MRC Speaker Series: María Cioè-Peña (Penn)

¿Soy Acaso Negra?: A testimonio on the erasure of Black Latines within, and beyond, bilingual education

Abstract: Black erasure remains a large issue within bilingual education with the standard association of Blackness in the U.S., often, equated with African American identity and English monolingualism. Conversely, most bilingual programming in the U.S. serves Spanish-users, and bilingual education research tends to center Spanish-using Latinx students and communities. Across these contexts, the focus is on language and an imagined mixed-race (i.e, mestizo) collective, centering culture to circumvent race and treating language as connective yet racially neutral. As a result, addressing issues of anti-Blackness is often viewed as beyond the scope of bilingual education. However, as critical scholars have shown, language and perceptions of language users are not racially-neutral and practices that are rooted in this ideology create more harm than good. Black people exist within Latin America, the Latin American diaspora, and bilingual education settings. Thus, Black erasure in bilingual education upholds anti-Blackness and model minority narratives in education overall and results in tangible exclusion and oppression for Black bi/multilinguals. Supported by theory and history, in this presentation, I “makes visible the internal and external pressures that have contributed to silencing my voice” as a bilingual Black Latina
to shed light on the continued erasure of Black students in bilingual education programs and research.

Bio: María Cioè-Peña (PhD) is Assistant Professor at the Penn Graduate School of Education. She is a bilingual/biliterate
education researcher and educator who examines the intersections of disability, language, school–parent partnerships, and education policy. Taking a sociolinguistic approach and stance, she pushes and reimagines the boundaries of inclusive spaces for minoritized children. Stemming from her experiences as a former bilingual special education teacher, Dr. Cioè-Peña’s research focuses on bilingual children with dis/abilities, their families, and their ability to access multilingual and inclusive learning spaces within public schools. Her interests are deeply rooted in political economy, raciolinguistic perspectives and critical dis/ability awareness within schools and families.