Race and TESOL: Introduction to Concepts and Theories

QUARTERLY

CONTENTS

ARTICLESRace and TESOL: Introduction to Concepts and Theories 471Ryuko Kubota and Angel Lin

Racializing ESOL Teacher Identities in U.S. K–12 Public Schools 495Suhanthie Motha

Wrestling With Race: The Implications of Integrative Antiracism Education for Immigrant ESL Youth 519Lisa Taylor

More Than a Game: A Critical Discourse Analysis of a Racial Inequality Exercise in Japan 545Kay Hammond

Racialized Research Identities in ESL/EFL Research 573Ena Lee and Andrea Simon-Maeda

FORUMEnglish Lessons 595Ruth Spack

Comments on Jennifer Jenkins’s “Implementing an International Approach to English Pronunciation: The Role of Teacher Attitudes and Identity”

A Reader Responds 604 Mitsuo Kubota

The Author Replies 609 Ayako Suzuki and Jennifer Jenkins

BRIEF REPORTS AND SUMMARIESHard Times: Arab TESOL Students’ Experiences of Racialization and Othering in the United Kingdom 615Sarah Rich and Salah Troudi

Language Learning and the Definition of One’s Social, Cultural, and Racial Identity 628Khadar Bashir-Ali

Owner

Text Box

Volumes Menu

REVIEW ARTICLEOn Race, Language, Power and Identity: Understanding the Intricacies Through Multicultural Communication, Language Policies, and the Ebonics Debate 641

Intercultural Communication: An Advanced Resource Book A. Holliday, M. Hyde, and J. Kullman (Eds.)

Language Policy: Theory and Method T. Ricento (Ed.)

Ebonics: The Urban Education Debate (2nd Edition) J. Ramirez, T. Wiley, G. de Klerk, E. Lee, and W. Wright (Eds.)

Reviewed by Andrea Parmegiani

REVIEWSAntiracist Education 649Julie KailinReviewed by Lynne T. Díaz-Rico

Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States 652Eduardo Bonilla-SilvaReviewed by Hyunjung Shin

Information for Contributors 655

Volume 40, Number 3 □ September 2006

TESOL QUARTERLY Vol. 40, No. 3, September 2006 471

Race And TESOL: Introduction to Concepts and Theories RYUKO KUBOTA University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States

ANGEL LIN University of Hong Kong Hong Kong SAR, China

The fi eld of teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) brings people from various racialized backgrounds together in teaching, learning, and research. The idea of race, racialization, and racism are inescapable topics that arise in the contact zones created by teaching English worldwide and thus are valid topics to explore in the fi eld. Nonetheless, unlike our peer fi elds such as anthropology, education, and sociology, the fi eld of TESOL has not suffi ciently addressed the idea of race and related concepts. This special topic issue is one of the fi rst attempts in our fi eld to fi ll the gap. This introductory article will survey key concepts and theories defi ned and debated in various fi elds, includ-ing race, ethnicity, culture, racialization, racism, critical race theory, and critical White studies, to provide a foundation for future explorations.

Angel: Several years ago when I was teaching at my former university in my native city of Hong Kong, I was the deputy leader of our undergraduate TESL program. One day, my program leader, who is Chinese, told me that he would like to appoint my colleague (a Caucasian, native English speaker who did not have a doctoral degree, as I did) as the deputy program leader to boost the public profi le of our program in the local communities. I protested via e-mail to him, saying that what he proposed would only reproduce the society’s denigration of local, non-Caucasian English teach-ing staff. He replied that he wouldn’t enter into such an unfruitful argu-ment with me and that all he cared about was the good of the program. I held nothing personal against my Caucasian colleague or program leader, and they both remain good friends of mine. However, I agonized that all my years of training and research to develop expertise in language educa-tion had only earned me a second-class status in my profession. The belief held by my program leader was well-intentioned, but he had let the per-ceived superiority of White native speakers exercise its power, and he was unaware (or refused to be aware) of the injustice done to me through reproducing this ideology.

JOBNAME: TESOL 40#3 2006 Page: 1 Output: Monday September 11 20:37:10 2006tsp/TESOL/126789/40.3.1

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Ryuko: As a Japanese woman who grew up in Japan, I attended graduate schools in the United States and Canada. There were quite a few interna-tional students and I felt I was treated fairly by my peers and professors. However, once I began teaching in an American institution of higher edu-cation, my sense of the way others perceive me changed dramatically. I was no longer protected as a receiver of educational services that I paid for. Once, I gave a presentation to my colleagues about my thoughts on the need to include issues of politics and ideologies in second and foreign language teaching and teacher education. I mentioned something to the effect that we should address issues of race and ethnicity more. A couple of years later, in a reappointment review, I was criticized as being racist in my presentation. I have continued to be convinced that my status as a visi-ble racial minority affects many experiences that I face (e.g., being criti-cized for my “mannerism” in a recent teaching evaluation). I struggle with the double perceptions of me by others: a petite, sweet-looking Asian woman to immediate colleagues (“kiddo,” as one colleague used to call me) and a scholar with a fi rm voice, respected yet invisible in publication.

Teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) is a worldwide enterprise, involving many groups of people who are

often perceived as racially and culturally distinct. Nonetheless, inquiry into ideas of race has not yet earned signifi cant visibility in TESOL scholarship. As several authors of TESOL Quarterly have pointed out, our fi eld is in dire need of an explicit exploration of race ( Amin, 1997 ; Ibrahim, 2000 ; Willett, 1996 ). Angel’s narrative representing the anguish that many TESOL professionals face deserves serious atten-tion. The lack of discussion could be related to the stigma attached to the term race , as Ryuko’s narrative shows. It evokes racism which is often interpreted as overt forms of bigotry, rather than structural or institutional inequalities, and this undertone tends to prevent open dialogue. Contrary to the relative absence of discussions on race in TESOL, other fi elds such as sociology, anthropology, education, and composition studies have both extensively and critically explored issues of race. Such scholarship theorizes race, racialization, and rac-ism, critiques racial inequalities in institutional structures, and explores the relationship between these constructs and sociocultural and political processes, including identity formation, knowledge con-struction, nationalism, national and local policies on education and immigration, and so on. The fi eld of TESOL and second language teaching in general have begun to explore critical issues related to social categories, such as gender ( Davis & Skilton-Sylvester, 2004 ), sexual identities ( Nelson, 1999 , 2006 ), and class ( Vandrick, 1995 ). Race is yet another category that addresses vital issues of power, iden-tity, and social (in)justice.

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This special topic issue aims to fi ll these internal and external gaps. We consider this task essential for TESOL, as our fi eld creates numerous contact zones for diverse groups of people all over the world, zones in which questions and tensions related to the idea of race are inescapable and constitute valid topics for critical explora-tion. Rather than being silenced by the discomfort of discussing race, racialization, and racism, the fi eld of TESOL could initiate unique and vibrant inquiries to build on these topics and investigate how they infl uence identity formation, instructional practices, program development, policy making, research, and beyond. This special topic issue is one of the fi rst attempts in our fi eld to bring scholar- practitioners together to address these issues (see also Curtis & Romney, 2006 ).

In this introduction, we survey some of the concepts and theories about the idea of race as defi ned and debated in various fi elds, make connections between them and TESOL, and introduce the articles in this issue. The amount of scholarly discussion on issues surrounding race is immense in the fi elds outside of TESOL, such as sociology, anthropology, and education. To provide a comprehensive summary of theories, views, and research methodologies is beyond our scope here. Rather, the main purpose of this introduction is to provide TESOL professionals with a springboard for future exploration of the topic.

RACE, ETHNICITY, AND CULTURE

Race

In everyday discourse, the word race invokes phenotypical features such as skin color, eye shape, hair texture, facial features, and so on. However, scientists generally agree that race is not a concept deter-mined by biological evidence. In other words, categorization of differ-ent races cannot be verifi ed by biological constructs such as genetic characteristics. Arguing that any differentiation of races, if they exist at all, depends on relative, rather than absolute, constancy of genes and raising a problem of classifying the human species in racial terms, Goldberg (1993) states:

Human beings possess a far larger proportion of genes in common than they do genes that are supposed to differentiate them racially. Not surpris-ingly, we are much more like each other than we are different. It has been estimated that, genetically speaking, the difference in difference — the percentage of our genes that determines our purportedly racial or prima-rily morphological difference — is 0.5 percent. (p. 67)

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More recently, the Human Genome Project has shown that human beings share 99.9% of their genes, leaving only 0.1% for potential racial difference in a biological sense ( Hutchinson, 2005 ).

In the sense that racial categories are not biologically determined, races do not exist. However, the recent approval of BiDil in the United States, a cardiovascular drug targeted for African Americans or the fi rst racial drug ( Duster, 2005 ), represents sustained scientifi c interest in grouping people according to race when investigating the relationship between genetics and diseases. In such explorations, the category of race has been replaced by the concept of population identifi ed by genetic characteristics ( St. Louis, 2005 ). According to St. Louis, par-ticular populations are identifi ed through certain objective genetic distinctions that may only partially correspond to socially conceived racial categories. He argues that, nonetheless, the concept of popula-tion tends to slide back into the existing social category of race, creat-ing biological racialization, for instance, in the discourse that supports the relationship between a racial group, identifi ed as special or target population, and greater health risks. 1

Such slippage signifi es the conceptual basis of race as a socially constructed discursive category and the pervasiveness of the idea of race used for legitimating divisions of human beings and forming our judgment of where people belong based on phenotypical characteris-tics. According to Omi and Winant (1994) , “race is a concept which signifi es and symbolizes social confl icts and interests by referring to different types of human bodies” (p. 55). As a social construct, racial representations are always in fl ux and situated in social and historical processes. Race is socially and historically constructed and shaped by discourses that give specifi c meanings to the ways we see the world, rather than refl ecting the illusive notion of objective, stable, and tran-scendent truths. Put differently, race parallels the nation as imagined community ( Anderson, 1983 ). Miles (1987) argues:

Like ‘nations,’ ‘races’ too are imagined, in the dual sense that they have no real biological foundation and that all those included by the signifi ca-tion can never know each other, and are imagined as communities in the sense of a common feeling of fellowship. Moreover, they are also imag-ined as limited in the sense that a boundary is perceived, beyond which lie other ‘races.’ (pp. 26 – 27)

1 An example of using the notion of population is seen in the human DNA research study called the International HapMap Project (see Takezawa, 2006). The guidelines of this project warn against equating geography and race and use such labels as YRI, JPT, CHB, and CEU to denote Yoruba in Ibadan, Nigeria; Japanese in Tokyo; Han Chinese in Beijing; and Utah residents with ancestry from northern and western Europe. However, this warning might not be faithfully followed when others interpret the data.


Furthermore, that race is a social construction raises the question whether the term race can be used as an analytical category for scholarly investigation and discussion. Some sociologists with neo-Marxist perspec-tives, especially those in the United Kingdom, have argued that using race as a descriptive and/or analytical category assumes its existence as a reality that divides groups of people into different races, contradicting the notion that race is a social construct rather than an ontologically determined category. It further legitimates the process of racialization, which leads to racism when a negative view of the Other as inferior is attached (see Darder & Torres, 2004 ; Miles, 1993 ). These scholars advo-cate abandoning race as an analytical category and focusing instead on racialization and racism. Yet others argue that while race is a historical, cultural, and political construction rather than a homogeneous, unitary, and static category, it can politically and strategically mobilize racially oppressed groups to create solidarity and resistance (see Solomos, 2003 ). These contested meanings of race indicate the need for us to continue theorizing and clarifying our focus of investigation.

Ethnicity

A concept related to race is ethnicity, which is sometimes used as a politically correct code word for race ( Miles & Brown, 2003 ). It is often used as a category to distinguish groups based on sociocultural characteristics, such as ancestry, language, religion, custom, and life-style ( Thompson & Hickey, 1994 ). However, like race, ethnicity is an equally contentious term with defi nition and boundary problems ( Miles & Brown, 2003 ). If it denotes sociocultural characteristics, how, for instance, is culture defi ned? Where can cultural boundaries be drawn in order to distinguish unique ethnic groups? How are diasporic groups categorized? Take, for instance, Asians who immigrated to Peru and other Latin American countries generations ago but have recently moved to Los Angeles (see Darder & Torres, 2004 ). Which ethnic group do they belong to? If they enroll in ESL classes, will they be perceived as Asian or Latin American? What assumptions would their teachers and peers have in interacting with them? Thus, although the notion of ethnicity appears to be concrete and easy to conceptualize because it is closely connected to a familiar and ordinary notion of culture, the concept is as elusive as race given the tremendous variabil-ity within a group and similarity among groups. Just as race is not a biologically determined construct, ethnicity does not denote innate or inherent attributes of human beings. Rather, it is a relational concept that sets one group of people apart from another — a process of

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constructing differences. In discussing ethnocization and racialization, Lewis and Phoenix (2004) argue:

‘Ethnicity’ and ‘race’ are about the process of marking differences between people on the basis of assumptions about human physical or cultural vari-ations and the meanings of these variations. This is what we mean when we say that individuals and groups are racialized or ethnicised … [such] identities are about setting and maintaining boundaries between groups. (p. 125)

Culture

These discussions underscore the importance of scrutinizing the notion of culture in relation to race and ethnicity. One signifi cant question to be posed is this: Is exploring or examining issues of cul-ture in English language teaching and learning (e.g., cultural differ-ence in linguistic and nonlinguistic practices, construction and performance of cultural identities) equivalent to or part of scholarly inquiry into the idea of race? We grappled with this important ques-tion at many levels in editing this special topic issue. This question also refl ects a characteristic of contemporary discourse about race. Historically, the European expansion to various parts of the world prompted Europeans to categorize the Other that they encountered into savages or cannibals, while they identifi ed themselves as civilized (see Spack, 2002 , and in this issue). The development of science in the late eighteenth century created a discourse in which race referred to biological categories of human beings, and it was exploited to per-petuate a hierarchy of superiority/inferiority ( Miles & Brown, 2003 ). In our postcolonial society, a scholarly consensus considers race not as a biologically determined concept, as mentioned earlier. However, the human will to differentiate and draw boundaries between groups of people has not disappeared. Thus, in our contemporary world, racial difference has increasingly been replaced by the notion of cultural dif-ference, a more benign and acceptable signifi er than race yet used as a means to exclude the experiences of certain racial and ethnic groups as Other and undesirable ( Anthias & Yuval-Davis, 1992 ; Bonilla-Silva, 2003 ; May, 1999 ; van Dijk, 1993 ). Thus, religion, for example, as part of culture can become a means for racialization (see Rich & Troudi, this issue). Sharing the same function with the idea of race, cultural difference is conveniently used to differentiate, exclude, or privilege cer-tain groups of people. Therefore, issues of culture can be investigated with the understanding that they are often implicitly and yet pro-foundly connected to the idea of race.


RACIALIZATION AND RACISMS

We have argued that race, ethnicity, and culture are ideas that sort and divide human beings based on perceived or discursively con-structed phenotypical and cultural characteristics. These socially con-structed differences lead to the notions of racilization and racism, terms that are diffi cult to defi ne and involve a great deal of argu-ment. Racialization can be defi ned simply as racial categorization, “a dialectical process by which meaning is attributed to particular bio-logical features of human beings, as a result of which individuals may be assigned to a general category of persons that reproduces itself biologically” ( Miles & Brown, 2003 , p. 102). In other words, it is “a core concept in the analysis of racial phenomena, particularly to sig-nal the processes by which ideas about race are constructed, come to be regarded as meaningful, and are acted upon ( Murji & Solomos, 2005 , p. 1). Racialization is also similar to what Omi and Winant (1994) call racial formation, which is “the sociohistorical process by which racial categories are created, inhabited, transformed, and destroyed” (p. 55). Thus, racialization produces and legitimates dif-ference among social groups based on perceived biological charac-teristics, yet it is a dynamic and historically situated process in which racial signifi cations are always shifting. However, racialization per se does not necessarily lead to racism (more on this point later), partly because the agent involved in the process of racialization is not always the socially powerful or dominant group. For instance, a minority and subordinate group can racialize themselves to construct their own identity in positive terms for the purpose of resistance (e.g., the strategic essentialism discussed by postcolonial critics; see Spivak, 1988 , 1993 ).

Racialization or the categorization of people carries a legacy of colonialism and often contains value judgments of the categories, although a scientifi c discourse masks such judgments with a neutral, objective, and even liberal humanistic tone. Underlying the categori-zation is the discourse supported by a specifi c power dynamic that excludes certain racialized groups as the inferior Other while main-taining the status quo of the Self. Such discourse can be identifi ed as racism . Despite the familiarity of the term, the defi nition of racism is not straightforward. Various scholars have given defi nitions: “Racism excludes racially defi ned others, or promotes, or secures, or sustains such exclusion” ( Goldberg, 1993 , p.101); racism is “a fundamental characteristic of social projects which create or reproduce structures of domination based on essentialist categories of race” ( Omi & Winant, 1994 , p. 162); and racism is “a discourse and practice of inferiorizing

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ethnic groups … . racism can also use the notion of the undesirability of groups … this may lead to attempts to assimilate, exterminate or exclude” ( Anthias & Yuval-Davis, 1992 , p. 12). Miles and Brown (2003) concisely defi ne racism as ideology, arguing that “racism is … a rep-resentational form which, by designating discrete human collectivities, necessarily functions as an ideology of inclusion and exclusion” (p. 104). The term ideology has also been widely used in the fi eld of sec-ond language teaching, as seen in scholarly inquiries into linguistic imperialism, critical discourse analysis, language ideologies, and so on (e.g., Phillipson, 1992 ; Rogers, 2004 ; Woolard, 1998 ). However, echo-ing the concern expressed by Anthias and Yuval-Davis (1992) about the connotation of false consciousness inherent in the Marxist usage of the term ideology, the poststructuralist discourse in applied linguis-tics cautions against the implication that ideology is juxtaposed with something else that represents truth ( Pennycook, 2001 ). In this per-spective, racism can be viewed as both discourse and social practice that construct and perpetuate unequal relations of power through inferiorization, a process in which the Other is rendered inferior to the Self.

