Book Talk, How Schools Make Race: Teaching Latinx Racialization in America

Book Talk Summary

Dr. Laura Chávez-Moreno examines the pivotal role schools play in shaping concepts of race and racial categories. Drawing from her research in a diverse Spanish-English bilingual education program, she highlights how teachers and students grapple with conflicting ideas about race and the Latinx group. She argues that the bilingual program advanced an imagined Spanish as the signature boundary delineating the Latinx racialized group in relation to other racialized groups. She invites educators to embrace ambitious teaching about the ambivalence of race, an approach that considers racialization and recognizes Latinx as a racialized group. Her work underscores why this shift is necessary: how we teach about race influences whether schools can provide an education that challenges racist ideologies.

Speaker Bio

Laura Chávez-Moreno is an award-winning researcher, qualitative social scientist, and assistant professor at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) in the Department of Chicana/o & Central American Studies and Department of Education.

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