bilingual authors have more tools, perhaps than monolingual authors. Or perhaps not, because monolingual authors maybe have different dialects, right… - Nelson Flores

I think our society finds fixing racialized communities as a seductive narrative. Because it really leaves the rest of the society off the hook, right? So, we don’t have to reflect on the root causes of racial inequalities, because we can just say, “Oh, it’s their fault, because they’re not using – they’re not asking their children questions.” I don’t know how anyone who, who has any experience working in neighborhoods, um, that have experienced multiple generations of racialized poverty, um, could possibly think that changing the way that you ask questions to your child, or increasing the number of words [laughter] that you give them, is really going to be what’s the make-it or break-it for whether that child is gonna thrive or not, right?

I’m not suggesting that white middle-class and upper-class people don’t have a rich cultural practices that they engage in. The issue is that all communities have rich cultural and linguistic practices that they engage in, and that’s something that the word gap discourse completely ignores. It completely ignores decades of anthropological research that documents the rich cultural and linguistic practices of all communities, and supposes that the practices of one is somehow objectively more quality than others.

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?