Nelson Flores Quotes

complex from whose perspective, right? Um, richer from whose perspective? Like, these aren’t objective designations.

I think that all of the money going into it might give you some indication for why people were so defensive about a response that called it into question, because there is a lot of money that’s going into it. I mean, remedial compensatory education, which has been funded by government and nongovernment officials since at least the ’60s, um, that are designed to fix the so-called cultural and linguistic deficits of racialized communities, have always been, um, a very lucrative industry. Um, there’s always been tons of money going into it. I mean, I don’t even know how much money – probably billions of dollars, at this point, honestly. And I always wonder, like, what would the world look like if we actually, like, invested that money in revitalizing communities, and, like ending poverty, and, like, ensuring that children had access to quality healthcare.

I think, empirically, we have the data that shows that all communities have complex, rich language practices that they engage in, but people don’t believe it because they don’t wanna believe it because they have deep investment in these ideas that certain communities have more rich language practices than other communities. At that point, you can’t disprove white supremacy. If people are invested in white supremacy, then they’re gonna be invested in white supremacy.

we have to keep engaging in political struggle, knowing that many of the changes that we’re advocating for may not benefit us or our children, but maybe will benefit our grandchildren or our great-grandchildren. Or our descendants, if we’re not having children.

This whole idea of a bilingual brain is still, from my opinion, coming from a monolingual perspective in the sense that most of the world is bi- or multilingual. Why are we exceptionalizing the, quote, “bilingual” brain instead of the quote, “monolingual” brain to begin with? Why aren’t we saying, “What are the unique cognitive traits of monolingual people who are the minority of the population?” Maybe a bilingual brain is just a brain and it’s the monolingual brain that’s actually this weird thing that we need to study. Of course, I don’t actually believe that, but I feel like some of the discourse exceptionalizing bilingualism, when we reverse it and really think about, well, if we describe monolingualism in that way, that would be really strange. Yet, “bilingual” describes more of the world’s population than “monolingual.” What exactly are we doing there?

I think what language socialization research helps us, then, to think about is, if we’re starting from the perspective that all children are socialized into complex language practices, and there, there isn’t an inherent hierarchy in terms of the complexity, then how do we incorporate the language practices of all children into the classroom? How do we stop framing certain language practices as deficient and in need of remediation? and I think that that’s a more productive beginning of a conversation, and I think there are lots of different ways you can answer that, right?

anthropology has shown us, for decades, that regardless of how many words people may or may not be hearing, that they’re being socialized into complex practices.

the idea that more is inherently better isn’t universal and isn’t necessarily true. But of course, we actually use language to engage in social practices with other people. So we’re not just listing vocabulary words [laughs] when we’re talking to other people. We’re engaging in dynamics that we’ve been socialized into, that we’ve gradually become familiar with as we become more socialized into those practices. Um, and so, to decontextualize language in that way, I think, really shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what the function of language is, which is to communicate, which is to engage in practice. It’s not to memorize vocabulary lists.

We have normalized bilingualism in some public schools in the United States, because people have pushed for the possibility of new listening subject positions in these institutions. So we have to keep thinking about what do we want teachers to be able to do, and how can we transform the institutions to allow them to be able to do that.

that reminds me of the work of Lisa Delpit, right, who, um, kind of looked at the cultural differences in parental communication, and found, in her work with African American parents, that they were more directive, um, than in white middle-class families. And then, what happens when those children get to school is that, the teachers who have been socialized – because most of the teachers are white women, by demographics – they’ve been socialized into this more passive way of making requests, where they’ll say, “Don’t you think you should be doing this?” The child, the child may not actually understand that that actually was a directive, right? Because it was a directive-the teacher was making a request, and the child didn’t necessarily understand it was a request, and maybe actually thought that they had a choice when you said, “Don’t you think you should – ” Which gets, again, to the importance of understanding cultural difference, and not assuming that one is more quality than the other. I mean, Lisa Delpit makes it very clear, in her work, that it’s not that black parents care less about their children. They love their children, they are – they have a particular history, um, where maybe there are needs to be more directive. Because if not, um, their child isn’t gonna be socialized to deal with an antiblack world, that expects people to – expects black people, in particular, to adhere to directives, right?

which spaces are these linguistic tokens policed, and what histories are being cited in those spaces? And how it’s really not just about individual teachers; it’s really this broader sociohistorical process that has allowed for this emergence of policing to begin with. And so, it connects to the point I was making, before, where we conclude, there, that any efforts at raising the consciousness of teachers has to also be situated within broader political struggles, that then can allow teachers to inhabit new listening subject positions, right?

language is not just a series of decontextualized vocabulary words. And more isn’t always necessarily better.

it is part of a much longer history where the language practices of racialized communities, of low-income communities, have always been framed through a deficit lens. Now, if we even go back to the early years of European colonialism, we can see raciolinguistic ideologies being used to dehumanize indigenous communities. Where people would describe the language practices of indigenous peoples as, um, almost animalistic, as a form of dehumanization. Now, nowadays, people wouldn’t say things like, “People are speaking like animals,” or at least most people wouldn’t say that. Um, but the underlying logic of there’s something somehow deficient about the language practices of racialized communities has remained consistent since the early days of European colonialism. And so, it’s not surprising that the 30 million word gap is so seductive, because it reinforces all of these ideologies that people have been socialized into accepting, for multiple generations.

I have been accused of being a bully. I think a lot of that stems from precisely my resistance to feel like I need to do the emotional labor of making people feel comfortable about what I’m saying. In particular, as a Latino scholar doing work in bilingual education, I’m particularly resistant to the idea that I need to make white people feel comfortable doing work in bilingual education. I put my work out there. I let it speak for itself. I certainly have never targeted anyone individually and personally insulted them, which is what bullying actually is, right?

Whenever we talk about social and academic language today, that’s really the legacy that we’ve inherited – a legacy of semilingualism, of suggesting that there’s something illegitimate about the language practices of racialized bilingual students.