Technologies of blanquitud in a Chilean school. A critical analysis of Mestizaje , racial innocence, and caring dehumanization

This paper examines ethnoracial dynamics emerging in a social justice-oriented voucher school in Chile, where nearly half of the enrolment consisted of immigrant students, predominantly from Haiti. Through multilevel analysis, this study centres on theoriseing blanquitud as a normalised social ethos within an educational context. Drawing on 600 hours of participant observation and more than one hundred interviews, this work interrogates, analyses, and contextualises three technologies of blanquitud applied by educators to respond to overt anti-Black racism experienced by immigrant students of African descent. The first is mestizaje, a national myth of racial mixture and homogeneity that erased the influence of African ancestry and relegated Indigenous peoples to privilege blanquitud. The second is the performance of racial innocence, operationalised by engaging in race-evasive practices to ignore or downplay anti-Black violence. The third is the enactment of caring dehumanisation towards the bodies of people of African descent.