"I WANTED MY KIDS TO SPEAK MORE AND SPEAK BETTER": ARTS-BASED AUTO/ETHNOGRAPHIC REFLECTIONS AND MEMOIR OF AFRICAN AMERICAN AND AFROLATINX/É FAMILIES ON BILINGUALISM AND SPANISH DUAL LANGUAGE IMMERSION IN THE SOUTHEASTERN U.S.

While research shows that African American students benefit from Dual Language Immersion (DLI) (Anberg-Espinosa, 2008; Thomas & Collier, 2010), some educators “would rather see schools ensuring students are proficient in reading and writing in English before teaching those skills in another language” (Gross, 2016). This deficit perspective affects program offerings and public opinion on the language skills of minoritized students. This dissertation explores these issues through a creative autoethnographic memoir of my family’s becoming bilingual, interviews with parents of elementary school dual language immersion students, and a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of DLI parent guidelines. Drawing from these methodologies, Iseek to answer three questions: 1) To whom are DLI programs targeted?; 2) How do African American and AfroLatinx/é parents consider deficit perspectives toward African American language abilities?; and 3) How do I navigate my and my children’s linguistic and racial identities in these challenging times?