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Proceedings of the annual meeting of the Southern Anthropological Society

Abstract

Drawing upon fieldwork conducted over 16 months (2022-2023), this paper ethnographically examines the efforts of one Latinx activist-educator, Señora Gómez, to challenge deficit narratives while working within a public high school in Charlotte, North Carolina. Located within the so-called “New” Latinx South, increasing incidences of Latinx/Hispanic students elicit improvisational responses to combat resource limitations; teachers such as Sra. Gómez are saddled with the “invisible tax” placed upon bilingual educators of color. This case study of her work grapples with the imperfect, messy ways in which resistance within the school day is carried out in pursuit of Latinx student agency and empowerment. While advocating externally for structural reform and changes, educators within school systems actively work to meet immediate student needs. In this paper, I argue that Señora Gómez’s in-classroom actions were indicative of two core features of her praxis: (1) dynamic and improvisational responses that strike a balance between curricular requirements and empowerment; and (2) the role that individual, daily actions have upon student belief in their capacity to succeed within the classroom. This argument does not seek to conceptualize an ideal practice of resistance and refusal; instead, it seeks to bring attention to the messy, imperfect realities of equity work that happens within unequal structures.

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