Kinds of Racisms

Despite such complexity in the defi nition of the term, racism in everyday life usually evokes only overt forms of prejudice and personal discrimination (see Hammond, this issue). Thus, when the term racism or racist is used in public discourse, the listener/reader often con-cludes that the group of people referred to are implicitly identifi ed as racist and defends that he/she is absolutely not. Worse yet, individuals that critically analyze race and racism or write about the topic are sometimes accused of promoting racial divisions and thus being racists ( Bonilla-Silva, 2003 ). This may well be a natural reaction given the terms’ negative connotation in contemporary society. However, the notion that racism is a discourse allows us to understand that most individuals are not racist; what is racist are the structured ideas that shape social reality. Thus, a statement, “I am not a racist, but … [expressing xenophobic ideas about immigrants of color, for instance]” refl ects the nature of this contemporary discourse of racism. To scrutinize racism, it is necessary to move beyond the understanding of racism at the level of individual beliefs and prejudices and instead examine various forms of racism or racisms ( Goldberg, 1993 ; Omi & Winant, 1994 ; Taylor, this issue).

For instance, racism as a discourse permeates every corner of society and shapes social relations, practices, and institutional structures. This


is what is often called institutional or structural racism. In the fi eld of teaching English, this type of racism is embodied in various ways. One example is the practices of hiring English language teachers world-wide. It has been pointed out that native speakers of English have a privileged status in employment, a privilege that is increased by having White skin ( Amin, 1999 , 2004 ; Golombek & Jordan, 2005 ; Lee, in press ; Leung, Harris, & Rampton, 1997 ; Rampton, 1990 ). Such prac-tices are sometimes implicit, masked by a liberal discourse of racial and ethnic equality ( Mahboob, Uhrig, Newman, & Hartford, 2004 ), or they could be quite explicit in job advertisements in some expanding circle countries. Another example is how students of color in schools in North America are often labeled as lacking culturally, socially, lin-guistically, or academically (e.g., Lee, 2005 ; Willett, 1996 ; Motha, Taylor, Bashir-Ali, this issue, see also Scheurich, 1997 ; Solórzano & Yosso, 2002 ) and often excluded from having mainstream educational experiences because of the gate-keeping and tracking function that ESL has as an institutional label and because of the unwillingness among mainstream teachers and students to socially engage with ESL students in a meaningful way ( Harklau, 2000 ; Lee, 2005 ; Valdés, 1998 ; Valenzuela, 1999 ).

Another level of racism can be called epistemological racism (see Kubota, 2002 ). Scheurich (1997) argues that it is based on the epis-temologies, knowledges, and practices that privilege the European modernist White civilization. Referring to infl uential philosophers, social scientists, and educators, who have been virtually all White males, Scheurich argues that the world ontological categories and epistemologies that we use to think, analyze, socialize, and educate have been largely developed within this racial and cultural tradition, including “the legitimated ways of knowing (for example, positivism, neo-realism, postpositivisms, interpretivisms, constructivism, the criti-cal tradition, and postmodernisms/poststructuralisms) that we use” (p. 140).

Epistemological racism is refl ected in North American textbooks for various disciplines, such as biology, history, and English, which con-struct and perpetuate racial stereotypes and the hegemony of Whiteness stemming from Western imperialism ( Willinsky, 1998 ). Hegemony of Whiteness is also refl ected in ESL/EFL textbooks when constructing the norm with regard to what is legitimate linguistic and cultural knowledge (cf., Matsuda, 2002 ).

Another consequence of epistemological racism constructs what counts as more academically valuable or scholarly rigorous. One exam-ple is a comment one of us heard from a teacher educator from New York: “Teacher education programs should recruit undergraduate stu-dents majoring in Latino/Chicano studies because such a degree is

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useless for them. A degree in education would give them better career opportunities.” While this view emphasizes practicality, it blatantly devalues knowledge of the specifi c discipline. Such thinking discour-ages many scholars of color from using nonmainstream race-based ways of thinking and writing in their research. Scheurich (1997) argues that even creating journals devoted to specifi c races would marginalize scholars of color because these journals are less respected than main-stream ones and negatively affect tenure and promotion of the faculty of color, which feeds into institutional racism.

Intersection of Racism With Other Injustices

Just as the idea of race interacts with gender and sexuality in iden-tity construction and negotiation, racisms can also intersect with other types of injustices such as sexism, classism, homophobia, lingui-cism, ageism, and so on. The combination is not manifested in a zero-sum fashion but in a complex way. For instance, in a situation of hiring teachers, we can think of multiple types of candidates: White female native English speaker in her 60s, White gay male native English speaker in his 40s, Black female native English speaker from Uganda in her 50s, Asian female native English speaker in her 20s, White female nonnative English speaker from Russia in her 20s, Asian male nonnative English speaker in his 30s, and so on. Who gets hired would be infl uenced by the complex interplay of multiple factors, not just racialized images or any one factor, although one factor might eventually carry a signifi cant weight in each individual case. In other words, the perceived profi les of the candidates based on race, gender, nationality, age, sexual identity, and language background would complicatedly interact with who the employer is, what the program goal is, what the institutional mission is, who the students are, and so on.

Another example is how racism produces assumptions about some-one’s language profi ciency. Using a matched guise test, Rubin (1992) investigated how racial images (e.g., Asian face versus Caucasian face) would affect listening comprehension and perception of accent in an instructional setting. The result showed that the Caucasian face was perceived as superior to the Asian face. This experiment confi rms the image of Asian Americans who are native speakers of English as perpetual foreigners regardless of their ability in English, as refl ected in a question sometimes posed to them, “Your English is excellent. How long have you been in this country?” ( Takaki, 1993 ). This intersection of race and language raises an important question with regard to native/nonnative issues that have gained


increased attention in the fi eld of TESOL and deserves some discus-sion here.

Racialized (Non)native Speakers

Various facets of the native speaker construct — dominance and norm as the linguistic model for students — have been problematized in TESOL in recent years (e.g., Amin, 1997 ; Braine, 1999 ; Kamhi-Stein, 2004 ; Mawhinney & Xu, 1997 ; Leung, Harris, & Rampton 1997 ; Lin, Wang, Akamatsu, & Riazi, 2002 ; Rampton, 1990 ). Critics have discussed how the myth of the native speaker infl uences hiring practices and the con-struction of students’ view of the ideal speaker of English. However, as Lee (in press) points out, the discussions on native/nonnative issues have tended to address linguistic aspects only (e.g., accent, standard/nonstandard use of language) without paying suffi cient attention to the racialized aspect of native/nonnative speakers. The problem lies in the tendency to equate the native speaker with White and the nonnative speaker with non-White. These equations certainly explain discrimina-tion against nonnative professionals, many of whom are people of color. Unfortunately, this essentialized dichotomy (i.e., native speaker = standard English speaker = White versus nonnative speaker = nonstandard English speaker = non-White ) has tended to blind us to the discrimination experi-enced by teachers who do not fi t this formula (e.g., Asian or Black native speaker of English, White native speaker with southern U.S. accent).

Focusing on nonnativeness in employment discrimination is abso-lutely necessary when seeking social justice in this globalized era as more English language teachers are recruited in many communities around the world. However, it is equally important to question the essentialized dichotomy that racializes (non)native speakers, to acknowl-edge the voices and experiences of teachers of color who are native speakers of English, and to address racial discrimination at the same time. This approach enables TESOL professionals to establish solidar-ity among these two marginalized groups.

THEORETICAL ORIENTATIONS FOR INVESTIGATING ISSUES OF RACE IN TEACHING AND LEARNING ENGLISH

Issues of race, racism, and racialization have been theorized in North America, infl uencing practice in disciplines such as legal studies and education. In this section, we review basic tenets of critical race

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theory (CRT), critical White studies or Whiteness studies, critical peda-gogies, and critical multicultural education.

Critical Race Theory

Issues of race and racisms have been proactively taken up and inves-tigated in CRT (see Taylor, this issue). Originating in critical scrutiny of the U.S. legal system, which claims to be objective and yet favors the racially and economically privileged, CRT investigates and trans-forms the relationship among race ideas, racism, and power ( Delgado & Stefancic, 2001 ). Delgado and Stefancic (2001) delineate the following basic tenets of CRT: (1) Racism is deeply ingrained in the ordinary ways in which everyday life in our society operates and thus it cannot be fi xed by color-blind policies of superfi cial equality; (2) because rac-ism benefi ts “both White elites (materially) and working-class people (psychically), large segments of society have little incentive to eradicate it” (p. 7); (3) “races are categories that society invents, manipulates, or retires when convenient” (p. 7); (4) the forms of racialization or racial discrimination are in fl ux, infl uenced by socioeconomic needs of the dominant society; (5) antiessentialist understandings of racial-ized groups (i.e., recognizing various kinds of diversity that exist within a racialized group rather than viewing it as homogeneous or static) is vital; and (6) coexisting with the previous point, the unique voice of the people of color about their experiences can be communicated to White people through storytelling which exposes and challenges hid-den forms of racism in everyday interactions (see Ladson-Billings, 1999 , for a more detailed summary of these points). The last point is referred to as counterstorytelling ( Delgado, 2000 ) or counter-story ( Solórzano & Yosso, 2002 ) which is defi ned as

a method of telling the stories of those people whose experiences are not often told (e.g., those on the margins of society). The counter-story is also a tool for exposing, analyzing, and challenging the majoritarian stories of racial privilege. (p. 32)

CRT has been introduced in the fi eld of education. Various scholars have critically examined how educational policies, including curricu-lum, instruction, and funding, are related to racial inequity and rela-tions of power (e.g., Ladson-Billings, 1999 ; Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995 ; Parker, 2003 ). Issues related to nonnative English speakers (e.g., use of their native language in the workplace, schools, and govern-ment offi ces, discrimination based on nonstandard accents) create great concern, especially to immigrant populations, and thus consti-tute another area of inquiry within CRT ( Delgado and Stefancic, 2001 ).


In addition to language, the ways that race, gender, class, national origin, and sexual identity intersect are taken into account as impor-tant factors in shaping and interpreting racial discrimination.

Critical White Studies

Related to CRT is the critical inquiry into issues of Whiteness called Whiteness studies or critical White studies (CWS) (e.g., Delgado & Stefancic, 1997 , 2001 ; Fine, Weis, Powell, & Wong, 1997 ; Frankenberg, 1993 ; Leonardo, 2002 ; McLaren & Muñoz, 2000 ). CWS investigates the social construction of Whiteness (e.g., how Irish, Jewish, and Italian people came to be labeled as White), White privilege (see oft-cited article by McIntosh, 1997 ), and the normative yet invisible nature of Whiteness observed in everyday practices and discourse. It has been argued that Whiteness exerts its power as an invisible and unmarked norm against which all Others are racially and culturally defi ned, marked, and made inferior. The invisibility of Whiteness also allows Whites to evade responsibility for taking part in eradicating racism. Frankenberg (1993) , for instance, demonstrated that White women in her study tended to evade references to race, racial difference, and individual complicity with power and privilege. Such power evasion confi rms and reinforces a color-blind or difference-blind discourse ( Larson & Ovando, 2001 ) that denies the existence of differences among groups and consequently the need to scrutinize the roots of social inequalities and to generate ethically situated social and educa-tional interventions.

In scrutinizing Whiteness, the antiessentialist approach again becomes important. It is necessary to explore how Whiteness intersects other social categories such as gender, class, age, sexual identities, reli-gious identities, and so on ( Fine & Weis, 1993 ; Rich & Troudi, this issue). Another cautionary point, which Hammond discusses in this issue, is the common strategy using sexism as an analogy, for instance, to raise awareness among White people about racial discrimination. Grillo and Wildman (1997) argue that such an analogy obscures and marginalizes the actual experiences of racism and instead White peo-ple’s concern tends to take the center stage. Despite its good intention, this approach could reinforce color-blindness. It is important to note that Whiteness is not a biological category but discursively constructed ( McLaren & Muñoz, 2000 ) and that “whiteness as a privileged signifi er has become global” ( Leonardo, 2002 , p. 30). Whiteness in the globali-zation discourse has particular signifi cance for TESOL, which confronts the challenge of the global spread of English and English language teaching.

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Criticisms of CRT and CWS

Although both CRT and CWS have paid explicit attention to race ideas and provided useful analytical lenses, there are some criticisms. Delgado and Stefancic (2001) discuss various criticisms from both out-side and within the fi eld. For example, mainstream scholarship infl u-enced by the Enlightenment has suggested that counterstorytelling as a method lacks analytical rigor and objectivity. Conversely, from a cri-tical perspective, the narrative approach is criticized for inadvertently romanticizing the experiences of the marginalized or creating a racial dichotomy between Whites and people of color, supporting and reinforcing the mainstream capitalist discourse of individualism and liberal multiculturalism ( Darder and Torres, 2004 ). 2

One self-criticism discussed by Delgado and Stefancic (2001) is a need for more focus on material conditions and poverty in relation to racism. This point has been raised from a Marxist point of view as well. Darder and Torres (2004) argue that CRT, by isolating race as the main unit of analysis, may run the risk of downplaying issues of class that refl ect the economic aspects of domination and subordina-tion. They further argue that the emphasis on the ways that race inter-sects with other social categories, such as gender, class, and sexual identities, tend to give an equal analytical and explanatory power to these categories, even though “class is located within production rela-tions and represents a very different and unique structural feature in a capitalist political economy” (p. 117). These authors cite Wood (1995) and point out a distinct feature of class, arguing that whereas racial, cultural, gender, and sexual differences as group or individual identities can be celebrated in a true democracy, celebrating class dif-ference is a nebulous concept in relation to democracy (see also Kubota, 2003 ). Thus, instead of treating race as an equal unit of analy-sis that intersects with gender, class, and so on, they focus on how race ideas, racial differences, and racism are entrenched in the political economy of capitalism, producing racialized class relations.

Some potential problems of CWS have also been raised. As one of us has discussed elsewhere ( Kubota, 2004 ), it could place Whites at center stage and impose on people of color the role of helpers who serve the interest of Whites in their pursuit of becoming change agents ( Sheets, 2000 ). These criticisms address a need for TESOL professionals

2 A similar argument has been made in the fi eld of composition studies. Expressivism, a pop-ular approach in the 1970s and 80s to expressing one’s authentic voice in a narrative mode, has been criticized. Berlin (1988) pointed out that this approach could be co-opted by the ideology of individualism and undermine collective struggle against social injustice and transformation.


to be cognizant of the conceptual diversity, complexity, and potential problems in critical inquires such as CRT or CWS despite their radical thrust for antiracism and social justice.

Critical Pedagogies and Critical Multicultural Education

Critical pedagogies and critical multicultural education are interrelated approaches to education that share similar social, cultural, and educa-tional visions: promoting social justice and equity through critical examinations of power and politics that produce and maintain domi-nation and subordination in various dimensions of local and global society (e.g., Freire, 1998 ; Freire & Macedo, 1987 ; Kanpol & McLaren, 1995 ; Kincheloe, 2004 ; Kincheloe & Steinberg, 1997 ; Nieto, 1999 , 2004 ; Ovando & McLaren, 2000 ; Sleeter, 1996 ; May, 1999 ; Sleeter & McLaren, 1995 ). As such, they explicitly engage teachers and students in dialogues on relations of power with regard to race, gender, class, and other social categories.

One of the core tenets of critical pedagogies is a critique of kno wledge-transmission-oriented and fact-focused approaches to teaching, which serve to perpetuate the dominant ways of interpreting the world. Along with the conception that knowledge constructed in the classroom is always political rather than objective or neutral, critical pedagogies provide analytical tools for examining ideas of race, ra cialization, and racism. Because knowledge that privileges the domi-nant White male middle-class heterosexual culture is deeply ingrained in curricula and instruction, critical pedagogies would help students identify and analyze hidden racialized and racist discourses that shape our social structures and worldview. In critical pedagogies, raising critical consciousness always interacts with actual experiences, “pro-ducing a synergy that elevates both scholarship and transformative action” ( Kincheloe, 2004 , p. 16). This interaction naturally leads to antiracist education (see Taylor, this issue, and Hammond, this issue).

Similarly, critical multicultural education questions normative knowl-edge of the White dominant society often constructed in a liberal approach to multiculturalism — namely, a difference-blind egalitarian vision about diverse cultures and peoples, perpetuation of the exotic and romanticized Other through celebrating superfi cial aspects of cul-tural difference (i.e., the heroes and holidays approach), and evasion of the power and privilege of Whiteness ( Kubota, 2004 ). It encourages students and teachers to confront racism and other kinds of social injustice not only individually but also collectively. It is therefore a form of antiracist education ( Kailin, 2002 ; Nieto, 1999 , 2004 ).

TESOL QUARTERLY486

Both critical pedagogies and critical multicultural education have been extensively discussed and applied to English language teaching (e.g., Auerbach, 1995 ; Benesch, 2001 ; Canagarajah, 1999 ; Hoosain & Salili, 2005 ; Lin, 1999 ; Morgan, 1998 ; Norton & Toohey, 2004 ; Pennycook, 2001 ). Issues of race can be further investigated within this framework.

IN THIS SPECIAL TOPIC ISSUE

This introduction indicates that issues of race, racialization, and rac-ism can be addressed under numerous inquiry topics within TESOL, such as identity construction of teachers and students; the develop-ment and use of teaching materials, curriculum, and technology; and language ideologies and policies. Because these issues are still under-theorized and underexplored in TESOL, our goal is not to provide comprehensive discussions on wide-ranging topics but to bring TESOL Quarterly readers’ attention to stimulating discussions that can be fur-ther explored in research and practice.

