Latino Males in the Southeastern United States: A Borderlands Analysis of Mentoring

• In Event: Getting Over Being Racialized: Critical Perspectives on Mentoring

Abstract

Purpose

Using a borderlands (Anzaldúa, 1987) lens, this paper examines a specific mentoring program with Latino male high school students in a suburban high school in the southeastern United States. It argues that mentoring lacks a social theory of race and gender sufficient to understand the real dynamics of such programs.
Perspective(s) or theoretical framework
I specifically draw from Anzaldúa (1987), and her exploration of hybridity, contradiction, ambivalence, and mestiza consciousness. Understanding the ambivalences and hybridity among Latin@s is crucial for exploring mentoring relationships (Delgado Bernal, Aleman, Jr, & Garavito, 2009). This framework makes it possible to reconceptualize approaches to mentoring in ways that reflect the realities of the Latino community. Additionally, unpacking evolving and changing identities are important pillars for analysis, especially in places like the southeastern U.S. where the Latino community has had to negotiate cultural and social worlds that often do not reflect “familiar” sociocultural and historical contexts.
Methods and Data Sources
This paper draws from a qualitative study of data of mentoring in a suburban high school located in the southeastern United States. Data were collected from interviews and observations of Latino male students and mentors. Interview data were transcribed and uploaded to Atlas ti which enables inductive and conceptual coding.
Results
These young men found mentoring to represent a new borderlands, one much more subtle than a national border. Mentoring was seen as culturally loaded, representing Anglo conceptions of respect; social class, race, and gender relations, and importance of family. The Latino mentees had to cross the border every time they met with the mentor. In the process, they learned that Being American is an assault on being Latino in key ways. Nevertheless, they were pushed to succeed in the Anglo world by the needs of their families.

Scientific or scholarly significance of the study or work
The “new Latino diaspora” (Hamman, Stanton Wortham, & Murillo, Jr., 2002) has led to significant demographic shifts in many school districts in the southeast and forged a sea change in the way communities imagine issues of diversity, equity, and academic achievement. This paper seeks to contribute much needed scholarship that explores how Latino males in this region experience interventions such as mentoring and how such programs may adequately address issues of race and gender.
References
Anzaldúa, G. (1987). Borderlands, La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco,
CA: Aunt Luke Books.
Delgado Bernal, D., Alemán, Jr.,E., & Garavito, A. (2009). Latina/o
Undergraduate Students Mentoring Latina/o Elementary Students: A
Borderlands Analysis of Shifting Identities and First-Year Experiences.
Harvard Educational Review, 71 (4), 560-585.
Hamman, Stanton Wortham, & Murillo, Jr., (2002). Education Policy in the New
Latino Diaspora. In S. Wortham, E.G. Murillo, Jr., & E.T. Hamman (Eds.),
Education in the new Latino diaspora: Policy and the Politics of Identity (pp. ).
Westport, CT: Ablex Publishing.
Saenz, V., & Ponjuan, L. (2009). The Vanishing Latino Male in Higher
Education. Journal of Hispanic Higher Education, 8(1), 54-89.

Author

• Juan Fernando Carrillo, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill