Negotiating domination and resistance: English language learners and Foucault’s Care of the Self in the context of English-only education

This article explores the basis for resistance to the normalizing technologies associated with English-only legislation and resulting educational practices. The dominance of English-only education in US public schools has normalized English first language speakers and English language learning by appropriating the technology of language in order to become ‘Americanized.’ Because of the growing number of English language learners (ELL) in US public schools, it is important to understand how the normalizing educational practices and disciplinary power associated with English-only education also cultivate possibilities for resistance. I draw upon Foucault’s analytic care of the self to explore the space of English-only education by asking: ‘What alternatives to the normalization of ELL students might be mobilized for resistance?’ This analysis suggests that to shift from a normalized ‘American’ identity requires questioning the racist and nativist discourse on English-only education, and focusing attention on contradictory and multilayered notions of ‘American’. The article concludes with recommendations for teacher education on how to cultivate prospective teachers’ resistance to English-only education.     

Under the cloak of professionalism: covert racism in teacher education

This study focuses on manifestations of racism and colonialism in teacher education. I build on the theoretical framing of Critical Race Theory and decolonization in order to expose racist and colonial assumptions at the core of teacher education. I highlight in particular the work of covert racism under the cloak of teachers’ professionalism. I focus on what I call ‘professional microaggressions’: subtle forms of racism and colonialism hidden beneath professional definitions. By interviewing graduates of a well-established Indigenous teacher education program in British Columbia, Canada, I examine the mechanisms that still hinder the success of Indigenous teacher candidates in teacher education and in the school system. The study highlights the resilience, resistance, and strategic planning that Indigenous teachers use to challenge the system while advancing their position within it. Lastly, I suggest ways to support Indigenous teacher candidates in teacher education.     

‘I FELT DEAD’: applying a racial microaggressions framework to Black students’ experiences of Black History Month and Black History*

This paper uses a Critical Race Theory perspective to explain the everyday racisms – racial microaggressions – directed towards students of African and Caribbean descent during a non-statutory Black History unit, at an English secondary school. Applying a racial microaggressions framework to ethnographic data, this paper finds that experiences of studying Black History by students of African and Caribbean descent are dominated by various types of racial microaggressions including: micro-invalidation, micro-insults and micro-assaults. These experiences are symptomatic of wider racist structures and processes within the National Curriculum for History, based upon the ideology of white supremacy. This paper concludes that the racial microaggressions framework allows for useful ways of thinking about the function and purpose of Black History Month and Black History in schools, and its opportunities for exposing wider institutional and ideological underpinnings that legitimate deficit understandings about black people in school classrooms.     

Desire for the desert: racialising white teachers’ motives for working in remote schools in the Australian desert

Abstract

Distinct from rurality, the Australian desert has long functioned as a signifier of remoteness in the dominant imagination; a product of spatialised binary relations between ‘progressive’ (white) mainstream or idealised white countryside, and disordered/dangerous Aboriginal periphery. Remoteness constitutes a complex racial dynamic that has historically mediated white teachers’ and missionaries’ desires to travel to the social margins. This article adopts a discursive understanding of remoteness to examine contemporary white teachers’ decisions to work in Aboriginal schools in the desert – decisions that are often articulated through unwitting recourse to the ‘three Ms’ or ‘tourist’. The article explores these identity constructs and how they enable different performances of whiteness. It examines how white people’s desires are often covertly raced but does not however, position the teacher as a priori racist. Rather, desire is theorised as a social construct in which subjects invest, which may at times contribute toward processes of decolonisation. This rendering moves beyond a logic of individualism and underpins the argument that recognising how these dynamics play out is vital with respect to understanding the place of white teachers inside remote Indigenous Education. Moreover, such insights are valuable for appreciating how whiteness continues to be reproduced in White Australia under a guise of good intentions.     

A Preliminary Report on the Relationship Between Microaggressions Against Black People and Racism Among White College Students

Previous efforts to understand microaggressions have surveyed stigmatized group members’ experiences of receiving microaggressions. This report presents the first attempt to measure self-reported likelihood of delivering microaggressions rather than receiving microaggressions and to explore the association between the likelihood of delivering microaggressions and racial prejudice. We conducted a cross-sectional survey of 33 black and 118 non-Hispanic white undergraduate students at a large public Southern/Midwest university. Black students reported the degree to which a series of statements would be experienced as microaggressive. White students reported their likelihood of delivering those statements and completed measures of racial prejudice. White students’ self-reported likelihood of engaging in microaggressive acts was significantly related to all measures of racial prejudice. The single item “A lot of minorities are too sensitive” was the strongest predictor of negative feelings toward black people. Results offer preliminary support that the delivery of microaggressions by white students is not simply innocuous behavior and may be indicative of broad, complex, and negative racial attitudes and explicit underlying hostility and negative feelings toward black students.     