In our fi rst article, Suhanthie Motha focuses on the primary and secondary school in the United States and investigates the challenges that four female beginning ESOL teachers face in complex negotia-tions between their own racialized positionalities and those of their students of color. Through critical lenses, she shows how the antiracist White teachers’ efforts to advocate for their students and multicultural-ism could be problematic. Motha further shows how speakers of nonstandard English are racialized with the label World English and how teachers struggle to help students negotiate African American vernacular English (AAVE) — the predominant social language at the school.

While Motha explores teachers’ racial positionality and identity, the next two articles focus on students in intervention activities. First, Lisa Taylor investigates how ESL students came to understand race and racism in a 3-day camp on antidiscrimination for high school students in Canada. She found that the camp enabled the participants to rec-ognize types of racial and gender discrimination beyond the personal level and to name linguistic discrimination. Signifi cantly, White European ESL students became aware of the meaning of Whiteness and developed their antiracist disposition.

The next article by Kay Hammond takes us to Japan and shows how a White teacher from New Zealand engaged university students in a simulation activity for experiencing racial inequality. Her study showed that while students experienced the feelings associated with discrimina-tion, many identifi ed discrimination only with an overt form and the majority-on-minority phenomenon, while drawing an analogy to


discrimination other than racism. Hammond also raises a complex question about the positionality of a White teacher in an EFL context who tries to raise students’ awareness of racism.

This relation of power between teacher and students is manifested in that between researcher and participants in ethnographic studies. Ena Lee and Andrea Simon-Maeda explore issues arising from di fferent racialized positions — Chinese Canadian and White women researchers — in their research on English language teachers’ experiences and iden-tities. Simon-Maeda’s not sharing a similar racialized background with her participants led her to broaden research on gender to focus on racialized identity. Yet, sharing racial minority backgrounds causes other predicaments for Lee, such as the role of researcher, as her refl ective account shows.

Two articles in the Brief Reports and Summaries section consider students’ racialized identities. Sarah Rich and Salah Troudi investigate the experiences of fi ve male students from Saudi Arabia in a TESOL graduate program in the post-9/11 United Kingdom. The authors explore the infl uence of Islamophobia, national origin, and gender on their academic experiences. In the next report, Khadar Bashir-Ali investigates the identity construction of a Grade 7 female ESL student from Mexico among predominantly African-American students in the United States. She shows how this student actively positioned herself as African American by learning AAVE. Following these reports is a Forum article by Ruth Spack, who discusses the racial discrimination against Native Americans from a historical perspective and makes a past-present connection to the racial and cultural inferiorization of minority groups in the fi eld of TESOL. The book reviews by Andrea Parmegiani, Lynne Díaz-Rico, and Hyunjung Shin introduce books on intercultural communication, language policy, Ebonics, antiracist edu-cation, and color-blind racism, issues that are all connected with the issues that other articles take up in this issue.

All in all, the topics addressed in this special issue expand, in a focused manner, the emerging discussions on issues of race that have been published in our fi eld during the last decade: issues of identities in multilingual contexts and second language teaching and learning (e.g., Harklau, 2000 ; Ibrahim, 1999 ; McKay & Wong, 1996 ; Simon-Maeda, 2004 ; and Thesen, 1997 , on student identity construction; Pao, Wong & Teuben-Rowe, 1997 , on racially mixed-heritage adults); issues of the linguistic norm in relation to ideas of race and ethnicity, such as speaking English with an accent and Ebonics (e.g., Adger, Christian, & Taylor, 1999 ; Lippi-Green, 1997 , 2002 ; Ramirez, Wiley, de Klerk, Lee, & Wright, 2005 ); colonialism and postcolonial critiques (e.g., Lin & Luke, in press ; Pennycook, 1998 ); and politics of bilin-gual education, English-only movement, and language policies (e.g.,

TESOL QUARTERLY488

Crawford, 2000 ; Cummins, 2000 ; Hill, 2001 ; Wiley 2004 ; Wiley & Lukes, 1996 ).

CONCLUSION

The idea of race, racialization, and racism are factors that shape social, cultural, and political dimensions of language teaching and learning. English language teaching entails complex relations of power fueled by differences created by racialization. The silence in our fi eld on topics about racialization and racism is peculiar given increased attention to them in other academic fi elds as well as the tremendous amount of racialized diversity manifested in TESOL. It is vital that our fi eld move beyond its color-blind vision imagining itself to be inher-ently fi lled with understanding and sensitivity toward diverse cultures and people.

In exploring the idea of race, racialization, and racism, a danger of essentialism needs to be recognized. For instance, although Whiteness as a social norm and privilege has been scrutinized in recent scho-larship, imagined racial difference, which generates racial identities and racism, is relational — it is not a static or essentialized notion across groups or situations. As Memmi (2000) notes, “difference cannot be considered an end in and of itself,” and “the real stakes against racism … do not concern difference itself but the use of difference as a weapon against its victim, to the advantage of the victimizer” (p. 51). The fi eld of TESOL, then, in which teachers and students are racial-ized across the globe, needs to address hegemonic racialized norms not only in relation to Whiteness but also from multiple racial/ethnic relations that are dynamic and situational. Thus, racism is not restricted to inferiorization of people of color in the White dominant society but is observed in, for instance, Japanese discrimination against non-White people including other Asians. Just as race ideas and racism cannot be reduced to White versus non-White issues, theories about them should not solely rely on Anglo-European scholarship. It is necessary to overcome epistemological racism particularly in a fi eld that encour-ages collaboration among scholars from all over the world.

As TESOL practitioners, we should engage in daily critical refl ec-tions of how our ideas of race infl uence what we teach, how we teach it, and how we understand our students. This should be followed by committed action to confront and eradicate overt and covert racisms with an understanding that they are intricately connected with other injustices and that the commitment for action always requires the awareness of our own racial and other privileges that are both rela-tional and situated.


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We thank Robert Miles and Suresh Canagarajah for their insightful comments on our draft.

THE AUTHORS

Ryuko Kubota is an associate professor in the School of Education and the Department of Asian Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, United States. Her research interests include culture and politics in second language education, second language writing, and critical pedagogies.

Angel Lin is an associate professor in the Faculty of Education at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, China. With a background in ethnomethodology, conversation analysis, and social theory, her theoretical orientations are phenomenological, socio-cultural, and critical.

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Racializing ESOL Teacher Identities in U.S. K – 12 Public Schools SUHANTHIE MOTHA University of Maryland College Park, Maryland, United States

Through a year-long critical feminist ethnography, this article exam-ines the challenges faced by beginning K – 12 ESOL teachers in the United States as they grappled with the signifi cance of their own racial identities in the process of negotiating the inherent racialization of ESOL in their language teaching contexts. I foreground the signifi -cance of race in the teaching, language, and identities of four K – 12 public school teachers; three White and one Korean American, whose orientations were specifi cally antiracist. The study examined the impli-cations of teachers’ privileged status as native speakers of standard English, a raced category, within an institutional culture that under-scored the supremacy of both Whiteness and native speaker status. The study found the teachers’ practice to be complexifi ed by their atten-tiveness to their own and their students’ racial identities and by their consciousness of the situatedness of their practice within a broader sociopolitical context. The fi ndings also illustrated the ways in which the teachers negotiated spaces in which they could challenge the silent privilege accorded to Standard American English by problematizing school policies surrounding World English and African American Vernacular English. Implications for theory, practice of teaching English to speakers of other languages, teacher education, and profes-sional development are discussed.

So I got the book Counting in Korea. … On the cover, there’s a picture of a [boy wearing a] traditional Korean outfi t. All the kids looked at it and said: “He looks like you.” So he looked at it and said: “He’s stinky! Stinky boy.” And he pushed it away.

Margaret, Afternoon Tea, November 1

Yesterday in the lunchroom [two teachers] were talking about a student who’s obviously struggling in class, and Geraldine said that she could spot from a mile off that he has a learning disability, and Mr. Macclesfi eld’s fi rst question was, “Well, is he Black?”

Katie, Afternoon Tea, June 19

This one kid fl ipped through [the school newspaper] and said: “Ms. Fitzpatrick, this paper is racist!” I said: “Okay, why?” … And he said: “It

JOBNAME: TESOL 40#3 2006 Page: 1 Output: Friday September 15 17:30:20 2006tsp/TESOL/126789/40.3.2

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doesn’t refl ect anything about the Hispanic kids, it’s all about the American Black kids and their music.”

Jane, Afternoon Tea, April 10

I said … “who am I to teach this course [in multicultural education]? I might do the reading strategies, I might do the work around it, but the actual discussion is not coming out of a White face.”

Alexandra, Interview, January 26

The quotes represent a glimpse into the different challenges that four teachers of English to speakers of other languages (ESOL)

faced as they navigated the connections between linguistic minority status and racial identity during their fi rst year of teaching in public schools in the United States. Just as ESOL students’ racial identities are signifi cant to the processes of their socialization into U.S. schools, so are the racial identities of their teachers. This article explores the ways in which these four teachers grappled with the signifi cance of their own racial identities in the process of negotiating the inherent racialization of ESOL in their language teaching contexts. Racialization is inevitably salient in English language teaching. Because the spread of the English language across the globe was historically connected to the inter national political power of White people, English and Whiteness are thornily intertwined ( Kumaravadivelu, 2003 ; Pennycook, 2001 ). However, throughout the year of this study, the dominant dis-courses surrounding race in the ESOL teachers’ contexts supported silences about racial identity, which created a challenge for teachers seeking to craft antiracist pedagogy.

The majority of ESOL teachers in the two counties of this study were White, and the majority of ESOL students were of color. Educators must ask to what degree to teach English in this context is “to repeat the colonial history embedded in the classroom between White teach-ers and students of color” ( Ibrahim, 1999 , p. 349). Any discussion of the connections between ESOL students’ racial identity and their lin-guistic minority status consequently needs to include attention to their teachers’ racial identities. This focus is one thread of a larger, data-driven study that explored how these four teachers came to understand the process of becoming English language teachers. In this exploration, I delve specifi cally into what it means to teach English as an additional language when teachers’ racial identities are assumed to be inex tricable from the process. I focus on the ways in which race is signifi cant in the teaching, language, and identities of four beginning K – 12 U.S. public school teachers, three White and one Korean American, whose educational vision was explicitly antiracist. I seek to extend understand-ings of (1) the ways in which identities acquire racial meanings within school walls, (2) teachers’ negotiations of dominating images surrounding

RACIALIZING ESOL TEACHER IDENTITIES 497

ESOL and race, and (3) the implications of the teachers’ privileged linguistic identities for their pedagogical practice. In the context of this discussion, I consider linguistic identities to be inextricable from racial identities because I believe Whiteness to be an intrinsic but veiled ele-ment of the construct of mainstream English. 1

In this exploration I do not provide, nor did I set out to develop, facile solutions to any of the challenges the teachers faced, and I did not expect them to resolve the numerous dilemmas they encountered. The stories that follow are therefore neither victim nor victory narra-tives. This study does not focus on how the four teachers could have addressed the tensions they encountered. Rather, I sought to explore from the inside out how the knowledge they constructed from their experiences could inform current understandings of language teach-ing. In this vein, I do not suggest alternative pedagogical practice. I simply sought a deeper insight into teachers’ experiences as they strug-gled with and negotiated the complexities nestled at the nexus of race, language, power, and learning in their teaching lives.

RACIAL AND LINGUISTIC IDENTITY

The social and educational practices surrounding the school cate-gory of ESOL have shaped it into an ideological category that com-prises a collection of racialized identities. As I show in this article, school and classroom practices provide the terrain in which meanings of racialized identities are dynamically and continuously constructed and negotiated. Neither race nor linguistic minority status are clear-cut or absolutely defi ned categories. They, like all dimensions of differ-ence, evolve in relationship with others, and their meanings are both subjective and negotiable. These negotiations contribute to the shap-ing of ESOL students’ and teachers’ racial identities and lives beyond school. As such, ESOL practitioners cannot afford to pretend that the school category ESOL is a racially neutral site of language learning.

Nonetheless, dominant discourses surrounding race, which Bonilla Silva (2003) calls color-blind racism and Kubota (2004) calls liberal multicultural discourses, do indeed represent ESOL as race-neutral and discourage open discussions about issues of race and inequality. Bonilla Silva believes that racial inequality in the United States persists because of a dominant racial ideology that denies racism. Nieto (2002) has noted

1 I concur with Regan (2002), who replaces the term standard English with mainstream English to avoid “an implicit and unarticulated assumption that a standard variety is in some way ‘better’ than a nonstandard one” (p. 5). However, I sometimes use the term standard English in this discussion to more closely refl ect the language used by the teachers in the study.

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that it is often diffi cult for idealistic teachers to accept the existence of institutional racism within school systems. To question the prevailing American philosophy of meritocracy is to accept that hard work may not always be rewarded and that not all privilege is earned. Van Ausdale and Feagin (2002) contend that adults, particularly White adults, in U.S. schools are in denial about the seriousness of racial prejudices in the society around them. Kubota’s (2004) clear distinction between liberal multiculturalism and critical multiculturalism highlights the ways in which discourses that ostensibly encourage multiculturalism can actually support oppression. She critiques liberal multiculturalism explaining how colorblind and no-differential-treatment arguments obscure issues of power and privilege and consequently perpetuate racial and linguistic hierarchies. She proposes instead critical multicul-turalism, which includes an explicit focus on institutional, systemic racism, a nonessentialist understanding of difference, and an acknowl-edgement of the ways in which culture as a discursive construct is connected to relationships of economics and power.

Negotiating Teacher Identity

ESOL teachers’ racial identities are not neutral in any interaction they have with students. Several theorists have recently discussed the ways in which race interacts with teaching identity in the lives of TESOL practitioners. For professionals of color, establishing a teaching identity is often complicated by an unspoken assumption that White English teachers are more legitimate than those of color ( Amin, 1997 ; Lin et al., 2004 ; Ng, 1993 ; Curtis & Romney, 2006 ). Race is salient not only in the teaching lives of professionals of color, but also in the professional lives of White teachers. The construct of Whiteness has been examined in Whiteness studies ( Frankenberg, 1993 ; McIntosh, 1997 ) and has specifi cally been explored in relation to teaching ( Paley, 1989 ; Howard, 1999 ). However, Whiteness in relation to ESOL teach-ing merits further attention. If English can be viewed as an imperialist language ( Canagarajah, 1999 ), and English language teaching (ELT) can be viewed as a colonial endeavor ( Pennycook, 2001 ), then the practice of White English language teachers not only echoes colonial patterns of domination but also affi rms Eurocentric values and episte-mologies in students who are not White. Mackie (2003) seeks to “dis-lodge” (p. 24) the colonized identities of ESOL teaching by questioning the nature of racial identity, including her own White identity. Vandrick (2002) has similarly discussed the importance of White ESOL teachers’ refl ection on their colonial privilege, asking them to be thoughtful of the “colonial shadow” (p. 411) cast over ESL teaching by the powerful


positioning of the English language, both historically and contemporarily.

Legitimate Language

In a discussion of English language teaching, it would be naïve to attend to teachers’ racial identities without addressing their linguistic identities. On a superfi cial level, these two may appear to be distinct, if loosely related, dimensions of difference, but a careful deconstruc-tion of Whiteness helps us to see that they are actually inextricable one from the other. Just as White teachers are assumed to be more legitimate than English teachers of color, teachers who speak main-stream English, with its silent inextricability from Whiteness ( Trechter & Bucholtz, 2001 ), are perceived to be more legitimate than speakers of English that is not mainstream, including English spoken by non-native English speakers. The identities of English language teachers are multilayered and cannot be examined without an eye toward race and language. For example, my own heritage is Sri Lankan, and as a TESOL professional of color, I have grappled with a (perhaps imag-ined, perhaps founded) sense that my ownership over the English lan-guage is sometimes perceived as less than rightful. However, the form of English I speak is privileged, taking its cues primarily from my child-hood in Australia, my college years in Canada, and my graduate school-ing in the United States. That is to say, I speak a form of English associated with Whiteness, although I am not White. My identities, like the identities of all humans including the four teachers Katie, Jane, Margaret, and Alexandra, are multiple and fl uid and fl uctuate accord-ing to context, and the degrees of authority associated with each facet of identity are not constant. As a result I, like my study partners, have a responsibility to consider the implications of privileged speaker status for the pursuit of social justice in our practice.

Questions about how race shapes the perceived legitimacy of lan-guages and language variations are of pressing concern to TESOL practitioners. Grant and Wong’s (in press) analysis of the implications of Bourdieu’s work for the teaching of English language variations is helpful for understanding the arbitrary ways in which mainstream or standard varieties of speech are socially and educationally sanctioned, while those that do not represent the majority can be “categorized, manipulated, even demonized” (p. 21). Language achieves legitimacy when it is racialized in certain ways. For instance, at the individual level, numerous studies have shown participants to accord a higher degree of competence, authority, and even comprehensibility to speak-ers they believe are White than those they believe are of color

TESOL QUARTERLY500

( Lindemann, 2003 ; Rubin, 1992 ). At the global level, creoles, pidgins, and indigenized varieties of English are termed as such not because they are grammatically or structurally inferior to “native” varieties of English but because they are spoken by people of color ( Mufwene, 2001 ).

METHODOLOGY

This exploration was one thread of a larger study, a year-long critical feminist ethnography ( Behar, 1996 ; Carsprecken, 1996 ; Fine, 1992 ; Reinharz, 1992 ; Thomas, 1983) of the pedagogy and perspectives of four women who were K – 12 public school ESOL teachers from two counties in the eastern region of the United States, Katie, Margaret, Alexandra, and Jane. 2 Margaret, Alexandra, and Jane are White, and Katie was born in Korea and adopted by a White American family when she was 4 months old. They ranged in age from 26 to 36. All four are native speakers of mainstream English and speak at least one other language. They were recent graduates of a master of education in TESOL program at a publicly funded institution in the suburbs of a large, ethnically diverse metropolis. Margaret and Jane were fi rst semester teachers, while Katie and Alexandra had graduated a semes-ter earlier than they had and were beginning their second semester of teaching. Katie, Margaret, and Alexandra taught in a county whose majority population was White. Jane taught in a separate, neighboring county in which 86% of students were of color. School demographic information is included in Table 1 .

