How Schools Make Race shows how a Spanish-English bilingual-education program
teaches—implicitly and explicitly—about race. It shows how the program’s practices,
pedagogy, and policies construct the Latinx group as an example to illuminate the
process through which schools unintentionally reinforce racial ideas and impede their
anti-racist efforts. Chávez-Moreno's book frames the program as a racial project and attends to how
schools construct Latinidad in relation to Blackness, Indigeneity, Asianness, and
Whiteness. Chávez-Moreno urges readers to reconceptualize Latinx as a racialized
group and calls for ambitious teaching that rethinks race and works toward a critical
racial consciousness education through considering racialization.
Dr. Chávez-Moreno’s book, How Schools Make Race: Teaching Latinx Racialization in
America, published by Harvard Education Press, won the 2025 American Association of
Hispanics in Higher Education Early Career Book of the Year Award and a 2025
American Educational Studies Association Critics’ Choice Book Award. Her book has
been featured in several podcasts and media, including the New Books Network and
Latinx Talk.