“Ain’t no white people have to be cultural ambassadors, right?” How a Latinx teacher in the US South resists ephemeral multiculturalism for political praxis

In this article, we expand the geographic narratives of Latinx teachers by first outlining how such teachers are desired to be a certain type of “cultural ambassador” in the US South, and second, how one teacher eschews this construction to instead center political agency and a democratic praxis toward racial justice. Whereas cultural ambassadorship privileges an ephemeral discourse of diversity and post-racism that positions Latinx teachers as objects tasked to model and replicate “safe” multiculturalism, we share how one Afro-Latina teacher in South Carolina uses her power to teach students how to interrogate racist systems and to practice political resistance.