Dual Language as White Property: Examining a Secondary Bilingual-Education Program and Latinx Equity

Abstract

This critical race ethnography examines a secondary-level dual-language (DL) program, a bilingual-education model thought to provide Latinxs educational equity. Drawing from a three-stage recursive analytic approach, I present evidence that a DL program’s policies and practices valued offering Latinx youth biliterate schooling only so long as DL was available and advantageous to Whites—which ultimately excluded some Latinx students from bilingual education and/or accessing its benefits. I theorize DL functions as white property when DL perpetuates racial hierarchies and preserves the value of a white racial identity, thereby maintaining Whites’ inequitable material accumulation. I problematize the logic of DL—highlighting that DL has the elitist tendencies of world-language education—and assess DL’s potential to deliver educational justice to Latinxs.