Feeling the stress and strain – race, economics, and the educational experiences of Latinx emergent bilinguals in a ‘new’ destination school

ABSTRACT

This article uses ethnographic data to examine the schooling experiences of Latinx emergent bilinguals and the educators who worked with them at a mid-size high school in a small Wisconsin city. Using Critical Race Theory, I argue that as tensions have increased in recent years from school funding cuts, deindustrialization, and demographic shifts, the community’s white residents have repeated long-standing patterns of white supremacy to assert economic and cultural dominance over Communities of Color. I examine the manifestation of these dynamics in the schooling experiences of my participants through a racially hostile schooling environment and a general lack of investment in their education. This work offers important insights on the sociohistorical intersections of race and class within predominantly white, rural and suburban ‘new destination’ communities and problematizes the very notion of ‘new’ in such locals by questioning assumptions about who is ‘native’ and who is ‘new’ to a particular community

KEYWORDS:

• Critical race theory
• Latinx education
• emergent bilinguals
• new destinations
• postindustrial contexts
• racial histories

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Pseudonyms have been used for all place and people names to protect confidentiality.

2. The term ‘Latinx’ is used throughout this article as a gender-neutral alternative to Latino/Latina.

3. While several terms are used to refer to learners whose native or home language is not English and who receive English-language support services, in this study, I use García, Kleifgen, and Falchi’s (2008) term ‘emergent bilingual’ because of its ability to capture learners’ bilingual identity and reject a monolingual lens on language.

4. The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction defines ‘economically disadvantaged’ as falling into one of the following categories: eligible for free lunch, eligible for reduced lunch, or eligible for needs-based programs based on household income.