Raciolinguistic ideology of antiblackness: bilingual education, tracking, and the multiracial imaginary in urban schools

Abstract

Based on a qualitative study of an urban middle school, this article examines student perceptions of shifting tracking structures following the dismantling of a school’s bilingual education program. The article demonstrates that students understood the school changes based on supposed language needs through an explicitly racialized lens, thereby illuminating both the permeability and entrenchment of raciolinguistic ideologies in the predominantly nonwhite school. In particular, a raciolinguistic ideology of antiblackness that positioned Black students as lacking when compared to other non-White students was ultimately reproduced in student discourse despite the change from bilingual education to English-only class tracks. This finding is significant because it questions how education reform is often structured without regard to broader social contexts and histories. The article concludes by exploring strategies policymakers and educators can draw from to challenge underlying relational racializations of antiblackness that are so pervasive in our current language education programs.