I relied primarily on audiotapes of three data sources: classroom observations, interviews, and, most important, afternoon teas, regular gatherings in my home every 2 or 3 weeks over a school year. The afternoon teas were not part of the initial study design. However, dur-ing the early weeks of the school year, fi rst Alexandra and then Katie suggested that we meet as a group, and Margaret and Jane welcomed the idea. I also conducted informal interviews with students, other faculty, and administrators, referred to school documents and students’ work, and exchanged e-mails and audiotaped phone conversations with the teachers.

I was a doctoral candidate, and this was my dissertation study. I had known all of my study partners for at least 2 years before the study began. As the sole teaching and graduate assistant in the unit, I had provided their advising, taught or cotaught some of their classes,

2 All names except my own are pseudonyms.


supported their seminar papers, and served as supervisor of their student teaching experience. A power imbalance was consequently embedded in our histories together. I took steps to minimize the effects of this imbalance. I shared with the teachers my concerns about exploiting them, and they knew that they could withdraw from the study at any time. I repeatedly assured the teachers that they should never feel obligated to have me in their classrooms or to come to the afternoon teas, and that they should feel free to ignore my e-mails and phone messages. I tried to make the afternoon teas a place of support and camaraderie for the teachers, rather than a site of data collection. However, I acknowledge that none of these steps could have com-pletely eliminated the effects of the hierarchy.

I used constant comparative methodology ( Strauss & Corbin, 1990 ) with a modifi cation: I fi rst coded the afternoon tea data, then coded all other data in relation to the themes that emerged from the after-noon tea data. I developed this methodology to privilege the after-noon tea data, which I believed to be more closely connected to the voices of my study partners, the power of community, and the episte-mological intent of research as praxis ( Lather, 1991 ). Nonetheless, no research methodology can be treated as orthodoxy. While the process of experimenting with research conventions was generative, I consider the methods I used to be part of an ongoing exploration, neither fi nal nor complete.

TABLE 1

School Demographic Information

Katie’s school (elementary)

Margaret’s school (elementary)

Alexandra’s school (middle)

Jane’s school (high)

Grades K–6 K–6 6 – 8 9 – 12

Total enrollment 317.0 489 .0 903.0 2,100 .0

“American Indian/Alaskan natives” 0.0 0.4 0.3 0.0

“Asian/Pacifi c Islanders” 15.0 5.9 15.6 3.2

“African American” 7.0 35.0 41.5 70.5

“White (not of Hispanic origin)” 66.0 46.8 25.1 6.6

“Hispanic” 13.0 13.1 17.4 21.0

“Free or reduced meals” 13.9 30.9 37.0 NA

“Limited English profi cient” 28.0 9.1 6.3 6.5

Note. The county's terminology is used to describe student categories. Numbers given are percentages.

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My study partners supported this work in various ways, for instance helping me to rewrite and reword incidents that were diffi cult to rep-resent with integrity, reading and providing feedback, and copresent-ing with me at numerous conferences. While they have all received drafts of everything that I have written and presented about them, it is important to note that this work remains my interpretation. It is my representation of someone else’s story, ultimately only one of countless possible representations of the study year. Within these pages are many stories that I am not telling, including some that were not mine to tell (for instance, those that the teachers asked me not to transcribe), and some that that I do not know (because the teachers did not tell them to me). These stories exist, interwoven around those that I am telling. An extensive discussion of the politics of representation implied in this study’s methodology can be found in Motha (2004) .

FINDINGS

Every 2 or 3 weeks over the course of the school year, Katie, Margaret, Alexandra, and Jane gathered together after the last school bell rang and sat around the coffee table on my family room fl oor sipping steaming cups of tea. As they shared stories of their complex struggles, fascinating images emerged of novice teachers striving to come to terms with their role in an enterprise that they clearly under-stood to be problematic, asking questions about the implications of their racialized identities for their teaching practice, and wondering how to help their young charges negotiate a world in which race is unquestionably present yet heavily shrouded. In this discussion I fi rst briefl y illustrate some of the ways in which I saw meanings of race being fashioned throughout the year of the study. I then move on to dedicate most of this discussion to the topic of teachers’ negotiations of their own racialized identities, including a focus on the implications of teachers’ privileged linguistic identities for their classroom practice.

I begin by providing two examples to illustrate the ways in which diffi cult and complicated issues of race are often embedded in short, fl eeting moments of classroom life. All four of the teachers in the study had antiracist agendas. However, antiracist agendas are enacted in tricky ways because racism is not confronted solely through a large-scale agenda, but rather in very situated ways that are sometimes clear-cut but sometimes not so straightforward at all. In the two exam-ples that follow, the teachers are striving for antiracist teaching. In each example, I explain how the teacher’s racial identities, while less overtly visible than their students’, quietly come into play.


Alexandra sensed that the representations within her school context of her Black and Latino male students were negative, and she, like other teachers who wrestle with stereotypes in the lives of students, had to make decisions about whether and how to acknowledge these controlling images. She sought to preemptively equip her students to confront the stereotypes that they would eventually encounter. She discussed three of her students: two Black students, Gamma and Rafe, and one Latino, William. Gamma in particular posed classroom man-agement challenges:

Alexandra: But every now and again I try to get him to see how intelligent he is but he has to show that, and unfortunately he has to show that more than others because he’s battling this thing in the United States where Black boys are not seen as intelligent.

Suhanthie: That was actually addressed aloud? That a Black student has to work harder because of racism?

Alexandra: He has to know what he’s doing. Like if he wants to show how intelligent he is, he has to show it … . William was saying that everybody’s unfair to Hispanic boys too, and I said, I recognize that, and that’s why I want you to show how intelligent you are. (Interview, January 26)

In this exchange, Alexandra was trying to help her students to medi-ate their own racialized identities. She used a strategy in which she presented the stereotype, assuming that the boys would absorb it else-where if not through her, and she positioned them, indeed defi ed them, to challenge the stereotype. She urged her students to own their own identities as Black and Latino men, but she simultaneously hoped that they would defi ne these identities for themselves rather than assuming the dominant representations surrounding them. However, this dynamic was complicated by her positioning as a White woman. When White teachers draw attention to and explicitly name racial stereotypes, do they risk propagating the stereotypes and concretizing the established social order? Conversely, to what extent do silences around race sustain inequality by failing to challenge it?

For Jorge, a young Latino in Jane’s class, “Hispanic kids” were invis-ible in the grand metanarratives of American life. Jane told us:

The school newspaper came out last week. This one kid fl ipped through it and said: “Ms. Fitzpatrick, this paper is racist!” I said: “Okay, why?” and he said: “Forget it” like he thought I was going to yell at him. I said: “No, no, no, I pretty much agree with you, but I want to hear why you think that.” And he said: “It doesn’t refl ect anything about the Hispanic kids, it’s all about the American Black kids and their music.” I said: “Okay, I agree, now what are you going to do about it?” You have to fi nd these small pieces and let them be able to do something with it. I said: “Who are the kids who

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write for the paper? Do you [and] your friends write for the paper?” He said: “No. I should complain.” I said: “Do you want to write a letter to the editor? … If you want to write a letter, I’ll edit it, I’ll help you with the grammar changes.” And I said: “You and your friends need to be repre-sented on that paper. You can’t sit back and complain about it. That’s the fi rst step, realizing there’s a problem … but you can’t stop there.” (Afternoon Tea, March 21)

In this exchange, both Jane and Jorge were negotiating their racial identities. Jane was encouraging her student’s critical analysis of his own representation (or lack thereof) in his larger school culture. She was exercising her authority in a way that had integrity for her, moving quickly to support his reticently expressed observation. From her posi-tion of authority, she encouraged his transformative action to chal-lenge the invisibility of his racial identity. However, dynamics such as this discussion take place in the shadow of colonialism, with Jane advo-cating from her position of teacher-authority as a White, native English speaker guiding the actions and reactions of a racial minority, nonna-tive English speaker. The hierarchy was present, and it was apparent that Jorge was quite conscious of it, as evidenced by his apparent fear that Jane would “yell at him.” Furthermore, it could be argued that Jane’s confi dence in the power of proactive behavior (such as letter writing) to provoke change is shaped by her positionality as a White middle-class woman ( Payne, 1996 ).

Teachers’ Struggles in Negotiating their Racial Positionalities

During the year of the study, I watched four teachers struggling with what it means to be a teacher in an endeavor that they recognized could be inequitable. The three White women, Alexandra, Jane, and Margaret, constructed themselves as working against layers of colonial-ism embedded in the ELT enterprise, and they were conscious of the potential hegemony to which they could contribute. The Korean-born woman, Katie, sensed that her authority was in question because of her racial identity, and she was infl uenced by her own history of shame about her race. All four teachers in the study were native English speakers, and they therefore needed to make thoughtful decisions about how to position themselves within an institutional culture whose dominant ideology underscored the supremacy of both Whiteness ( Fine, 2004 ) and of native speaker status ( Cook, 1999 ).

Alexandra struggled to challenge the hierarchy that privileged White authority. She was concerned that students were reading insuffi ciently culturally diverse literature, so she suggested that her school offer a class in multicultural literature. Her situation was fraught with


complexities. She was operating in a context that embraced liberal multiculturalism. One characteristic of this ideology was the use of words such as multicultural and diverse to mean minority, a substitution that is troubling because if a multicultural literature class is marked as multicultural, then a literature class that is not marked as multicultural can somehow come to be understood as not multicultural. This ten-dency sets mainstream and multicultural classes in opposition to each other, thereby potentially excusing literature classes that are not mul-ticultural from including diverse voices. Using the terms minority voices and multicultural voices as synonymous underscores the construction of Whiteness as normative by juxtaposing it against multiculturalism.

Alexandra saw herself as an inappropriate choice to teach the class because she was White and therefore “not multicultural.” She told us about a conversation she had had with an African-American administrator:

I said to her, “Who am I to teach this course?” and my ideal would be just to coordinate parents coming and discussing a piece of literature with the kids. (Interview, January 26)

I asked her why she thought that she lacked the qualifi cations to teach the class, and she responded:

I might do the reading strategies, I might do the work around it, but the actual discussion is not coming out of a White face. I feel really inadequate saying to people, think of it in terms of this, when that’s not my experi-ence with my very narrow view of the world. (Interview, January 26)

In leaving the teaching of the class to those who are not White, Alexandra was challenging the troubling tradition of allowing White authorities to present non-White perspectives, a practice that has been challenged by race theorists ( Delpit, 1988 ). There is no simple answer to this dilemma, but Alexandra’s strategy was to integrate both sides of the tension into an uneasy solution: she participated in the course development, but agreed to teach only such material as reading strate-gies, leaving the actual discussion to someone whose face was not White. The situation raises numerous questions about identity-based credibility and professional authority ( Brenner, 2006 ). For instance, if Alexandra had taught the class, would the subject have had more legitimacy in the eyes of the school community? If Whites are not acknowledged as legitimate participants in antiracist movements, does it then follow that responsibility for antiracism rests solely with racial minorities ( Motha, 2006 )? Is it only racial minorities who benefi t when discrimination is challenged?

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Another way in which Alexandra sought to decenter Whiteness was by disentangling White and American in her teaching. When her stu-dents were selecting folk tales to read, she said:

I gave them a couple of choices, but I really encouraged the Native American perspectives because I think that unfortunately the American folk tales are very me, rather than what America really is, they’re very White America and they’re not representative of America at all. (Afternoon Tea, January 24)

Through many of Alexandra’s stories, we see her struggling with constructions of American. According to her categorizations, “Native American perspectives” are more legitimately American than “White American perspectives.” Alexandra was aware of the weight of White privilege and eager to discount its authority, and she did this by assign-ing validity to Native American cultures, whose members came to the U.S. long before European immigrants did. However, suggesting that legitimacy correlates to length of time in the country calls into ques-tion the Americanness of fi rst generation immigrants, including her students. At the same time, in saying that White Americans (the major-ity of the American population) are not representative of America, but that Native Americans (a small minority) are, she made an important statement: She rejected the notion that larger groups carry greater representative power and affi rmed the value of minority perspectives.

Margaret challenged the invisible norm of Whiteness, specifi cally by disengaging the terms “Anglo” and “neutral” from each other: “It’s hard for me to realize that although I am Anglo, my family and their heritage is specifi c and meaningful .” She then described the ways in which being Anglo does not, for her, mean being cultureless:

For me, culture is my mom making popovers in cold weather as her mother did. It’s my grandmother’s childhood diaries at the bottom of the Chinese cherrywood trunk. And it’s the poems my grandfather still remembers. It’s the piano études my father has played all my life. And the soft blanket forts my sister and I would make on rainy days … And now my culture also includes things and ways Chinese that my husband has shown me. (Margaret, Webchat, April 21)

For Margaret, Anglo was not neutral because her experience of being Anglo included multiple cultural experiences that were not neutral.

Katie was the one teacher of color in the study. Over the course of the year, she made several references to the undermining of her professional capabilities in relation to her racial or gender identity. For instance, she said of another faculty member, 5th grade teacher Mr. Maccesfi eld:


I want to come to an understanding with Mr. Macclesfi eld, but it’s hard because I don’t know what approach to take. He doesn’t see me as a credi-ble teacher, as a credible equal peer. Because … I’m a woman and I’m a minority … How am I going to be able to advocate for my students? I’m not Caucasian, I’m not male, and I’m not a mainstream classroom teacher. It’s a tough thing to negotiate. I just have to do what I can for my students. (Katie, Afternoon Tea, November 1)

Like many other women educators of color ( Amin, 1997 ; Lin et al., 2004 ; Ng, 1993 ; Lee, this issue), Katie believed that her gender and racial identity contributed to a subtext of inequality in some interac-tions within her professional context. Katie’s personal experiences of racism heightened her consciousness of the relevance of race in the lives of schoolchildren:

I was teased … in Kindergarten. I remember it … . I came home from school and I was really upset because this other kid was making fun of my eyes … . You know how little kids do that thing [pulling at outside corners of eyes] and they say “Chinese, Japanese.” … I think I just didn’t want to be Korean because it was cool to be something else … something White. (Katie, Afternoon Tea, October 11)

Katie’s story shows us how her classmate’s teasing about difference led her directly to construct Korean features as somehow inferior. She later wrote: “These events gave me fi rst-hand experiences of racial and ethnic issues and help me to understand the diffi culties and experi-ences that many of my students face, even today” (E-mail message, June 25).

Racialized Nature of Language Variation

Katie, Margaret, Alexandra, and Jane all spoke mainstream and native varieties of English. In this section, I discuss the racialized nature of their linguistic identities. I use data from the study to dem-onstrate the ways in which race is implicated in the constructs of native English, standard English, World Englishes ( Kachru, 1990 ), and African-American vernacular English (AAVE) ( Lippi-Green, 1997 ). What varieties of English were the four teachers teaching? What Englishes did they speak while they were teaching and consequently legitimate? Nero (2005) has noted that “while the ESL class might celebrate cultural diversity in theory, it requires linguistic uniformity in practice” (p. 198). In the context of school systems that took unam-biguous positions to exclude all but mainstream varieties of English,

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what did mainstream English-speaking teachers do to challenge quietly racialized school policies surrounding language variation?

“It’s a Bit of a Different English”: World Englishes

One thread of the study that was relevant to the connection between racial and linguistic identities related to the school systems’ policies surrounding World English ( Kachru, 1990 ; Brutt-Griffl er, 2002 ). At the beginning of the school year in both counties of the study, each ESOL teacher received a roster of their ESOL students that listed each stu-dent’s name, age, class, country of origin, and native language. Placement decisions were made based on an informal instrument administered at the county ESOL offi ce. In both counties, many of the students were listed as speaking “World English” as a fi rst language. In one county, the most frequently spoken languages of students receiving ESOL services were categorized under the umbrella term World English. The term World English has come to refer to any of the varieties of English that have emerged in postcolonial ( Bhatt, 2005 ) and other international ( Llurda, 2004 ) contexts. Through the lens of this study, I perceived that World English became constructed as marked and devalued, and that furthermore, the factor that relegated a language to World English status was not degree of language varia-tion, but race. In this section, I explore the ways in which World Englishes were constructed as socially illegitimate rather than as “an additional resource for linguistic, sociolinguistic, and literary creativity” ( Bhatt, 2005 , p. 25). This construction contributes to a devaluing of people of color globally and to assimilationist pressure to coax into Anglicization the varieties of English spoken by people of color.

Katie, Margaret, Alexandra, and Jane had received confl icting mes-sages about World Englishes from multiple sources throughout their graduate coursework and in their schools. For instance, a guest speaker in one of their university classes spoke of World English and then pidgin English synonymously, and the county ESOL offi ces used the term World English to refer to many of their students who were fl uent speak-ers of a limited number of English varieties that were not standard U.S. English. Language hierarchies had been supported to some degree in some of their classes but specifi cally deconstructed in histori-cal context in other classes.