‘It wasn’t racism; it was more misunderstanding.’ White teachers,Latino/a students,and racial battle fatigue

This article explores how and why a group of Latino/a high school students identify and explain racism differently over the course of an 18-month participatory action research (PAR) project. To do this we examine what recent scholarship has termed racial microaggressions in what is thought of as the Post-Racial America public school system. Pulling examples from student and teacher interview, focus group, and class discussion data we first examine how these students’ teachers conceptualize and talk about racism, cross-racial relationships, and racial misunderstandings, and then we juxtapose that with students’ discursive work to make sense of the ways their teachers make their conceptualizations known and/or seen in school. Focusing on the K-12 context, this study finds racial battle fatigue may be why students switch between how they label these aggressions.     

A complicated passport: racialized realities and lessons from visible minority women teachers

This article presents key findings derived from the experiences of visible minority woman as teachers in Canada, whose lived realities reveal myriad instances of compromise. The ethnic, cultural and racial diversity among teachers is an area that has garnered attention as it pertains to equitable work environments, teacher–student relations, and multicultural education. The challenges and responsibility of representing one’s racialized identity, ethnicity, culture, and religion while finding oneself marginalized within mainstream populace is critically examined through their narratives and reflexivity. In instances of blatant discrimination, bridging the public and private sphere, to moments of fulfillment, the resilience of these women is a defining factor of their success within adversity. Through their experiences there is opportunity to inform and advance the notions of diversity, representation, and distinctiveness of teachers in educational settings and the impact this has on an intercontinental symbol of society values in education.     

Sounding Like Your Race in the Employment Process: An Experiment on Speaker Voice,Race Identification,and Stereotyping

Research has shown that listeners can identify black and white speakers with high accuracy rates from voice alone, but few studies have investigated whether individuals can identify Asian American native English speakers. In a three-part hypothetical employment process experiment, recordings of white, black, and US-born Asian American voices are used to test participants’ (N = 49) race identification of unseen speakers, evaluations of speakers’ employability, and accuracy of race identification with the introduction of headshots. Key findings show the following: judges demonstrate high accuracy rates of identifying white and black speakers based on voice alone, judges rated the black speaker at least eight times less likely to be hired than the white and Asian American speakers, and accuracy rates of race identification for the Asian American speaker rose dramatically with the introduction of headshots. The study contributes to research on Asian American English speech and extends work on stereotyping and employment discrimination.     

Shouts of the street: Identity and the spaces of authenticity

Abstract

For a long time the street has occupied a cherished place in the lexicon of urbanism. Romanticised as the site of authentic political action, celebrated and reviled as the font of ‘low’ culture or feared as a signifier of dangerous territorialisation, the street can be gazed at, walked through and appropriated time and again in representations of the city. This paper looks at some of the tensions in the notions of spatiality that are both masked and naturalised in our common use of the term.

The paper takes as its empirical focus the racialised and racist mobilisations that occurred in the East End of London in the late summer of 1993. A local by‐election with a very high profile BNP (fascist) presence, the racist assault on seventeen year old Qudddus Ali, which left him for several days near death in intensive care, and the subsequent clashes in Whitechapel and Spitalfields which sprang from attacks on the shops and restaurants of Brick Lane by far right activists culminated in serious clashes between police and local Bengalis and a petrol bomb attack on the local police station.

The paper shows that ‘the street’ invokes a range of spatialities that are a constitutive feature in understanding not only the parochial specificities of Spitalfields and Stepney, Wapping and Whitechapel, but also the very nature of racist and anti‐racist mobilisation. At times the vocabulary of resistance may appear similar or even identical to the language of the carceral and territorial imperatives that codify and institutionalise racist practices. On closer inspection subtle distinctions arise from particular articulations of street sensibilities, raising questions that are essential for a plausible and politically progressive reading of recent violent disorder and indispensable to an understanding of the constellation of contemporary debates around public space and the perennial discussion about ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ in anti‐racist mobilisations.     

