Constructing Latinidad as a constrained credential: Anti-Blackness and racialized inequities in a majority Latinx middle school

Abstract

From data gathered during 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork, this paper unpacks the implications of five ethnographic examples describing interactions between educators and students at New Horizons, a majority Latinx middle school, to demonstrate that the circulation of racialized “good Latinx” narratives legitimates differential allocation of limited school resources between those imagined as falling into the good Latinx category and those that do not because they are ascribed Blackness (i.e., African American and Afro-Latinx youth). That is, the discursive construction of Latinidad as well-behaved, hard-working, and specifically non-Black positioned it as a racialized yet privileged credential at school. In these circumstances, Latinidad may at best be considered a constrained credential.