A LatCrit Analysis of Latina Collegians’ Recollections of Racism in Educational Spaces

ABSTRACT

Often noted in educational scholarship is Latinx/a/o students’ experiences of racism that they encounter from peers, faculty, and staff within college contexts. Less discussed, however, are the persistent long-term effects of everyday, racist messages on Latinx/a/o students they received in PreK–12 years and how these forms of marginalization in turn affect how they navigate through college. Using a narrative methodological approach and Latino critical race theory as a framework, we centered the experiences of 12 Latina college students to investigate this question. Findings revealed how these Latinas’ experiences of racism in PreK–12 were shaped by interactions involving family, relying upon their mothers’ teachings in the process. However, when they transitioned to college, their understandings of racism as previously informed by their mothers evolved and became more complex. We then provide implications for practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Latina
• mother
• daughter
• LatCrit
• PreK–12
• college

Often noted in educational scholarship is Latinx/a/o¹ students’ experiences of racism that they encounter from peers, faculty, and staff within college contexts (e.g., Garcia et al., 2021; Kiyama et al., 2015). Less discussed, however, are the persistent long-term effects of everyday, racist messages on Latinx/a/o students they received in PreK–12 years and how these forms of marginalization in turn affect how they navigate through college. Given that precollege experiences are sure to inform how Latinx/a/o students approach individuals and environments in postsecondary education contexts, we see a strong potential to inform practitioners’ work informed by knowledge of these realities.

Connected to these experiences of racism, so too have scholars examined how Latinx/a/o students rely upon their families to combat these oppressive realities and to persist in educational settings. Namely, for Latina students, their mothers can be particularly instrumental in navigating through the racism and sexism they face within educational contexts (Durand, 2011; Espinoza, 2010; Flores, 2018; Marrun, 2020; Reyes & Duran, 2022; Suarez & Quiñones, 2021). Specifically, their mothers’ interactions with schools can reveal the ways that systemic racism are ingrained within education (Greenberg, 2012). Thus, not only is it important to examine Latinx/a/o students’ encounters with racism through the educational pipeline, but it is also significant to understand how their families are present along the way.

Therefore, the purpose of this narrative inquiry (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000) was to investigate how Latina collegians recalled past incidents of racism at all educational levels. Stemming from a larger study examining the interaction of Latina students’ maternal relationships and educational experiences, this analysis focused more explicitly on the dynamics between students and schools, insights that emerged relative to their familial connections. To encompass manifestations of racism unique to Latinx/a/o communities, like those along the lines of “language, immigration, ethnicity, culture, identity, phenotype, and sexuality” (Villalpando, 2003, p. 622), we employed Latino critical race theory (LatCrit) as an analytical lens. With this foundation in mind, our research questions were:

1. How do Latina collegians describe experiences of racism in educational settings through their stories?

2. Through the narratives they tell, how do Latina collegians speak to racism occurring differently in their PreK-12 years from that at postsecondary levels, if at all?

Theoretical framework

Advanced by those involved in critical legal scholarship and the civil rights movement, critical race theory problematizes white standards and institutions, laying bare the unequal power differentials they afford, particularly on the basis of race. As an offshoot of critical race theory (see Bell, 1995), LatCrit scholars consistently emphasize the embeddedness and permanence of race when examining social issues.

Fundamental to understanding LatCrit’s origins, Valdés’s (1997) formative law review offered an in-depth analysis of LatCrit-related issues. Though Latinx/a/o scholars in the legal field collectively imagined LatCrit, Valdés (1997) notably proposed four functions of LatCrit that he outlined as: “the production of knowledge, the advancement of social transformation, the expansion and connection of anti-subordination struggles, and the cultivation of community and coalition” (p. 158). Crucial to these functions, Valdés noted, was an anti-essentialist lens in theory and praxis. Importantly, groups of scholars have expanded on or reinterpreted LatCrit’s core tenets since then to foster the theory’s relevance (see Solorzano & Bernal, 2001 for an example). Central to our study, LatCrit holds utility in various aspects of Latina students’ experiences. Intimately connected in many Latina students’ social locations are considerations made around immigration, culture, and language that are often utilized for themselves or their families when navigating their racial/ethnic identities in educational settings. Emphasizing the tenets of coalition-building as well as anti-subordinative struggle, we analyzed participants’ recollections of racism as multilayered attempts to subjugate them as well as their processing of, mobilizing against, and healing from the harm of racist perpetrators.