A blurry area existed between the county’s defi nition of World Englishes and other varieties of English (such as Scottish English) that also differ structurally and prosodically from the governing American standard. The students who were referred to as World English – speaking students during this study were all ethnically South Asian or Black and


came from African, Caribbean, or South Asian countries. At a super-fi cial glance it would appear that students were defi ned as World English speakers if their fi rst language (L1) was a variety of English that differed signifi cantly from standard U.S. English. However, I believe that beyond speakers’ L1s, their racial identities were relevant to how their language was described. Kachru (1990) made the distinc-tion between outer circle 3 countries, in which varieties of English that are locally established and standardized are not typically the fi rst lan-guages of the citizens and are not legitimated globally, and inner circle 4 countries, which dictate dominant standards in outer circle countries and around the world. The majority of the populations in inner circle countries are White. Native English speakers from Jamaica (which is not included in Kachru’s 1988 model) were classifi ed as World English speakers in this study’s public schools, but Jamaica does not fi t smoothly into any of Kachru’s categories because most Jamaican citizens speak a form of English as their fi rst language. I suggest that race is the most signifi cant factor keeping many language variations, including Jamaican English, from amassing the same linguistic power as, for instance, British, American, and Canadian English. I contend that Jamaican English was categorized as a World English simply because that coun-try’s population is predominantly of color. Katie, Margaret, Alexandra, and Jane’s World English – speaking students spoke varieties of English that were not validated by their school system, and they had been placed in ESOL classes to encourage their English to quickly approxi-mate American English. Brutt-Griffl er (2002) notes that “the center-driven narrative of English language spread writes people residing outside the West out of their central role in the spread of English and their place in making the language we call English” (p. viii). I believe that the scope of the “center-driven narrative” extends far beyond “people residing outside the West” to reach people living in Western countries — if they are not White.

The placement of World English speakers into ESOL in the fi rst place presented a fundamental social challenge to the teachers. Within the cultures of all four schools, ESOL was socially constructed as defi cit (for further explanation of the construction of ESOL in these four schools, see Motha, in press ), with ESOL students perceived as unable to speak English rather than in a more positive framing of bicultural/lingual or multicultural/lingual. Jane, who taught students from Jamaica, Ghana, and Sierra Leone (i.e., L1 speakers of World English), wanted

3 Countries in Kachru’s outer circle include Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Bangladesh, India, Malaysia, Philippines, Pakistan, Singapore, and Sri Lanka.

4 The inner circle countries include the United Kingdom, the Unites States, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand.

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to legitimate multiple varieties of English, including World Englishes. However, her efforts were hampered by the mere placement of World English speakers into ESOL classes, because the policy communicated to the school community that these students were not native speakers of English and could consequently lay no rightful claim to English. Hill (1995) has written of practices that have the effect of publicly produc-ing racism even where overt racist discussion is not permitted. This positioning is an example of one such practice, unobtrusively refracting a history of colonialism and contemporary persistent racism.

Jane’s students questioned the presence of native-English-speaking peers in their ESOL classes. The teacher tried to offer her students an explanation without openly criticizing the racism and linguicism undergirding the placement policy: “World English is tough, and it’s tough for a couple of reasons,” she told me. Of one student in par-ticular, Terrell, Jane said: “So it’s almost like they’re putting him down, like ‘Why are you in this class?’” She went on to explain:

So I say, “Well it’s an English, it’s a bit of a different English, and we’re working on the writing skills.” Some of the kids really don’t understand why they’re in the class. It’s almost like, “What are you, dumb? Why are you in here?” I know why he’s there, I know the writing structures are dif-ferent, and what needs to be focused on is the reading and writing. (Jane, Interview, June 25)

Jane did not want to contribute to the stigmatization of World Englishes, so she framed the difference between World Englishes and mainstream English as a gap between speaking profi ciency and reading and writing skills. She perceived spoken World Englishes to pose no complication within the school context, but believed that writing structures in, for instance, Granadian and Jamaican vernacular English were suffi ciently different to necessitate support to World English – speaking students:

Jane: Some of the words he uses I have to have him clarify because I don’t know what he means. Yeah, it would probably be an issue of standard ver-sus nonstandard English. Trying to help him communicate more. Sometimes I understand what he means, but … Structure, too, I’m think-ing that some of my kids are from Sierra Leone, and the structure is so dif-ferent. And organization too.

Suhanthie: Is that because they’re speaking a different form of English?

Jane: You mean, could it just be their education? Could be. It could be where they’re coming from and what they’ve worked on and what they haven’t. (Interview, June 25)

The school’s placement of World English speakers in ESOL supported linguistic hierarchies that Bhatt (2005) referred to as


“English-linguistic apartheid” (p. 27) and made it impossible for Jane to present World Englishes as anything other than varieties of English that were unsanctioned by the school without openly criticizing the school’s policy. However, by implying that students were in ESOL in order to acquire written academic varieties only, she legitimated at least the spoken varieties of World Englishes.

A further complication was presented by the indistinct lines among interrupted education, World English, and ESOL. Students whose edu-cation had been interrupted were often placed in ESOL regardless of their fi rst language and were labeled World English speakers. Referring to students whose education had been interrupted as World English speakers reinforced the false construction of World English speakers as students without formal schooling, with both categories consequently acquiring a defi cit meaning. In this instance, it is diffi cult to avoid slipping into a discussion of defi cit in terms of a lack of literacy or education because in some cases, real conditions of poverty underlie the interruption of education.

“They’re Learning Three Languages and They All Sound Like English”: African-American Vernacular English

A second way in which race was made invisible in the schools of the study was in the silences surrounding AAVE. Despite the fact that all four schools had large numbers of AAVE speakers, there was no formal discussion or even acknowledgement of AAVE within the schools. In Jane’s and Alexandra’s schools, almost all of the native-English- speaking students spoke African American language varieties colloquially. However, every ESOL teacher practicing within all four schools of the study spoke mainstream English. The teachers understood that they were to teach mainstream English, and that school-based and standard-ized testing would assess students’ facility in mainstream English. However, no guidance was provided about how to address AAVE.

The term standard English is heavily — albeit for the most part invisibly — racialized. The term AAVE is usually juxtaposed with the apparently neutral standard English. Standard English often serves as a code for White English, with its ostensible neutrality suppressing the racialized nature of language discrimination. The tacit assumption that standard English is racially neutral is related to the social, and particularly discursive, construction of White as neutral ( Frankenberg, 1993 ). When Whiteness is equated with neutrality and transparency, it becomes normative, “the implicit referent, i.e., the yardstick by which to encode and represent cultural Others” ( Mohanty, 1991 , p. 55). Similarly, when the standard-ness of standard English is reinforced, varieties of English that are not

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typically associated with Whiteness, including AAVE and World Englishes, can become pathologized ( Grant & Wong, in press ).

Alexandra understood that she was charged with two confl icting tasks: to teach her middle-school students to communicate with their peers as part of their quest to belong, and to teach them the language of power so that they might achieve academic success. Within their school lives, her students were surrounded primarily by AAVE: “So you’re picking Black vernacular up quicker than you are Mrs. Lau’s English” (Afternoon Tea, June 19). Alexandra experienced her task as daunting because she taught in the context of a culture that devalued African-American students’ culture and language. She objected to the teaching of standard English in school primarily because it was discon-nected from the lives of her students: “If one of the outcomes is to speak standard American English, then that’s a different language than we speak around here” (Afternoon Tea, June 19).

Alexandra appreciated the value of recognizing multiple language varie-ties and advocated unambiguously teaching students to navigate among them. She would ask her students to consider: “What does this mean, why do you say it differently?” and commented to me: “You have to teach them that there’s different settings that you’re going to use Black vernacular and you’re not going to use it” (Afternoon Tea, June 19). She recognized that students were receiving mixed messages about the nature of English and sympathized with them: “I feel sorry for these kids [ESOL students] because they’re learning three different languages and they all sound like English.” Part of her antiracist agenda included challenging the suprem-acy of standard English. In order to decenter the unjustifi ed authority carried by standard English, she chose not to teach it and focused instead on teaching colloquially used language: “What’s most important is speak-ing with your peers and being part of.” (Afternoon tea, June 19th).

Alexandra’s choice is situated on complicated terrain. As they choose how to navigate among language varieties, teachers negotiate the confl ict between what Bakhtin (1981) characterized as centripetal forces, which pro-duce authoritarian, dogmatic discourses designed to exclude and domi-nate, and centrifugal forces, which support the natural diversity of language use. Single-mindedly teaching only nonstandard varieties of English can whittle away at centripetal forces but can simultaneously deprive students of access to socially favored ways of communicating, particularly disadvan-taging students who don’t have access to standard English in their homes and communities outside school. Conversely, teaching and acknowledging only standard English, which nurtures centripetal forces, reinforces its supremacy and marginalizes nonstandard varieties of English and the stu-dents who speak them. This is the reality in many public school settings.

In theory, teachers’ support of diverse ways of using language could serve to move students’ understandings away from the idea of one


legitimate language. This is not merely a pedagogical stance, but an epistemological one; it creates space for the possibility of multiple simultaneously correct language variations and the legitimacy of more than one perspective and attendant truth.

Jane, too, made decisions about how to present language varieties:

Jane: Yeah, I’ve taught the difference between dog and dawg.

Suhanthie: Dog and dog ?

Jane: Like dog, D-O-G, is that sitting right there [indicating her puppy, Duff] and dawg, D-A-W-G, is like your friend. I thought it was just so ironic, here’s me teaching the language of the kids.

Suhanthie: Do you tell them specifi cally about language variations?

Jane: I just say it’s slang. It’s just a popular word for your friend. (Jane, Dinner at her house, June 25)

In the context of a school system that skirted around the connec-tions between race and language varieties, Jane needed to fi nd a way to explain AAVE without delegitimizing it. In teaching AAVE from her position of teacher-authority, Jane promoted its validity to her students. However, she did not identify AAVE as a language variety but rather referred to it as “slang,” which is not a language variety but rather a register. Despite the fact that fewer than 6% of the students at her school spoke standard English, her school system and curriculum pro-vided no space for addressing any nonstandard form of English. The word slang can carry negative connotations — the second entry in Webster’s Third International Dic tionary ( Gove, 1976 ) describes slang as “vulgar or inferior” — but Jane balanced her description with the word “popular,” which is positively nuanced, thereby promoting a con-ception of accepted language.

Teaching and legitimating AAVE have far-reaching consequences, affecting not only AAVE speakers but all English speakers. Challenging the supremacy of standard English can add legitimacy to all varieties of English that are not mainstream. These include English spoken with an nonnative accent, thus posing a challenge to the assumed superior-ity of native speakers ( Cook, 1999 ).

CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS

Easy solutions to the dilemmas that Katie, Margaret, Alexandra, and Jane faced were not readily available, and specifi c recommendations about their teaching practice would be inappropriate in this article. However, from this scrutiny of their experiences emerge larger

TESOL QUARTERLY514

implications for those who, like these four teachers, pursue an agenda of antiracist pedagogy in ESOL classrooms.

Portraying the TESOL profession as racially neutral is part of a larger social movement toward a liberal multiculturalist ideology that professes to be antiracist but actually serves to sustain racism ( Bonilla Silva, 2003 ). In the light of the current study, I would argue that iden-tities shaped within the construct of ESOL are inherently racialized. As such, ESOL practitioners should have an explicit consciousness of the implications of their practice within a broader colonial enterprise so they can make choices accordingly. In denying the racialized root of many social practices in schools, individuals are able to justify ignor-ing racial inequalities that pervade U.S. K – 12 schools and indeed soci-ety at large. All who are involved in this nation’s schools should have a deliberate awareness of the processes and conditions that support racial discrimination, including the ways in which colorblind and no-differential-treatment arguments obscure issues of power and privilege and consequently perpetuate racial and linguistic hierarchies. An unambiguous highlighting of this distinction can equip those who teach minority children to recognize and name veiled issues of race.

Meanings of White identity should be specifi cally deconstructed. Although antiracist work should be everyone’s work, White teachers’ antiracist work takes on different meanings than antiracist work of teachers who are racial minorities. Collaborative partnerships are important. White adults working with children can include racial minority adults in their antiracist work to help them to avoid what might otherwise be a missionary-like positioning ( Vandrick, 2002 ). The positions teachers practice from are complex because teachers have authority with children. For instance, when Jane encourages Jorge to write a letter to the school paper, she is advocating against dominant discourses that fail to acknowledge the place of Latinos in the tapestry of American culture. The power of teachers, especially White native-English-speaking teachers in ESOL classrooms, should not be ignored or denied, but teachers should have a place in which to talk about what it means to use that power responsibly. More research is needed on how TESOL professionals of color are advocating for themselves and their students. How can minority faculty interrogate inequitable or discriminatory school practices?

Beyond preservice teacher education, the study highlighted the necessity of supporting teachers’ exploration around issues of race dur-ing the beginning years of teaching. The need for this support does not disappear when teachers start teaching. As teachers practice their craft, they continue to learn to teach and they continue to reconstitute their racialized selves in their teaching practice. In numerous studies, beginning teachers who embraced liberatory ideologies during their


teacher preparation programs were heavily socialized by the conserva-tive infl uences of public schooling ( Kettle & Sellars, 1996 ; Paley, 1989 ). In order for teachers to remain in pursuit of an antiracist agenda, they need to be supported.

The silences surrounding language variation in these four public schools help to perpetuate racial inequity. The inseparability of Whiteness from standard English both refl ects and reinforces White privilege. Mainstream English can be a valuable resource, equipping students to represent their own interests, but learning any new lan-guage or language variety must be accompanied by support for a criti-cal understanding of how language ideologies can oppress or liberate. Critical literacy advocates suggest that the process of language learning be “more explicit and more situated … exploring the differential sta-tus and power among, and associated attitudes towards, particular lan-guage registers and language varieties” ( May & Janks, 2004 , p. 2). In teacher education, teachers should be supported in recognizing silences that camoufl age race. For instance, in the schools of the study where AAVE was the language of most students, language varieties were not openly discussed. Well-prepared teachers within school systems that use the term World English should problematize the monolithic use of the term and should avoid the practice of categorizing speakers of global language variations as World English speakers only if they belong to cer-tain ethnic minority groups. Nero (2005 , 2006) has called for a new paradigm for linguistic classifi cation of multilingual students, one that takes into account the multifaceted identities that they represent.

Another implication relates to the power of dialogue in community and the ways in which teacher knowledge is generated. Traditionally, questions about how to teach were answered by (usually White male) researchers in universities, who fi ltered that knowledge “down” to teachers. The teachers in this study crafted their pedagogy with the support and camaraderie of each other. Although the afternoon teas were clearly not a completely neutral space, being held in the home of their former teacher, they were separate from the faculty and admin-istration of their public school campuses and sheltered from the sur-veillance of the larger school culture. In this context, the teachers could more uninhibitedly negotiate texts and discourses that may not have been institutionally sanctioned or desirable — for instance, safely and openly challenging school practices that sustained inequalities regarding race, class, and other dimensions of identity.

This study contributes to a growing body of research that examines the complex ways in which racial and linguistic identity interact in English language learning contexts. Though the experiences of the four teachers in this study cannot be assumed to echo those of ESOL teachers in other contexts, this study highlights directions and

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possibilities for future research. How can TESOL professionals create the possibility of a sustained dialogue about how racial identity shapes language teaching practice? What supports are necessary for the devel-opment of theoretically and practically informed explorations of race in ESOL classrooms? How do ESOL teachers in other settings negoti-ate the implications of their own racial identities in their practice? It is my hope that future studies will delve further into the numerous complexities that lie at the intersection of race, language, and identity within English language teaching.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am deeply grateful to Katie, Margaret, Alexandra, and Jane, to the guest editors for their encouragement and support, to three anonymous reviewers for their construc-tive feedback, and to Sherrie Carroll, Jeremy Price, and Shelley Wong for their help-ful comments and suggestions.

THE AUTHOR

Suhanthie Motha is a visiting assistant professor in the graduate programs in TESOL and teacher education at the University of Maryland, College Park, United States. Her research explores the complexity of identity, power, language, and pedagogy in second language learning.

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Wrestling With Race: The Implications of Integrative Antiracism Education for Immigrant ESL Youth LISA TAYLOR Bishop’s University Lennoxville, Québec, Canada

This article presents selected fi ndings from a qualitative practitioner study into the learning experiences of 30 immigrant ESL high school students in a 3-day innovative, Freirean-styled, antidiscrimination leader-ship program. This case study is grounded in a social identity theoretical framework which assumes that linguistic interactions are not neutral nor is the right to be listened to universally accorded, but that these are linked to identity and structured through social power relations (includ-ing racism). In this article I fi rst ask how students came to understand race and racism as they used the integrative antiracism analytical frame-work of the program to examine examples of discrimination from their personal experience. Second, I ask what implications their analysis had for their identity claims as immigrant ESL learners. The research argues for an understanding of racialized power dynamics as integral to social identity construction through English language learning, especially as they intersect with discourses of national identity and cultural citizen-ship in the case of immigrant ESL learners. The study suggests that integrative antiracism education can support immigrant language learn-ers’ intersectional and multilevel understandings of discrimination. These expanded understandings of discrimination can also facilitate broader possibilities for social identity claims and ethical visions of Canadianness.

A growing body of TESOL scholarship has begun to grapple with the complexities of racialization in the historical development and

contemporary practice of English language teaching and learning. This literature explores the ways that, as a discipline intimately linked to the imperial expansion of English as well as national politics of immigration and integration, TESOL is permeated by racialized power relations that create hierarchies of speaker identities and resilient images of linguistic impurity and Otherness. There is as yet little

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research, however, into the ways explicitly antiracist pedagogies might support English language learners (ELLs) in understanding and chal-lenging processes of racialization and discrimination in their own lives.

This article presents selected fi ndings from a qualitative practitioner study into the learning experiences of 30 high school ESL students in an innovative, Freirean-styled, antidiscrimination leadership camp in Canada ( Taylor, 2003 ). In this 3-day extracurricular program, public school students of 15 national origins were introduced to critical con-cepts of sociological analysis to enable them to collectively explore the myriad forms of social difference and discrimination at play in the multiple spheres of their lives.

In this article I ask how students came to reconceptualize race and racism as they used the integrative antiracism analytical framework of the camp to examine examples of discrimination from personal expe-rience. I then ask what implications their analysis had for their iden-tity claims as immigrant ESL learners. This research question is grounded in the study’s social identity theoretical framework, which posits a particular relation between language, identity, and power. I assume that linguistic interactions are not neutral nor is the right to be listened to universally accorded, but that these are structured through social power relations (including racism). Within this frame-work, it is through language that learners construct complex, chang-ing identities that can conform to or challenge and transform these social power relations through their claims to speaker authority (what they know things to mean, how their knowledge is valued) and affi li-ation or belonging (who they can be in relation to the world around them, how they identify and are associated with different groups) ( Norton, 1997 ).

