S11E7 – How Schools Make Race with Dr. Laura Chávez-Moreno

How Schools Make Race

Andrew: Welcome to the Integrated Schools Podcast. I'm Andrew, a White dad from Denver.

Dr. Val: And I'm Val, a Black mom from North Carolina.

Andrew: And this is “How Schools Make Race” with Dr. Laura Chávez-Moreno. This conversation we're gonna share is about kind of this high level question of how schools participate in the creation of race.

Dr. Chávez-Moreno studied a couple of dual language programs in middle school and a high school, and dual language is certainly a big feature for many parents and caregivers who connect with Integrated Schools.

My kids have both, one is still in a dual language program. Another one is no longer but, but spent time in dual language. It's certainly a tool that many schools use to try to increase integration or at least desegregation because it tends to be a desirable thing for White and privileged parents.

And we talked about it a bit before, way back in episode 13, Hopes and Hazards of Dual Language. There is real promise in creating these kind of intentionally multiracial spaces where you're democratizing the power of language and also real hazards in not being conscientious about how race shows up in those spaces.

Dr. Val: Yes. And I think I had reached a point where I thought I had reached full understanding of…

Andrew: Hmm.

Dr. Val: …race making, race, racial socialization. And so, it was really important to be a part of this conversation and to, to revisit some of my ideas to deepen my thinking in some areas. And to leave with questions.

Andrew: We have talked about the ways that race is a socially constructed idea. A number of years ago we did a “In Case You Missed It” of the Seeing White from Scene on Radio podcast, really going deep into the ways that race is not a biological concept, but rather a social concept. And we're trying to deepen our understandings of the complexity of that today by looking at the Latinx experience.

Own grappling kind of matches some of what Dr. Chávez-Moreno went through in writing the book. She started out with this question of what is Latinx as a category? Is it an ethnicity, is it a race? She wasn't really sure about it. Could feel that there was an important difference in that. And, and this project helped her solidify her thinking about that.

Dr. Val: And so what we want to invite listeners to do for this particular episode is to release the things that you think you know about race, racism, anti-racism, and anti-race.

Andrew: Yeah. Definitely a meaty conversation in this about avoiding being race evasive, or what, you know, might call colorblind. Wanting to create positive racial identities, but also recognizing that race itself is a construct. Its purpose is hierarchy. Certainly a lot of complexity in that, that we really got to dig into in this conversation.

Dr. Val: We are back, virtually connected Andrew, but just recently we had a chance to see each other.

Andrew: That's right! You were in Denver for a conference and we got to have brunch. It was lovely.

Dr. Val: It was lovely. My friend here picked me up from the airport, did not charge me.

Andrew: Yet… the bill's in the mail. [laughing]

Dr. Val: That's right. Took me to a great brunch, showed me around, even made sure I had snacks for my hotel room.

Andrew: That's right.

Dr. Val: Thank you so much, friend.

Andrew: Yep.

Dr. Val: All right. We don't want to wait another moment, sir.

Andrew: Let's take a listen.

[THEME MUSIC}

Dr. Laura Chávez-Moreno: Hi, my name's Laura Chávez-Moreno. I also go by Laura, and I'm an assistant professor at UCLA, University of California in Los Angeles. I'm in the Department of Chicano and Central American Studies and also the Department of Education. And I just recently wrote a book, How Schools Make Race: Teaching Latinx Racialization in America. And I thank you so much for inviting me to talk about it!

Dr. Val: Congratulations! We love having scholars on the podcast to talk about their scholarship, their research, and certainly about students and how we can continue to make sure that they are getting the best out of school.

Dr. Laura Chávez-Moreno: Thank you so much for inviting me.

Andrew: Yeah. How did you find yourself as a professor writing about race, about Latinx studies, education, justice? How did you find yourself here?

Dr. Laura Chávez-Moreno: Sure. So I am an immigrant from Mexico. My family moved to Arizona when I was eight years old, but we lived on the border, so I would speak Spanish daily. That was my, my home language. But I never was able to go to a bilingual school. The signature issue I could say for the Latinx community was language and access to bilingual education. Culturally affirming, linguistically affirming education.

So, when I was an undergrad, I decided to pursue being a teacher of Spanish, and I moved to Philadelphia. And there I noticed that the racial landscape of what my students dealt with was different in, in certain aspects just because of the history where I grew up was very different from Philadelphia, but there were still some of the same problems in terms of, of disadvantaging students based on their group, right? So I wanted to understand that and I went to graduate school to understand that and to understand how to better prepare teachers to navigate these type of challenges and then also navigate the challenge of how to talk about and teach about race, because that comes up a lot in classrooms. So all of that kind of led to my trajectory.

Andrew: Yeah. Can you go back one step further? You saw issues that lots of people see, but decided to actually try to learn more about it and do something about it. Who poured that into you? What is it about your own experiences that kind of made you question those things initially?

Dr. Laura Chávez-Moreno: Oh wow. I mean, it was interactions with students, interactions in family. It was interactions in the community. As a teacher, when I was a teacher in Philadelphia, there were lots of times where students brought up race and I didn't really know how to address it. I didn't really know how to structure the conversation or structure the learning in order for students to really dig deep into different ways of thinking about, about racism and race.

Dr. Val: I think that's such a significant acknowledgement that Andrew and I work on acknowledging things that we, we might not feel equipped to engage in the conversations and, and thus the practice and the learning is really important in that.

Did you have a teacher when you were in K-12 that was a model for what you wanted to be as a teacher, or what you thought was a really important way of going about some of these critical conversations that you wanted to have?

Dr. Laura Chávez-Moreno: Not in, not really K through 12. What stands out to me most is what wasn't there. And why did I have to wait until when I was an undergrad in order to be culturally relevant and some of the history of the Mexican American community.