Literature review

To situate this study, we explored two different bodies of literature that we believed would set a necessary foundation for the present investigation. We first began by exploring the broader literature on Latinx/a/o students’ challenges and barriers encountered in the U.S. educational system. We then turned to the scholarship specifically focused on how Latina mothers and daughters navigate educational settings.

Latinx/a/o students’ barriers and challenges in the U.S. Education System

Consistent in the literature is that the U.S. system of education continues to broadly struggle with supporting Latinx/a/o students (Espinoza-Herold & González-Carriedo, 2017; Flink, 2018) – despite their increasing numbers. Although we do not profess that this review is exhaustive in detailing all of the barriers that Latinx/a/o students face in U.S. educational settings, we bring to light the literature that particularly sensitized in this study, especially concerning culturally relevant knowledge and school/campus climates.

Scholars have also brought attention to the lack of knowledge that school personnel and administrators hold concerning Latinx/a/o students’ needs, as well as those pertaining to their parents (Marrero, 2016). Partially tied to this misunderstanding of Latinx/a/o communities, a shortage of resources (Freire & Valdez, 2017), and also due to other racist obstacles (Pagán, 2022), research has found that curricula and pedagogy across the PK–16 pipeline fails to engage the cultural knowledges of Latinx/a/o communities. The ineffective or absent implementation of what is frequently referred to as culturally relevant pedagogy is an issue given findings that consistently demonstrate the significance of this type of pedagogical engagement, especially when framed using a CRT lens (Pappamihiel & Moreno, 2011).

On top of the challenges that Latinx/a/o students may face within the classroom, scholarship has also named the barriers that individuals encounter as it relates to broader school climates that further racism, xenophobia, and other forms of marginalization. For instance, pertaining to higher education institutions, researchers have demonstrated the negative campus climates that are present for Latinx/a/o individuals, furthered by the microaggressions, low expectations for campus community members, and shortage of support for these populations (Kiyama et al., 2015) – even at colleges and universities with higher enrollments of Latinx/a/o populations (Sanchez, 2019). Campuses that fail to create welcoming environments for Latinx/a/o students are in danger of harming these groups’ likelihood to persist and succeed academically (Rischall & Meyers, 2019).

The same can be said for K–12 environments in which chilly climates also remain for Latinx/a/o students (Espinoza-Herold & González-Carriedo, 2017), oftentimes perpetuated by color-blind racial ideologies in these spaces (Castro-Atwater, 2016). These realities are indicative of what Kohli et al. (2017) deemed a new type of racism, in which more covert forms of racial marginalization are perpetuated in K-12 settings. These contexts inevitably set the stage for Latina daughters, as well as their mothers as they come to reflect on their social location in relationship to educational settings.

Latina mothers and daughters navigating educational settings

Albeit much more limited compared to the scholarship on Latinx/a/o students’ barriers and challenges, researchers have begun paying more attention to the nature of Latina mother – daughter relationships in relationship to educational settings (e.g., Durand, 2011; Espinoza, 2010; Flores, 2018; Marrun, 2020; Reyes & Duran, 2022; Suarez & Quiñones, 2021). What this literature has highlighted is how mothers can play pivotal roles in supporting and advocating their Latina daughters as they move through their educational trajectories, but can also serve as points of pressure and stress. Additionally, scholars have underscored how educational settings systematically exclude the involvement and presence of Latina mothers (Greenberg, 2012).