I review relevant concepts from critical race theory (CRT) that frame the camp’s integrative antiracism pedagogy and highlight racialized power relations structuring the teaching and learning of English in global and, specifi cally, Canadian contexts. I describe the camp participants and curriculum in detail, including an activity apprenticing students in analyzing different forms of discrimination.

In relation to my research questions, I present overall fi ndings with detailed analyses of two participants, focusing on their changing understandings of racism and their strategic identity claims. These portraits illustrate themes that emerged across the data set; they are contextualized and supplemented by less detailed references to other participants. My conclusion argues for a practice of TESOL as a critical liminal site of student apprenticeship, investigation, and intervention in the racializing processes of English language learning.

THE IMPLICATIONS OF INTEGRATIVE ANTIRACISM EDUCATION 521521

UNDERSTANDING RACE IN TESOL THROUGH CRITICAL RACE THEORY

Although the study drew from postcolonial, critical multicultural, and critical race theory, I focus in this article on the latter, which explicitly informed the camp pedagogy ( McCaskell, 2005 ). Undergirding the camp curriculum were CRT’s complex understandings of race as a contextually specifi c, socially constructed relation of unequal power (rather than an empirical difference between discrete groups of peo-ple) and racism as a deeply ingrained, hegemonic array of structural and institutional practices systematically advantaging certain groups over others (rather than as isolated incidences of individual bigotry). 1

Within the European imperial project, the rise of the modern nation state and world system, highly fl exible and resilient discourses of race have emerged that recruit a range of arbitrary, shifting, and often contradictory markers (e.g., physical features, ethnicity, or nation of birth) to defi ne and naturalize racial groups or categories 2 ( Goldberg, 1993 , 2002 ; Hall, 1991 , 1997 ; Parker & Villenas, 1999 ; van Dijk, 1993 ). This analysis is vital to understanding the ways racism persists after the demise of eugenics, for example, in discourses of cultural racism or new racism ( Balibar, 1991 ; Barker, 1981 ), which are grounded in logics of cultural (rather than biological) determinism. Cultural racism homog-enizes nondominant ethnic groups as so empirically different from a presumed us , so inescapably defi ned by defi cient, less civilized, pre-modern, utterly antagonistic (to paraphrase Australian prime minister John Howard) or irreconcilably “foreign” cultural values, worldviews, and ways of life, that it’s only natural that confl icts should arise from intercultural contact. This discourse is not simply cultural essentialism, however, because cultural practices are being defi ned in racist ways (i.e., as empirical indicators of a heritable collective essence) that jus-tify and reinforce continuing Eurocentric segregation and inequality. For example, when low academic achievement of racialized ethnic groups is explained with reference to “cultural differences” from Euro-Canadian values and parenting practices rather than conditions of

1 The paradox of race within CRT (as a necessary analytic term designating a social construct with very “real” consequences) highlights one of the important distinctions between CRT and critical multiculturalism, which rejects a central analytic focus on this problematic con-cept ( May, 1999 ). Many critical multiculturalists (e.g., Gilroy, 2000 ) would argue that it’s possible to analyze racialization and its effects without reproducing the ontological category of race.

2 This premise does not preclude forms of racist discourse arising from imperial histories of China, Japan, or other empires, nor the complex ways racist discourse is taken up between differently racialized groups (see e.g., Dikötter, 1997 ).

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social and economic marginalization associated with racialization and immigration, ahistorical cultural stereotypes are acting to shore up White privilege in Canada in ways congruent with a history of racism ( Razack, 1995 ).

Representations of the cultural backwardness stigmatized particular-ity of differently racialized ethnicities (i.e., Them) also work through binary logics to contrastively infer a fl exible, normalized identity of Whiteness (Us): Enlightenment discourses of modernity and Western Civilization have combined with colonial discourses of racial purity, moral authority, and legal entitlement in imperial and state-formation projects to secure universal status for European knowledge traditions and naturalize White ethnicity as a neutral, unmarked norm ( Fine, Weis, Powell, & Mun Wong, 1997 ; Frankenberg, 1993 ; Levine-Rasky, 2002 ; Roediger, 1991 ). I use the term White not as an absolute identity (when did the Irish become White, after all?) but as a socially con-structed, contextually specifi c position of power and status in relation to other groups: Thus a working class Italian-Canadian immigrant may be positioned as non-White by a 10th-generation British-Canadian employer, yet might position himself as White (read European ) when celebrating Columbus or questioning how an Ethiopian Canadian should speak Italian.

This example speaks to the particular matrix of competing dis-courses of race, culture, and language striating the Canadian verti-cal mosaic ( Hamilton, 2005 ; Porter, 1965 ). Canadian critical race and postcolonial scholars ( Bannerji, 2000 ; Gunew, 2005 ; Haque, 2005 ; Razack, 2002 ; Walcott, 2003 ) argue that hegemonic discourses of multiculturalism within a bilingual framework refl ect processes of dual state formation: that discourses of a White settler colony of “two founding races” (Offi cial Languages Act, 1969, cited in Haque, 2005 , p. 22) circumscribe offi cial discourses of a culturally pluralist liberal democracy through the inauguration of a dual economy of “asymmetrical collective rights” ( Haque, 2005 , p. 289). In this two-tiered economy, the economic, political, and institutional rights of the two offi cial language groups (a term that sutures Whiteness to English/French to national cultural foundations and proprietorial primacy) are enshrined as prior to the concessionary rights to cul-tural celebration and nostalgia extended to racialized “migrant eth-nicities” ( Spivak, 1993 , p. 273) to cultural celebration and nostalgia. As White Anglophone and Francophone ethnicities are unmarked as tolerant hosts, multicultural becomes an increasingly racialized term that positions all Canadians of colour as perpetual new arrivals indelibly marked by and expected to perform their origins from “elsewhere” ( Walcott, 2003 , p. 126). 3 Bannerji and Walcott distin-guish this multiculturalism from above from popular multiculturalism


which pries open the silences and forgettings of White Anglo-/Franco-centred pluralism by demanding full economic and political rights, by asserting heterogeneous, hybrid, diasporic affi liations and multiracial visions of the national project. 4 The antiracism camp can be understood as just such an initiative, strategically operating within the interstices of competing discourses of multiculturalism ( McCaskell, 2005 ).

EXPLORING THE CONTOURS OF RACISM IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING

A growing body of TESOL scholarship draws from CRT to explore the ways historical processes of imperialism and racism are not inci-dental to our fi eld, but rather, central to its discursive and material practices. Pennycook (1994 , 1998) documents TESOL’s role in British imperialism as it promoted English as a language of global economic and cultural power, of Whiteness and epistemological authority ( Amin, 2000 ; Brutt-Griffl er & Samimy, 1999 ; Canagarajah, 2002 ; Kubota, 2004 ). This language-based racism or linguicism continues to reinforce cul-tural and economic Eurocentrism within the postcolonial world system ( Phillipson, 1992 ). Kubota (2001) examines the colonialist heritage and racial hierarchies underpinning the cultural racism — that is, the essentialized images of ESL students’ so-called cultural differences and monolithic cultural Otherness — prevalent in ESL curricula and TESOL literature. Other authors trace the unexamined Eurocentrism and rac-ist effects of ESL curricula that prepare immigrants solely for blue-col-lar employment ( Auerbach, 1995 ; Giltrow & Colhoun, 1992 ). Cultural and linguistic determinism also ground the increasingly problematic native/nonnative speaker dichotomy ( Leung, Harris, & Rampton, 1997 ; Canagarajah, 1999a ): Because English is characterized as White, nonnative speaker functions as an essentialising marker of cultural

3 First Nations Peoples contend with distinct processes of racialization not treated in this discussion of the particular discursive nexus of race, language, and cultural citizenship negotiated by ESL youth. Haque (2005) reminds us that First Nations Peoples were excluded from state development of and consultation on multiculturalism policy and have consistently refused confl ation of their claims with those of Quebec or so-called multicul-tural minorities. For critical analyses, see Anderson (2000) , Gunew (2005) , Kalant (2004) .

4 These strategies arguably demand the more complex analysis afforded by critical multicul-tural and postcolonial or postnational frameworks that avoid CRT’s reinscription of the binary logic and domestic national focus of “majority/minority” discourses ( Anderson, 2000 ). See my analysis of the ways participants’ strategies of postcolonial translation exceed and expand the camp’s situated conceptions of racism ( Taylor, in press ).

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Otherness and distance that constructs the racialized nonnative speaker as less authentic, knowledgeable, or legitimate ( Braine, 1999 ; Thomas, 1999 ). Cultural racism and linguicism underpin the defi cit models in educational theory and practice that naturalize the academic struggles of bilingual students as a product, not of systemic discrimination or curricular marginalization, but of the presumed foreignness or inade-quacy of their essentialized culture: Students are described as culturally deprived and “language handicapped” (Schlossman in Cummins, 2001 , p. 36). 5

Critical understandings of racism also ground recent research on English language learners contesting narrow, racialized images as they construct resistant, hybrid social identities through language practice ( Canagarajah, 1999b ; Ibrahim, 1999 ; McKay & Wong, 1996 ).

STUDY SITE, PROGRAM, AND POPULATION

The ESL anti-discrimination leadership program was run within the Toronto District School Board (TDSB), one of the most diverse public school districts in North America: almost half of the students are non-native speakers of English, representing over 160 language groups; however, visible minority students are over-represented in families of lower socio-economic status ( Toronto District School Board, 2001 ).

Over the past 30 years, the school board has developed a multi-pronged approach to building equity-promoting learning environ-ments, including staff and curriculum development and extracurricular programming ( McCaskell, 2005 ). Among these, “Equity Leadership Retreats” were offered during their peak period in the 1990s to stu-dents from more than 16 secondary schools: These retreats included the ESL camps.

Drawing from distinct British, U.S., and Anglo-Canadian practices of antiracism, critical multiculturalism, feminist and critical pedago-gies, the ESL Equity Leadership Camps (also known as ESL Antiracism Camps) examined in this case study were developed as an action- oriented program for personal, institutional, and societal change. Taking racism as a salient entry point, the integrative antiracism (IAR ) pedagogy builds students’ capacities to analyze and act on the ways all forms of discrimination/privilege (e.g., hetero/sexism, classism,

5 See, e.g., Cummins (1986 , 2001 ); Rockhill & Tomic (1994 ); Nieto (2000); see also Razack (1995) on the cultural defi cit model in education.


Islamophobia) interlock in everyday interactions ( Dei, 1996 ; McCaskell, 2005 ). 6

This mixed pedigree means that the camps have grappled with ten-sions within and between different pedagogical traditions: the cultural essentialism, individualism, and power blindness of liberal multicultur-alism; and the racial essentialism of early antiracism ( May, 1999 ). Tensions have also been opened up by postmodern understandings of social identities as complex, multiple, and integrative, constructed through shifting, contextually specifi c relations of power and per-formed and claimed through competing desires ( McCaskell, 2005 ). These tensions emerged in student discussions and interviews as they used the camp’s IAR framework to analyze different forms of discrimi-nation in their lives.

Central to the camp curriculum are students’ personal experiences as the basis of shared insights, analysis, embodied knowledge construc-tion, positive identity building, and leadership development. Understanding leadership as the capacity to analyze and collectively act on the architectures of power shaping the social and material con-ditions of learners’ immediate worlds, activities aim to build active alliances around shared values and visions.

In the 3-day program, mixed-school Family Groups engaged in

1. Ice-breakers and team building activities; pair interviews.

2. Viewing a video dramatizing the ways linguicism, racism, and xeno-phobia can marginalize, isolate, and disadvantage ESL students; debriefi ng personal responses and experiences.

3. Learning to analyze racism and other forms of discrimination at the individual and institutional levels based on examples from personal or immediate experience.

4. Analyzing in school groups how antidiscriminatory and welcoming their own school is; developing and presenting an action plan (a timeline of specifi c collective steps to improve different aspects of their school with the support of attending teachers).

5. Making confi dential written commitments to individual action plans or resolutions.

6. A reunion of all participants a month after camp to present progress reports, problem-solve, reconnect and renew momentum.

6 Here I echo Gunew’s (2005) caution to attend to the situatedness of theoretical and peda-gogical movements: Though May (1999) describes a clear dichotomization of early British antiracism and multicultural education debates, in Ontario integrative antiracism has drawn from British, U.S., and local movements to develop an analysis of the ways racism intersects with gender, culture, class, language, and so on ( Dei, 1996 ; McCaskell, 2005 ).

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The third activity highlights the integrative nature of the camp’s antiracism pedagogy: Facilitators ask participants for any and all examples of discrimination, prejudice, or stereotyping they could remember, not strictly examples of racism or linguicism, opening a space for participants to identify according to religion, gender, lan-guage, ethnicity, class, ability, or sexual orientation, and allowing less powerfully located students’ complex examples of multiple mar-ginalization to be heard and examined. Student examples are organ-ized in three categories (stereotypes, prejudice, discrimination) which form the Power Triangle (defi ned in Appendix A ). Stereotypes are beliefs or images (“ESL students are dumb”); prejudice involves feelings inspired by stereotypes (resentment at having to work coop-eratively with ESL students); discrimination refers to actions from a position of power that reduce an individual or group’s freedom, opportunities, sense of value or hope (ignoring ESL students in group work). The Power Triangle is a key analytic framework par-ticipants learn to use to identify the ways discriminatory actions cre-ate, sustain, or exacerbate conditions that then naturalize stereotypes: In the cited example, the ignored ESL student has fewer social and linguistic resources to complete the work and thus may appear natu-rally weaker academically. A second triangle (interpersonal, societal, and institutional discrimination) analyzes the inequitable effects of systemic discrimination (for details, see McCaskell, 2005 ; Taylor, 2003 , 2004 ).

STUDY DESIGN

The study combined qualitative approaches with discourse analysis from a facilitator/researcher’s perspective. This situated perspective is grounded in my subject location and experience as a facilitator in previous camps and a White, Canadian-born antiracist ESL teacher of 10 years. In my role as university liaison/researcher, I initiated and coordinated the 2000 camp as a fi eld partnership between the University of Toronto Bachelors in Education program and the Equity Department of the Toronto District School Board. This partnership involved recruiting and cotraining University of Toronto preservice teachers to work with Equity Department youth educators as camp facilitators.

My previous facilitator experience and coordinator/trainer role in the 2000 camp gave me insight into the pedagogical design, objectives, and context of the program. As coordinator, I could conduct partici-pant observation of a range of discussions and small group activities during the camp (fi eld notes were vital because it was inappropriate


to audiotape sensitive discussions). I presented my own observation notes to facilitators at the end of each camp day for elaboration, con-textualization, second opinions, and for insights from home-school teachers. Over the following months, I visited and received reports from student teachers working with camp participants in schools on follow-up activities.

The 47 participants in the Year 2000 ESL Equity Leadership Camp were aged 15 – 19 from 15 countries and two highly multiracial schools (described in Taylor, 2004 ). Over a 3-month period subsequent to the camp, I visited the two schools regularly to conduct one-hour audio-taped individual semistructured interviews with 30 of the 47 camp par-ticipants. Interviewees (aged 15 – 20) were selected for ethnic diversity (15 ethnolinguistic groups) and gender balance refl ective of the camp (13 male, 17 female). It is signifi cant that they were selected in rela-tion to participant observation and feedback from teachers/facilitators identifying these specifi c individuals as having engaged the camp peda-gogy in particularly intense, complex, contradictory, or remarkable ways.

These data were supplemented by one-hour individual interviews with four adult graduates of past camps (from 1990 – 1999) that had been conducted prior to the 30 interviews. Interviewing adult camp graduates helped refi ne interview questions and provided mature, retrospective insights into the short- and mid-term learning experi-ences associated with camp participation. Overall fi ndings are reported below with a specifi c focus on detailed portraits of two participants (all personal and school names are pseudonyms). Table 1 summarizes information on the 14 participants cited in this article.

This research design allowed triangulation among individual postprogram interviews; fi eld observations from school visits and the 3-day camp program; teacher and facilitator observations from their interactions with students prior to, during, and subsequent to the camp; and adult camp graduate insights. This triangulation allowed for the formation, testing, and negation of hypotheses, the identifi cation and testing of recurrent themes, and the search for negative cases across data sources. Data coding and aggregation were done through use of NUDIST software ( QSR International, 2005 ). Themes were illustrated through portraits of camp partici-pants that incorporated their own, their facilitators’, their teachers’, and my own interpretive analyses. Retrospective accounts from adult camp graduates provided valuable glimpses into the longer term understandings, friendships, activism, and career choices that might only emerge for current participants with time and particular circumstances.

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FINDINGS: TRANSFORMING PARTICIPANT CONCEPTIONS OF RACE, RACISM, AND IDENTITY

Developing Nonessentialist, Intersecting Analyses of Racism

Although participating schools are distinctive in their institutional cultures of antiracism, only 10 of the 30 interviewees claimed to have heard of discrimination before the camp, a term all but two had equated with White-on-Black “color racism” ( May, 1999 , p. 2).

