How Schools Make Race with Dr. Laura Chávez-Moreno

 We often talk about race as a social construct. We know that there is more genetic diversity within racial groups than between. And yet, race obviously has real life impacts on people's lives. We have talked on the show in the past about the historical creation of race, and looked at the creation of Whiteness, particularly in relation to Blackness. Our guest today complicates this understanding both by asking us to acknowledge the ways race continues to be created and re-created, particularly in schools, and by asking us to consider the label of Latinx as a racial category rather than an ethnicity.

Dr. Laura Chávez-Moreno recently wrote a booked called, How Schools Make Race: Teaching Latinx Radicalization in America, in which she argues that schools play an important role in how society makes and remakes racial categories. Through an examination of two dual-language programs in the midwest, Dr. Chávez-Moreno studied the ways these programs reify ideas about racial identity and use what she calls an "imagined" Spanish, as a proxy for racial identification.

The conversation complicates our understanding of racial categories, and highlights the ways that school could play an important role in moving beyond anti-racism and towards an anti-race society.

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Finding a school where your children can thrive, while avoiding contributing to the ongoing segregation we see today, can feel like a tough issue for socially conscious parents.

Check out our FREE guide on how you can start engaging with the education system to achieve just that: Click here to download the guide now!

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LINKS:

• How Schools Make Race: Teaching Latinx Radicalization in America - Dr. Chávez-Moreno's book
• Episode 13 - Hopes and Hazards of Dual Language
• ICYMI: Seeing White - our overview of the podcast series from Scene on Radio
• S10E15 – Rebuilding The Black Educator Pipeline with Sharif El-Mekki
• S7E11 - A Framework for Antiracist Eduction - with a discussion of the CARE Framework
• Zeus Leonardo, at UC Berkeley - After the Glow: Race ambivalence and other educational prognoses
• Contact Dr. Chávez-Moreno

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The Integrated Schools Podcast was created by Courtney Mykytyn and Andrew Lefkowits.

This episode was produced by Andrew Lefkowits and Val Brown. It was edited, and mixed by Andrew Lefkowits.

Music by Kevin Casey.

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