To begin, perspectives on Latina mothers as it pertains to their daughters’ educational journeys underscore how they function to bolster their child’s aspirations and success (e.g., Durand, 2011; Marrun, 2020). Specifically, individuals have communicated how mothers can pass along important lessons of perseverance and resistance in the face of educational systems that may be oppressive toward Latina women (Espinoza-Herold, 2007; Marrun, 2020; Reyes & Duran, 2022; Suarez & Quiñones, 2021). These dichos [proverbs] emphasize the cultural resources that Latinx/a/o people carry with them (Espinoza-Herold, 2007). Yet, others have complicated these ideas by describing the paradoxical messages that Latina mothers can transmit to their daughters – that of being resistant but at the same time, also conforming to norms around them (Villenas & Moreno, 2001).

Relevant to our framework, mothers can be some of the first that help Latinas resist the racist realities they encounter in schools (Fujimoto, 2013). Moreover, what researchers have consistently recommended is that Latina mothers can be more involved in their kids,’ and specifically their daughters,’ educational journeys and achievements if there are specific initiatives designed to engage maternal figures (e.g., Hammer et al., 2018; Lopez-Robertson, 2015). These programs can be particularly instrumental in building a focus on the cultural knowledges that Latinx/a/o people bring with them into their schooling settings. Still, these types of experiences are not common and as underscored by the previous section, too often are Latinx/a/o knowledges excluded in the U.S. system of education.

Methodology

We designed the study in accordance with the principles of narrative inquiry methodology, a qualitative tradition that is uniquely concerned with how a phenomenon under investigation is experienced by people as informed by their life histories (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). As Clandinin and Connelly (2000) explained, narrative inquiry is special for its attention to how “the people, schools, and educational landscapes we study undergo day-by-day experiences that are contextualized within a longer-term historical narrative” (p. 19). Specifically, narrative research as defined by these authors seeks to understand people’s stories as situated within a three-dimensional space: (a) exploring the contexts in which situations occur, (b) how experiences are positioned in a temporal manner, as well as (c) the interactions and personal meaning making that characterize people’s realities. Of note, the fourth theme of LatCrit that Solorzano and Bernal (2001) outlined involved “the centrality of experiential knowledge” (p. 314), which lends itself well to our usage of narrative inquiry.

Participant recruitment and selection

After the study was declared exempt by Auburn University’s institutional review board (#20–541), we developed our participant recruitment tactics in accordance with ideas of criterion sampling (M. Q. Patton, 2002). Namely, in order to answer our research questions, we wanted to search for individuals who fit the following profile: (a) identify as Latina, (b) was currently enrolled at an institution for their undergraduate, and (c) had a mother who came from a Latin American country. Concerning our first criterion, we had hoped to include cis and trans women in the study, but unfortunately, were not able to recruit trans women. As it pertains to the third criterion, we included on recruitment materials that we operationalized Latin American country as including Caribbean Islands, Mexico, Central and South America. We publicized a recruitment flyer containing this information on our social media sites (i.e., Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter). For those who were interested, we included a link to a demographic form on the recruitment materials that also contained a study information letter. The form asked individuals to share details about their social identities, as well as characteristics about their higher education institution. 12 individuals who fit the criteria expressed interest and we selected all of them to participate in the study. Table 1 displays information about the participants and their mothers.

Table 1. Demographic Information of Latina Collegians as reported on Information forms.