As all and any personal examples of discrimination were sought from participants, the complexity of their lives enriched the camp curriculum. The integrative framework facilitated their analysis of racism intersecting with and infl ected by xenophobia, classism, sex-ism, and other forms of discrimination based on contextually spe-cifi c markers of fi rst language, nation of birth or immigrant status, gender, and poverty. For example, 19 of the interviewees recounted feeling or being treated as less intelligent, credible, valued, or even visible as immigrant ESL speakers. For Peter and Tim, speaking

TABLE 1

Camp Participants Cited in This Study

Participants in April 2000 Camp

Name

Gender

Age (at time of interview)

Age (at time of camp)

Country of birth School

Cory F 20 20 Philippines Bonneview Johnny M 16 15 China Sunnyfi eld Khatra F 16 16 Somalia Bonneview Luiza F 16 16 Albania Bonneview Mei F 16 16 China Sunnyfi eld Mohamed M 16 16 Ethiopia Bonneview Natasha F 16 16 Russia Bonneview Nadia F 16 16 Russia Bonneview Nelofer F 15 15 Afghanistan Bonneview Tim M 16 16 China Sunnyfi eld

Adult Graduates From Previous Camps

Nico M 16 21 Serbia (former Yugoslavia)

Meadowlight

Nenad M 15 24 Serbia (former Yugoslavia)

Adanac

Peter M 18 20 Ghana Valleylight

Note. To maintain participant anonymity, schools have not been identifi ed as high schools, technical institutes, or collegiate institutes.


accented English or their fi rst language drew pejorative attention to their ethnicity (as Ghanaian or Chinese). In another example, Hue and Khatra analyzed the ways racialized, gendered stereotypes of beauty inspired discrimination against them, even by peers of the same “color” (see Taylor, 2004 ). In Nico’s analysis, it is in hegemonic stereotypes of both native English speakers and authentic, nonhy-phenated Canadians as White that linguicism and xenophobia are racialized (Nico’s analysis is discussed in more detail later).

As they developed more sophisticated understandings of discrimi-nation, many participants used the camp’s analytic framework to identify and interrogate complex examples of racially infl ected lin-guicism in their lives that they had previously accepted as normal or as simply a stage all language learners pass through equally (e.g., anxiety or self-censorship because of one’s accent or imperfect fl uency).

Understanding Discrimination at the Collective Level

Of the 10 interviewees who claimed to have heard of discrimination before the camp, 8 had defi ned it in terms of individual overt bigotry. This is coherent with liberal multiculturalism and North American ide-ologies of individualism.

When asked in postprogram interviews for examples of discrimi-nation, though all interviewees cited individual acts, 13 examined examples of systemic discrimination (including Cory, discussed later). As I have reported elsewhere ( Taylor, 2004 , in press), Hue linked student experiences of racism to the lack of antiracism education in schools, whereas Luiza analyzed the systemic gendered risks posed to young women by war, civil insecurity and by inadequate sex edu-cation. Both Johnny and Mei analyzed the effects of racist stereo-types of Blacks in the media. Nelofer analyzed myriad institutional restrictions placed on women in Afghanistan where “men have more value”; she also analyzed the ways classist stereotyping gave a neigh-boring school an advantage over her own in lobbying to avoid clo-sure by the board (“They think that school is academic, it has uniforms”).

Institutional discrimination is certainly a more challenging con-cept than individual discrimination: Those who analyzed collective discrimination were either older or more mature in political analysis (Luiza, Johnny, Mei, and Nelofer all claimed an interest in politics dating back to their families’ experiences under Communism or the Taliban).

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Analyzing and Claiming Multidimensional, Relational Identity

The camp focus on multiple, intersecting forms of discrimination encouraged participants to see their identities not as absolute so much as constructed in relation to different contexts and relation-ships. Although Nico identifi ed with the strategic collective ESL iden-tity claimed by camp participants as they analyzed common experiences of language-based marginalization, particular students’ accounts of racism prodded him to recognize the ways his distinct positioning as a comparatively Whitened, European immigrant mitigated the effects of linguicism. As he described the antiracist values he has developed, he disidentifi ed with racist friends with whom he shares language and ethnicity. 7 Although Johnny and Tim gave examples in their interviews of racism they had experienced as Chinese immigrant lan-guage learners, they also both disidentifi ed with the anti-Black racism they remembered in the Peoples’ Republic of China ( Taylor, in press ). Mohamed analyzed his being stereotyped as a “Black thief” by suspicious shopkeepers in Canada, while recognizing that in Ethiopia his ethnolinguistic affi liation overshadowed other identity markers (“Because of the war between Eritrea and Ethiopia … They’d be like, ‘Oh, he’s Ethiopian, oh my god! They’re so mean!’”). When he analyzed the classist exclusionary consequences of high school fees in Ethiopia, he positioned himself as middle class. He identifi ed uncomfortably as male when he analyzed (as an example of sexism) the ways he recalled girls being judged in Ethiopia: “They’re like, ‘She needs to cover up more.’”

In all of these examples, the shifting focus of analysis in camp discussions — from linguicism to xenophobia to gendered racism to classism — asks students to analyze their multiple positions within con-textually specifi c relations of power. At the same time, the camp pro-gram provides a model of nonessentialist collective identity. Though participants share neither fi rst language nor ethnicity, the fi nal stage of creating and implementing their school antidiscrimination action plan demands that they build a community of difference (theo-rized in Taylor, 2004 ) based on shared values and a common com-mitment to minoritarian perspectives (perspectives that strategically adopt the critical insights and interests of the minority in any power relation).

7 It may be signifi cant that Nico later described his birth nation as having been “destroyed by racism.”


Acting for Social Change

The potential for participants’ more complex analysis of race, iden-tity, and discrimination to inspire transformative action depends on myriad factors. Interviews with camp graduates attest to the kinds of leadership and collective activism the camp can directly inspire in schools with committed support from participating teachers, other school staffs, or administration and/or a history of student activism (often camp inspired), particularly for participants with strong social and language skills. Examples of projects initiated by past ESL camp graduates include developing multilingual resources for new ESL stu-dents; school international or antidiscrimination clubs sponsoring events to raise awareness; equity audits of student and community experiences of discrimination presented to school and board administration; and designated ESL positions in student government and school newspapers. Leadership and collective actions often emerged in response to particu-lar crises: driving out White supremacist groups recruiting at school (Hue) or fi ghting the board’s proposed closure of the school (Bonneview students including Nelofer, Luiza, Cory, Nadia, and Natasha).

Adams, Bell, and Griffi n (1997) remind us that much of the per-sonal change inspired by social justice and antidiscrimination educa-tion is subterranean. Though interviewees did not always link these explicitly to their camp experiences, they described changed relation-ships with friends, family, peers, and coworkers (e.g., see Nico’s discus-sion) as well as new ambitions for postsecondary study and career pursuit (Khatra, Johnny, Mei, Hue, Nenad, and Peter).

PORTRAIT OF CORY: ANALYZING SYSTEMIC AND INDIVIDUAL CLASSED, GENDERED, LINGUISTIC RACISM

Cory had arrived with her younger brother from the Philippines 2 years prior.

When I came here I had never seen my mom for 10 years. Like, before she was in Canada, she was in Hong Kong, so I grew up with my grandpar-ents … . So she brought us here for a good future. Because it’s really hard to get a job in my country, even if you have a diploma. And I know she sac-rifi ced a lot, she really did all her best just to bring us here. She’s worked looking after other people’s kids. Even now, we only ever see her on week-ends. But she was really sad before, especially on special times, like Christmas.

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The irony of her mother sacrifi cing the joy of raising her own chil-dren as the price of their “future” is not lost on Cory as she names the gap between North and South as a form of discrimination:

Researcher: Can you name some different examples of discrimination?

Cory: Well, in the camp we talked about discrimination between countries.

Researcher: Can you explain that?

Cory: Like you have to leave your country because you can’t fi nd a job or that the rich countries don’t help the poor countries, they just say “you can’t immigrate,” but there aren’t jobs in the poorer country!

Researcher: So rich countries are discriminating?

Cory: Yeah, you should help them, instead of, like, not accepting them to come to Canada. Like Philippines, we’re not a poor country, but you can’t compare with Canada because here there are more opportunities. But we don’t say “you can’t come to our country because you’re poor or something.”

Researcher: If this is discrimination, what are the stereotypes?

Cory: Well, like you think — well, not you, but politicians — think people in poor countries are lazy, so it’s our fault there aren’t jobs.

Researcher: In your experience are immigrants or Filipinos lazy?

Cory: What? Like, just look at my mom — how many moms in Canada miss their kids for 10 years for work?

As Cory names global economic disparities, the inequitable global labour economy, and First World immigration restrictions as forms of discrimination, she links these through the Power Triangle to racist stereotypes of the natural laziness of the peoples of former colonies like the Philippines. What is of note here is the way the camp’s inte-grative antiracism framework encouraged Cory to think about discrimi-nation in new ways:

Researcher: Did you know about these different kinds of discrimination before?

Cory: Well, no, not like that it could happen between countries: like I know it, but not really specifi c. Like, yeah, I know if one person discriminates somebody else’s race, the color, something like that.

The narrow understanding of color racism Cory claims to have held before the camp may refl ect essentialist discourses of antiracism circu-lating in her school or hegemonic discourses of race in North American popular culture. “One person discriminates somebody else’s race” echoes


liberal multicultural discourses that reduce discrimination to interper-sonal expressions of irrational feelings ( May, 1999 ). Grounded in her own family’s experience of prolonged separation and hardship, Cory extends her prior conception to include systemic discrimination through the institutions of globalised trade and investment and national immigration policy.

This expanded, intersecting notion of discrimination is vital to Cory’s analysis of other examples in her life:

Researcher: Do you remember examples of discrimination you discussed at camp?

Cory: Well, my example was, when I am at work, the woman I work with is really mean to me — like she didn’t tell me to go to the back and stay there, but she always told me I say too much the word like and I can’t with customers.

Researcher: Do other young people say like ?

Cory: Yeah, even young people born here say like ! … So I kind of feel like, you know, she’s discriminating me, and I really get kind of upset, because … like you might come from a different country but we’re all humans, and people can make mistakes.

Cory defi nes more precisely her coworker’s double standard: Language practices that might be treated as minor mistakes of a native speaker are interpreted as a refl ection of her incompetence in serving customers.

Researcher: How is this discriminating against you?

Cory: Well, so I won’t talk, or now I’m really self-conscious when I say like . Like I said like at camp and everybody laughed at me [ laughing ].

Cory traces her older, native-speaking coworker’s power to silence and limit her opportunities to improve her English (“so I won’t talk”). The Triangle thus helps her map the way discrimination can reinforce conditions that exacerbate and naturalize the very stereotypes that inspire it.

When the camp facilitator asked Cory’s Family Group if this exam-ple of silencing her is a form of discrimination, another student com-pared it to his disengagement in response to a White teacher he claimed consistently ignored or reprimanded Black students in class. The group had decided that this must therefore also constitute dis-crimination since “It’s a free country and everyone can talk” (fi eld notes, April 11, 2000). Asked what might be the particular basis of this discrimination, the group agreed on immigrant ESL status rather than race, on which the facilitator introduced the words xenophobia and

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linguicism as forms of discrimination based on birthplace or citizenship status and fi rst language or English profi ciency. This discussion may well inform Cory’s analysis of the stereotypes inspiring her coworker’s actions:

Researcher: Where do you think this discrimination comes from?

Cory: Hmm. Like, because I’m just some ESL kid, so she’s prejudice that immigrants can’t speak English.

Researcher: Is it true immigrants who speak English as their second or third language speak it badly?

Cory: No, like, not for sure — because my other teacher was born in India, and like, she’s a teacher, so …

I’ve traced an important shift from Cory’s initial understanding of her coworker as “really mean” to her analysis of the racialized power relation between them. This shift allows Cory to ask not only how she is speaking but how her coworker is listening and to what effect. Re-examining her feeling of self-consciousness through the lens of the Power Triangle allows Cory to denaturalize it as socially constructed through racist and linguicist images of incompetent immigrant nonna-tive English speakers. Drawing from the camp discourse of integrative racism, Cory powerfully repositions herself as a legitimate speaker wor-thy of her listeners’ attention ( Norton, 1997 ) and a leader with privi-leged insight into discrimination and equity’(“And I thought, ‘Wow! I could be a leader.’”). The camp’s systemic analysis and leadership man-date also opened avenues of collective action: Though not conclusive, there is clear evidence in this study of the increased participation and profi le of ESL camp participants, including Cory, in the student cam-paign to reverse the board decision to close their school (Cory pre-sented one of many testimonial deputations to the board).

PORTRAIT OF NICO: UNDERSTANDING THE DYNAMICS OF WHITENESS WITHIN LINGUISTIC RACISM

Nico recounts and analyzes a very distinct experience of language difference. An adult camp graduate, Nico had arrived in Canada with his family from Belgrade the year prior to attending camp, having developed English profi ciency at what he describes as a “fast” pace. Nico’s trade-oriented high school was located in a western suburb with mixed housing, extensive parkland, and a high concentration of Eastern Europeans from successive post – World War II waves. His school was also characterized by signifi cant antiracism leadership among staff


and a vibrant English as a second dialect (ESD) program, which drew largely Afro-Caribbean students from across the city. Thus, although the student demographics refl ected a White majority with Eastern Europeans highly represented among the ESL population, students of color from more than 15 ethnoracial affi liations were represented among the ESL and ESD groups. 8

Prominent in Nico’s memory of the camp is the surprise he felt lis-tening to stories of discrimination experienced by other ESL students:

Researcher: Do you remember things that surprised you at camp?

Nico: Well, [ pause ] kind of surprised … yeah, I think I was surprised a cou-ple of times at the severity of the discrimination. But I knew it happens sometimes … I mean, it didn’t happen to me exactly. Because I think the neighborhood of the school is pretty good. But I’d heard stories from friends of mine in other places or on the media … lots of examples of, um, of how different uh nationalities or cultures would be, treated.

Researcher: Why do you think you experienced less discrimination than friends?

Nico: I guess, well, my conversational English was pretty good. And I guess it seems the accent is less of a problem for Serbian speakers than other fi rst languages. So that way people that might have been racist towards non-Canadians or whatever, they couldn’t really see that I was an immi-grant unless I told them I was. And I guess that’s why I didn’t encounter as many racial problems. But, I don’t know, I guess other people from ESL that had a thick accent, I think that they could have had a little more of a problem, as far as fi tting into the Canadian concepts, and on the other side I guess more racial problems.

At fi rst, then, Nico presents a linguistic determinist view (akin to cultural racism): “Thick accents” refl ect natural differences between languages and can lead to “racial problems” because these speakers experience greater diffi culty “fi tting in” and thus can become targets for the occasional bigotry of “people that might have been racist toward non-Canadians or whatever.” For Serbian speakers, accent and therefore xenophobia are “less of a problem.”

Researcher: So do you think the discrimination was because of language or race?

Nico: Hm. Um, both. Because I look like the stereotype of a Canadian, still, even though this is changing. So it was easier for people to accept me speaking English.

8 Though exact ethnoracial demographic data are not available for Nico’s school during this period, this overview is based on personal communication with a veteran teacher (October 2, 2000).

TESOL QUARTERLY536

In naming this discrimination as both linguicism and racism, Nico suggests that his Whiteness helped him “fi t” the “stereotype of a Canadian,” unmarking him and making it “easier for people to accept [him] speaking English.”

This represents a signifi cant shift in analysis: Whereas at fi rst Nico naturalized language difference and accent as empirical markers used by xenophobes to identify potential targets, he uses the Power Triangle to trace relational images of Whiteness within normative discourses of native English speakers and Canadianness. This analysis leads him to reconsider accent as a racialized social construct. Nico and Cory’s analyses posit a complex relationship between forms of social differ-ence based on language, race, and competing visions of national iden-tity. Although language difference can be a target of xenophobia, powerful discourses of Canadian dual state formation already construct certain subjects as racialized “multicultural” Others from elsewhere whose accent one listens for as much as one hears (cf. Rubin, 1992 ).

It is through listening to the stories of racist experiences of immigrant friends of color that Nico is able to “see” Whiteness as a relation. Being European cannot guarantee him White status; however, it does Whiten him in comparison with non-European immigrant language learners whose experiences of exclusion so shockingly diverge from his own. Within this analysis, discourses of racism and linguicism do not simply spark random acts of xenophobia; rather, they are central to the very processes, to the very terms of belonging and legitimacy by which ESL students struggle to construct their social identities as credible speakers of English and authentic, equally accepted and valued Canadians.

Nico is not the only White(ned) camp participant to describe an awareness of the effects of Whiteness on their experiences of language learning and social integration: of the seven students interviewed (from Serbia, Ukraine, Albania, Russia, and Kazakhstan) whose Caucasian appearance potentially Whitens them in relation to peers of Asian, African, or South American origin, four offered examples of racism heard from other camp participants while noting that they had not themselves experienced racism. Several explicitly constructed their identities within a framework of White antiracism:

Luiza: Personally, I haven’t experienced difference towards me, I mean like racism towards me or my family, but I think, there was a still a kind of racism, but towards more the races, mostly, the country. Because we are White people, so maybe we don’t feel it as much as Black or Chinese peo-ple do, because I have friends from all over the world, so, I know like when they tell me that “this happened to me” and it’s like some kind of discrimi-nation, but they’re not White and they’re Black or Chinese. So I think there’s a kind of discrimination but not from the countries between coun-tries, I think it’s between the race.


Although Luiza could be racialized on the basis of her Muslim faith or her immigration from a Second World country, she positions herself as White in recognition of the contrastive dynamics of Whiteness. In fact, she is more concerned by racism than xenophobia. For Luiza, taking up the integrative antiracism analysis of the camp has involved not only identifying the ways Whiteness shapes her social identity in English, but also explicitly identifying with a particular kind of Whiteness: a White antiracist social identity developed through the experience of a diverse camp community built on shared values of antidiscrimination.

Hearing the “severity” of racism against friends of color at camp and analyzing the unjust privileges associated with his comparative Whiteness seems to have shaped the ways Nico, too, takes up his social identity as White. He reports in the interview that his closest friends and girl-friend are racially diverse, something which has accelerated the grow-ing distance between himself and certain former Serbian friends:

The way [one Serbian friend] talked about Black people and Asian peo-ple, that really ticked me off a little and I just, I guess we grew apart … not because he’s racist, just, just because, the concepts he sees and he hates people he doesn’t even know.

Nico is at pains in this refl ection to avoid essentialisng; rather, he emphasizes the central role of shared values and worldviews in his shifting social affi liations.

