Chicana/Latina Testimonios on Effects and Responses to Microaggressions

Abstract

Testimonio in educational research can reveal both the oppression that exists within educational institutions and the powerful efforts in which students of color ¹ engage to challenge and transform those spaces. We utilize testimonio as a methodological approach to understand how undocumented and U.S.-born Chicana/Latina students experience the effects of and responses to a systemic, subtle, and cumulative form of racism, racist nativist microaggressions. We draw from critical race and Chicana feminist frameworks to understand the effects of microaggressions as embodied systemic oppression (Cruz, 2006; Moraga & Anzaldúa, 2002b). Our analysis reveals that the students engaged and created counterspaces within K-12 institutions that challenged oppression and sought to transform the educational spaces that marginalized them. Throughout these findings, we explore the process of conocimiento (Anzaldúa, 2002) that allowed the women to engage in reflection, healing, and celebration of their resiliency.

Notes

1. Typically in our work, we intentionally capitalize the term “Students of Color” to reject the standard grammatical norm. Capitalization is used as a means of empowerment and represents a grammatical move toward social justice. We typically use this rule to apply to “People, Immigrants, Women and Communities of Color” in our writing. However, we understand the policies this journal has established to maintain consistency in the use of capitalization and the potential to exclude other oppressed groups in this grammatical practice (i.e., Queer, Persons with Disabilities, etc.).

2. Delgado Bernal and Villalpando (2002) argue that an apartheid of knowledge exists in academia where racial divisions are created between Eurocentric epistemologies and other epistemological stances, producing an ideological divide between “legitimate” and “illegitimate” forms of knowledge. This apartheid maintains white superiority through a narrowly defined knowledge production process that devalues and delegitimizes the forms of knowledge that exists within communities of color.

3. The majority of women in this study self-identified as either Chicana or Latina. Thus, we use the term Chicana/Latina to describe this group of participants. All ten of the undocumented participants were born in México. In addition, all ten of the U.S.-born participants’ parents were born in México. The salience of racial identification varied in the lives of the participants. Some women were very committed to the political dimensions of a Chicana/Latina identity, while others explained using the term Latina because it was more of a collective identity. Others used terms like Mexican American, American Mexican, Mexican, and Hispanic to describe themselves.

4. This work extends a previous study that explored how the women experienced racist nativist microaggressions in California public K-12 schools (Pérez Huber, 2011).

5. The original definition of racist nativism can be found in Pérez Huber et al. (2008). We would like to acknowledge the assistance of Dr. Daniel Solórzano in crafting a brief version of this definition as provided here.

6. The concept of racial microaggression was first developed by psychiatrist Dr. Chester Pierce (1969) to explain the subtle, yet powerfully harmful “offensive mechanisms” directed by Whites toward African Americans (p. 303). CRT scholars have built upon this conceptual tool within critical race scholarship in education and have found that this concept can be used to explain how Latina/o and African American students are targeted by low expectations, racist and sexist stereotypes, and racially hostile college campus environments (Greir-Reed, 2010; Smith, Allen, & Danley, 2007; Solórzano, 1998; Solórzano, Ceja, & Yosso, 2000; Yosso, 2006; Yosso, Smith, Ceja, Solórzano, 2009). Racist nativist microaggressions as a type of racial microaggression have been theorized from a LatCrit lens that has allowed researchers to examine the role of immigration status in the way microaggressions are experienced (Pérez Huber, 2011).

7. See Pérez Huber et al. (2008) for a discussion of the historical subordination of Latinas/os in the U.S., specifically through immigration and educational policies.

8. These focus groups included undocumented and U.S.-born students.

9. In this previous study, Pérez Huber (2011) discusses the current law guiding language policies in California public K-12 schools, Proposition 227 (Prop 227). Prop 227 restricted bilingual education in schools and mandated EL students into structured English immersion programs. She explains that this law targeted Spanish-speaking Latina/o students who comprised the majority of English Learner students at the time the law was passed in 1998. She argues that such restrictive language policies support and encourage teacher practices of English dominance over Latina/o students in these schools.

10. All names provided in this article are pseudonyms to protect the identities of the students and confidentiality of their testimonios.

11. Our analysis of microaggressions uncovers the subordination the women experienced as a result of being labeled English Lanugage Learners in K-12 schools. However, we feel it is also important to acknowledge that being bilingual was also a source of strength that provided the students with a skill-set they utilized to navigate educational institutions. In a previous study, Pérez Huber (2009a) explains how these bilingual skills can be considered a form of linguistic capital within a community cultural wealth framework.

12. Pseudonym

13. Cueva (2012) has found other examples of embodiment. Her data (46 testimonio interviews) on Chicana and Native American doctoral students highlights the various types of racialized and gendered microaggressions women encounter in higher education that impair their bodies, health, and overall quality of life. Some of the symptoms include: depression, anxiety, dissociative disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, insomnia, fatigue, high blood pressure, diabetes, irritable bowel syndrome, anxiety/panic attacks, sweats, weight gain, weight loss, low sugar levels, migraine headaches, chronic pain, contemplation of suicide, as well as reproductive issues (e.g., missed periods, miscarriages, stopped ovulation, heavy bleeding/cramping, extreme PMS, pelvic pain).

14. Both undocumented and U.S.-born students experienced the effects of racist nativist microaggressions in similar ways. However, we feel it is important to highlight the heightened negative effects of microaggressions experienced by the undocumented women in the study, such as Alicia's symptoms of depression. Future research should further theorize the relationship between the body, mind, spirit, and traumatic experiences that undocumented Chicanas/Latinas encounter as a result of racist nativism, sexism, patriarchy, and other forms of oppression.

15. Pseudonym

16. Here, we consider the findings of Pérez Huber (2011) on restrictive language policies as institutional oppression that results in the young women's experiences with microaggressions.

17. The two excerpts provided here have been previously published in a different analysis focused on method to illustrate how the women described the process of testimonio as reflective and healing and how participants’ descriptions were incorporated into the conceptualization of testimonio as a methodological process (see Pérez Huber, 2010).

18. The direct English translation of herida is “wound.” However, the way Beatriz uses this word is more of an expression that lacks a direct translation. Similar to this expression of herida, we see Anzaldúa's (1999) use of the term in her concept of la herida abierta, “the open wound” of the social world created by the oppressive physical and symbolic borders imposed by neocolonialism (e.g., racism, patriarchy, capitalism, heterosexism).