The (un)coupling of language and race in a Green Mong teacher’s advocacy for dialect equity

Abstract This case study explores Xee, a bilingual Hmong teacher’s observed dialect inequity at her dual language bilingual education (DLBE) program and advocacy through a LangCrit lens. Multiple interviews and informal conversations were utilized to gain an understanding of Xee’s critical consciousness for the inclusion of the Green Mong dialect within the Hmong-English DLBE. The findings reveal that the strict boundaries between the two dialects, Green Mong and White Hmong, were socially constructed and imposed through specific strategies that both ascribed an assumed and imposed identity of White Hmong onto Green Mong students and a linguistic hierarchy at the DLBE. Xee’s advocacy efforts aimed at providing students with a third space to negotiate their Green Mong identity while also othering/racializing parents and teachers against a White norm. In the discussion and conclusion sections, I recommend that a critical stance should also be extended to parents and families to avoid deficit identities and stereotypes, and call for more investigation into inequitable conditions in one-way DLBE programs.