How schools make race: Teaching Latinx racialization in America By Laura C.Chávez‐Moreno, Cambridge: Harvard Education Press. 2024. 224 pp. $42.00 (hardback). ISBN: 9781682539224

As of 2022, Latinxs are the largest minority group in the United States. In the last couple of decades, states like RedRock (pseudonym) have experienced a recent increase in their Latinx population. Located in the Midwest, RedRock saw the Latinx population more than double from 1990 to 2000. The growing culturally and linguistically diverse population in Oakville, a metropolitan city, translated into a growing population of students designated as English learners attending Oakville Urban School District. How Schools Make Race: Teaching Latinx Racialization in America by Laura Chávez-Moreno explores how a secondary bilingual education program conveyed ideas about race, Latinx racialization, and Latinidad. Using ethnographic methods of participant observations, interviews, and document analysis, this book illustrates how the dual-language programs at Borane Middle School and Amlie High School function as a racial project that contributes to the racialization of Latinxs as a group. The book is divided into three parts. The first part, which consists of chapters one and two, discusses how the bilingual education program of Oakville communicates ideas about race and Latinxs as a racialized group. From Chávez-Moreno's observations of class activities and discussions, we learn how teachers broach issues about race with students. In chapter one, across different vignettes, she showcases how race was often discussed as a biological or innate characteristic rather than a socially constructed category. Though teachers attempted to tackle issues of race and racism, students lacked clarity about what constitutes race and racism, and how Latinxs experiences were shaped by racism. Chapter two explores how teachers (1) defined “Latino culture” and (2) taught its relationship to race. The bilingual education program's curriculum promoted the idea that “Latino culture” constituted the cultural and linguistic practices of Latin America. Little attention was given to the long and rich history of Latinxs in the United States. Moreover, Latinxs were defined as immigrants rather than long standing community members. Indeed, the majority of students designated as English learners in Oakville were US born. Despite defining Latinxs as an ethnic group, interviews with youth reveal their awareness of how Latinxs faced discrimination and were subject to racialization. However, few teachers referred to “Latinx” as a racial category. Chapters three and four focus on the construction of Latinidad as well as how Latinxs were relationally racialized. In chapter three, Chávez-Moreno describes how the bilingual education program construction of Latinidad resulted in the invisibilization of Indigenous as well as Asian Latinx students. Moreover, Latinidad was defined by centering the Spanish language. Chapter four specifically focuses on how the construction of Latinidad subjugated the “Latinx racialized group [as different] from and in relation to the Black racialized group.” She details how racist ideas worked to demarcate Latinxs as different from Blacks. By focusing on the differences between groups (e.g., which group was better behaved or capable of learning Spanish), teachers contributed to the racial project by communicating ideas about how on the racial hierarchy Latinidad was higher than Blackness. The final two chapters focus on how the racialization of Latinxs occurred at the structural level through the bilingual program's policies and practices. Chapter five illustrates how the bilingual program operated in such a way that it failed to improve the achievement of Latinx students despite its race-radical roots. Indeed, school practices like academic tracking perpetuated ideas about where Latinxs were positioned in the white supremacist racial hierarchy, which was below their White English-speaking counterparts. The final chapter focuses on the experiences of White students. Beyond school practices, district and state policies also shaped the experiences of students partaking in the bilingual education program. Chávez-Moreno brings to our attention how targeted funding for students designated as English learners was shared with White students given their participation in a bilingual program. An opportunity to ameliorate inequities was lost. Through a variety of examples, she illustrates how structural forces advanced a racial project that perpetuated ideas about race and Latinxs as a racialized group. Unlike other books focused on dual-language programs, this ethnographic case study expands our understanding of how bilingual programs work at the secondary level. To date, much of the research has focused primarily on elementary bilingual programs. However, its main contribution lies in how the dual language programs contributed to race-making as it relates to Latinxs, the largest racialized group in the United States. Across the chapters, Chávez-Moreno depicts how teachers taught about race, contributed to the racialization of Latinxs vis-à-vis others, and ultimately contributed to racialized outcomes they sought to address. By showing how teachers at Borane Middle School and Amlie High School inadvertently promoted inconsistent ideas about race and Latinidad, this book invites educators to “embrace ambitious teaching about the ambivalence of race.” In summary, this book is a must read for scholars and educators alike. As an ethnographic case study, scholars can benefit from a beautiful example of how Chávez-Moreno discusses her positionality throughout her narration. One caveat is that readers might be left wondering how White families understand their role in perpetuating racialized outcomes for Latinx students. Nevertheless, given the growing number of dual-language programs across the nation, this timely book can help spark conversation about how teachers and administrators can work towards dismantling structural racist practices that reproduce inequities for Latinx students. This book will leave educators with an understanding of how incorporating “a pro-race, anti-racism, and anti-race stance” can help schools develop students' critical-racial consciousness. Sophia L. Ángeles is an assistant professor of multilingual education at Pennsylvania State University. Stemming from her experiences as a former educator working in multilingual and immigrant communities, her research examines how immigration and educational policies shape the educational trajectories of high school newcomer youth.