Abstract
Spanish so White by Adam Schwartz examines the author’s experiences as a learner and teacher of Spanish in the United States and his students’ struggles with “racializing language, structures, and institutions” (p. xv). The book extends an invitation for White Spanish teachers and student-teachers to interrogate the ideological connection between language and race within Spanish teaching and learning contexts. The book challenges these individuals to reflect upon the ways that the connection between language and race shapes who they imagine themselves communicating with when they teach Spanish as a subject in the classroom. The author’s interpretation of the data he presents is informed by his experiences growing up in a Jewish family that gradually learned to identify as White in the United States. His analysis is also shaped by his positionality as a male, cis-gender, White, upper-middle-class teacher of Spanish who is critical of the privileges that these identities have afforded him (e.g., additive bilingualism, access to higher education, and authority in institutional spaces).
In Chapter 1, Schwartz scrutinizes his first Spanish class back in the late 1990s with Señorita Kennedy who asked him to choose a “Spanish” name for himself. The author discusses the ways that asking White learners of Spanish to choose “Latino-sounding” names upholds ideologies of looking like a language and sounding like a race (Rosa, 2019) while framing Spanish speakers as foreigners in the United States. With his personal reflection as a backdrop, Schwartz then introduces the premise upon which the remainder of the book is based: (1) we live in a racist society that upholds Whiteness, (2) Whiteness produces damaging perceptions of racialized speakers and their languages, and (3) language informs our ideas about race and vice versa. These premises inform Schwartz’s analysis of the failure of Spanish language education in the United States to critically examine raciolinguistic ideologies and histories of colonialism and imperialism (Rosa & Flores, 2017). This reluctance to address racism and Whiteness in Spanish language education, the author explains, has allowed systems of inequity to run unchallenged, enabling Whiteness to “explain away power imbalances and inequities” (p. 11).
In Chapter 2, Schwartz invites readers to engage with him in critical conversations about U.S. Spanish language education, based on what he calls principles or non-negotiable truths: (1) systems of domination do not sleep; (2) we are socialized into normalizing these systems; and (3) educational institutions serve as “White public spaces” that perpetuate these systems. To exemplify these principles, the author describes how he and White colleagues struggled to acknowledge the advantages they enjoy as White individuals in a system that manufactures merit and innocence for White bodies. For example, for White individuals, learning Spanish is met with praise and presupposes economic opportunities. Conversely, for Latinas/os, learning English is seen as the least they could do, and their bilingualism sheds doubts on their allegiance and loyalty to the United States. In the face of these raciolinguistic ideologies, the author urges White Spanish teachers and student teachers to think about “who gets to be an expert in a language and why?” and how we can “imagine the possibility of a classroom that honors and affirms multiple ways of knowing and multiple ways of doing language?” (p. 43).
Chapter 3 focuses on critical conversations with the self. The author starts by illustrating the ways he was socialized into not naming race, out of fear of coming off as a bad person. He offers examples of how, at a young age, he learned that the word “Mexican” could be a slur and that not all individuals who “looked” Mexican were Mexican or spoke Spanish. It was not until he started graduate schoolwork that the author encountered critical literature pointing to the importance of naming a problem (e.g., racism) to make it tangible, and therefore, addressable. Against this generalized avoidance of naming race, the author builds the argument that White Spanish language teachers, scholars, and student-teachers must critically think about their intergenerational investment in Whiteness and their complicity in reproducing marginalization. He describes the examination of one’s inherited location in a “large constellation of oppression and power” as a key step toward realizing the need for antiracist praxis (p. 66).
Chapter 4 invites White Spanish teachers to engage in conversations with colleagues about the ways they might have been socialized into teaching White ways of being bilingual (e.g., double monolingualism and linguistic purism) while disregarding the fact that Latinas/os living in the United States frequently use Spanish in the home. In addition, the author illustrates how Whiteness is embedded in Spanish language curricula in the United States. For example, he narrates that he attended Spanish classes that lacked critical engagement with the history of the Spanish conquest in the Americas and the strong presence of this language in the United States. He also recounts facing difficulties as a university faculty discussing and researching Whiteness and racial identity with other White Spanish faculty. In this chapter, he also writes about the discomfort that emerged during conversations with peers about who gets constructed as an expert in Spanish language education (i.e., White bilinguals) and why. More broadly, he also discusses the ways learning Spanish is an additive experience for Whites while learning English is a subtractive one for Latinas/os and other minoritized communities.
In Chapter 5, Schwartz foregrounds the importance of encouraging White Spanish language students to think critically about race and racism, which he argues can be done by engaging in an ethic of care and compassion. The author explains that these openly critical conversations about Whiteness and racism are not always easy or well taken. For instance, he recounts having to address the discomfort White students feel when they encounter the concept of Whiteness in the classroom for the first time. Yet, he argues that our empathy with discomfort should be centered on those at the receiving end of oppression: Spanish heritage speakers. He also states that participating in these conversations necessitates that teachers give students the vocabulary to name the problem and address it. In his own classes, he does this by teaching about mock Spanish to provide students with the language to analyze how the Spanish language classroom gets constructed as a White public space where the language practices of Latinas/as are framed as deficient while those of Whites are understood as accomplishments.
In the final chapter, Schwartz asserts that the challenging of Whiteness and racism should not stay within the confines of the classroom. Instead, he argues that efforts to interrogate Whiteness should extend to interactions with friends and family. Drawing on the work of Jane Hill and bell hooks, the author frames the countering of Whiteness outside of institutional spaces as courageous acts of “radical love and liberation” (p. 111.), through which White individuals can help one another transcend the oppression they have been socialized to reproduce and normalize. Drawing on the aforementioned scholars, he characterizes these critical conversations with friends and family as a lifelong project. He illustrates how he has practiced “radical love and liberation” himself by inviting relatives to revisit memories of growing up to understand race in particular ways and to witness the work that he does as a researcher.
This book has a series of strengths that merit discussion. First, Schwartz offers a critical theory-informed examination of his lived experience as a White Spanish language educator, researcher, and learner. By doing so, he convincingly demonstrates the ways that Spanish language education in the United States is often complicit in the perpetuation of Whiteness, raciolinguistic ideologies, and racial inequities. The author’s call to openly name racism within (and beyond) Spanish language education is timely in the face of growing research documenting how ideologies of language and race detrimentally impact the lives of Latinas/os in the nation (Rosa, 2019; Rosa & Flores, 2017). The author shows that while critically reflecting upon Whiteness and racism is not comfortable, such reflection—whether done individually or collectively—promises to create spaces for the inclusion of multiple ways of being and becoming bilingual speakers (e.g., the fluid languaging characteristic of U.S. Latinas/os).
Although Schwartz discusses complex ideas, the book is written with language that is accessible to individuals outside of linguistic anthropology, applied linguistics, and Spanish language education. Furthermore, chapters are structured in a way that facilitates engagement with these complex ideas. Chapters start with insightful quotes from renowned scholars, as well as the author’s colleagues and students, followed by a series of questions intended to encourage critical thinking. The author also includes thought-provoking questions and scenarios at different points throughout the chapters, which allow the reader to pause, think, and process the argument that he is developing. These pause points are crucial given that the author is asking the reader to confront their own biases and assumptions about the Spanish language and Spanish language education. Overall, as a Latino scholar who conducts research on Latinas/os’ identity construction at the nexus of language, ethnicity, and race, I believe this book is an important resource for language teachers, student-teachers, program administrators, or anyone—White or non-White—seeking to identify and challenge racism in language education.
