Guest editorial: Thickening solidarities through dialogue: the role of languaging on intracultural discourses of racialization

Discussing race in multicultural education/research, though important, has in many ways displaced discussions of cultural specificity. This editorial provides an overview of the special issue entitled, “Thickening Solidarities through Dialogue: The role of languaging on intracultural discourses of racialization.” It further outlines the value in recognizing cultural nuance within racialized groups on the road to enduring solidarities across and among them.To celebrate Kwanzaa one year, we came together as a group of Black families alongside the local community, in support of a local Black bookstore while filling our coffers with new literature for the year to come. For Ujamaa, or the day during the weeklong cultural holiday in which we pay special attention to cooperative economics, a Jamaican scholar kicked off the bookstore convening by elucidating her gratitude to Black Americans for making the path tenable for her and her family as im(migrants) before launching into her research and book which was available for purchase.This sister’s decision to honor Black Americans left me speechless. It was disarming – and interestingly enough, alerted me to the fact that I was, in fact, defensive in the first place. This statement was a foundational recognition that all liberties racially minoritized and otherwise marginalized folks have in the USA have been won on the backs of Black Americans. As a boiler plate recognition (which I noted based on this Jamaican scholar’s tone of voice and the fluidity with which the statement rolled off her tongue) and particularly one offered without prompting, it shifted the entire room and conversation that followed. It spoke directly to intraracial tensions that remain unspoken in front of company and diffused colonial and imperial boundaries represented by citizenship status and linguistic hierarchies (among other tools of division). These selfsame tools are acutely on display particularly within today’s political landscape.Through this framing, those cultural distinctions among the Afrodescended were placed in earnest conversation making way for a depth of solidarity among groups racialized as Black. By reaching deep into her unique positionality as a Jamaican American, this sister reached across the African diaspora in a powerful way, to Black Americans and beyond to create meaningful dialogue. – Author 2’s ReflectionIn 2025, for the first time, I visited both the village in China (father) and the city in Taiwan (mother) where my parents grew up before migrating to the USA in the 1960s. As a child of diaspora, in talking with transnational migrant (first generation immigrant) friends, I was often asked why it took me 47 years to visit the birthplaces of my parents. As an Asian American, people came to understand and empathize with the choice to distance myself from my ancestral homelands, partly out of shame at a lack of greater knowledge about the contexts of my parents’ migration and the loss of my own heritage languages which (could have) provided roots to these distant lands; additionally, out of fear that I would be rejected by my heritage communities, for my lack of language and for not being Asian enough; and finally, due to concern that the conditional and tenuous acceptance I had worked so hard to try to find in my own national and cultural contexts in the USA would not be understood or contribute in a Chinese and Taiwanese context. When I began talking about these things in community, I started multiple overlapping journeys to discover a greater sense of my identity, my ancestors and my place in diaspora.What I found in my journeys was the importance of cross-diasporic connections, nuance, openness and community. The clearer I became about my identity and place in diaspora, in who I was as Taiwanese American (with Chinese cultural roots), the more I could engage with my colleagues on both sides of the Pacific and both sides of ongoing transnational tensions which are often erased in American consciousness. I also came to recognize that the more I could understand about what structural invisibilization, deficit positioning and erasure had cost me, the better I could do my work as a multicultural educator and come alongside other communities in solidarity work. – Author 1’s ReflectionAs humans, chosen family, mothers and scholars, with deeply held shared commitments, we came to this special issue as co-editors, in community and grounded in our own deep relationality, seeking to confront cultural essentialism and highlight the ways in which diversity within racialized groups has been erased within a white supremacist global context. We did this to address with loving critique specific criticisms faced by multicultural education, including its tendency to homogenize dissimilarities between and among groups, and prioritizing race as a unifying force in lieu of culture as evolving experiences. Both of these tendencies result in overlooked histories and cultural particularities which humanize those within minoritized groups. Granted, racialization within a US context predominates in structural and systemic issues of inequity particularly in education. Nevertheless, displacing cultural realities as we have witnessed in favor of