A “Racial Identity Shaped by Loss and Feeling Lost”: AfroLatine Student Experiences Navigating Identity Binarization

• In Event: “Asian and Latinx Anti-Blackness in Schools and Communities: Complicity and Resistance” Book Discussion Symposium 2

Abstract

Purpose: This chapter analyzes experiences of two co-researchers in relation to their identities as Black and biracial, their grandfather’s experiences as an Afro-Carribean Panamanian immigrant, and their complicated navigation and relationship with AfroLatinidad in the U.S. context. Specifically, this chapter seeks to consider the role of linguistic, cultural, and racial binarization in AfroLatine student experiences throughout their educational journeys, and the roots of identity binarization in anti-Blackness (e.g. Burgos, 2021). Further, implications for leveraging Implementation Science to better engage and support Black and AfroLatine students in school spaces are discussed.

Perspective(s) or theoretical framework: This chapter draws on the concepts of Afro-Carribean diasporic world making (Corinealdi, 2022) in its analysis of the co-authors’ Afro-Carribean Panamanian heritage. Additionally, it leverages the frameworks of school-based Implementation Science (Komesidou & Author, 2023) and the Elements of Equitable Implementation (Metz, Woo, & Loper, 2021) to discuss how findings from the BLMA study related to identity binarization of Black and AfroLatine student experiences were used as community-defined evidence (Metz, Woo, & Loper, 2021) to create the AMANI Project, a Black Education Space for students to address and heal from manifestations of anti-Blackness in school spaces (Warren & Coles, 2020) and center Community Cultural Wealth (Yosso, 2005).

Methods: Data including meeting transcripts from a larger study entitled Black Lives Matter All the Time (BLMA) were analyzed using secondary reflexive thematic analysis to identify themes related to the role of cultural, linguistic, and racial identity binarization in AfroLatine student experiences.

Data sources: The BLMA study was conducted in 2020 to document and share the experiences of Black undergraduate students at predominately white institutions (PWIs) on the west coast and identify calls to action to better support and allow Black students to thrive (AUTHOR et al., 2024; AUTHOR et al., 2024; AUTHOR et al., 2024). This study used the Photovoice method (Wang, 2006) and resulted in a robust qualitative dataset related to Black students’ intersectional and multidimensional identities, and multiple focused thematic analyses related to Black student experiences across the diaspora.

Results: Through secondary reflexive thematic analysis of the co-author’s experiences related to anti-Blackness, AfroLatinidad, and ethno-racial identity development, four themes were identified: 1) The Myth of Monolithic Blackness, 2) The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and the Erasure of Ancenstral History, 3) Linguistic and Cultural Assimilation and AfroLatine Heritage, and 4) Reclaiming Language as Resistance and Cultural Healing. The results of this study underscore the ways the oversimplification of Blackness into a monolithic experience and identity has profound implications for Black student identity development, particularly for multiracial/multiethnic/and/or multicultural Black students.

Scientific and scholarly significance:
Implications of this study highlight how these results have been applied into school-based practice via Implementation Science to better engage and support the multidimensional identities of Black and AfroLatine students. This aligns with AERA’s theme of “unforgetting histories and imagining futures” by highlighting ways to center student histories that have historically been overlooked and provide mechanisms for translating theory into practice to better affirm students’ intersectional identities in school spaces.

Authors

• Natalie King-Shaw, Harvard Medical School

• Sam King-Shaw, University at Buffalo - SUNY

• Melanie Sonsteng-Person, Salem State University

• Dominique Mikell Montgomery, University of Nevada - Reno

• Alexia Oduro, University of Southern California

• Tiffany Hogan, MGH Institute of Health Professions