Contesting Black Exclusion in Dual Language Bilingual Education

• In Event: Imagining Futurities in Bi/Multilingual Education Through Counter-Stories From Racialized and Minoritized Parents

Abstract

Dual language bilingual education (DLBE) often is positioned as one way to ensure culturally and linguistically responsive education and to pursue educational equity. However, students racialized as Black have been excluded from, or marginalized within, DLBE based on deficit perceptions of their ability to succeed (Blanton, et. al, 2021; Wall, et. al, 2019) as well as their language and languaging practices (Dorner, et.al, 2020; Frieson, 2022a). Valdés (2018) cautions that DLBE is not a default tool for equity. DLBE that does not attend to the broader US context of white supremacy, intergroup relations among minoritized communities, and intersectional axes of privilege and oppression can reify existing power structures and patterns of oppression. In addition, Rosa and Flores (2017) offer a raciolinguistic perspective on DLBE which calls for the “....dismantling of the white supremacy that permeates mainstream institutions as a product of colonialism” (p. 637).

The prevalence of deficit-based views of Black learners in DLBE (Palmer, 2010) and the impact of using DLBE as a geographic gentrification weapon against Black residents in gentrifying areas illuminate an ideology that blackness is antithetical to being and pursuing bilingualism in school. Using a Black Crit lens, and an offshoot of Critical Race Theory (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995), parents in this study offer counterstories to challenge these prevailing narratives.

Emerging research also illustrates Black resistance against anti-blackness and linguistic hegemony within DLBE (Frieson, 2022b). Adding to the literature, this study uses focus groups of Black parents with children enrolled in a majority-Black DLBE school during its inaugural year to equitably amplify parents’ voices (Kitzinger, 1995) and unearth communal experiences (Parker & Tritter, 2006). By employing Critical Race Theory as a conceptual lens, this study presents parents’ counterstories contesting deficit-based ideologies about the appropriateness of DLBE for Black youth and dominant ideologies asserting equal education opportunities (Solórzano and Yosso, 2002).

Parents in this study challenged a homogenous, monolingual view of blackness and the racist assertion that their racialized identities placed DLBE out of reach for their children. When exploring their experiences engaging with ULS and their pursuit of bilingualism for their children, parents asserted the relevance of their racialized identities to (1) a historical fight for equitable access to education, (2) heritage language learning as Afro-Latinx, and (3) global heritage that normalized being Black and multilingual.

The critique of an overly simplified White-Latinx dichotomy within DLBE research (Cervantes-Soon, et al., 2017; Morita-Mullaney, 2018) can also be extended to the oversimplification of blackness. Diversity among the African diasporic population in the US compels us to attend to the myriad of ways Black parents’ racialized identities influence their interactions with schools. This study adds to the body of research on blackness within DLBE. The homogenization of blackness obscures opportunities to serve and partner with families and youth in pursuit of educational equity. The counterstories of parents in this study highlight the need for research that recognizes heterogeneity and disrupts essentializing approaches to blackness to further DLBE’s social justice aims.

Author

• Sabrina L. Wesley-Nero, Georgetown University