racial flattening perpetuates the harms of white supremacy and invisibilizes the humanity of racially minoritized groups. As such, we came to this issue through conversations about reclaiming our cultural selves to uplift dialogue, which grounds action, and so it felt fitting to begin with our parallel reflections, in conversation with one another as we introduce this special issue.Our goal in bringing together the voices in this special issue was not to say that specific communities have been ignored within multicultural education contexts. Indeed, much multicultural education research has explored particular ethnic, linguistic and racially minoritized communities to indicate nuances of their education journeys and structural impediments to their successes. In fact, according to Banks and Banks (1989), “The first phase of multicultural education emerged when educators who had interests and specializations in the history and culture of ethnic minority groups initiated individual and institutional actions to incorporate the concepts, information, and theories from ethnic studies into the school and teacher-education curricula.” (p. 12). Over time, those ethnic and cultural particularities have ceded space to (rather than been in conversation with) racialized group generalizations which can obscure the nuance initially animating the work. In fact, there is far less research representing intra-group (Asian/Asian American, Black Caribbean/Black American) diversity that explores overlaps and tensions among varied experiences related to languaging and solidarity discourses, and how these unique positionings impact intra-group and intergroup relationality. Dialogic processes that foreground listening, witnessing and relationship-building make this issue unique in centering the humanity of minoritized peoples through their voices and experiences. In this special issue, we do not ignore the construct of race, but rather, we foreground the voices, tensions and cultural realities of those who experience racialization, displacing the dehumanizing impact that race discourses have normalized. Unique cultural groups merit careful and meticulous study in their path-making within ongoing systems of imperially and colonially-imposed scapegoating of subjugated groups that obfuscate the hegemonic powers that rightfully warrant such criticisms. Finally, narratives that engage tensions, surfaced through homogenizing forces of racialization among similarly racialized groups with distinct linguistic and cultural histories, remain superficial. This issue seeks to offer nuanced accounts of intracultural diversity among said groups, creating an opening for deeper interrogation of experiences that often are silenced because there are few spaces to be in conversation around intraracial difference.Essentialist racialized demographic categorization of minoritized and transnational communities has become increasingly prevalent in this current moment in our shared national context of the USA. The essentialization of racialized groups reifies dehumanizing forms of fracture within, among and between families and racialized communities, and we continue to bear witness to the horrific implications of cultural essentialism that places diasporic communities’ lives in danger and scapegoats them for structural and socio-political mechanisms of control. One clear example of this is in the current targeting of minoritized racial groups in relation to immigration policies. Both through Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids which have been sanctioned to racially (and linguistically) profile “suspected” undocumented immigrants (including US citizens who are “suspect” purely by race, ethnicity or language), and through the introduction of “travel bans” and new visa restrictions and requirements for people from a large number of (African and Asian) Muslim majority countries and subsequently, for highly skilled immigrant workers regardless of national origin; these policies target large cultural groups, dehumanizing their existence and refusing to make space for their stories.Education has been far from immune to the politics of essentialization. In this time, during which the federal Department of Education is being systematically dismantled, numerous previously awarded grants targeted toward minorized people have been suspended or canceled, including those that provide supports and teacher training for linguistically minoritized children. In addition, the status of degrees largely populated by women and women of color like those within education and counseling, have seen their professional designation revoked setting the stage for employment scarcity, further pay inequity and a loss of student loan and other funding for those who aspire to these fields. With the recent national US election ushering in less federal protection and resources for minoritized learners (and a reversal of previous understandings of the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion) alongside a “free market” approach to education, the inequitable distribution of resources among racially minoritized groups will likely increase. Resources for authentic multicultural and multilingual education are threatened in ways that call for in-depth explorations of historical, existing and possible future solidarities from which bottom-up collective