Constructing Latinidad as a Constrained Credential: Schools, Latinidad, Blackness, Antiblackness, and the Reproduction of Racialized Inequalities

• In Event: Fairmont Roundtable Session Six
  In Roundtable Session: Mosaics of Change and Challenge: Critical Ethnographic Conversations (Table 12)

Abstract

This ethnographic study analyzes how New Horizons, a majority-Black-turned-majority-Latinx middle school, acted as a racialized organization. I show that one mechanism crucial to how New Horizons functioned as a racialized organization involved the construction of Latinidad through good Latinx scripts that imbricated anti-Blackness. I argue these scripts positioned Latinidad as a constrained credential that legitimated the differential allocation of resources at school between youth imagined as good Latinx and those excluded, particularly Black and newcomer Latinx youth. By centering the everyday circulation good Latinx scripts, this study surfaces how schools – as racialized organizations – can foster less visible mechanisms that are equally as violent as more recognizable forms of organizational discrimination.

Author

• Rebeca Gamez, Vanderbilt University
  Presenting Author