Most forms of overt discrimination based on race or nationality are illegal throughout the United States. However, discrimination based on a speaker’s language, dialect, or accent is not categorically prohibited; indeed, such discrimination is demonstrably commonplace and is sometimes explicitly endorsed by government policy. Widespread ideologies that stigmatize certain speech practices and link these practices to certain racialized or national identities may therefore contribute to ongoing disparities in housing, employment, education, and other domains. However, these raciolinguistic ideologies are critiqued and contested in a small but growing number of K-12 and college classrooms, in which children and adults are studying and discussing relationships among language, race, nationality, and racism. For example, many colleges offer coursework that debunks racist stereotypes about speech practices widely associated with African American communities (e.g. African American English, or AAE).  Yet some scholars have expressed concern that the strategic essentialism often invoked in conversations about AAE may have unintended and potentially counterproductive consequences. Given this state of affairs, it is important to understand where and how such conversations take place. Who learns (and who teaches) about AAE, and with what motivations? How do classroom conversations about language, race, nationality, and racism unfold, and how are they experienced by students? Do students’ understandings of language and identity change in response to such learning experiences? Answers to these questions could enable teachers and teacher educators to develop curricula, instructional activities, and professional development opportunities to support such conversations. They could also advance our theoretical understanding of how Americans learn, unlearn, or relearn ideologies of language and processes of racialization. My proposed mixed-methods study seeks to address these questions through an analysis of national-level corpus data, repeated-measures surveys and interviews of students at eight U.S. colleges and universities, and ethnographic observations at one institution. Come to hear about my pilot data and offer feedback on my proposal!