The Intersection of Language and Race among English Learner (EL) Leaders in Desegregated Urban Midwest Schools: A LangCrit Narrative Study

ABSTRACT

This inquiry examines how district English Learner (EL) leaders negotiate and shape their linguistic and racial identities within the landscape of racially desegregated urban school districts. Girded by the theory of LangCrit, an intersection between critical language studies (CLS) and Critical Race Theory (CRT), this study illuminates how EL leaders position language and language learning as their primary leadership aim. This language-centered focus resists the institutional practices of their desegregated districts that are principally shaped by binary racial frameworks of Black and white. Resisting the racialization of language, EL leaders negotiate their leadership actions through colorblind, colormute and nativist lenses that are shaped by their respective linguistic and racial identities. Implications within this narrative study assert that inter and intra-racial and cross-linguistic dialogue is necessary among EL leaders with other leaders of color to deconstruct equitable opportunities for ELs by centering and intersecting the constructs of race and language.

KEYWORDS:

• AsianCrit
• Critical Race Theory
• CRT
• educational leadership
• emergent bilingual
• English language learner
• English learner
• ESL
• LangCrit
• LatCrit
• race

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the late Maritza Robles, Bilingual Director and School Board member, who was instrumentally profound in the shaping of this critical study. You will be missed Maritza.

Notes

1. Asian, Black and Hispanic are capitalized to demonstrate respect based on current and historic marginalization of these groups of color. The term white is not capitalized in an effort to recenter our logics around people of color in EL leadership (Halley, Eshleman, & Mahadevan Vijaya, 2011).

2. A school system has achieved unitary status when a federal court determines that it is not only desegregated, but has also eliminated the vestiges of prior racial discrimination (Brown, 1990, p. 1108).

3. The state is not identified, as requested by participants who are concerned that their role may be jeopardized should their identities be notable.