Laura Chávez-Moreno: How Schools Make Race

How Schools Make Race examines how a bilingual-education school program in the US Midwest works as a racial project (a project that engages in racialization, the process of delineating racialized groups and hierarchies). It focuses on how the racially and linguistically diverse dual-language program constructs ideas about race and Latinidad, and forms the Latinx group. Lecture will be followed by a reception and author book signing, books will be available to purchase.

Prof. Chávez-Moreno argues that bilingual schooling may become a false champion for a future anti-racist, anti-imperialist, decolonial Latinidad if this schooling does not disrupt racially inequitable outcomes and encourage Latinxs' critical consciousness. She also posits that the bilingual program advanced an imagined Spanish as the signature boundary delineating the Latinx racialized group in relation to other racialized groups. Lastly, she invites teachers and educators to embrace ambitious teaching about the ambivalence of race, an approach aimed at enhancing critical consciousness about race.