As these students examine the role of Whiteness in their language learning experiences, the nonessentialist antidiscriminatory pedagogy encourages them to develop antiracist identities that claim national belonging based on common values rather than White privilege or ancestry.

Researcher: What does Canadian mean to you, who is and who is not?

Nico: Hm. Well, to me the real Canadians would be the Indians. That’s how I see, because at one point or another, no matter how many genera-tions they had to go, they had to come from somewhere. So, to me the real Canadians would be the Indians and the Eskimos. But I guess if you were second or third generation here, that’s pretty much all you know. No mat-ter if you were from Pakistan or England, no matter where from the world, I think by the time you hit third or even second generation I think you’re pretty much “Canadian-oriented.” Because I have a couple of friends who were just the fi rst generation, they were born here and, they don’t even speak their language. So I would make that a second kind, second cate-gory. Well, then the third group would be me or my folks: that came here less than birth time. I guess I would fi t them in a third group. But I don’t think any less of them.

Researcher: You mean they’re not different degrees of “real” Canadians?

TESOL QUARTERLY538

Nico: No, no, they’re just different ways of setting them, I mean organizing what people feel and know about this country but for me they’re all equal.

Nico’s identity claim challenges both colonialist and liberal multicul-tural discourses of citizenship with their Eurocentric hierarchies of col-lective rights and authenticity. He establishes a fundamental distinction between First Nations Peoples and settlers or immigrants based not in racial categories but in different modes of identifi cation with Canadian society (understood to reference different histories, memories, and affi liations within global fl ows). Within this nonessentialist framework, Canadianness is not a measure of inheritance, genealogy, or entitle-ment, nor a set of arbitrary indicators (e.g., ethnoracial features, fi rst language, accent) or legal status, but an act of identifi cation and com-mitment. To live your life “pretty much ‘Canadian-oriented’” is to live your life primarily in relation to this society and space; in contrast, those who “came here less than birth time” experience life here trian-gulated with life there ( Hoffman, 1990 , p. 170). Nico’s framework for organizing different modes of Canadianness based on “feelings” of commitment allows for discussion of societal practices (like xenophobic or racist discrimination) that can inhibit or enhance feelings of inclu-sion and collective identifi cation among differently positioned collec-tivities. At the same time, Whiteness loses any special status or claims.

It’s noteworthy that several other participants explicitly rejected the kinds of White identity status imagined by Eurocentric discourses of Canadian identity. To the questions “Do you feel Canadian? Who is Canadian in your opinion?” they responded:

Nadia: [ Pause ] Hmm, that is interesting, my point is that Canadian is to be every color … . So now, everybody is so different, it’s really hard to say who is and is not a Canadian now … . I would say once you have your citizen[ship], you are Canadian. But the Indians are the real real Canadian. So maybe we should not apply to government immigration but to ask the Indian people to become a citizen, to say, “Will you accept me”?

Natasha: [ Pause ] First you have to know what it is, Canadian! For me, Canadian is [ pause ] I don’t really know! [ Laughing ] [ Pause ] Probably I do feel, because I just feel at home here, fi rst. Second, I respect this country. And Canadian person is not White Canadian! I don’t think so, so probably that’s one of the reasons too I like to feel Canadian!

Both born in Russia and comparatively Whitened in their school, Nadia and Natasha recognize the paradox of claiming membership in a collective identity so broadly defi ned in ethnoracial, historical, or political terms. They are clear, however, that the Canadian identity they claim is one predicated on recognition of the unique status and rights of First Nations, and one which is explicitly multi-ethnoracial. These identity claims assert a “multiculturalism from below” ( Bannerji,


2000 , p. 22), which imagines this postcolonial settler society as a pro-foundly hybridized “diaspora-space”: “a point of confl uence of eco-nomic, political, cultural and psychic processes … where multiple subject positions are juxtaposed, contexted, proclaimed or disavowed” ( Brah, 1996 , quoted in Parker, 2000 , p. 73).

CONCLUSION: IMPLICATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

The research presented in this article makes a strong case for TESOL practitioners and researchers to attend to the sociocultural and sociopolitical contexts of English language learning. In particular, this case study argues for an understanding of racialized power dynam-ics as integral to processes of social identity construction through English language learning, especially as they intersect with competing discourses of national identity, cultural citizenship, and linguistic com-petence/legitimacy in the case of immigrant ESL learners. These fi nd-ings also suggest the need for more research of explicitly antiracist ESL pedagogy in different settings.

The portraits of Cory and Nico suggest that integrative antiracism education can support immigrant language learners’ development of expanded, intersectional, and even multilevel (individual, collective, institutional) conceptions of discrimination. The value of these under-standings lies in the potential for learners to recognize and question forms of discrimination they had previously accepted as natural or exceptional. Re-examining these forms as socially constructed and col-lectively experienced may open avenues for individual and collective interventions into these lived examples of discrimination and inequity.

These expanded analyses of discrimination can also potentially facil-itate nonessentialist identity claims as learners identify in complex ways with different groups from different positions within different con-texts. Facilitating such identity claims is particularly important as ESL youth navigate the paradox of identity common to experiences of migration and minoritization: as described below, immigrant language learners are challenged to make sense of the unprecedented plurality and fl uidity of roles they come to play in their new society even as ethnocentric norms reduce them to totalizing, frozen stereotypes:

Nowhere is there more dramatic evidence of change, as the new arrival suddenly becomes a minority, a target of racism, class dislocation, cultural and family upheaval … . At the same time ‘immigrant woman’ [or ‘ESL learner’] carries with it a fi xed, enduring and totalizing quality … it becomes the totality of her identity in the dominant society, the only way in which she will be seen, however long she resides in Canada, as long as

TESOL QUARTERLY540

she speaks with an accent, or her difference is marked by skin color or other physical signifi ers that deviate from the norm of white (fe)maleness. ( Rockhill & Tomic, 1994 , p. 21)

This research also suggests that meaningful, personal engagement in a supportive learning environment with integrative antiracism analy-sis and values can open a distinctively ethical stance vis-à-vis becoming Canadian. Nico and other relatively White participants identify with a Canadian national identity based not in racial or ethnolinguistic hier-archies but in a common set of values that remember and challenge Eurocentrism, racism, and colonialism.

Finally, this research urges us to recognize that our practice of TESOL is never neutral but always embedded within racialized and imperialist (as well as gendered, heteronormative, classed, ethnocen-tric, and nationalist) discourses that our pedagogy might either per-petuate or challenge. TESOL and ESL are border sites where the cultural, racial, national, and linguistic Other is produced as much as taught ( Luke, 2004 , p. 25), and where racialized cultural and language difference is reifi ed as much as negotiated ( Kubota, 2001 ). White Anglophone TESOL and ESL teachers need to recognize that our bodies are themselves part of the hidden curriculum, that they rein-force dominant images of English as a White language and of White native speakers as the most qualifi ed teachers ( Amin, 2000 ; Braine, 1999 ). We can work to challenge these dominant discourses in many ways: through curriculum choices (Who is represented and how in our teaching materials? Whose knowledge counts in our classrooms?), stu-dent-centered classrooms and whole school environments (Whose faces are on the walls? Whose voices give the announcements?); through professional alliances to effect changes in school and educational pol-icy (including prioritizing faculty diversifi cation) ( Banks & Banks, 2004 ; Coelho, 1998 ; Cummins, 2001 ).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author gratefully acknowledges the supportive suggestions of the editors, reviewers, colleagues Katie Rehner and Eve Haque, and most important, the leader-ship, generosity, and insights of camp participants and organizers.

THE AUTHOR

Lisa Taylor completed her doctoral degree at OISE/UT, University of Toronto, On-tario, Canada. As an ESL, EFL, and social justice educator of 17 years, she conducts research in critical multicultural, multilingual, and multiliteracies education in multilingual contexts, as well as cultural studies, critical race, feminist poststructural-ist and postcolonial theory in education.


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APPENDIX A

Power Triangle Activity from Facilitator’s Handbook ( Equity Studies Offi ce, 2000 )

DAY TWO

UNDERSTANDING DISCRIMINATION

PURPOSE: To give the students new vocabulary and concepts to organize their experiences.

METHOD: Write the words: Stereotype, Prejudice and Discrimination on the fl ip chart. Ask the students to defi ne these words as a group. The bottom line of these defi nitions should be that:

Stereotypes are ideas , generalizations etc.

Prejudices are feelings , attitudes etc.

Discrimination is action .

It will be helpful to have the students give concrete examples of each. Next, ask the students who can have stereotypes. (Everybody) Who can have prejudice?

(Everybody) What does someone need to discriminate? (Power) One needs some sort of power to be able to act. What gives people power in our society? (Authority, size, language, education, money, etc.)

When students are clear on these concepts ask them to fi ll out the “When I see, hear, fear” forms with a partner. As they report back group the responses under three headings: Dominant ideas, Individual actions and systemic or institutional practices or policies. Don’t tell the students what your organizing principle is. Ask them to fi gure it out.

Ask the students how these areas are connected. .... Connections should run both ways from each corner. Ask them what it feels like to be in the centre of all this and on the receiving and of such ideas and actions.

Finally ask them what kinds of activities are necessary to change this cycle at each corner, i.e. Ideas are changed through education, individual actions are changed by rules and con-sequences, systemic practices are changed by political action.

Note. From Equity Studies Offi ce (2000) . Reproduced with permission of Toronto Board of Education.


More Than a Game: A Critical Discourse Analysis of a Racial Inequality Exercise in Japan KAY HAMMOND International Christian University Tokyo, Japan

This article reports on a critical discourse analysis of Japanese English as a foreign language (EFL) students’ written refl ections on their experi-ence of a simulated racial inequality exercise at a university in Japan. Initially, the refl ections were compared thematically with previously pub-lished narratives by people who had experienced racism. The results showed that students engaged well with the simulation and reported many experiences similar to those reported in the published narratives. This result suggests that, according to traditional measures, the exercise was as effective with Japanese students as it has been with white Americans in promoting awareness of racial discrimination. The written statements were reanalyzed, however, from a critical pedagogical perspective draw-ing on the concept that language shapes, and is shaped by, social prac-tice and inequalities in power. This analysis revealed that the students’ written refl ections contained a discourse of diversion from racism. The fi ndings suggest that language teachers need to be more critical when using racial inequality simulation exercises because a focus on the obvi-ous engagement and increased empathy commonly reported may miss the subtle forms of oppression contained within language or society. Pedagogical implications of the analysis are also presented.

The power relationships that structure social life do not stop at the class-room door. ( Brown, Cervero, & Johnson-Bailey, 2000 , p. 273)

R acism is still prevalent in all facets of modern societies, including practices in EFL contexts. Analysts of racism (e.g., Bonilla-Silva &

Forman, 2000 ; Essed, 1991 ) point out that much of modern racism is manifested covertly. It has also been argued, from a critical pedagogi-cal perspective, that many characteristic practices of education contain hidden assumptions and acts that constitute and maintain inequality ( Canagarajah, 1999 ; Pennycook, 1994 ). One pedagogical approach to promote greater understanding of social inequality, including racism, is using simulation games. Successful results have been reported ( Dorn,


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1989 ). However, the use of these games has largely been outside of the TESOL fi eld.

In this study, I analyzed the refl ections written by some Japanese EFL university students in Japan after they had participated in a racial inequality simulation exercise. Initially I analyzed their refl ections thematically to compare them with previous literature. Following this analysis, I analyzed their refl ections again through a critical discourse analysis (CDA) framework to identify discursive strategies that may sub-tly support racism. I also critically examined my own positionality as a white native speaker of English. This study contributes to the literature on race and TESOL in its critical examination of a pedagogical prac-tice that has been previously reported as effective for teaching racial awareness.

SIMULATION GAMES

Simulation games have been used to teach greater awareness of social inequality, including racism ( Bohmer & Briggs, 1991 ; Dundes & Harlow, 2004 ; Groves, Warren, & Witschger, 1996 ; Miller, 1992 ; Misra, 1997 ). In 1968, Jane Elliot conducted a historic simulation exercise focusing solely on race to promote awareness of the effects of racism. To provide her white, third-grade students with fi rsthand experience of the effects of racism, she divided the class based on brown and nonbrown eye color. The children were treated differentially in terms of praise and privileges for one day each, fi rst as the favored group and then without these benefi ts as the nonfavored group. When the children were in the favored group their schoolwork and self-esteem improved, and they started to discriminate against children in the non-favored group. Children in the nonfavored group suffered a drop in schoolwork performance and self-esteem. Refl ections written by the children about discrimination showed a deeper understanding of the issue. Furthermore, observations of the children over the following years showed that they maintained their understanding and were less tolerant of discriminatory behavior by those around them ( Elliot, 1973 ).

Discussions following simulation games provide students with op -portunities to refl ect on their own experiences and examine how social structures are maintained in society ( Coghlan & Huggins, 2004 ). Common postexercise assignments also include students’ written re -fl ections (e.g., Coghlan & Huggins, 2004 ; Lehman, 1997 ). Outcomes from simulation games of racism have included students taking action beyond the classroom in terms of teaching antiracism workshops, organizing aid drives, participating in mentor programs ( Jakubowski,

ANALYSIS OF A RACIAL INEQUALITY EXERCISE 547

2001 ), and feeling greater empathy with people in oppressed positions ( Groves, et al., 1996 ). As a result, the use of simulation games has been considered successful in terms of increasing student awareness of and action on racial issues.

RACE RELATIONS IN JAPAN

Although simulation games have been used with classes that focus on white racism in the United States, it is likely that the same princi-ples could be applied in Japan where the dominant group is Japanese. The concepts of Japanese and race need to be described. The widely held view in Japan of what it means to be pure Japanese is that an individual has Japanese nationality under the law, has Japanese blood lineage, and has internalized Japanese culture ( Fukuoka, 2000 ). In practice this means people who hold Japanese citizenship, whose ancestors were also Japanese, and who speak Japanese and follow Japanese cultural behaviors. However, this view is problematic because concepts of race are contentious. Lie (2001) states that considering the genetic homogeneity of the human species, the concept of race is more of a social analysis than a biological one. He also mentions that the concept of ethnicity is ambiguous in the absence of fi xed defi ning criteria. Therefore it is not easy to defi ne pure Japanese blood or the exact point at which someone has suffi ciently internalized Japanese culture. Considering these diffi culties in defi nition, the concept of race used in this article includes both biological and ethnic elements as they are constructed in this so-called common-sense view, and the concept of racism concerns the discrimination against groups that dif-fer from this common-sense defi nition of pure Japanese .

Compared with the racially diverse population of the United States, Japan is relatively homogeneous. Nonetheless, minority groups exist. Such minorities include Japanese citizens who are ethnic minorities (e.g., the indigenous Ainu, Ryukyu islanders from Okinawa, ethnic Koreans or Chinese) and resident foreigners (e.g., long-term Japanese residents of Korean or Chinese descent, recent immigrants of Japanese descent from Brazil and Peru, and others). Lie (2001) points out that estimating the numbers of these minority populations in Japan is dif-fi cult because neither governmental nor sociological surveys incor-porate ethnic diversity. Furthermore, members of groups such as the Korean Japanese may try to pass as mainstream Japanese to avoid discrimination. According to the 2000 census, of the approximately 127 million people living in Japan, only 1% comprised people from overseas (Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts, and Telecommunications: Statistics Bureau, 2001).

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Despite the existence of several minority populations in Japan, there is a prevailing attitude that Japan has only one culture and ethnicity ( Uchida, Noda, Sado, & Ishiyama, 1994 ) with no real minority prob-lems ( Fukuoka, 2000 ). Noguchi (2001) summarizes the work of schol-ars who show that this monolithic image was created as a result of efforts to standardize language and education during the Meiji Period (1868 – 1912). Japanese language and education were standardized to increase national pride in the face of increasing contact with more technologically advanced Western nations. It was combined with the ideology of the Japanese as a single group descending from gods that originated in heaven. These images were used to unite the Japanese people and proclaim their cultural superiority. Furthermore, Noguchi (2001) states that this superiority was used to justify the assimilation of all other ethnic groups by depriving them of their language and culture and eventually overwriting their existence with the myth of homogeneity.

Despite their sense of superiority, many Japanese have an enduring admiration of the West, particularly North America and Europe ( Lie, 2001 ). This attitude may be related to the association between the modernization of Japan and its adoption of many Western concepts (Aoki, 1990, cited in Nakanishi, 2002 ). The foreigners who appear in endorsements of commercial products tend to be American or European white persons ( Nakanishi, 2002 ), and news coverage of over-seas countries disproportionately favors the United States ( Saito, 1999 ). In the fi eld of English teaching it is easier for white, native speakers of a dominant variety of English to fi nd employment. However, despite this preference for white foreigners over nonwhites, the white foreign-ers are excluded from entering the inner “we” Japanese group. As Tobin (1983) states: “Japan presents Americans with a way of life famil-iar and attractive enough to stimulate a keen desire to be included; but this desire inevitably leads to frustration, to the realization that an American in Japan is always an outsider” (p. 137). Therefore, White foreigners in Japan occupy both a discriminated and a privileged position.

In recent decades, the issue of racism has gained prominence in Japan. Ethnic minorities have become more vocal, research is fo -cusing on these minorities, and a greater international character is shaping communities as more immigrants enter Japan and more Japanese experience living abroad ( Noguchi, 2001 ). Attention has focused on the discrimination against the indigenous Japanese Ainu ( Noguchi, 2001 ; Siddle, 1995 ; Sobel & Miyake, 1994 ), the Japanese-born Korean population ( Fukuoka, 2000 ; Hicks, 1997 ; Hirasawa, 1991 ), the Brazilian and South American immigrants of Japanese ancestry ( Hirataka, Koishi, & Kato, 2001 ), the Chinese


communities ( Maher, 1995 ) and the general discrepancies between treatment of Japanese and non-Japanese people in Japan ( Mannari & Befu, 1991 ). