6. Fit to Be Good Cooks and Good Mechanics: Racialization in Schools

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Date

2011

Authors

Vasquez-Tokos, Jessica

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

New York University Press

Abstract

School systems are simultaneously racialized and racializing. Educational institutions possess tremendous capacity to reproduce the power structure and racial hierarchy of society. Family, as another social institution, mediates the racializing effects of the educational system. The family is a critical site of racial identity development as it is a locale where intergenerational biography-based teaching occurs and strategies of action and resistance are formed. Within both schools and families, students respond to racializing messages and renegotiate their racial self-understanding. School experiences are conditioned by historical context, gender, and parental influences as parents use their own schooling experience as fodder for the intergenerational transfer of knowledge and ideologies to their children. This chapter asks, What influence do educational systems have on immigrants’ and citizens’ racial identity formation? What role do families play in amplifying or mitigating the process of racialization? From a long-term perspective, what are the cumulative effects of racialization across family generations? This chapter examines how second- and third-generation Mexican Americans experience their social identity within the educational system and how parents’ experiences with their own schooling shape their parenting styles.

Description

31 pages. From the book "Mexican Americans Across Generations."

Keywords

racialization, school systems, racial hierarchy, family, racial identity, educational systems

Citation

Vasquez, Jessica M.. "6. Fit to Be Good Cooks and Good Mechanics: Racialization in Schools". Mexican Americans Across Generations: Immigrant Families, Racial Realities, New York, USA: New York University Press, 2011, pp. 163-193. https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9780814788431.003.0010