Pseudonym	Ethnicity(s)	Pronouns	First-in-Family College Student?	Region of Institution	Mother’s Ethnicity(s)	Mother’s Occupation
Alex	Peruvian, Puerto Rican	She/her/hers	No	Midwest	Peruvian	Stay-at-home mom
Esperanza	Mexican	She/her/hers	No	Midwest	Mexican	Stay-at-home mom
Gabrielle	Peruvian	She/her/hers	No	Northeast	Peruvian	Spanish-to-English interpreter
Janis	Peruvian	She/her/hers	No	Midwest	Peruvian	Scientist
Josie	Mexican	She/her/hers	Yes	Midwest	Mexican	Stay-at-home mom
Julia	Puerto Rican	She/her/hers	No	Midwest	Puerto Rican	Stay-at-home mom
Maria	Puerto Rican	She/her/hers	No	Southeast	Puerto Rican	Teacher
Romero	Mexican, Peruvian	She/her/hers	No	Southeast	Peruvian	Stay-at-home mom
Samantha	Mexican	She/her/hers	Yes	Southeast	Mexican	Stay-at-home mom
Sandara	Mexican	She/her/hers	Yes	West	Mexican	Stay-at-home mom
Sylvia	Mexican	She/her/hers	Yes	Southwest	Mexican	Stay-at-home mom
Ximena	Mexican	She/her/hers	Yes	Southeast	Mexican	Stay-at-home mom

Data collection

After selecting the 12 Latina college students for this research project, we engaged each participant in two semistructured interviews designed to align with narrative inquiry. These interviews lasted roughly 60–90 minutes and occurred via the Zoom software, allowing us to audio record them. Because narrative inquiry is concerned with understanding people’s framing of a central phenomenon (e.g., educational experiences) as situated within their larger histories (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000), we constructed the interview protocols to ask about students’ educational trajectories up to the point of the interview in addition to capturing information about their familial realities broadly. The first interview, in particular, involved us inviting participants to offer stories about their families, their K-12 years, and applying to college. We frequently employed language such as “tell us a story about when … ” or “share a particular instance … ” that enabled the storytelling characteristic of narrative methodology.

The second interview focused more specifically on their time in higher education, navigating family relationships while in college, and their own identity development as undergraduate students. Throughout both interviews we encouraged participants to name how their educational environments perpetuated marginalization of them and/or their mothers tied to their Latinx/a/o identities while addressing our theoretical framework of LatCrit. Similarly, we also probed into how their social identities (e.g., gender, ethnicity) shaped how they experienced their educational settings, also attending to our theoretical underpinnings.

Data analysis

To analyze the data, we led with Connelly and Clandinin’s (1990) notion that participants do not always tell stories in an organized or sequential fashion. Appropriately, we then created narratives from each participant’s interview transcripts, performing a chronological restorying with an attention to time, place, and scene. In crafting these narratives, we paid special attention to racist incidences participants described as well as events that we perceived to have racial undertones. These narratives ranged from 4–6 pages in length. We subsequently coded these narratives as it related to LatCrit’s tenets. As a result of this coding process and conversations between the researchers, we arrived at the findings below.

Trustworthiness and limitations

Qualitative researchers typically take steps to bolster the trustworthiness of their work, a concept that describes how rigorous a study is (Jones et al., 2022); however, limitations will inevitably still exist. In this project, we attempted to ensure rigor by inviting participants to offer feedback on the analytical process. Specifically, we sent each individual their restoried narrative. Only three responded to the request, but these three had minimal or no edits to their narrative, meaning that they felt their stories were captured accurately. Additionally, having two research team members meant that we could discuss our assumptions grounded in our standpoints, allowing us to challenge ideas. Although these proved to be strengths of the project, we also acknowledge that limitations were present in the project, such as ending up with a participant pool that was limited in (a) the ethnicities of participants and (b) the types of occupations the mothers worked in. However, we believe that this study is still an important contribution to the literature and encourage future researchers to expand on this work.