solidarities might be forged (Author 2 and Colleague, 2024).Acknowledging our present contexts and with a goal of “thickening solidarities” (Liu and Shange, 2018) both across racial and cultural groups, and within them, we present this special issue, a collection of peer-reviewed articles that interrogate intracultural diversity to help us better consider possible futures that build from our collective solidarities. We use this introductory essay to unpack several of the thematic conversations which take place within each article, across articles in regional diaspora groups and across the entire special issue. We then return to the idea of collective solidarity across diaspora and what it means to come from a place of radical diasporic hope in this moment.Dialogic exchanges among members of the African diaspora open the issue reflecting how generational and class-based distinctions, as well as ethnic and cultural particularities are detrimentally de-centered both driven by and as a response to anti-Black oppression. The papers are authentic and time-bending contributions demonstrating real-time grappling with discourses of and relationships to Blackness that are stubbornly loving, unresolved and ripe for reckoning.Lakeya Afolalu, Patriann Smith and Author 2 (2026) recast discourses of Blackness across the diaspora in, This is Where We Go: The Quantum Healing Possibilities in Languaging Black Humanity. The facilitated dialogue creates a healing space among the invited scholars and moderator wherein the power of Black art and creation, youth insight and a willingness to confront the harmful, hierarchical and divisive categorizing processes of empire are surfaced and acknowledged. Furthermore, the scholars reveal their own personal journeys of navigating racialization across national, linguistic and various other borders and the wisdom of both youth and elders, which serve as guiding lights in their language and literacy research with Afrodescended communities. Finally, the piece honors the ingenious linguistic practices of Africa/ns and her diaspora through recounting the fugitive languaging Black diasporic peoples have and continue to invoke in the face of systemic oppression (Author 2, 2025). This vulnerable exchange sets a precedent for healing through gathering and honoring the semiotic transmission of ancestral memory among African peoples towards joyful and liberated futures.Privette (2026) continues this conjuring of communal knowledges with, You Can Trust Me, I Love You: Recovering the Counterstory of Black Language in Education Research, which explores an intergenerational dialogue among Privette’s parents and herself. As a retrospective on her journey toward becoming a speech and language therapist, this work challenges Black education researchers in particular to reinforce their commitments to the beauty and power of Black Language by highlighting the “diversity of educational experiences among Black American students.” Through counterstory, Privette displaces the errant engagement with Black Language as a commodity and reminds readers that it is rather “a place of joy, a source of sustenance, and a method that refuses to silence the truth of our fullness.” Taken together, the two works that begin the special issue draw into focus the ways in which the nuance within Blackness, as manifested through space and time, is precisely where Black humanity thrives, while rejecting the pressure to conform to a racialized standard largely enforced from entities outside of Black diasporic membership.In representing AfroCaribbean, continental African (specifically Nigerian) and Black American realities across the two works, this section refuses the blanket racialization that has been wielded against the Afrodescended particularly in the USA. For example, rather than affirming president Biden’s assertion that “unlike the African American community, with notable exceptions, the Latino community is an incredibly diverse community,” the two articles highlight how weighty class, linguistic and ethnic/cultural distinctions can be, while directing those invested in multicultural education towards methods and resources that celebrate this intraracial diversity all while strengthening solidarities across the Black diaspora (Barrow, 2020, para. 2).The next two articles in this special issue focus on nuance related to the complex relationship among Indigeneity, mestizaje and Latinidades. Situating their studies in conversations around these racialized groupings, the authors consider relational solidarities that resist homogenization, which often invisibilizes Indigenous communities, and the violence, displacement and invisibilization enacted against them on their homelands in the Americas.Méndez (2026) in Against Homogenizing Latinidad and Indigeneity: A Chicana’s Reflexión on Thickening Solidarities, uses autohistoria-teoria and poetic inquiry to consider the “tensions, and of solidarities with the importance of nuanced understandings of the force of Latinidad as a means of among Indigenous communities. on her own as a who into relationship with communities in the and is by erasure of Indigenous communities on their homelands and histories of and her as who her own through in ways that her to related and (2026) engage in and realities through an how explorations of complex knowledge within and across