Teaching While White: Addressing the Intersections of Race and Immigration in the Classroom

by Laura A Roy

He stated, “They are not our friend, believe me. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

Seems like he is talking about himself here. What a hypocrite.

A legacy of fear, for example, reverberates among Latinx parents who are now in their 50s, 60s, and 70s as they were routinely punished and abused as children by White teachers for speaking Spanish in schools.

In this way, two languages are seen as an asset for affluent White families while Spanish is seen as a liability for working-class Mexican immigrants who have little opportunity to maintain Spanish in school.

“Until the story of the hunt is told by the lion, the tale of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.” In other words, those in power will write history in their favor and likeness.

enslaved Africans brought to the US via the transatlantic slave trade were referred to as “workers” rather than enslaved human beings.

implying that enslaved Africans had chosen to come to the Americas by their own free will.

we learn the “twigs” of history: oversimplified, decontextualized lists of dates or events that rarely address the deep structures of why and how events occurred.

emphasizing that stories are told from the perspective of the colonizer rather than the “people.”

This romanticized portraiture is often envisioned as a European immigrant arriving through Ellis Island from 1892 to 1954. Stories from this “golden era” of immigration are permeated by accounts of brave stowaways, businessmen, and families scraping together their last pennies for a ticket to America.

In addition to the focus on European immigrant groups, history books tend to privilege the stories of those who are perceived to have assimilated, including an imagined voluntary and expedient process for learning English.

It still holds true that most immigrant groups lose their first language by the third generation regardless of where in the US they relocate.

Relatable :(

Immigrants of color are more likely to experience the same forms of discrimination as US-born people of color with the added, intersectional experience of being an immigrant (Rong & Brown, 2002).

The racialization of immigrants, or how they are perceived racially by Whites, makes it difficult for immigrants of color to assimilate, even if they work to take on the lin...

Irish and Italian immigrants experienced discrimination and hardship, but also benefited from the evolving definition of race over time. They were able to “become White” based on the socially constructed notions of race.

Most ancestors of White Irish and Italian immigrants today are viewed as White, even if it was not the case historically. Other immigrant groups such as the Japanese have been perpetually racialized.

US-born White, right-wing extremists have committed more terrorist acts on US soil than Muslims (Neiwert, 2017).

the people of Puerto Rico, who are US citizens, are still without power

Puerto Ricans have been US citizens since 1917 as a result of the Jones-Shafroth Act, which allowed Puerto Rican residents to retain their Puerto Rican citizenship while becoming US citizens.

maybe i would speak proper spanish if we weren't a territory lol

The process of giving citizenship in exchange for strategic access for military operations and resources is a common practice among colonizing nations.

__ As long as I have a driver’s license, I can travel domestically in the US or get pulled over for a minor traffic violation without the fear of being deported or having my citizenship questioned.

Maybe. But now Im not sure due to the new Trump Administration.

“The ESL students are the smog?”

“Well, it’s difficult. We can’t just teach when we have them. We have to make accommodations and it changes things, it disrupts the ecosystem,” they clarified.

I again questioned their choice to depict children as smog. “I’m wondering if you’ve considered what this would convey to ESL children or parents. What message would this send if they saw your poster?” I questioned.

Good to question their thinking and views of potential bias. It could definitely be very hurtful if I were a parent/Gaurdian and I saw this in my child's school.

“We don’t mean it in a bad way. We care about all students, but they really change schools and create challenges,” they responded.

The ESL students in the poster were depicted as pollution, impeding the growth of the flowers, which were presumably White, English-speaking students. In this metaphor ESL students were dehumanized, that is, they were not even considered children.

“Such deficit thinking was used to justify the economic exploitation of people of color and to deny them the social and political rights enjoyed by whites”

Undesirable “genes” or qualities, to eugenics promoters, included criminal behavior, alcoholism, blindness or deafness, feeblemindedness, intellectual dullness, and promiscuity. These qualities were typically assigned to low-income Whites and people of color. The label of promiscuity included women and children who had been raped and become pregnant.

Court cases as recent as 2017 have been heard in states like North Carolina for women seeking justice for sterilization without consent.