What stands out to me is that in high school I learned about, for example, the Trail of Tears. I learned about the Civil Rights movement, so I learned history that some students don't have access to at all. That's good. I'm very grateful that I learned about that. But it's interesting that I grew up in Douglas, Arizona, which is maybe like 90% Mexican/Mexican American, and we didn't really hear any history about, um, Mexican Americans. I don't recall any lessons even about like, Cesar Chávez, which so many students hear about. Right? There really was not any type of Chicano or Mexican American history where I grew up.

So, that's more what stands out to me. I had teachers who were caring. I had teachers who were not as much. Um, but really what stands out to me was the omission of that type of curriculum.

Andrew: Yeah. You know, on the podcast in the past we've talked about race as a social construct and I think a lot of those conversations have been largely, historically focused, so sort of looking back at the past and then also really focused on kind of the Black/White binary. And the addition of the Latinx category to the conversation really starts to complicate our understanding of, of what race is, of how we define these boundaries. To kind of set us up for the rest of this conversation, I'm wondering if you can help us set some context with some definitions.

Race versus ethnicity. Latinx, Hispanic, Chicano. What groundwork do we need to lay so we can really understand this conversation?

Dr. Laura Chávez-Moreno: So, I, I can start off with the word Latinx. And I use Latinx to encompass Latino, Latina, and Latine. And I use it intentionally to challenge binaries, to challenge patriarchy . I also use the X instead of, for example, Latine. I use the X in order to remind us that the word itself derives from a Eurocentric way of labeling a whole continent.

So Latin America, Latin is something that European elites proposed in order to lay claim to, or try to influence the people in Latin America. So I use that very purposefully in order to remind us that we really do need a different type of term, that's not a colonizer, uh, term.

Now other definitions, uh, perhaps would be the, the idea of racialization, which is in the title of the book, right? How Schools Make Race: Teaching Latinx Racialization In America. The idea of racialization is important because what I'm trying to do in the book is show that forming races, making races, constructing races, and you mentioned the social constructiveness of race, this all has to do with a process. And the process is what we call racialization. And the process involves obviously, time. So it's a historical element, but it also has to do with institutions in our society influencing what are the ideas about what is race and what are the racial groups.

And as an institution, schooling is very important in order for our society to keep reinforcing and even if it challenges “What are the ideas?”, it's still challenging them within a way that, that our society is still racialized. So this is very important for us to understand that it's really a process and institutions play an integral part in maintaining and reinforcing (and at times challenging), or maybe extending the boundaries of what are the racialized groups in our society.

Dr. Val: Thank you.

Andrew: Yeah. So this is what you mean by making race in the title of the book, right? That race is not a fixed category. It's not based on some biological fact. We as a society are constantly defining it and redefining it. And so, we can say that race was constructed, but I think maybe it's more accurate to say that race is constantly being reconstructed. It's an ongoing act. It's an ongoing process. And as you said, schools are a key place where that's happening. And there's an opportunity in that because racial categories are constantly being redefined and because school is a big place for that, we could leverage that. But we probably aren't really leveraging that as, as a society to, to change the ways that we think about these categorizations.

Dr. Laura Chávez-Moreno: Yes. I think that's really important. What I'm trying to do in the book is complicate the idea of what is Latinx and complicate the idea of some folks thinking about it as an ethnicity.

I define ethnicity as cultural practices that are shared and interpreted in similar ways with a group. And I define race as a way to kind of lump people into groups regardless of their culture. So ethnicity is more focused on how do you observe people's different cultures, whereas race is actually just interested in lumping people regardless of how they identify culturally.

And one of the things that, that also, I would like to add to the definition of race is that really, it's like it's a nefarious process. It is a process meant to oppress certain folks and to establish a racial hierarchy.

Andrew: So the difference between Latinx as a category versus Mexican, Venezuelan, Colombian, Puerto Rican, that, that those sort of cultural ethnicity based definitions are different than this kind of lump categorization of Latinx.

Dr. Laura Chávez-Moreno: Yes, definitely. Yeah. Thank you.

Andrew: Yeah. Tell us a bit about the schools you studied because you spent a lot of time in a school context really digging into the ways that these ideas of race and language and ethnicity all come together in a school. Tell us about those schools.

Dr. Laura Chávez-Moreno: Sure. It was two schools in the Midwest. One was a middle school and one was a high school. And the reason I did both schools was because they had the same bilingual program. And what I mean by that is that once the middle schoolers finished the middle school, their bilingual education program, they moved on to the high school.

And, and this program is what's called a dual language, bilingual education program. In the classroom, all the students are learning both English and Spanish, thus the word “bilingual.” But interestingly, half of the students would be identified as predominantly Spanish speakers, for example, from Spanish speaking homes. And then the other half would be students who are wanting to learn Spanish, from English dominant homes.

And the idea is that having the exposure to other students who are experts in the target language helps students learn and develop their own languages. And their bi-literacies.

Another thing that I should mention is that the Latinx community really fought for this program. When I was doing the study, it was the first year of a senior class graduating from that program. And the community was very proud of the program. They had really fought for it, and they had been very conscious of the fact that they did not want a model of bilingual education that would segregate the Latinx students from the other students in the schools.

Dr. Val: Did this research help heal some part or clarify some part of your childhood or your past or your own educational experience? When you were doing this work, was this, was this personal in any way, that you left, your studying and your writing saying, “I needed that, or I wanted that, or, I understand that better.”

Dr. Laura Chávez-Moreno: Thank you so much for the question. So I definitely think that one of the things that the study helped me do is think about, what is Latinx? Is it a race or is it ethnicity? I actually, when I began it, I had questions, I had doubts. Is it really as simple as, for example, just skin tone or just, uh, appearance? Is that really what race is? That's something that I really, the study really helped me understand because I was open to being incorrect.

And by the end of the study, I started having more confidence in saying like, actually Latinx is a racialized group.

And then in terms of like the actual aspect of bilingual education, it was really wonderful for me to sit in a classroom that was a bilingual education program, and sit there and think like, “Oh, I wish I would've had this type of, of school.” There were so many teachers there who really were wonderful teachers and I was very excited that students have that opportunity. And I would love for students to have that opportunity more, more widely. And also for us to be very conscious of some of the challenges that bilingual education faces in order for us to not abandon it, but actually support it because it does really, important work in our society. Even with the, the drawbacks.

