She doesn’t even act Mexican: smartness trespassing in the new south

Abstract

Historically, Latin@s have experienced deficit thinking as it relates to their perceived academic abilities. In North Carolina’s emerging Latin@ population, the first waves of K-12 students are writing a new chapter in the state’s history. Yet, there is a dearth of research that focuses on the identities of academically successful Latin@ students in the state. This qualitative study examines the politics and discrimination associated with claiming a ‘smart identity’ in the new south by documenting the experiences of a high-achieving Latina high school student. We introduce and use the term, ‘smartness trespassing,’ to capture this tension.

Keywords:

• New Latino diaspora
• Latin@ education
• race and ethnicity
• smartness

Notes

1. My use of ‘@’ in Latin@ is an effort to be gender inclusive and to move away from the inherent sexism and assumptions of heterosexual normativity in the masculine term, ‘Latino.’ In solidarity with Asencio and Acosta’s (2010, 4) assessment concerning their use of the word, Latina/o, I use Latin@ to ‘acknowledge equally the experience of women and men in the construction of this diverse and heterogeneous community’. Latin@ is also useful for disrupting binary notions of identity cultural production. Some scholars have used other terms to explore these issues. For instance, Rodríguez’s (2003, 22) use of queer Latinidad also provides insight into ‘the process by which constructions of identity work to constitute one another, emphasizing ‘and’ over ‘is’ as a way to think about difference. So, Latinidad is about the ‘dimensions’ or ‘the directions in motion’ of history and culture and geography and language and self-named identities’. Similarly, Latin@ Critical Race theorists (Cantú and Franquiz 2010) use Latin@ over Latino to center the heterogeneity among those of Latin American heritage and to utilize gender inclusive language … (Carrillo 2013).

2. Referring to relaxed, laid-back, mellow environment that some Latino immigrants associate with living in North Carolina.

3. In all cases, the use of the name ‘Southern City’ serves as a pseudonym that will be used in an effort to protect the identity of the participant in this study.

4. This example is given by Juan F. Carrillo.

5. Citation information for numeric data is withheld for the purpose of protecting Maria’s anonymity.

6. pseudonym.

7. This statement draws from a recent experience (May, 2013) where I presented on Latin@ student issues at a Latin@ parent meeting in Smithfield, NC. While sitting down and enjoying the meeting, I noticed that the drink machines on a table had the labels of ‘sweet tea’ and ‘horchata.’ The containers were side by side.

8. Juan F. Carrillo.

9. Juan F. Carrillo.