Raciolinguistic ideology of antiblackness: bilingual education, tracking, and the multiracial imaginary in urban schools

Abstract

Based on a qualitative study of an urban middle school, this article examines student perceptions of shifting tracking structures following the dismantling of a school’s bilingual education program. The article demonstrates that students understood the school changes based on supposed language needs through an explicitly racialized lens, thereby illuminating both the permeability and entrenchment of raciolinguistic ideologies in the predominantly nonwhite school. In particular, a raciolinguistic ideology of antiblackness that positioned Black students as lacking when compared to other non-White students was ultimately reproduced in student discourse despite the change from bilingual education to English-only class tracks. This finding is significant because it questions how education reform is often structured without regard to broader social contexts and histories. The article concludes by exploring strategies policymakers and educators can draw from to challenge underlying relational racializations of antiblackness that are so pervasive in our current language education programs.

KEYWORDS:

• Urban education
• raciolinguistics
• antiblackness
• bilingual education
• race

Notes

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 The city, school, and student and teacher names used in this paper are all pseudonyms.

2 Bancroft Middle School starts in 6th grade, thus the 7th graders were in their second year at the school and well-positioned to comment on changes they had observed.

3 The four largest Asian ethnic groups were Mien, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Cambodian. Over half of the total Asian American student body was Mien, a tribe from the Laos region who arrived in the US as Vietnam War refugees.

4 In order to be redesignated, ELL students met a series of criteria (though there was no standard rubric) including a combination of testing at or above grade level in standardized tests, consistently achieving strong class grades, and being recommended by their teachers. It was no small feat to be redesignated at Bancroft, and only the most successful students in the ELD track moved into the mainstream English track.

5 California Standards Test (CST) was the test used by the state of California to compile school accountability performance records. The California Achievement Test (CAT-6) was used to compile national accountability data for NCLB measures.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kenzo K. Sung

Kenzo K. Sung is an Assistant Professor of Urban Education and Community Studies in the College of Education at Rowan University. His research areas include urban education and policy, ethnic studies, history of education, critical race theory, political economy, and twentieth-century social movements and reforms.