Andrew: Right, and the challenges come. I mean, all of the teachers who you spoke about, even when they were, you know, unintentionally creating or, or reifying, these sort of racial boundaries and hierarchies you seem to have so much heart and compassion for them all and recognizing the challenges that they were facing. Even if the lessons they were imparting was not necessarily their intent. Um, there was just like a lot of love, I think, the way the book was written. I really appreciated that.

Dr. Laura Chávez-Moreno: Oh, thank you. That makes me feel really, really good because I did, I want to convey that, so I'm so glad that you mentioned it and I'm so glad that it came across. Thank you.

Andrew: Yeah, I mean, you weren't writing about me, so I don't, I don't know how the actual teachers feel! [laughter] But it did, it did really feel like there was a lot of love there.

There are lots of people connected to Integrated Schools, the organization whose kids go to bilingual or dual language programs. My kids included. And I saw so many parallels between the conversations that have happened at our school and the programs that you studied. Can you, can you talk about the role of the dual language program in this process of race making that you lay out? The ways that, kind of, the language element of dual language played into that?

Dr. Laura Chávez-Moreno: So one of the things that I looked at in the book was how people were talking about race and then how the program was teaching about race. So I began the book by actually providing an example of a lesson about what was the difference between race and ethnicity that one of the teachers in the dual language program did for her high schoolers. And it was an ethnic studies course that they had. It was just a one semester. And I started that to show how it could be that we teach about this explicitly, right?

But the book also shows many instances where there are lessons about what is race or what are the racialized groups and that are very implicit or unintentional in ways. And where language comes in is that a lot of times people think of bilingual education as only really about language and developing biliteracy, et cetera. But bilingual education should be recognized as making race. So the bilingual education through just having the program continue to reinforce the idea of “What is Latinx?” And what is Latinx, I argue in the book, is a group that is kind of delineated by an imagined Spanish, and I say imagined because not, not all Latinx people speak Spanish. But this bilingual program, through its way of thinking and having the students think about what is Latinx continues reinforcing the idea that there is this imagined Spanish that delineates the group.

Andrew: The thing that the group shares is that they speak Spanish. And so, if you speak Spanish, you are Latinx. If you are Latinx, you speak Spanish, when, when both of those things can be false.

Dr. Laura Chávez-Moreno: Yes.

Andrew: Can you talk a little bit about the role of Black kids in the dual language program? Because I thought this was really, really interesting and certainly matched a lot of what I've seen in dual language programs as well.

Dr. Laura Chávez-Moreno: Yeah, it is so fascinating actually, the way that the people in the community talked about diversity, because what I noticed was that people were talking about the program really needed diversity. And once, you know, I started hearing this and more and more, and then asking like, what, okay. Trying to figure out like what's, what, what does this mean? They really meant Black students. The program really needed Black students.

And it was interesting the rationales, it was just, it was more than one about why the program needed Black students. And I'm not saying obviously, that Black students should not be in the program. That's definitely not what I'm saying. But I had the idea that there was something more, right? to this, focus on diversity as Black students.

And one of the things that the program had been kind of critiqued in the community was that it caused some segregation within the school. So segregation of students who were the “desired” students and who were the desired students were the, middle class White students who, whose family, really wanted their kid to know a different language. And then the, the Latinx students were another desired group because there was this, imagination that, that their parents were easy going, that they didn't really challenge teachers, and the idea that the Latinx students would just kind of do whatever it is that they were told.

And then the “undesired” students were the students who the school identified as special education or as Black. So a lot of the community was very concerned that within the school, the program was segregating students in those type of racial lines, and then also by special education.

So there was a lot of talk about like, “We need more diversity. More diversity,” but it is interesting also because there was this acknowledgement that the program needed the Black students, but there wasn't really as much acknowledgement about, “Okay, what we're gonna do with the students once they're there.” Right?

Because the program was so heavily focused on Latinx culture and then a lot of the times Latinx culture was separated from African American culture. So there was very little of, for example, the acknowledgement of the Afro-Latinx experience. It was really more a separation of the two different groups.

Dr. Val: I just hate being the “undesirables!” That's just my own feelings about socialization and race and all of that. Because I do think that if Black kids in particular understand the history of what has happened to the Latino/Latinx/ South American countries and communities, they would find so much in common with that struggle, and with those fights, and with the revolutionary spirit. And it, it pains me that that is not something that teachers regularly talk about and help students make those connections.

Dr. Laura Chávez-Moreno: Yeah. There was some towards the, the end of the study. For example, a student who I was able to re-interview, she talked about that connection and she specifically said, like, “Our communities have a lot that we have shared.” So that was a very hopeful trend.

Dr. Val: And just thinking back to my own experience and how that was missing. And certainly like you, it was for me, I was a journalism major in undergrad, so it wasn't until graduate school that I had some of these conversations and exposure, right? And so, without that additional structured learning experience, I would not have had the exposure. Right? And so, that makes it feel so important that we include these conversations as early and as often as possible. 'Cause there's no guarantee that I was gonna go to graduate school and keep wanting to learn more. Or that you were gonna keep asking questions about it. And so many people stopped that learning. And how do we continue to make sure that we are making those connections for our young people across culture, across race.

Dr. Laura Chávez-Moreno: And I do want to add that even within the African American or Black American student group, there were distinctions that were made in terms of what, who was in the program and who was seen as a “model minority” changed also, depending on very specific characteristics of the population.

So for example, someone told me that, that it may have been strategic or maybe it was just the way it played out, but the program had more students who were immigrants from Africa than would be kind of normal or representative of what the school had. And those were the students who were seen as like the “model minorities” of the program because there were no Asian students in the program, really. I mean it, throughout the study, I think there was just one or two students in the program for the middle and the high school. So really the model minority in the bilingual education program were the immigrant students from Africa, or their families were from Africa.