Positionality statements

Narrative researchers all “come to inquiry with views, attitudes, and ways of thinking about inquiry” (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000, p. 46). In fact, if participants’ stories are situated within larger histories, so are the scholars who study them, which inevitably will inform how they approach their research. For this reason, we hope to name some of the assumptions that we brought to this project. Hannah Reyes is a cisgender, heterosexual Latina woman whose intimate experiences with racism prompted this study, particularly when reflecting on her childhood years living in the Deep South. Though she resonated with many of the instances of racism and sexism participants recounted in the study, Hannah was also cognizant of her privilege and how these systems of oppression are further compounded by xenophobia and homophobia. Antonio Duran identifies as a queer cisgender Latino man who is passionate about identifying the structural barriers that impact Latinx/a/o students and their development/success in college. He came to this research being particularly reflective on his privilege as a cisgender man and regularly journaled about how patriarchal discourses may have been playing a role in his interpretation of the participants’ narratives. In talking with participants, he also was forthcoming about his motivations to engage in this research and his desire to learn from their experiences.

Findings

We organize our findings into two sections: parsing occurrences at the PreK–12 level and collegiate level, offering our interpretations of the LatCrit tenets present throughout. Specifically, we argue that their experiences of racism in PreK–12 were shaped by interactions involving family, relying upon their mothers’ teachings in the process. However, when they transitioned to college, their understandings of racism as previously informed by their mothers evolved and became more complex.

PreK–12 occurrences: relying on mothers’ teachings and racism associated with family

In our first finding, Gabrielle, a half Jewish half Latina¹ student attending a large public institution in the Northeastern U.S. region, offered an example of overt racism she experienced during her PreK-12 years. As Gabrielle mentioned, her mother’s early attempts to be involved in her education were actively hampered by other parents and teachers. When attempting to join a parent-teacher organization (PTO), Gabrielle observed her mother facing pushback because of her skin color and limited English. She remarked, “I don’t think that my teachers ever thought of [my mom] as like a legitimate like person that they could collaborate with … they sort of wrote her off and saw like “Oh, she didn’t care.”’’ Captured in this example, Gabrielle discussed how she viewed her mother to have “a lot of knowledge and experiences that other parents didn’t have,” like a second language, but was ultimately excluded. Gabrielle continued, saying:

It’s funny because they didn’t ignore that she was an immigrant, but the way that they went about it, like you could look at like asking me to like educate the whole classroom on Peru as like something that my family offers to schools that just like it’s a unique perspective right but I don’t think that it was treated with care, I don’t think that it was [genuine].

Directly tied to Gabrielle’s story, the LatCrit tenet of knowledge production is apparent. As Gabrielle recognized, her mother offered a unique perspective because of her lived experiences and yet, schools sought to exploit that knowledge.

For Esperanza, a Mexican student attending a large public institution in the Midwest, having an older sister who was the first in family to attend college allowed her a glimpse into the college-going process. Being from a mixed-status family, however, meant that Esperanza would have a drastically different experience:

I was born in the U.S., and she wasn’t. So, um she’s undocumented, so a lot of her experience, for her was a lot harder, not just because she was the first person in the family to do it, but also because there’s a lot of unknowns for her and a lot of things that I didn’t have to struggle with I didn’t have to struggle, with stuff like in state tuition [and health insurance].

These observations stayed in the back of Esperanza’s mind, especially when reflecting on her own elementary experience of being unfairly reassigned to ESL classes and educational institutions’ unsupportive nature for students like her and her sister. As her mother often responded however, perhaps to draw attention to the other aspects affecting Latinx communities, “other people have it worse.” This sentiment may have led Esperanza to discount her own PreK–12 experiences of inequity.

Samantha, a Mexican student attending a large public institution in the Southeast, also spoke to this point as a DACA recipient herself:

I have to fight for my future while doing whatever I can for my future. It’s just an area of just, you’re trying to balance your life while other people are trying to balance your life based on immigration reforms…. I always feel like many people don’t feel the same way I feel, based on deportation or how the feel about immigration and stuff like that, and I feel that all the time, because I feel the fear of something can happen to me, or something can happen to my parents type of thing.

