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International Intrigue
By Grant Jolliff
According to Davidson-Davie's institutional data…
- 12.7% of Davidson-Davie’s enrollment population is identified as Latinx.
- Davidson-Davie’s graduation rate for Latinx students is 49.3%, while the overall graduation rate is 47.2%.
Interested in learning more about Latinx students?
Join Sarah Wright for "SíSe Puede": Building Trust and Belonging with Latinx Students (Piedmont Hub) on Friday, October 4 from 12:00 to 1:00 pm.
Words Really Do Matter
By Sarah Wright
Throughout the years, I have found that people extend so much grace to others. Flannery O’Connor often embedded the theme in her literature, and she was known to say that she knew it was lost on her readership because most people do not understand the concept of grace–unwarranted forgiveness–in simple terms. In my research and support of Latinx students, I have learned from necessity that we tend to speak about groups of people as monoliths. We are wrong when we engage in that practice, and we can level some pretty unjust and erroneous information when we do, but we still do it. We do it because a group so diverse is almost impossible to speak about in generalities, but our practices tend to require that we do just that.
Over the years, I have presented on building trust with Latinx students. Can I build trust with ALL Latinx students? I would like to say so, yes, but that would be my ego responding. Can I build some? Sure. Can I share what has worked? Yes. Please attend the presentation that I will be doing for the Piedmont Hub in which I will talk about some of those generalized strategies. I will begin with the caveat that I am speaking in generalities and a one size approach does not always fit all.
I do know that each Latinx student I encounter is uniquely different. Do some share some similarities? Of course, but they do not have the same backgrounds, motivations, or even traumas. Making generalizations often perpetuates stereotypes and even worse, we may be leveling microaggressions against people we truly want to support.
I adore this 2020 explanation from an NPR article: Microaggressions “are the thinly veiled, everyday instances of racism, homophobia, sexism (and more) that you see in the world. Sometimes it's an insult, other times it's an errant comment or gesture” (Limbong). Microaggressions may be failing to or failing to try to pronounce someone’s name correctly because it has an ethnic foundation that we do not understand. This type of microaggression can be doubly egregious. It can send the message that the name or person isn’t worth trying to get it right, and names, in many cultures, have profound meanings. Microaggressions can be acting shocked by someone’s language skills or intellect–implying that the assumption is that people from that culture are not generally intelligent.
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