The Phoung and Cioe-Peña reading raised how implicit the interconnection of race, language, and disability is until addressed directly. These social constructs are often co-constructed through school policing and policy. This perspective made me question how much of what is called "support" for students is actually to reinforce the same colonists ideologies that entail white, monolingual as the norm. What is often set as norm in schools includes the values of students going unnoticed at schools and even frames belonging with blending in which keeps the assimilation policy in rotation especially for students of color. Moreover, schools often mark difference as failure and that failure is placed on the individual rather than traced back to broader systemic structures of violence in the classrooms as we read in the example of how Dan was blaming their mom for not learning English to be able to communicate.
Another thing I kept thinking throughout this reading is how labeling disabled students as having "special needs" reinforced this rhetoric. Calling it "special" creates a separation between "normal" needs and "other" needs when in reality everyone has different learning accommodations and needs. Framing it this way makes it easier for schools and others institutions to dismiss their responsibility in being able to meet disabled student needs. It pushes the burden onto these students and families rather than addressing the systemic barriers imposed in classrooms environments. This is also similar to how bilingual or deaf children are labeled as deficient when they are compared to the monolingual norm of English speakers. The problem is not with the children but with the institutions unwillingness to value multiple ways of learning, being, and communicating.
Furthermore, another example that really stuck with me was the way Paty was speaking to Tanya about her language practices and framing Spanish as inferior to English. It made me connect this to my own experience on how I utilize Spanish most of the time in non-academic ways and how all of this reinforces this kind of narrative specially at Swarthmore. Even when I tried to purposely do my research in Spanish it often becomes more time-consuming and harder for me to the point that I give up. This made me think of how institutions push English as the "legitimate" language of knowledge production and how it also reflects how much resources and academic credibility are structured around English dominance. All of this reflects how language policing has never been neutral and how it's a mechanism to enforce who gets recognized as human, worthy of belonging, and as intelligent.