ACADEMIC RESEARCH BRIEFS

Hey Hispano: Forget the Celebration, Address Your Internal Prejudice
Claudia García-Louis, PhD
University of Texas-San Antonio
October 26, 2020

As we celebrate and honor the legacy and enduring contributions of millions of Latinx in the United States, let us remember that our roots in this country extend well before the U.S. was established (Jiménez Román & Flores, 2010; Menchaca, 2001; Sáenz & Morales, 2015). We are not an easily classified ethnic group as our cultural, racial, and global geographies are as diverse as the terms that have been crafted to categorize us: Hispanic, Latina, Latina/o, Latinx, LatinX, Latin*, Latin@, Latina/o/x, Hispanohablantes – and the list goes on. Yet, masterfully embedded within the aforementioned is the incessant will of the colonizer to rob us of our vast diversity Alcoff, 2006; Milian, 2013)...Read more

Claudia García-Louis, PhD is an assistant professor in the Education Leadership and Policy Studies Department at the University of Texas-San Antonio. Her research approach is interdisciplinary in nature as she seeks to disrupt negative stereotypes about Latinx students, minoritized populations, and underrepresented students through the critical incorporation of culturally appropriate, asset-based methodological approaches. Her goals are to expand the definitions of Latinidad and Blackness in higher education, to make a critical contribution to a newly formed line of inquiry that explores the educational experiences of AfroLatinx, and to conduct research that highlights Latinx heterogeneity and the experiences of Latina-mamí-scholars.