ABSTRACT
Using testimonio, this chapter shares an example of a Latina student enacting community cultural wealth, alongside accessing institutional resources to develop, maintain, and meet college aspirations, which informed the development of a critical race college retention and persistence framework. This study uses New Juan Crow in Education (NJCE) with community cultural wealth to connect school contexts and student resources. NJCE allows the study to account for racialized institutional processes and experiences with intersectionality. Community cultural wealth builds on and challenges the traditional sociological concepts of social and cultural capital. Combined, these two frameworks account for the marginalizing schooling contexts and highlight the student-level assets used to challenge them. Examining both the institutional context and student cultural wealth serves to contest the individualistic notion of grit. The chapter proposes a College Retention and Persistence model, which acknowledges that community cultural wealth can serve as a protective barrier against racial microaggressions but institutional resources—such as outreach programs, supportive counselors, summer bridge programs, and scholarships—are critical for students to navigate both NJCE and postsecondary contexts.
