Integration on the Surface: Whiteness, Intelligence, and Latina/o Racialized Schooling

• In Event: 1571 - Contemporary Latina/o Racialization

Abstract

Schools, as social institutions, have never been and are not immune from the power of race as a core organizing principle (Lewis and Diamond 2015). We, thus, must examine the multiple current consequences of racialization, digging deep into the full and broad effects of racializing mechanisms within schools. This article focuses on U.S. born and undocumented Latina/o high school students’ racialization experiences at a campus that is touted as one of the most diverse high school’s in LAUSD. The paper addresses the following questions: what are Latina/o students’ experiences of racialization within school? How do these students make sense of and resist racializing ideologies and racialization practices? Drawing on data from five years of school ethnography and in-depth interviews with 50 U.S. born and undocumented Latina/o high school juniors and seniors, this article demonstrates that Latina/o students’ schooling is racialized through formal and informal mechanisms. First, the organizational structure of small learning communities (SLC) at “Hillcrest” high school is a principal formal racializing mechanism that re-produces racialized experiences for Latina/o students. The organizational structure, especially the presence of two magnet programs, has led to the construction of certain areas of the quad, specific classrooms and buildings at the school as white spaces. The racialization of physical areas as white spaces is informed by racial ideological narratives that have conflated whiteness and intelligence. This conflation emerges as a principal informal mechanism shaping the contours of racialized interactions between white and Latina/o students at “Hillcrest”. I argue that Latina/o students have developed a critical lens through which they make sense of how broader racist nativist anti-immigrant narratives are embedded in the racializing practices and interactions they encounter. This awareness informs Latina/o students’ formulation of counter-narratives to challenge their racialization by disputing the coupling of whiteness and intelligence.

Author

• Karina Chavarria, University of California-Los Angeles