How Schools Make Race: Teaching Latinx Racialization in America

• In Event: 30420 - Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 10: Race and Education, K-12 Challenges

Abstract

This presentation discusses how schools make race and define the Latinx group by teaching ideas about race and delineating/blurring societal racialized boundaries. Drawing from a qualitative study, I show how a secondary-level bilingual-education program, intentionally or unintentionally, (1) teaches about race and racism; (2) positions Latinidad in relation to Blackness, Whiteness, Indigeneity, and Asianness; and (3) structurally reproduces racial patterns, thus reinforces racial hierarchies. I find that by not teaching about the social process of making race and struggling to challenge the unjust distribution of resources, the program fell short in providing educational equity. I further argue that the program contributes to constructing the Latinx group by reinforcing the Spanish language as the signature boundary that delineates the Latinx racial group/category. This work connects race, Latinx education, ethnic studies, and raciolinguistics, and offers recommendations for theorizing the Latinx racialized group.

Author

• Laura Chavez-Moreno, University of California Los Angeles