Article

“We Want Spanish Songs!”: Resilience in Latinx Students’ Making of Counterspaces

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Abstract

As the Latinx student population in the U.S. continues to grow, LatCrit is a crucial lens to understand students’ experience and resilience in the face of White supremacy and English hegemony. This paper explores Latinx students’ critical resilience in their making counterspaces with their peers of other races. I conduct individual interviews and focus group discussions with 21 fourth graders. Through thematic analysis, I find racism manifests in the Latinx and the other students’ attitudes towards Spanish songs. But in focus group discussions Latinx students create counterspaces with non-Latinx students as they disrupt English dominance and deficit-based narratives about the Latinxs. I call for researchers and educators to recognize Latinx students’ critical resilience and create peer dialogue opportunities that allow diverse students to create racially exclusive and inclusive counterspaces.

Keywords: LatCrit Theory, English dominance, Racial hierarchy, Counterspaces, Critical resilience

How to Cite:

Zhao, X., (2021) ““We Want Spanish Songs!”: Resilience in Latinx Students’ Making of Counterspaces”, Journal of Critical Thought and Praxis 11(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.31274/jctp.12965