For Samantha, this fear translated into her uplifting other members of her predominantly Latinx/a/o and Black PreK-12 school system, often asking her peers about their recent successes as well as college or work plans. Importantly, Samantha explicitly attributed this strategy to something she learned from her mother and her “united” side of the family, recognizing the importance of leveraging the skills and means they can help others with. Touching the lives of others, offering herself up as resource, and ultimately, building coalitions across groups was imperative for Samantha:

I’m so limited to what I can do, but even though I am limited, I’m not going to make sure that those limits are not met. If it’s so small, I’m going to use all the limits that I have.

Though resolute in this endeavor, Samantha seldom named any school faculty or staff that did these acts for her, describing how many maintained a “’I don’t care’ type of thing.”

Alex was also hyperaware of her identity from a young age, due largely to her mother’s messages of better opportunity by masking their Latina identity. Alex specifically recalled her mother urging her to identify as white on exams and related this back to early recollections of her mom being treated differently based on her outward appearance and accent:

If she talked to [my childhood friends’] parents, they always talked to her, I guess, slower and more simpler, even though she’s been in this country for 30 plus years, knows English very, very well. It always felt condescending, I guess.

It was not until early on in Alex’s college years after being surrounded with other Latinx friends on her campus, that she began to push on her mother’s advice and fully embrace her Puerto Rican and Peruvian identities, bringing us to our second finding.

Collegiate occurrences: complicating the script and Mother’s teachings

In our second finding, Josie, a Mexican student attending a large public institution in the Midwest, spoke about her initial transition to a predominantly white college. Josie began her recount by offering memories of her mother taking her on drives through campus, pointing at students bound to have “successful careers” and that Josie “needed to be like them.” After attending predominantly white PreK–12 schools, Josie recalled how she hoped college would be different:

I remember on my first day, when my mom dropped me off [at the honors dormitory]… And the first day I was here, actually, I remember this Asian girl, she walked up to me. And I told her I was Mexican because she asked me where I was from, so I said I’m Mexican. And she was like, “Oh, margaritas.” And this other white boy, I think he’s Croatian. I don’t know. He was white to me … He didn’t ask for my name. He just asked me straight up. He was like, “Oh my god. Are your parents immigrants?” Like it was some trophy or something. And I was just like, “Let me walk away because…” Yeah. And I experience a lot of racism here, actually. I didn’t think I would, but I did.

Josie reflected on considerations she made when attending her institution saying, “I knew this was going to be a white school, and I wasn’t going to live with people that looked like me. There weren’t going to be a lot of people like me.” Yet, this cognizance hardly served as a buffer to the microaggressions Josie experienced and the weight of her peers’ words. To heal from these racist sentiments, Josie resolved to surround herself with others like her, even if it meant not being like the “successful” students her mother identified. Much like the coalition building tenet of LatCrit, Josie remarked, “I did reach out too and found my community. I found a Latina community, so I’m really happy with them. I feel like I have friends to rely on, so I’m happy for that.”

Romero, a Mexican and Peruvian student, spoke to how her predominantly white PreK–12 school system led her as she attended a predominantly white college. When processing her educational trajectory, Romero described how, as a child, she simply wanted to be like her white peers. Befriending other students of color in college, however, allowed Romero to articulate the codeswitching she had practiced most of her life:

I’ve grown up very around–like a lot of white people so… I had a friend, this year, and she was talking to me, and she was like “Oh there’s like a way you act around your white friends and a way you act at home.”

Romero continued to parse this difference apart, explaining how her mother taught her how to “be able to stay in everyone’s good side.” Reflecting on lessons like these subsequently helped Romero to name the pressures and risks of associated with her identity as a Latina woman and, in some cases, avoid dangerous situations:

I’m like a more a bit more reserved like I watch what I say, and I think it’s like to not come off as like an uneducated like to come off like I didn’t know like sophisticated, in a sense… when you’re like of different nationalities or like ethnicities there’s things that like they say, like you, like aren’t very well received and there’s things that I could possibly say that they just won’t understand.

