Drawing insights primarily from Ethnic Studies, this essay is broken into the following components: outlining the elusive task of defining urban; delineating three decolonizing moves in relation to representation, structure, and affect; and ending with the ongoing struggles for Ethnic Studies in PK-12 schools and higher education. The goal is to sharpen "nuestra facultad" and deeply engage with "el sitio y la lengua" of urban schools and communities in order to unpack what has been normalized, construed as common sense and, therefore, taken for granted. An earlier version of this essay was given as the author's presidential address at the 2019 annual meeting of the American Educational Studies Association in Baltimore, Maryland.