Abstract Background The complexities of Latino/a/e/x racial identity remain underexplored in the context of engineering education. Here, we examine the experiences of five Latinas with engineering aspirations, focusing on how they understand their racialized identities and racial inequity in STEM. Purpose To attend to the within‐group heterogeneity in the Latino/a/e/x population in engineering and examine how this diversity shapes sensemaking about race and racial inequity. We leverage a longitudinal dataset to gain insight into what factors impact participants' critical consciousness over time. Method Grounded in Critical Race Theory, we performed a secondary thematic analysis of 3 years of interviews with five Latinas with engineering aspirations. Drawing on Bonilla Silva's Tri‐Racial hierarchy and Freire's Critical Consciousness frameworks, we explored how Latinos/as/es/xs' positioning in the US racial hierarchy supports or hinders their critical consciousness development. Results Participants' skin color, language, and parents' country of origin were salient aspects of how they understood their racial identity, which positioned them as either White, racially ambiguous, or brown. This shaped their experiences in engineering spaces, engagement with hegemonic STEM narratives, and perceptions of racial inequities. We found that the COVID‐19 pandemic and systemic racism in 2020 prompted an important shift in their critical consciousness development. Conclusions Our findings have implications for research and practice. Researchers should consider (i) employing critical and intersectional frameworks to historicize and contextualize Latino/a/e/x racial identity and dispel the “myth of the monolith”, and (ii) developing interventions that disrupt color‐evasive rhetoric/practices and support the critical consciousness raising of STEM faculty and students.
Blanco et al. (Tue,) studied this question.