Much like Romero, Julia, a Puerto Rican student, felt the pressures associated with representing her race, especially in predominantly white school systems. Even within her friend groups, she recognized that, they “could only call themselves diverse because I was there. If not, they were just another group of white kids hanging out.” This point of racial difference, Julia’s mother emphasized from early on, was something to take pride in. Julia, however, also named the intersectionality needed to advocate for marginalized groups, including those beyond race, particularly as it related to her sphere of influence in college:

It’s not that I just want to fight for those Latinos. No, I want to fight for Latinos, of course and women and men, both of them and then the queer people and then all three of them. How it all goes together. This isn’t a fight for like, “Oh, you know, my one group needs to be more equal.” Like, “No, okay, because there’s people in your one group who are like all these different things, so just by elevating one, doesn’t mean that the other ones are up as well.” So to fight for that equally. Yes, you can have a focus, but fight for equally and be all equal.

Maria, a half white, half Puerto Rican student attending a large public institution in the Southeast, unlike Julia, shared how she initially had a different reaction to her oppressed, intersecting identities. Internalizing teachings from her mother that advocating for herself would only make her a “target” made Maria initially feel like she just “got stuck with a lot of different minorities.” Once attending college, however, she observed an evolving perspective on race and racism:

“Okay, why do we have to keep throwing these [minoritized identities] at me?’ … there are like women of color and then woman and then I identify as part of LGBTQ+ community so it’s like ‘wow, that’s a lot of lots of minorities to handle at once,” but um, I don’t know. Part of it, I feel like makes me a more empathetic and better person, so I appreciate them. But part of me is like “Okay, I don’t like the way the universe is set out to attack different identities that I have.”

Maria explained how this awareness led her to practice activism in leadership roles across campus, seeking to acknowledge and expand the struggles faced by those across oppressed identities.

Discussion

In reflecting upon the Latina collegians’ stories using our LatCrit framework (Valdés, 1997) and in conversation with existing literature, several insights emerge as salient from our narrative inquiry project (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). As LatCrit seeks to expose the embeddedness of racism that uniquely impacts Latinx/a/o communities based on axes of difference like immigration or language, several examples of these instances manifested from the participants’ experiences across their educational years. Such patterns mirror and extend the existing literature on Latinx/a/o students that shows how educational settings in the United States struggle to support them (Espinoza-Herold & González-Carriedo, 2017; Flink, 2018).

What was unique about the current study was that it interrogated these realities from the perspective of Latina college students and their mothers. What emerged were stories such as those provided by Gabrielle who shared how her teachers in her K-12 years discounted her mother and prevented her from joining a PTO because of her limited English and immigrant status. Although Latina mothers can support their daughters and their educational aspirations (e.g., Durand, 2011; Marrun, 2020), school community members can also serve to push these maternal figures away (Greenberg, 2012). From a LatCrit perspective (Valdés, 1997), this systemic exclusion is only bolstered by having limited English or coming from an immigrant background as in Gabrielle’s narrative. This reality also came through in stories like those of Alex’s where her mother shared ideas of how to navigate schooling by masking her Latina identity. In the face of chilly climates that still exist for Latinx/a/o students in K-12 settings (Espinoza-Herold & González-Carriedo, 2017), mothers can impart lessons on how to negotiate their Latinx/a/o identity in these contexts (Espinoza-Herold, 2007; Marrun, 2020; Reyes & Duran, 2022; Suarez & Quiñones, 2021) – which may include masking or minimizing this aspect of self. In doing so, these Latina mothers are passing on knowledge that they have gained from themselves learning how to persist through oppressive climates, an insight made clear by LatCrit (Valdés, 1997).