Mapping folk devils old and new through permanent exclusion from London schools

The process of permanent exclusion from school offers a heightened example of the rejections necessary to keep the English neoliberal education treadmill running. This extreme end of education’s disciplinary apparatus illuminates trends less immediately legible across the system, namely how securitization and neoliberal governance heighten inequalities. Unpicking the dynamics at work behind exclusion shows how racialization and marginalization are not reduced but reproduced through this educational format. This paper maps how securitization and neoliberal governance work together through permanent exclusion to reproduce racialized folk devils old and new, drawing on discourses of criminal blackness as well as the radicalized Islamic terrorist. It will also explore how exclusion policy is negotiated and translated into daily practice by exploring parental accounts of their child’s permanent exclusion alongside the narratives of head teachers in London.     

Pornographic eroticism and sexual grotesquerie in representations of African American sportswomen

Sport is used as a lens through which ‘white’ people are encouraged to analyse how they construct and view ‘black’ people. Sport is linked to an analysis of the ways that sections of the media have framed tennis champions Serena and Venus Williams as threats. This article examines how key media spokespeople use disparaging racist and sexist stereotypes that no longer focus on female passivity and weakness to denigrate their physical power and mental strength. It argues for a new critical race consciousness that can inform sporting commentary and media narratives to enable African American women and men to envision and achieve equality within a broader framework of social justice.     

Preserving white comfort and safety: the politics of race erasure in academe

ABSTRACT

In this paper four critical scholars/ activists reflect on the complex institutional and public responses to recent white supremacist events on Canadian campuses and the equity discussions they have affected. Specifically, we interrogate practices, which reify and reinsure positions of dominance and human/social hierarchy in four ways. To begin, (1) we interrogate freedom of speech and freedom of expression positions, as well as the reliance on critique of neoliberalism to supplant analyses of racism and colonial logics, to identify their role in preserving white fragility. Next, (2) we provide a local media analysis of academe’s responses to white supremacy on campus to trace the discursive moves that obscure institutional racism. Following these contextual scaffoldings, (3) we explore the ways equity projects within institutions remain projects protecting and preserving whiteness while exploiting the politics of identity. Finally, (4) we carefully reflect on the various modes of inclusion in the academy, which produce racialized scholars(hip) to be complicit in the reproduction of racial thinking, alongside and occluded by institutional narratives of equity and progress. Critical questions are raised regarding the possibilities, complicities and complexities of achieving equity and transformation in the academy, as well as the role of racialized scholars(hip) in this work.     

‘Are you gonna show this to white people?’: Chicana/o and Latina/o students’ counter-narratives on race,place, and representation

This article explores the recurring narratives on race, place and representation that emerged in the talk of Chicana/o and Latina/o sixth-graders at a middle school in East Los Angeles, California. Discourse analytic methods are used to closely examine how these narratives were constructed within the contexts of everyday classroom interactions. Drawing on the notion of counter-storytelling from critical race theory, the article highlights how these sixth-grade students articulated counter-narratives about who they were and what their community was like – often in direct opposition to what they perceived as white people’s stereotypical assumptions and misperceptions. It is argued that these narratives constitute a powerful and sophisticated critique of dominant narratives that frame working-class Chicana/o and Latina/o students in racist and pejorative terms. The article ends with a discussion of implications for understanding youth agency and the politics of representation.     

Ideal liberal subjects and Muslim “Others”: liberal nationalism and the racialization of Muslim youth in a progressive Danish school

Drawing on an ethnographic case study of Muslim youth in a Danish lower secondary school, this article explores teacher talk about Muslim immigrant students and how teachers engaged liberal ideals of respect, individualism, and equality in ways that racialized immigrant students. I consider moments of vacillation in teacher talk to explore tensions between teacher’s desires to assimilate immigrant students to national norms of belonging and their desires to be perceived as inclusive and ‘open.’ In doing so, I ask how visions of liberal schooling impose ideas of what a ‘normal’ citizen should be and how teachers produce ‘ideal’ liberal subjects in their talk and in the everyday practices of schools. I argue that teachers engage the ideals of abstract liberalism to establish a colorblind discourse of non-racism. While educators described the school as an idealized space where students are encouraged to freely express themselves, to develop unique individual outlooks, it was clear that this vision of ‘openness’ did not include Muslim students’ attachments to religious and cultural identities.     

Understanding racial literacy through acts of (un)masking: Latinx teachers in a new Latinx diaspora community

As Latinx teachers are recruited to work in U.S. schools, a continued agenda to understand their experiences is warranted. This multiple case study considers the storytelling of six Latinx teachers in a new Latinx diaspora community. It documents both their racial literacy (the ability to resolve racially stressful issues) and their experiences with (un)masking (literal and figurative ways to cover or embrace racial markers). This study reveals the tensions that arise when Latinx teachers attempt to define their identity in social spaces where their languages, bodies, and names, among other markers, are racialized when read by others. Implications for teacher education include a call to include storytelling as a pedagogical tool to develop Latinx teachers’ racial literacy skills. By experiencing storytelling in their own schooling, Latinx teachers are more likely to model such racial literacy skills in their schooling communities; thereby, empowering a generation of students to enact more humanizing behaviors.     

