Brown-n-Loud: Building Positive Cultural and Language Affirmation in and out of the Classroom

• In Event: Contra la Corriente: Cultivating Culturally and Linguistically Sustaining Learning Spaces for Chicagoland Latinx Youth

Abstract

Chicago Public School’s population continues to transform to nearly one half Latinx, predominantly Mexican origin, while other, large regional districts are solidly 60-90% LatinX.
Ongoing influx of immigrants, political refugees, and asylum seekers from Mexico and Central America coupled with an already huge generational brown community across Chicagoland, requires careful examination of the population’s youth development. How are we teaching them? What are we teaching them? How are others learning about them? How are we engaging these families? How are Mexican and Latinx youth being celebrated, being cared for, being loved?

It is essential for Mexican, Puerto Rican and LatinX youth to see themselves mirrored and honored throughout school curriculum and community agenda as a story that must continue to be written and learned from. Not just as stories that community members know, but inculcated into the fabric and makeup of Chicago, as a population who built communities, revenue, and systems in the city, that was needed as essential workers during the pandemic, experiencing so much loss, and still, overlooked. Many young people believe that Mexicans and other Latinx people have just arrived recently, unaware the community they pertain to has long roots in this city; has fought with dignity for change over a century; and has been resilient, while continuing to be dismissed for their brown skin, told to go back where they came from, to speak English Only, called wetbacks, spics, or mojados, living in fear of deporation, but whose labor is always welcomed.

The lack of recognition and stories presented to them perpetuates negative, violent, and absent narratives around Mexican and Latinx people, and obstructs conscious and healthy development for young people whose cultural identity is rooted in indigenous America, reflecting centuries of resistance and colonization in everything from language and literacy, art and music, food, science, and architecture, to all types of skills, ways of doing and being, spiritual practices and beliefs, and community building. An education that recognizes and explicitly engages this precious knowledge will ensure that its youth can leverage their complete identity of skills and awareness to go forth in the continuing crises of environmental, economic and racial injustice, health and wellness (Delgado-Bernal & Aleman, 2017).

We represent ongoing and developing educational projects and curriculum, working in and out of schools to build spaces for constant and safe engagement, for cultural practice, learning and speaking, to allow for genuine and authentic growth. Curriculum development and programming places a lens on students’ identity, their community, their lives, their relationships. They learn more about who they are and where their people come from. It is enriched with culture, with things they know and don't know, and that inspires curiosity. Consistently using art, language, and music to build a solid trifecta of cultural affirmation is beautiful. Together with intergenerationality, saving our historical memory, our legacy, and stories, nurtures future generations to grow to be positive, thriving, whole people, and ensures others receive another narrative of who this population is and what they are about.

Authors

• Jackie Rodriguez Vega, Benito Juarez Community Academy
  Presenting Author

• Gina Pacheco Gamboa, Northeastern Illinois University
  Presenting Author

• Maya Zazhil Fernandez, 18th Street Casa de Cultura
  Presenting Author