Socializing Latinx college-going youth to (White) Neutral Rationality: Liberal teaching practices and right-wing racisms

Abstract

The mythology of liberal anti/racism endures in U.S. mainstream educational discourse as the rational approach to address white supremacy, with college-going positioned as the pathway to a better life. Liberal logics suppose that once racialized peoples enter positions of power, society will improve. Drawing upon pláticas and interviews from an ethnographic study of a college preparation program for Latinx youth at a public high school in the liberal, racially diverse San Francisco Bay Area, this work examines how liberal teaching practices shaped Mexican-origin youths’ responses to right-wing terror. Instead of preparing youth to dismantle white supremacy, these practices undermined youths’ readings of their sociopolitical worlds. Engaging language socialization approaches, this work argues that liberal teaching practices socialized college-going youth to (white) neutral rationality, wherein accommodating white supremacy signals rationality and college readiness. This research illustrates why college-going can be no more than one tactic towards collective wellbeing for racialized people.

Keywords:

• Liberal racisms
• right-wing racisms
• college preparation
• language socialization
• critical place inquiry
• plática

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Latrise Johnson, Bayley J. Marquez, Renee M. Moreno, Kevin Nguyen, Kim D. Hester Williams, Mercy Romero, and the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful feedback on this work. Much appreciation to Michael J. Myers II for the push to see another way.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 “Cedarville” is a pseudonym for purposes of anonymity, as are “Bridge Program,” youth and teacher names.

2 “Latinx/-e” are used interchangeably here as gender expansive terms, a category in flux and contestation that encompasses peoples of various races, genders, languages, and places of origin in ways that erase Black and Indigenous peoples. In Cedarville, most Latines were of Mexican or Central American origin. Youth in the Bridge Program were primarily Mexican-origin, racialized, non-Black and non-Indigenous, second or third generation in the U.S., the subgroup college preparation programs such as Bridge and Puente are designed for in California. In this study, Latinx teachers and students were part of this subgroup except for students Mercedes, self-identified as Native Hawaiian, African American, and Mexican (fourth generation), and Jessamy, self-identified as Mexican and Indian (from India).

3 This study was approved by the Committee for Protection of Human Subjects at UC Berkeley, 2017-06-10038, including informed consent for all participants.

4 Former President Obama’s presidency illustrates liberal anti/racism rather than material antiracism.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by a mini grant from the American Educational Research Association Division G.

Notes on contributors

Theresa Burruel Stone

Theresa Burruel Stone is an assistant professor of English at Sonoma State University. Their work examines the intersections between schooling, ideologies of educational uplift, Latinx racialization and vulnerability to racialized violence, and U.S. settler colonialism.