Valencia explains that the cycle of deficit thinking is still prevalent and works like this: A social problem is identified. A study is conducted to show how the advantaged and disadvantaged are different. These differences are defined as the problem. An intervention plan is designed and implemented with the differences as the premise.

Language ideologies are “people’s ideas about language and speech” and “what language is like and what it should be like” (Philips,

‘durative aspect marker,’ that is, a form that means that an action or event is a regular event, happens over and over, and is characteristic or typical. Lots of languages have a durative aspect marker, even though Standard English does not”

In this example, neither the student nor the reading specialist was using a standard form of US English, but context and power played a primary role in whose linguistic forms were considered correct or conventional.

For example, I grew up in Nebraska using the word pop for carbonated drinks. My grandmother, who grew up in Kansas, used the general term Coke. In the region of Pennsylvania where I currently reside, soda is used. All of these forms are correct, but the preferred convention depends on where one lives.

racial microaggressions, defines them as the brief and everyday slights, insults, indignities, and denigrating messages sent to people of color by well-intentioned White people who are unaware of the hidden messages being communicated. These messages may be sent verbally (“You speak good English.”), nonverbally (clutching one’s purse more tightly) or environmentally (symbols like the confederate flag or using American Indian mascots).

“You’re from Puerto Rico and you don’t speak Spanish? What a shame.”

Ouch :(

The implied question is, “But, you don’t look American to me, so you must be from somewhere else.” People of White, European descent rarely get these follow-up inquiries unless the conversation is specifically focused on ancestry. This is what is called “Othering,” a discursive act that separates and defines someone as different than the perceived norm.

People who are bilingual or multilingual have been found to possess cognitive and linguistic skills beyond that of their monolingual peers, but schools rarely measure bilingualism; thus, these skills and knowledge are undervalued or ignored.

In this school, however, the students were required to line up single file in the hallways with their hands behind their backs. Absolute silence was expected.

all students were required to place the tip of their nose up against the wall until silence was once again restored.

Students were allowed to walk freely through the hallways between class periods. Students who were yelling or acting up were met with mild reprimands and side-smiles from their teachers.

Put into a historical context, these in-school practices resemble Black Codes and Jim Crow laws established after Reconstruction, which were designed to unfairly punish people of color. In the second school, kids were seen as kids, and minor misbehavior was viewed as normal or even humorous. White students were free to be kids. They were trusted and given the benefit of the doubt.

I advocate for White teachers to acknowledge to their students that it’s not them, it’s us, teachers who are complicit in perpetuating systems of oppression through the discipline practices they support in schools.

The teaching population in the US is overwhelmingly White at approximately 80%, and predominantly female. The student population, however, is increasingly diverse.

To Mr. Martin, order and discipline have to be present before learning can occur.

Mr. Martin sees the eye roll and the use of Spanish as disrespectful and marks Horatio down for another point. “Show respect in this class and speak English, please. That’s another point for you. One more and you have detention,” Mr. Martin says as he records the point.

Since Horatio helps in his uncle’s store after school, he skips detention, not knowing the implications. The next day, Mr. Martin refuses to allow Horatio in class since he skipped detention. Horatio is visibly frustrated and unclear as to why Mr. Martin is asking him to leave. He talks over Mr. Martin and tries to explain himself and his after-school responsibilities, but Mr. Martin calls the campus resource officer to address the issue. Horatio struggles when the officer attempts to escort him out of the room for what Mr. Martin calls “being combative.” Because Horatio did not immediately comply with the resource officer, he is suspended from school.

For example, what if Horatio or members of his family are undocumented? Should this matter to teachers? Would this scenario play out in a different way for a White middle class student in a suburban school? If so, how? How did the classroom community, or lack thereof, hinder learning?

I tried to create community in my classroom, but the school dictated much of the curriculum and it wasn’t very engaging. All in all, the school was really set up like a prison. The students had to earn tokens for things my own kids could do anytime they wanted in their predominantly White suburban school.”

He emphasizes the paternalistic nature of these practices that succeed only in showing who teachers do or don’t trust to be self-reliant and free.

Their study revealed that children who received books for reading were much more motivated to continue reading than children who received tokens or prizes.