communities, highlight diversity in and across of blanket like within like with for the culture are we Through dialogue, the authors the importance of in deep to offer for personal and with implications for multicultural teacher is power in refusing to These works educators and education researchers to outside of of and of where discourses would otherwise indicate refusing the of and for poetic that better the of or to rather than from how colonial borders have and communities and this section for the of in cultural to intraracial about what it means for multicultural education when Asian diasporic people who are a of the global majority and and incredibly cultural and linguistic groups, continue to be into a few racialized Asian diasporic peoples experience and within spaces that to be but are often who Asian diasporic people are to The articles and two book in this special issue which focus on people of the Asian diaspora with with and navigating spaces while As with the across other the voices by these articles against essentialization that them of their (2026) Asian on Asian Asian with their own toward Asian Americans and from their Asian American the time, when a that against an Asian American all the that and noted that Asian Americans as were racialized or as and of to ways that between their Asian and Asian American people around them, on the of the Asian was when the a shared positioning within a racialized which all people of the Asian diaspora as the that shared experiences of for of intraracial solidarity across immigrant for Asian diasporic peoples but that Asian more to racialized understandings within a diverse to their own of Asian Americans and to better understand racial call for the of racialized can be found when piece into dialogue with the piece by and Love to Asian and In this from two Chinese transnational scholars to Asian transnational and provide an to racial literacy for their their experiences but and research in ways that provide a for other Asian diasporic to understand shared experiences through of racial their in of for our of other in the of racial for our Asian and for our collective racial future and each of which deeply and Asian experiences and how come into conversation with Asian American histories and as well as the experiences of racially minoritized communities in the USA. In and take up the which to racial literacy for first generation Asian and with the of and toward collective futures that honor individual and shared experiences and histories within diasporic and in and Solidarities Asian and approach this diasporic conversation with a of transnational which in issues of around race, and and (2026) reveal to readers through their conversations the challenges of being by one another and by and the importance of and spaces of authentic dialogue to for transnational identity and collective not being seen in which recognize or make space for their and consider the importance of as a within multicultural education, which nuance and for identity and and the of of who can our as a way to and build together across idea of making authentic space to cultural essentialism also is in an context in and on a diverse education how education which commitments to and multicultural education, can often and existing forms of to or forms of such as cultural which cultural essentialism and to make in relation to cultural and linguistic In this way, on become and members of the community, their existence to and and their and through institutional these of which result in and for multicultural educators to consider how to make space and among diverse experiences without of power and context of diverse experience within the Asian diaspora are in the two book in this special issue. in Education a of and in American Education on the and for Americans in US both and hegemonic the book (and its highlight the hope and of and reclaiming The book of The of Chinese American in US and and on a Chinese American in education. the also challenges of and the ways that culture beyond in fact, navigating those can to the of that challenges special issue was by across cultural and linguistic particularities with one goal in to solidarities as a to solidarities across racialized groups. authentic and conversations about how distinct cultural groups experience racialization particularly within a context of US education the of loving that can in our research and education of multicultural education, has to the of various as learners across and contexts The of this issue is to the to humanize those by the linguistic and particularities of these groups beyond their racialization by highlighting their cultural realities and affirming their the in this issue the hope of reclaiming our cultural selves and for the future for which we so – a future race not is so much more to who we are than being in conversation with on culture not the harms of race, it rather those to their place and reminds us that we be for a future where to humanity rather than for the space at the of a racial recognizing that discourses outside of the cultural communities and we can to from the selfsame harms those discourses create one We hope this issue reminds multicultural educators and researchers that reaching across first reaching deep to our to the beauty of who we are so that our of can from the of community can