Dr. Val: Yeah. No, that makes so much sense. Yeah.

Andrew: Again, back to the potential for good is in these spaces if we can have these intentional conversations, like you were saying, Val and start the learning early, that there's so much good that can come out of it. And if we don't, then like the, the default, the de the status quo. I mean, you wrote the, “The program constructed Latinx people, however, unintentionally, to be separate from and at times in antagonistic relation to Black people.” That if we're not conscious about it, that kind of the default is going to be to recreate these racial hierarchies that exist throughout society, if we're not, cognizant of it and thoughtful about it.

Dr. Laura Chávez-Moreno: Yes. And that's really one of the things that I hope that readers take away from the book, is that we do have to acknowledge and then be very intentional in the actions that we take in order to ensure that we dismantle racial hierarchies and racial ideas.

Dr. Val: Yeah.

Andrew: I'm just wondering if you can talk a little bit about the ambivalence of race. This comes up a bunch in the book, looking at the ways that we think about teaching race and what such a great concept. Totally kind of, you know, reshape my thinking about, about race. What is the ambivalence of race and what does it matter?

Dr. Laura Chávez-Moreno: I have to thank, professor Zeus Leonardo, who's at UC Berkeley, for helping me think about the ambivalence of race at a time that, again, I was questioning about what is race and is Latinx a group and reading his work really helped me to understand that this ambivalence of race is basically the acknowledgement that we are racialized. I'm saying “we” and the society, and then also as individuals.

So acknowledging that we are racialized, but then also taking the step of thinking about that race is nefarious and that race is a category meant to divide. So, the ambivalence comes in having to acknowledge it because we don't want to be, race evasive or what many people say colorblind. We definitely don't want to be race evasive. We want to acknowledge race exists and that we are racialized, but then we also have to make sure to step back and, and be anti-race, meaning. In order for us to get rid of racism, we also have to dismantle race, the racial categories.

So there's this ambivalence in terms of, like, recognizing that we have to fight against racism by unifying. And by unifying, I mean, having a shared struggle with other folks who are racialized and who are, are allies who are against racial oppression. But then recognizing that really the end goal is to get rid of race itself also, because that is also an oppressive ideology. It's not just the racism. It has to be both.

Andrew: Separate from ethnicity and, and like you said, not in a race evasive manner. Not to say that we are all the same, to acknowledge that we have differences, but to also acknowledge that the ways in which we use race to differentiate ourselves is nefarious by nature, is designed to divide by nature.

And you talk about this triple bind in the book of, of being pro-race, we want people to have a positive self-identity related to their race. That is a positive thing. We want people to practice anti-racism and we want people to be anti-race so that eventually we end in a place where race is no longer a tool to divide us.

Dr. Laura Chávez-Moreno: Yes, exactly. And I think that comes in with the idea that race is socially constructed. And Zeus Leonardo really influenced me in thinking that if race is constructed, then there was a time that we as a society didn't organize our society by race. So we have to get to a place where we're also not organizing our society by race.

Dr. Val: I think this is where I always come to like a, a real personal struggle. Being a, a Black American as we talk about, like, race and ethnicity. And, outside of being a Black American and having American as my ethnicity, the ability to identify as a Black American is a point of pride for me. Right? So the idea of removing that, I, I, I just, I feel some, some tension with that, and I feel it's important to distinguish myself, not against my good friend Andrew here, but when I say like American, that does not always convey to some people who hear that, as a Black person. Right? Or any person of color.

And so, I don't know what to do with those feelings or thoughts or wonderings. I'm so glad we're having this nuanced conversation now. But I think that's a point of, of tension for me, 'cause I'm just, I'm just not sure what to do with it. I am American. There's a, there's a flag right there! Right? [laughter] And, and I know this about myself and also I'm a, I'm a Black American. I'm not a direct descendant of African immigrants. And so, there's a tension there that I don't know always know what, what to do with when we start talking about, like, dismantling the entire construct of race.

Dr. Laura Chávez-Moreno: Yeah, I agree with you and I feel the same way in terms of being proud of being a Chicana, and then also thinking that the American doesn't describe my experience either. And right now, some scholars are thinking about it in terms of what does this mean in terms of Blackness, and then thinking about what's the specificity of Blackness then when we're thinking about how to dismantle racism and then how to also dismantle anti-Blackness.

Dr. Val: Right.

Dr. Laura Chávez-Moreno: So this is interesting conversation and I hope the book is getting at the specificity of Latinidad, and I hope other scholars are also thinking about the specificity of Blackness when we're thinking about dismantling racial ideas. Because it is different and, and the book doesn't really delve into the specificity of Blackness. I'm thinking more about the specificity of Latinidad and I learn a lot from, from scholars who are thinking about, about the questions that you're, that you've mentioned, Val. And I think they're really, really important questions that I hope to also learn from other scholars who are really deep, deeply thinking about it and helping us all learn about it.

Dr. Val: Yeah, absolutely.

Andrew: I mean, it speaks to, and you write this in the book, right? “Anti-race stance points out that racial identities are linked to restricting roles and activities. Yet we cannot escape being racialized, nor is race evasiveness productive. This contradiction is not simply an unsustainable position. It speaks to the construction of race itself.”

That, like, all of this complication and nuance is because of the ways that race is constructed in the first place. And so, it's hard to imagine what deconstructing race actually looks like. We can talk about times in the past before we constructed race, but those weren't typically multicultural places where we had come together across lines of, of difference. And so “What does it look like on the other side,” I think speaks to how kind of inadequate race is as a way of defining people.

Dr. Laura Chávez-Moreno: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. I feel that, that you both have gotten the book really well, so I really want to say thank you for engaging with the ideas in the book and taking them very seriously. Thank you.

Andrew: Absolutely. Yeah, it was a, it was a pleasure to do. So, so what should we do? What's your vision for an education system that is actually, you know, living up to the promise of education versus the perils of recreating racial hierarchy?

