"Tenemos que seguir nuestra cultura": Latinx Children as Critical Discourse Analysts

• In Event: 34.095 - MTCC Roundtable Session 11
  In Roundtable Session: 34.095-3 - The Sociopolitical of Latinx Education: Problemas, Promesas, y Posibilidades in an Era of Anti-Latinx Racism

Abstract

Objective/Purpose
This paper presents arguments made by children in order to showcase how elementary-school age bilingual Latinxs engage in critical analyses mirroring the logic and structure employed by critical race theorists. Children recognize when something is unfair, and their ability to identify injustices allows them to see when they themselves are the victims of unfair schooling practices. When encouraged to be critical, this awareness allows them to formulate analyses revealing the ways in which schools function to reproduce social hierarchies. In this study, fifth- grade students engage in an analysis of middle-school class choice processes that mirror key tenets of critical race theory, in particular the four property functions of whiteness (Harris, 1993).

Theoretical Perspectives
This paper utilizes marginalized students’ voices, but also emphasizes that those voices are actively engaged in theorizing, applying the logic of whiteness as property (Harris, 1993) in order to make sense of a recent schooling experience. Under this conception, whiteness alters social relations similar to property whereby the right to claim/assert is accompanied by mechanisms of fierce protection. An understanding of how whiteness operates as property can explain the exclusion of marginalized students from advanced classes or other highly-valued schooling spaces, neither as the result of a lack of individual effort, or the natural result of their intellectual ability, but as part of a systematic racial project to ensure differential access to quality schooling (Ladson-Billings, 2003; Palmer & Henderson, 2016; Palmer, 2010; Valdez, Delavan & Freire, 2017). These practices operate covertly, of course. While schools remain deeply segregated, what can escape scrutiny is the extent to which racially diverse schools create their own internal systems to ensure racial segregation (Ferri & Connor, 2005). Children’s ability to identify and critique the ways in which whiteness operates vis-a-vis ostensibly color-blind practices makes clear the extent to which students (1) are aware of the role of race and language in constructing separate educational spaces, and (2) possess the ability to critique, question and challenge these social practices.

Methods/Point of View/Significance
In my analysis I explain each of the four property functions of whiteness and provide examples from transcribed video demonstrating students identifying and explicating the property function in their own words. This study employs a synthesizing method of analysis, where instances were brought together to showcase the connections between a situation and inquiry (Brinkmann, 2008). I find that students engaged in critical analysis, deconstructing the logic of ability grouping and choice in order to reveal the reality of class choice for Latinx students. While these students were aware of the ways in which they were being labeled as ‘low-performing’ and incapable of participating in higher-level courses, they were also aware that success within the current system required them to sacrifice their culture and language. The analysis herein shows young students collectively engaged critically analyzing the discourses of choice and individual responsibility, creating arguments deconstructing the logic of ability grouping.

Author

• Melissa Adams, Blazer Elementary School