However, in addition to understanding how racism operates in educational settings through their connection to their mothers, the stories of participants in this narrative inquiry study also revealed how racism manifested in more covert ways in both K-12 and higher education settings. Such details are indicative of what Kohli et al. (2017) termed a new kind of racism for Latinx/a/o students in K-12 contexts, but our study highlighted how this also was present within the colleges and universities that students attended – connecting the two environments (i.e., K-12 and higher education) through these narrative arcs. As participants like Romero spoke to how she would have to negotiate the pressures associated with being a Latina and Josie described the microaggressions she encountered, these stories mirrored what is named in the literature about the subtle forms of racism that Latinx/a/o people face on college campuses (Kiyama et al., 2015). Yet, what is imperative to underscore is how these Latinas challenged these experiences by creating connections and surrounding themselves with people like them, a practice that is representative of LatCrit’s focus on coalition building (Valdés, 1997). Furthermore, their approaches to navigating these realities started to differ from the teachings their mothers had once imparted on.

Implications for practice

Aligning with the overarching goals of LatCrit, the participants highlighted above sought to effect racial change for themselves or others. For students like Esperanza and Samantha, their conceptions of race were intricate, often complicated by the immigrant status of themselves or their families. Heard in other stories were mentions of Latina immigrants as “trophies” or “unique” individuals and yet, as Gabrielle pointed out, their knowledge was not genuinely valued in schools. As Gabrielle also recalled, however, her mother actively attempted to be involved in her schooling by employing her own wealth of knowledge. Instances like these are likely not uncommon so spaces to nurture these parents’ and guardians’ investment in school involvement should be prioritized by school teachers and administrators who oversee programs like PTO. Additionally, educational agents should consider expanding PTOs to include students’ perspectives in meaningfully ways, as it was clear to Gabrielle from the beginning that her mother’s familiarity of Peru and fluency in a second language would be beneficial to many, like her classmates. For schools with large populations of Latinx/a/o students, school leaders may consider creating specific PTOs for these communities and equip them with the power to advocate for Latinx/a/o individuals. Students like Samantha also shared this focus on the greater collective, though uplifting others seemed to be an effort she alone shouldered. In instances like Samantha’s, these desires to help others should be nurtured, but the same care and encouragement, ideally from faculty, staff, and administrators, should also be prioritized for Samantha.

In Maria’s case, she detailed her own growth in previously viewing marginalized identities as deficits and in college, realizing the systemic oppression affecting these identities. By relating to others with minoritized identities, particularly related to gender and sexuality, Maria demonstrated what it meant to build community by connecting with other’s struggles. Considering those like Alex, who could discern feelings of discrimination from an early age, spaces where girls of color can process and share stories should be established in order to (re)imagine more positive senses of selves, both in PreK–12 and college settings.

It was also clear that college brought about an evolving understanding of racism and how Latinas made meaning of these experiences different from their mothers. Consequently, it would stand to reason that Latinas should get the opportunity to unpack this in collaboration with staff and their fellow peers. Such initiatives could take the form of mentoring programs and dialogue groups, run by identity centers or counseling units on campus. Importantly, these initiatives should be conducted in culturally relevant ways that prioritize an intersectional lens to interrogate how culture, gender, and race/ethnicity shapes the lives of these Latinas.

Conclusion

The experiences of Latinx/a/o students in educational settings are oftentimes shaped by institutional and interpersonal forms of racism (e.g., Garcia et al., 2021; Kiyama et al., 2015). These realities are further made complex when one considers the role that families play in Latinx/a/o students’ lives. One such familial connection that brings this to light is the bond that exists between mothers and daughters. In the above study, we examined the ways that Latinas make meaning of the presence of racism in their educational trajectories in relationship to their mothers. We argue that their stories are an important starting point to reimaging educational systems to be more equitable for Latinx/a/o students.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ When possible, we use the identifier Latinx/a/o to refer to those included within Latina and Latino but also those who do not ascribe to the gendered Spanish binary. When referencing other works, however, we honor their chosen language.