Dr. Laura Chávez-Moreno: Sure. I think one of the, the first things that bilingual education needs to do – reconnect to its roots in ethnic studies in order for it to advance, critical racial consciousness. And, and it needs to do that by being also very ambitious about what it's teaching about race.

So let's think about like math curriculum in the United States. There is a progression in terms of what are the mathematical ideas that students need to learn from elementary to high school. And obviously that is not, sometimes done well in some schools and then some students have access to some mathematical ideas versus others, et cetera. But the concept of race in our schools is not something that is developed at all. Really, in elementary school, students learn that they have to be nice to each other, that they shouldn't judge others by how they look like. And then that lesson keeps going to middle school and then keeps going to high school.

So we have to develop the students' understandings about racial theories and what is race. We need to complicate the ideas of students. Because by the time they were in high school, they were really bored in terms of what were some of the lessons that they were learning about, like, social justice, racial justice. And felt that it was very repetitive. And it's interesting because despite that they were still very interested in learning about race, so they really wanted to learn. There was some contradictions about ideas about race that were really not being delved into. And students, I think by asking the question, they are ready to hear more complicated ideas. So that's one thing that we need to think about, is how to structure this throughout a student's learning from kindergarten, through to high school.

Dr. Val: That… I love that by asking the questions, they are ready to hear more complicated ideas. I love that with my whole heart. And so, all the questions my kids ask me that, I'm like, “Don't ask me that now!” [Laughter] I'm like, I guess we're ready. I guess you're ready for the answer, I guess you're ready for the answer.

Andrew: It sounds like that's about what sort of curriculum we're developing, that's about how we're training our teachers. That's about how we're supporting our teachers who want to be doing it. That's about who we're holding accountable and how we're holding them accountable.

Dr. Laura Chávez-Moreno: The support also has to come from the community because sometimes it was just individual teachers doing this hard work and sometimes feeling that they were alone in doing this work, and sometimes feeling unsupported. And sometimes feeling un unsuccessful because they didn't know how to scaffold students into learning about more complex racial ideas.

So that's something that the community has to also support, and then that actually links to this national conversation that is about banning CRT. Or just banning anything that, that, like the conservative right does not like. Right? And I say that because we know that it's not really CRT, critical theory that's, that's being attacked. It's actually much bigger. Right?

But, instead of this national conversation about whether schools should teach about race or not, we should have a conversation about how to improve the teaching of these ideas. So instead of banning, for example, Mexican American studies in Tucson, which is one example that was doing it right. That program was doing it right, and then it gets banned. So, we have to support the, the places that we're doing this right. And then make sure to expand that instead of banning, for sure.

Andrew: What does it look like to give teachers the tools they need to actually be able to do this well?

Dr. Laura Chávez-Moreno: Sure. I think one of the things that would be very helpful for teachers is to be able to talk with other teachers in terms of what it is that they're doing in the classroom and in order for them to receive feedback from, from folks. And then also have more curriculum that's available to them that addresses these issues.

Some of the teachers really struggled with, and they said that they were fatigued from having to basically develop their own curriculum. They had to look for a lot of materials that they felt their students would connect with, and that really exhausted them. And I, I was a teacher also. I know that that takes a lot of time. To find things and to think about how to integrate that into your classroom. So for teachers to have a supportive community that divvies up, that type of work or shares resources would be very helpful.

Andrew: And I'm guessing that it's not just about you know, we need some really explicit, targeted curriculum around racial identity development, around critical consciousness about race. But then it also has to kind of permeate through the rest of, so when we're talking about math, when we're talking about Spanish language development, when we're talking about history, when we're talking about, you know, social studies, all these things that, that sort of critical consciousness is part of the, the conversation.

Dr. Laura Chávez-Moreno: Yeah, definitely. And, and having us as a society think about how that would look throughout a student's trajectory in schools. That would be wonderful. I do wanna share something about, about when I entered the study, I actually thought I would be seeing almost no, no talk or no explicit lessons about race. So it was in a way, a pleasant surprise to be in classrooms and then see that type of work being done. It was actually very heartening for me.

Andrew: That's great.

Dr. Val: So something that's always hopeful for Andrew and I, and I'm, I'm sure you as well, is, like, what did you see from the students that convinced you like, this is worth doing, this is worth, all of the challenges that we have to overcome and that we should, we should push forward.

Dr. Laura Chávez-Moreno: I don't remember the student's name in the book, but this recognition of these shared struggles. Those were one of the moments that I really felt like, okay, something's being done right here. The student that I'm referring to is, is a Black student, and she was very clear about there being a struggle against, racism and, and colonialism, imperialism, shared by African American folks and, and Latin American. So there was this very clear sense of, like, our community has struggled and their community has struggled in very similar ways. So hearing that from the student really impressed upon me that this work is very important and it can be done right.

Dr. Val: Mm-Hmm. Mm-Hmm.

Andrew: Hmm. That's beautiful. Yeah. There is hope. I mean, it's obviously there's so many places where we continue to ignore race to our own detriment. And yet, you take these small examples of places where people are being really intentional and thoughtful about it, and there is so much potential. And it's not destroying kids. It's not, you know, ruining them or, or convincing them to hate America. In fact, what it's doing is, is helping everybody find their shared humanity and, and recognize our shared struggle. And as, as Val often says, you know, the only way we win is together. And what better place to be together than in a school Learning together in this sort of project of growing the next generation of citizens. It's really, yeah, it's inspiring.

Dr. Val: I actually just had a vision of what it might look like to get past race and it's this conversation, right? And me learning more about you and always learning about Andrew and understanding the ways that we are connected and that we've had similar experiences. Feels like the, the path. And I can still be me without having to give that up. And, that's cool.

Dr. Laura Chávez-Moreno: I love that. Thank you so much for sharing that, Val, because it's, it's something that I've actually, also felt myself, but then it's interesting to, to be able to hear someone else also feel that. So thank you.

Dr. Val: Yeah. No, thank you.

