05 - School Contexts of Language Learning Reading Response

I greatly appreciate the sharing of this very insightful response, I am in such deep agreement with everything you presented here and am thankful for the clarity and the tenderness of your reflections.

You represented so well how race, language and disability interacted and were supported by systemic structures in schools. I really agreed with you when you talked about the term “support” mostly being used to uphold white, monolingual norms under the pretext of inclusion. Your dissection of the “special needs” label was also spot-on, it is indeed the case that this framing helps to divide rather than unite, and shifts the burden away from the institutions.

Your personal association with language and research at Swarthmore was a strong influence, too. It is a silent but powerful testimony to how deeply rooted the language hierarchies are even in the academic spaces that claim to appreciate cultural diversity. Your thoughts prompted me to think even deeper about how belonging is in most cases conditional and tied to assimilation, and how much it is really necessary to resist that.

I am really thankful for your response and for the way it makes these intricate dynamics visible.