The Mañana Complex: A Revelatory Narrative of Teachers’ White Innocence and Racial Disgust Toward Mexican–American Children

Abstract

This paper presents selected findings from an ethnographic case study of at a public junior high school. Analysis of White teachers' discourse implicated a perspective of Mexican-American children that we describe as a mañana complex, a perceived association between Mexican-Americans and the term "mañana" (Spanish: "tomorrow"). We outline how this mañana complex among White teachers is indicative of historical racial tropes of Mexicans in the United States while also reflecting current anti-Mexican discourse emboldened and made more fervent by the current US presidential administration. Ultimately, the mañana complex is an example of both racial disgust toward Mexican-American children (Matias and Zembylas in Crit Stud Educ 55(3):319-337, 2014) and presumptions of White innocence and neutrality (Orozco in Crit Stud Educ, 2017.

The racial politics of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) work.

“…At the time of writing this article, I held a temporary appointment in our campus diversity office. It was easy to relate to Ruth's DEI work experiences to my own observations and tensions in advancing a critical research agenda while also having to cater to, or at minimum, respond to, White fragility and emotion (Matias, 2014(Matias, , 2016(Matias, , 2020Morales et al, 2019). My own teaching, research, and service activities all center critical educational and racial theories.…”

Indagando los Tropos: Una Forma de Contribuir al Reconocimiento de los Saberes en una Pedagogía Culturalmente Sostenible

“…Un claro ejemplo de esto es el peligro de pensar que el saber se han criao regalaos no tiene relación con la educación y, por tanto, con los procesos de subjetivación de personas particulares. En este sentido, asumimos que la negación sistemática de derechos a algunos colectivos se basa en tropos poderosos y racializados, que operan hegemónicamente teniendo importantes consecuencias (Morales et al, 2019). De ahí la importancia de insistir en los planteamientos de Zipin y otros (2012, 2020) y Rolnik (2019) en cuanto a un actuar resonante, que siembre la semilla de la justicia social y que ejerza una agencia desde los impulsos vitales de nuevos futuros, a través del trabajo de comprender y reimaginar críticamente sus habitares presentes.…”

Racist and Raciolinguistic Teacher Ideologies: When Bilingual Education is “Inherently Culturally Relevant” for Latinxs

“…As shown above, while some teachers pointed to the lack of resources the Latinx families had, others resorted to the long accepted form of racism in U.S. discourse of blaming their culture (e.g., Morales et al, 2019): Latinxs have a culture that causes a difference between the achievement of Latinx and other students (i.e., Whites) and that causes Latinxs' continued underperformance in the dual-language program.…”

“…This also betrays a raciolinguistic comparison of Latinxs being affected by inadequate Spanish input but not applying this logic to the White dual-language students, who would also see their performance drop in Spanish yet were mostly excelling in Spanish literacy. These raciolinguistic ideologies work in tandem with, facilitate, and/or justify already present racist ideologies and depictions of Latinxs and ELs (for examples, see Bondy, 2011;Morales et al, 2019). Additionally, the raciolinguistic ideology of narrowly defining Latinxs' "equity problem" or "race issue" as mainly about language/literacy disregards the fact that Latinxs benefit from enhancing their criticalracial consciousness in order to face issues related to other intersecting identities and concerns (Cammarota & Aguilera, 2012;Urrieta & Villenas, 2013).…”