An investigation into how schooling can enhance and hinder critical-racial consciousness through the making of the Latinx racialized group In How Schools Make Race, Laura C. Chavez-Moreno uncovers the process through which schools implicitly and explicitly shape their students' concept of race and the often unintentional consequences of this on educational equity. Chavez-Moreno sheds light on how the complex interactions among educational practices, policies, pedagogy, language, and societal ideas interplay to form, reinforce, and blur the boundaries of racialized groups, a dynamic which creates contradictions in classrooms and communities committed to antiracism. In this provocative book, Chavez-Moreno urges readers to rethink race, to reconceptualize Latinx as a racialized group, and to pay attention to how schools construct Latinidad, a concept about Latinx experience and identity, in relation to Blackness, Indigeneity, Asianness, and Whiteness. The work explores, as an example, how Spanish-English bilingual education programs engage in race-making work. It also illuminates how schools can offer ambitious teachings to raise their students' critical consciousness about race and racialization. Ultimately, Chavez-Moreno's groundbreaking work makes clear that understanding how our schools teach about racialized groups is crucial to understanding how our society thinks about race and offers solutions to racial inequities. The book invites educators and scholars to embrace ambitious teaching about the ambivalence of race so that teachers and students are prepared to interrogate racist ideas and act toward just outcomes.
Laura C. Chavez-Moreno is assistant professor in the Cesar E. Chavez Department of Chicana/o and Central American Studies at the University of California Los Angeles. Her research has been recognized with multiple awards, including from the American Educational Research Association and the National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation. She also served as a teacher for five years in the Philadelphia Public School District.
"An illuminating account of the ways that bilingual education programs produce ideas about race and Latinidad. Chavez-Moreno pays deep respect to the origins and aspirations of these programs, while taking seriously the contradictory terrain they navigate. A model study of racial formation."--Daniel Martinez HoSang, professor of American studies, Yale University "Conceptualizing Latinx experience is complex because it is wedged between culture and race. How Schools Make Race provides a compelling history of Latinx double colonization that challenges cultural essentialisms, including the common-held assumption that speaking Spanish is a prerequisite to group membership. Instead, Chavez-Moreno powerfully centers racialization as the shared experience of Latinx students in US society and schools. CRT, LatCrit, and antiracist educators will find this book indispensable."--Zeus Leonardo, professor of education, UC Berkeley, and author of Race Frameworks: A Multidimensional Theory of Racism and Education
