Latinx racialization in education: A composite conversation on the social construction of race

ABSTRACT This article presents a fictitious composite conversation between a professor and a graduate student, showing how they make meaning of whether Latinx is a racial category. Their dialogue highlights a crucial shift – from asking whether Latinx is a race to recognizing the need to understand the process of racialization. The narrative demonstrates that grounding this inquiry in contributions from empirical research – particularly from the education field – clarifies and strengthens the understanding of Latinx as a racialized group. Their exchange grapples with defining race beyond physical appearance and attends to Latinx heterogeneity and the intra-group marginalizations shaped by settler colonialism, colorism, anti-Blackness, and anti-Indigeneity. The article concludes by urging scholars to examine racialization and to conceptualize Latinx as a racialized group, underscoring that systemic barriers and educational injustices that continue to deny Latinxs parity with Whites play a central role in socially constructing Latinx racialization.