Chicana/Latina Testimonios on Effects and Responses to Microaggressions

Authors:
Publisher website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Testimonio in educational research can reveal both the oppression that exists within educational institutions and the powerful efforts in which students of color 1 1. Typically in our work, we intentionally capitalize the term “Students of Color” to reject the standard grammatical norm. Capitalization is used as a means of empowerment and represents a grammatical move toward social justice. We typically use this rule to apply to “People, Immigrants, Women and Communities of Color” in our writing. However, we understand the policies this journal has established to maintain consistency in the use of capitalization and the potential to exclude other oppressed groups in this grammatical practice (i.e., Queer, Persons with Disabilities, etc.). View all notes engage to challenge and transform those spaces. We utilize testimonio as a methodological approach to understand how undocumented and U.S.-born Chicana/Latina students experience the effects of and responses to a systemic, subtle, and cumulative form of racism, racist nativist microaggressions. We draw from critical race and Chicana feminist frameworks to understand the effects of microaggressions as embodied systemic oppression (Cruz, 2006 Cruz, C. 2006. “Toward an epistemology of a brown body”. In Chicana/Latina/Latina education in everyday life: Feminista perspectives on pedagogy and epistemology, Edited by: Delgado Bernal, D. , Elenes, A. C. , Godinez, F. and Villenas, S. 59–76. Albany, NY : State University New York Press. [Google Scholar] ; Moraga & Anzaldúa, 2002b Moraga, C. and Anzaldúa, G. 2002b. This bridge called my back: Writing by radical women of color , (3rd ed.)., Berkeley, CA : Third Woman Press. [Google Scholar] ). Our analysis reveals that the students engaged and created counterspaces within K-12 institutions that challenged oppression and sought to transform the educational spaces that marginalized them. Throughout these findings, we explore the process of conocimiento (Anzaldúa, 2002 Anzaldúa, G. 2002. “Now let us shift … The path of conocimiento … Inner work, public acts”. In This bridge we call home: Radical visions for transformation, Edited by: Anzaldúa, G. and Keating, A. 540–578. New York, NY : Routledge. [Google Scholar] ) that allowed the women to engage in reflection, healing, and celebration of their resiliency.

This publication has 28 references indexed in Scilit: