This chapter engages with the question of what language policy does by considering what the scope of language policy as a field of inquiry is beyond the traditional focus on the management of ‘named languages’. I look at how language policies in educational context involve privileging particular ‘ways of being’ and managing hierarchies of knowledge and expertise, moving far beyond the mere regulation of ‘language’ use. In other cases, such as in the regulation of interaction on the flight decks of commercial airliners, language policies are part of a broader process of managing relationships, where they help establish an overall set of values. Language policies are also involved in managing visibility by controlling what voices are heard in public discourse, not only with regard to what ‘languages’ may be used, but also more broadly with regard to what topics may be discussed, what behaviours are to be engaged in and which are to be avoided. Finally, language policies manage access by helping create boundaries in discourse, associated with beliefs about what it means to be a member of a community.

In this chapter, I present a conceptual framework for understanding the perspectives used as lenses to examine the construct of Black immigrant literacies in this book. The chapter begins with a historicizing of multiliteracies and translanguaging followed by a description of the way in which literacy has emerged as a sociocultural and multimodal practice. Raciolinguistics, a raciolinguistic perspective, transracialization, as well as language and raciosemiotic architecture are then presented in tandem, highlighting how linguistic and broader semiotic affordances work based on ideologies steeped in racialized language and semiotics. In turn, raciolinguistic and raciosemiotic ideologies influencing multiliteracies of Black immigrant youth are discussed as well as mechanisms such as a transraciolinguistic approach which function as an avenue for understanding how Black immigrants leverage literacies in relation to peers. Following this, translanguaging based on an integrated model of multilingualism is presented along with a description of the ways in which Black immigrants’ language practices have been examined and intersect to undergird the current study regarding the literacies of Black immigrant youth. In doing so, connections across these concepts as well as the potential influence of race-based ideologies for clarifying Black immigrants’ multiliteracies are illuminated through attention to translanguaging and transsemiotizing with Englishes.

Language policies are difficult to enact, but they may be even more difficult to undo. Frederick County is one of the rare communities to ever repeal an English-only policy. I analyze how activists and politicians worked in concert to dismantle the ordinance, both in terms of actually passing a repeal bill and by marshaling community support more broadly. I find that people used four strategies: flipping the economics script, linking language to race and racism, questioning whether English can even be defined and separated from other languages, and highlighting the role of collective action. At the same time, focusing on the economic benefits of multilingualism nearly eclipsed the other approaches, with the end result that the repeal bill itself offered a more limited vision of language policy than the rest of the repeal campaign and the interviews. Ultimately, I argue that there are advantages as well as risks to cultivating and combining different alternatives to English-only policies. In light of these people’s successful advocacy, I also conclude that scholars have much to learn from activists’ expertise.

Gail Prasad, daughter of an inter-racial, -cultural, -linguistic, and -religious couple, grew up with only one language, "the language of opportunity.” At an early age, she experienced systemic racism and exclusion, while navigating multilingual interactions as an act of resistance. Creativity and criticality are at the heart of her research investigating the coercive power relations among majoritarian and minoritized language users. She sees school as "a protected space for imagining and building more equitable societies.”

Trump’s entire presidential campaign had anti-immigrant and anti-Latinx sentiment at its core, but in August of 2018, at an event honoring the border patrol, Trump praised Latinx Border Patrol agent Adrian Anzaldúa for his role in the arrest of two US citizens who were transporting immigrants across the US Mexico. In a seeming non sequitur, Trump also remarked that Anzaldúa “speaks perfect English.” This back-handed tribute invokes the patronizing assumption that Latinx individuals are not expected by to speak English well; the guise of flattery, then, reinforces the ideological hostility toward people of color Trump has promulgated. This chapter argues the above episode is emblematic of a process termed “raciolinguistic exceptionalism,” a rhetorical strategy that exceptionalizes one individual while racializing and demonizing an entire group. The authors show how this specific incident highlights the White supremacist, colonial relations through which ideologies of language and race are formed, embedded, and maintained. They also argue that raciolinguistic exceptionalism is a bipartisan process that sometimes easily flies under the radar because the connections it relies on are not obviously racist to hegemonic White speakers, who constantly have to be reminded not to infantilize people of color for speaking “such good English.”