Unveiling the Invisibilized Resistance of Students and Teachers of Color Through an Embodied Raciolinguistic Analysis

• In Event: Methods for Studying Learning in Social Movements: Consequences for the Movements and the Field

Abstract

Research Question
With the resurgence of student-led social movements, more attention has been placed on the process and outcome of student activism rather than the situational dynamics leading up to their actions (Otero & Cammarota, 2011). Furthermore, white students have garnered national recognition for activism in ways that erase and disregard the agentive resistance that Students of Color already exert (e.g., Parkland, FL). Contributing to these intersecting gaps in the literature, I examine the micro-interactional processes in which Latinx middle school students from Southeast Los Angeles, CA asserted their agency as part of the #Enough! National School Walkout social movement.

Perspectives
Drawing on the fields of Ethnic Studies and Critical Geography, I conceptualize how hegemonic forces and social factors shape Latinx students’ contestation of school spaces. The formation of racial hierarchies are integrally tied to places, localities, and regions (Delaney, 2002; Pulido, 2006). Thus, my understanding of students’ agency considers the relationship between the dominant social order and their racialized positioning. Applying a dual examination of student resistance as a product of both racial and spatial processes, I explore the relationship between the national and local dominant social order within which they enacted agency for social change at school.

Context and Methods
This study takes place within the context of an Asian American teacher’s history classroom in a restrictive public school serving 99% Latinx students. Building on the intersecting fields of Linguistic Anthropology (Goodwin & Goodwin, 2004) and Raciolinguistics (Alim, Rickford, & Ball, 2016), I engage in a humanizing approach to research, and utilize an embodied raciolinguistic analysis (Author) to examine how students’ agency for change are discursively co-constructed, maintained, and transformed in micro-geographical contexts. I rely on video recordings, field notes, and informal interviews as data and reflective tools to co-investigate the moment-to-moment social dynamics leading up to and after the walkouts. Public documents and artifacts were used to triangulate findings and contextualize the moment within the broader schooling and national context.

Findings
Findings reveal that the linguistic and embodied practices of teachers and administrators influenced Latinx students’ perceptions of support for taking action; thus, the class and teacher that students had at the time walkouts occurred significantly influenced their decision to participate. Due to perceived lack of organization of the walkout, some students engaged in alternative practices of resistance (e.g., silent protest). Out of fear of punitive action, students who were historically deemed as “bad students” stayed in class, while others regretted walking out in fear of disappointing their parents.

Significance
This study suggests that social context and social actors, historically and in-the-moment, influences students’ capacity to take formal action. Offering an analytic tool that unveils place-based constructions of student leadership, I offer new perspectives for learning in and for collective action, including 1) the racialized nature of who gets deemed an activist, 2) the invisibilized practices and agency of students and teachers in restrictive contexts, and 3) how emerging partnership through the research process politicizes and re-affirms marginalized students and teachers as critical social movement actors.

Author

• Josephine Pham, University of California - Santa Cruz