Implications: Findings indicate that Spanish-speaking youth participants not only have a shared visceral awareness of the increasing overt racism and xenophobia in the country, but their participation within a community-based educational program/organization provides them with an opportunity to engage in authentic conversations with peers and adult youth workers, leading some to develop an understanding of the racialized connection between the Spanish language, race, and imaginations of citizenship. These findings represent an important contribution as they have the potential to deepen our understanding of how Latinx youth maintain their humanity in the face of a xenophobic deficit-based environment, while simultaneously resisting by embodying pride in their cultural and racial identities that are sustained through authentic, interpersonal interactions.

Author

• Juan Carlos Medina, University of Wisconsin - Madison