Abstract
The mythology of liberal anti/racism endures in U.S. mainstream educational discourse as the rational approach to address white supremacy, with college-going positioned as the pathway to a better life. Liberal logics suppose that once racialized peoples enter positions of power, society will improve. Drawing upon pláticas and interviews from an ethnographic study of a college preparation program for Latinx youth at a public high school in the liberal, racially diverse San Francisco Bay Area, this work examines how liberal teaching practices shaped Mexican-origin youths’ responses to right-wing terror. Instead of preparing youth to dismantle white supremacy, these practices undermined youths’ readings of their sociopolitical worlds. Engaging language socialization approaches, this work argues that liberal teaching practices socialized college-going youth to (white) neutral rationality, wherein accommodating white supremacy signals rationality and college readiness. This research illustrates why college-going can be no more than one tactic towards collective wellbeing for racialized people.
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