Researching Latinxs, racism, and white supremacy in bilingual education: A literature review

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article reviews literature on U.S. bilingual education that addresses white supremacy and racism, specifically pertaining to Latinx youth and their teachers. To illustrate the wide range of the research, the author categorizes the reviewed articles into three lines of inquiry: documenting language education policies, negotiating identity, and addressing pedagogical or programmatic problems in bilingual education. She discusses connections across the literature with regard to the researchers’ social practices and the trends, implications, contributions, and gaps in the scholarship as a whole. The author finds that research examining white supremacy and racism mostly takes place in language-restrictive or dual-language contexts, and is overwhelmingly conducted by language and bilingual education scholars, not race scholars. To diversify the questions and perspectives used to study this topic, the author calls for more exploration of white supremacy in bilingual education contexts with a majority of Latinx students, where Latinxs can still suffer from racism and learn hegemonic epistemologies. She also recommends expanding the variety of race theories employed, and for future studies that conceptualize bilingual education as engaging in the racial formation of Latinxs. Having more diverse research areas and methodologies to investigate these issues may aid in developing curricular and pedagogical practices that counter white supremacy.