Soy Porque Somos: How Black Teachers Create Practices to Bring Balance

• In Event: Engaging With Critical Race Theory, Bans, and Positive Racial Identities

Abstract

This paper explores the ways in which U.S. based Spanish language teachers who are racialized as Black, develop and navigate Critical Race Pedagogies (Anya, 2020) in order to resist linguistic pushout (Austin, 2022) and confront the racializing myths that erase Afrodiasporic and Indigenous (hi)stories from Spanish language curricula. The interview participants derived their insights from locally informed linguistic and intrinsic cultural expertise, which permeated their defense of Blackness through Black-Self Determination and moves toward a recognition of Black humanity (Wynter, 2003). Through the thematic analysis of eight Black Spanish teachers’ stories, we argue for what Clemons (2021) calls Hemispheric Black Language Pedagogies to center Afrodiasporic histories and insist upon student success in Spanish language classes.

Authors

• Aris M. Clemons, University of Tennessee

• Tasha Austin, University at Buffalo - SUNY