Dealing with racist incidents: what do beginning teachers learn from schools?

This article focuses on how schools respond to racist incidents, and what new teachers learn from their involvement in those processes. It analyses four incidents involving the pupils of four beginning teachers. The article suggests that in each case, schools either partly or wholly avoided addressing the incident, and that this avoidance can be understood in terms of the colour and power evasive discourse, which is the dominant discourse on race in Western societies, and in most schools. One aspect of this discourse is that racism is defined on the basis of individual intentions, not outcomes. The article argues that it may be possible to adopt a more race cognisant approach with student teachers and staff in schools, building on nascent understandings of institutional racism, which shifts the focus to outcomes rather than intentions. The article demonstrates this approach, analysing each incident in terms of its consequences for the learning of the new teacher, and for the promotion of race equality in the school. While the small number of incidents may initially appear heartening, their negative impact on both teacher confidence and children’s understanding may be significant. The findings suggest that in the changing context of initial teacher education in England, approaches to supporting both schools and new teachers in this often misunderstood area are much needed, and that one way forward may be to give teachers time and support to critically reflect on and discuss their experiences.     

Whitewashing the nation: racist jokes and the construction of the African ‘other’ in Greek popular cinema

This article explores representations of race in three Greek popular films of the 1970s and 1980s. The portrayal of African characters in these films is antagonistically positioned in relation to the dominant, ‘whitewashed’ Greek national narrative which relies on the nineteenth century idea that Greece is the progenitor of European civilization. Often masquerading itself as ‘just a joke’, the discourse of these films narrates the African Other as lacking in terms of culture, intelligence and beauty – the three central categories upon which the idea of the ‘white supremacy’, according to Cornell West, is historically constructed in modernity. Tightly woven with this idea (largely introduced in Greece by the leading European powers), these films enunciate explicitly colonial viewpoints in a country that was neither a colonial power nor at the geopolitical center of the European project. The article argues that the racialized representations of these films are an effect of appropriating the Eurocentric idea of historicism, where the ‘progress’ and ‘backwardness’ of groups and nations are measured according to how effectively they perform the values of modernity.     

Devout Muslims or tough highlanders? Exploring attitudes toward ethnic nationalism and racism in Europe’s ethnic-Chechen Salafi communities

This is the first article that systematically deconstructs the idealised, widely shared view and formal self-representation of Salafis as a de-culturalised group of Muslim believers who are solely devoted to the idea of a uniform Muslim identity and are indifferent to the notions of ethnic nationalism and racism. Drawing on unique interviews with EU-based ethnic-Chechen émigré Salafis, the article illuminates the ways they draw boundaries and consequently construe their ethnic and racial identities as superior and opposed to Muslims stemming from the Middle East and Central Asia. Below the surface of coherent ideologically shaped self-representations, the diaspora Salafis’ identities reflect the idea of Chechnya’s mountainous topography being conducive to a superior ‘national mentality’, racial purity, and cultural uniqueness. Intriguingly, the diaspora-Chechen Salafis’ attitudes toward Middle Easterners and Central Asians employ a rhetoric which entails similarities with the notion of imagined geographies and to some extent resembles Western Orientalist discourse. In stark contrast to leading Salafi scholars’ statements emphasising a united Muslim identity, which are routinely echoed by outsiders, this article points out the maintenance of strong ethnic-nationalist and racist resentments amongst individual members of this religious community.     

Unpacking racial identities: the salience of ethnicity in Southeast Asian-American youth’s schooling experience

This article reconceptualizes white teachers’ notion of their Asian-American students’ racial identity. Forty urban Southeast Asian-American (SEAA) students and seven of their white European-American teachers were examined to determine how the students responded to the white teachers’ assumptions about their identity. This study provides an overview of the U.S. historical and political contexts that shape the positionality of Southeast Asian-American youth in the black–white racial discourse. It found that despite the fact that the teachers lumped the SEAA students into one category, the students highlighted the salience of ethnicity in their lives. One implication of this study is for teacher education programs to train new teacher candidates to move beyond simple racial categorization or race-blind approaches. Instead, teachers should be taught to acknowledge the importance of ethnicity to their students; to examine their own positionalities; and to incorporate more culturally relevant pedagogies into their instructional practices.