Racializing Latinx bilinguals in K-12 language learning classrooms in the United States

World languages for Black Linguistic Reparations

“…Languages of Native American groups, enslaved Africans and their descendants, indentured servants, or poor whites were rendered insignificant and peripheral given their distance from status and centers of power. The raciolinguistic enregisterment (Clemons & Toribio, 2021; Rosa & Flores, 2017) of these language practices with racially devalued groups reduced them to classifications as foreign languages, (if they were considered “real” languages in the first place). Even the Spanish(es) that eventually overtook French as the most popular “modern” language of study in the United States are varieties more closely aligned culturally and demographically with whiteness and power.…”

“…Meanwhile, in the broader area of applied linguistics and SLA where research on WLs is situated, Black often simply means “problem.” The scarce mention of Black people and Blackness in applied linguistics research has not been to theorize complexities in Black discourse, pragmatics, or pedagogies, but mostly to exemplify problems like the supposed deficits of Black language users, and the unwelcomed Black presence in (or Black exclusion from) language learning, teaching, policy, and practice. Applied linguists and language scholars alike note that Dominican varieties of Spanish (Clemons & Toribio, 2021) and Africanized Portuguese and Spanish (Sánchez‐Martín & Gonzales, 2022) terms are devalued or completely misunderstood. This misunderstanding reinscribes a languageless status upon diasporic Black communities by framing them as in need of endless remediation (Rosa, 2016).…”

Illustrating linguistic dexterity in “English mostly” spaces: how translanguaging can support academic writing in secondary ELA classrooms

“…Policy initiatives intended to institutionalize bilingualism in secondary schools, such as the Seal of Biliteracy, treat multilingualism as apolitical (Colomer and Chang‐Bacon, 2019). This perpetuates the status quo of multilingualism being a lauded add-on for white middle- and upper-class students, but a sign of risk or obligation for working class students of color (Clemons and Torribio, 2021). Despite recent pedagogical and theoretical advances in understanding multilingualism as speaker/writer centered, political and racialized (de los Ríos and Seltzer, 2017; Rosa, 2019), literacy curricula grounded in translanguaging principles are not yet widely accepted in practice.…”

“…Pedagogies of multilingualism and multiliteracies are few and far between. When they exist, they often privilege English and English speakers as “foreign language learners” (Clemons and Torribio, 2021). However, scholars have argued for and evidenced the ways multilingual orientations in English language art (ELA) classrooms can aid in dismantling of legacies of racial hierarchies (Baker-Bell, 2020).…”