Andrew: It's, it's been great. Thank you. Thank you for the book. I'm so excited for it to be out in the world for people to be able to digest these topics. I think it's just such a profound and complicated vision of race that is presented in a really easy to digest and, full of love way. And, really grateful to you for writing it, for coming on to talk to us about it. Thanks for being here!

Dr. Laura Chávez-Moreno: Thank you so much. I, I really do hope and I wrote it with the intention of it being accessible, so I really appreciate you mentioning that it was, and I would love it if teachers and other educators read it and then also hear back from them. I would love that. But, so thank you so much.

Andrew: Absolutely, we'll put your contact info in the show notes and a link to the book, for sure.

Dr. Laura Chávez-Moreno: Thank you so much. It was a pleasure speaking with you both.

Dr. Val: Thank you.

[THEME MUSIC]

Andrew: So, Val, what'd you think?

Dr. Val: Oh my gosh. When I said I had a vision of what it means to be in a post-race society?

Andrew: Yep.

Dr. Val: I lost it! I have no idea what that was. [Andrew laughs] It was, it was a blink. It was, it was a flash. It was a moment in time. Um, I mentioned the tension that I felt regarding what it means to, like, let go of race, and what felt like a racial identity that I'm proud of.

And so, I want to talk about, um, first, and I say “talk about,” but really this is a grappling Andrew, so everyone will hear my, like, unbaked thoughts as we are talking about this together.

Dr. Chávez-Moreno mentioned the Triple Bind.

So, being proud of your racial identity with the next step being anti-racist, with the next step being anti-race. Right? And one of the “a-ha”s that I came up with is like, wow. She really just extended my timeline to a better future. [Val and Andrew laugh] Right? Like, dang.

Andrew: I thought we were close.

Dr. Val: I thought, [Val laughs] I thought we were close! But we are actually a little bit further than I, I realized.

And, and I think it starts with that, that first step, right? Like, being proud of your particular racial identity. And that is something that I was very intentional about with my children growing up, right? I wanted them to have a sense of self and a sense of pride before they went to school, just so that they would know who they are. And they could be proud of that.

And I think that's an ongoing thing. That's an ongoing thing throughout the course of your life. And if you haven't had any explicit conversations about that, you might spend, like, your entire adulthood, like, figuring that part out. And again, I don't know how, how White people do it, you can talk to me about that.

Andrew: I believe the, the assertion that race is created as a tool of hierarchy. That there is, like, nefarious intent in the creation of race. That the ways that race, not just originally was created but continually is recreated, is used as a tool for hierarchy, is used as a way to divide.

And so, conceptually moving to a place where that is no longer the case, feels like the ultimate goal. And I think it's much easier to imagine in the sort of broad Latinx diaspora context to me where people have ethnicities to hold onto, that doesn't necessarily apply for, you know, the majority of White or Black Americans.

And so, I don't really know what to do with that. I mean, the idea of developing a positive racial identity for your Black kids that can withstand the potential attacks that come from our education system from society at large feels like an important piece. I certainly have not tried to instill a positive sense of my kids' Whiteness,

Dr. Val: Right.

Andrew: in them.

Dr. Val: Mm-hmm.

Andrew: I mean, I think there's, like, a healthy White identity, but, a lot of that is, I think about, like, rejecting the ways that that society tries to hold up Whiteness. And being proud of Whiteness feels, like, really, I don't know.

Dr. Val: Yeah.

Andrew: I can't, I can't see how feeling good about that.

Dr. Val: When I left that conversation with Dr. Chávez-Moreno, you know, I did ask myself like, what is Latinx? What, what have been my ideas about it? And I know we believe in super nuanced conversations and we, we certainly, like, reject binaries and all of those things. And we know that accepting complexities in these situations is preferred to simplifying everything. But I realized like after that conversation, that was not what I was doing for the Latinx community.

My motto -and I saw this on a shirt once - is “Black, Brown and anybody down.” Right? [Laughter] So that's, that's where I was. Right? And I don't know that I interrogated the idea of what is Latinx. I think I got a little more complex in my thinking when I, you know, years ago learned about Afro-Latinos and, you know, how their experience will be different from White-presenting Latinos. But still it was, it was still very much in that binary, right? If you're Browner, then you've experienced life the way I have, and we connect on that same level.

And I appreciate her forcing me to stop and interrogate my own thinking again about something that maybe I thought, thought was settled, um, in my mind. And not to dismiss, I think I just unintentionally tried to make it super simple, you know?

And I think that's because I was, if we, if we talk about the triple bind, I think it's because I have spent so much time in that first section of having a positive racial identity.

Andrew: Yeah.

Dr. Val: Because I find, like, pride in that and I don't, I don't feel complex about that for me. It feels simple to me. I'm a Black woman, Black American. I have a Black American experience in the most expected form, right? And so that, that was pretty clear to me.

And so, I think that's, I, I projected some of that onto others?

Andrew: Right. But, like, you, you needed to carve out that space. Like, an, an American experience is not what you've had. I mean, it is a, a very much an American experience that you have had, but, our concept of American experience doesn't encapsulate your experience as a Black woman.

Dr. Val: I mean, I've had a Black American experience.

Andrew: Right. But “American” is not sufficient. This is the problem with, like, with being anti-race is like to say you have had an American experience, which is true, but that does not capture your actual lived experience as a Black American.

So like what's, what's the value to you of that like clarification, of not just saying you've had an American experience, but you have had a Black American experience? Of not just saying that you're an American, but that you're a Black American?

Dr. Val: This is where I'm, I'm open to, to not being sure. And I'm actually really happy for this moment to just not be sure again about some things that I think it means I'm growing.

I think that distinction is important, because of the uniqueness of our arrival to the country and our first several hundred years in the country.

I think the distinction is important for that.

Andrew: Maybe, maybe this is the question. There's a piece that feels very obvious to me of, like, the importance of giving your kids a sense of pride in being Black.

Dr. Val: Mm-hmm.

Andrew: Of, like, feeling a sense of affinity to other Black people that feels like a protective mechanism, that feels like a way to, to guard against the inevitable anti-Blackness that they're likely to encounter.

Dr. Val: Mm-hmm.

Andrew: Is there something beyond that? I imagine that, that the world that Dr. Chávez-Moreno is talking about in which we actually are moving towards anti-race. To, to eliminating race as a way to categorize people is a place where you no longer need that armor, where you no longer need that sense of protection.

If we were in that place, is there still something lost by giving, giving up the identity of Blackness?

Dr. Val: The rejection that Black Americans may feel, comes in so many forms that as a parent, it's like, I need to teach you, like, where to look–

Andrew: Mmm.

Dr. Val: –for help. Where to look for support. And, that has defaulted to other Black folks because the assumption is made by me that they're also connected to a similar experience. Right?

Andrew: Right.

Dr. Val: In the Black community, we have a saying, “All skin folk ain't kinfolk,” right?

Andrew: What I was just thinking. [Val chuckles]

Dr. Val: So while the positive Black identity helps fend off some of that pain of rejection and not belonging, it's also of, like, if you need some help and you're alone and you have a choice of, like, who to go ask for help,

Andrew: Right.

Dr. Val: Look for the Brown face!

Andrew: Right.

Dr. Val: Like, the Brown face will see you differently. Won't see you as a threat, won't see you as a stranger, won't see you….

Andrew: Certainly less likely, right? Like you're, you're, you're, you're playing your odds better. “All skin folk ain't kinfolk,” but a lot of skin folk are, and so,

Dr. Val: Right, right. And so you, yeah, you're like, “If I need help” and help is general, right? We're not talking about, like, emergency situations, but if you just need some community, you need something, you need to look someone in the eye who will see you.

Andrew: As a full human. Yeah.

Dr. Val: Yeah. I think that was part of it too, right? Like, how do you help prepare your, your children for the world?

And the other thing I was thinking about, I thought of the triple bind as like a three step process. You know, positive racial identity, anti-racist, anti-race. And maybe that's not the image at all.

Andrew: It is not linear. It's like,

Dr. Val: Correct.

Andrew: We’re constantly working on all of them.

Dr. Val: Yeah. And we have to, right? So in addition to me teaching my kids, “All right, you need some help. Look for the Brown people,” that, you know, will most likely see you as a human.

And also, please know, all White people aren't racist or bad, and they will help you too! And I think I, it's funny because I, I go back and forth with, with you in particular.

I, I will talk about you specifically, and that I'm like, you know, you're my friend! I don't see your color, Andrew! But I, I will also, I will also absolutely ask you a “White person question,” right? [Val chuckles] So, like, so I want you to see me as a Black woman, always. To understand that my experience has been informed by that. And, I want you to see me as a homie, right? I don't want every one of our conversations to be about race and the impact on our lives.

Andrew: Fortunately they’re not.

Dr. Val: Right, exactly. We just had a wonderful, wonderful brunch conversation without that at all. Right? And so maybe it's, uh, concentric circles or something. And maybe it, it feels more possible in one-on-one relationships.

Andrew: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Val: And I think that, and maybe that's what it's always been about, right?

Like, not trying to, like, change the whole system in one fell swoop, but how do we create these spaces that are positive racial identity? We both identify as anti-racist and we both know that, like, our relationship is not only based on race.

Andrew: Yeah.

Dr. Val: Maybe. maybe that's what, maybe that was my vision. Maybe I got my vision back.

Andrew: Yeah. See, see it came back. Here we are. I do think the idea of a world in which we have set aside race, that race is no longer a thing feels so far away. Like you were saying, like, the timeline has really changed, feels so far away and so hard to even conceive of. You know, and I don't think there are any models of, kind of, real, truly multiracial, pluralistic societies that are, that don't use some form of kind of hierarchy making based around physical characteristics. Usually about how dark your skin is. So, like, to, to conceive of, of arriving there feels really hard for me.

But I wonder if kind of the, to your point of like, how do we live in all these spaces at once is, like, recognizing the ways that race is a tool designed to divide. That the, the construction of race was designed to divide us. And I think probably the, the first place to start in that is in our interpersonal relationships. You know, at Integrative Schools we say relationships are the unit of change.

That, like, in our personal relationships, we have to get past race. We have to not ignore race. And I think, I think the way that that certainly growing up I was taught to do that was to ignore race. Was to say we, “Oh, I don't see color. I don't see race. That's not a thing” And we know that that doesn't work because, because there is something real to your, to the, the conversation earlier.

Your experience is not the same as my experience. We are both American and yet we have had different experiences and, and part of, I mean obviously every person has a different experience than every other person, but, like, part of what is significant about the difference in our experience is your identity as a Black woman.

And so, for me to ignore your identity as a Black woman fails to see the totality of you. I have to take that into my consideration of who you are, and you are more than just your racial identity. You are more than “just” the experiences that are about your racial identity, because you have also had this whole other set of experiences. And I think that's the, that's the vision of anti-race that I, I can kind of wrap my mind around. A society that has actually moved past race feels much harder.

But holding out that kind of idea that, that we have to be able to acknowledge race and then set it aside, feels like, I don't know, I can get behind that.

Dr. Val: Yeah, so in a racially just world we have corrected all of the harms that have been caused before, then we can get out of our own way. Right? And so I think racial justice is the gateway to anti-race.

Andrew: And I think there's so many systems and structures in our society that are, that, that work counter to that. And this, you know, to come back to the Integrated Schools podcast, the reason that there is such potential in schools is because it's so much easier to, for kids to do that. You know, it's so much easier to do that work.

Not easy, by any stretch. But easier to do that work the younger you start and the more that you start based in real meaningful relationships versus kind of intellectual exercises.

Dr. Val: Yeah. And I like the transition to, to talking about how schools make race, because I mean, you hear all the time like anecdotes about young people playing together and not “caring” that they are a different race or ethnicity and how very quickly in schools, you start to see the hierarchy play out. Whether it's how your Black and Brown classmates are treated. You know, who gets called on. Um, what your honors class distribution looks like. And that is if you're lucky enough to go to an integrated school.

Andrew: Right.

Dr. Val: And I know in my heart that school is a place where we can teach people how to be better at this.

And, there's always lots of debates about the purposes of school, and I don't know that an explicit purpose has ever been to raise anti-racists, you know? Like, that's never been an explicit purpose.

Andrew: Certainly not as, as a society. Not like across the country. Yeah.

Dr. Val: Right, we might have pockets or schools that might wanna do that. And so, any adult in there who is trying to do that is working against the status quo. And I think that's something that Dr. Chávez-Moreno mentioned, right? Like, teachers are exhausted about trying to figure out how to do this themselves.

Andrew: Totally. Yeah.

Dr. Val: Because they don't have the institutional support to do it. In fact, it might be banned for them to do it.

And I think it's because there's a belief by dominant cultures that if marginalized cultures have a positive perception of themselves, whether it's race, sexuality, gender, then it is automatically “anti” the dominant identity. And that's not true! I'm just trying to figure out how to love myself. You know?

Andrew: Love is not zero sum.

Dr. Val: No! And so, for whatever reason, it feels like a threat for, for marginalized folks to have a positive identity.

Andrew: I think the “What do we do about this?” question that, that we asked Dr. Chávez-Moreno, you know, and she talks about the need to kind of bring back critical consciousness. The roots of bilingual education were in critical consciousness and we sort of lost that and we need to bring that back to dual language, to bilingual education programs.

But I think we probably need to not bring that back, but bring that to the rest of our education system. You know, I think about Sharif El Meki on our show talking about his, you know, African freedom school. That education was entirely focused on building critical consciousness and developing future activists whose job was to make their communities better and stronger and to make the world a better place.

And, like you're saying, that has not ever been a sort of an explicit goal of our education system. We talk about training future workers and we talk about, you know, giving kids the skills for the 21st century, but where are the places where we can use education as a tool to improve everyone's life? To build critical consciousness, to drive social activism, to bring the voices of all of our people to these big questions that we have to answer as a society.

And we can't assume that creating bilingual spaces is sufficient, just like we can't assume that creating racially diverse student bodies, putting kids in the same building, is sufficient. That doesn't do the trick. We have to take this proactive stance. She said, “Instead of asking should we teach about race,” why aren't we saying, “How do we teach about race?”

Our kids need to learn about race. Why don't we have as part of our standard curriculum, a progressive with scaffolding that gives elementary school kids some pieces that then grows and builds on that, That builds these tools and skill sets around understanding race.

How do we teach critical consciousness? How do we empower students to then use that knowledge and service their communities? That feels like, while it has not been an explicit goal of education, should be if we want to have an education system that actually serves our whole country, is something that we, we should be fighting for.

Dr. Val: Yeah, because kids are tired of learning about the same Civil Rights heroes for 13 years. Yeah. And I, I, I think it's possible. You may remember that, uh, critical consciousness was part of the CARE Framework, the anti-racist educator framework,

Andrew: We’ll put a link to that conversation in the show notes as well.

Dr. Val: I think that's a good idea.

In teaching about race, we have to teach about power, and I think that's the biggest threat to people who wanna maintain the status quo

Andrew: Yeah. My hope is that the messages about the need to address power, if they're combined with the kind of positive vision of, of what the world could look like, that it is not zero sum. That the pie can grow. That there is like a better world out there, that we actually can win if we are together.

The only way we can win is together, but we actually CAN win if we try to win together. That, that kind of, that positive vision is what can, can push people through the discomfort of really coming to terms with grappling with the way that power shows up in our, in our schools and in our lives more broadly.

Dr. Val: Yeah. I don't know that I felt, um, the listeners got a whole lot of coherent thoughts from us, but I think they got the real “us” in this conversation, like grappling with the, a challenging issue. I am really grateful.

Andrew: Uh, yes. I mean, we said at the outset that this kind of, the, the Latinx experience really complicates our understanding. And it certainly did in the conversation with Dr. Chávez-Moreno. And, and it's still complicated! We didn't, I don't know that we necessarily simplified it at all.

Dr. Val: Nope. Thanks for listening, y'all!

Andrew: But we lived in the complication of it.

So, really grateful to Dr. Chávez-Moreno for writing the book,. The book, there'll be a link in the show notes. Also contact information for her. If you wanna get in touch, uh, if something in the conversation here or in the book really struck you, she would love to hear from you.

And we would also love to hear from you! So send us a voice memo, speakpipe.com/integratedschools. Go to the website integratedschools.org. Click on the “leave us of voice memo” button on the side of the page. We want to hear how you're grappling with this idea of how race is constructed, how race is made, how race continues to be remade, and how our schools play a role in that.

Dr. Val: Absolutely. And once you listen, have this conversation with someone else, right? So listen, share, revisit, sit with some of these, these thoughts and really question like what do you actually believe and why?

Andrew: Yes. And if you wanna go deeper, we have a free guide. It's called Helping Your Children Thrive Without Perpetuating School Segregation, A Starting Guide for Socially Conscious Parents. There'll be a link to it in the show notes. So definitely check that out.

Dr. Val: That's awesome.

Thank you so much to our listeners who have joined IS+. We're trying something new, and we want everyone else to get on board as well. So, join IS+, you'll get some bonus episodes, bonus conversations, and it helps us keep the lights on.

Andrew: That's right, and if you're listening on Apple Podcasts, right in your podcast app, you'll see a way to subscribe. And of course, Patreon is always there: patreon.com/integratedschools.

If you want to support that way, we are always grateful for it.

Dr. Val: Andrew? It was so good to see you this week!

Andrew: It was great.

Dr. Val: It was really amazing. So thank you so much for being my friend.

Andrew: Thank you for grappling with all of this with me for coming and visiting. It was very nice. And as always, it's a pleasure to be in this with you as I try to know better and do better.

Dr. Val: Until next time.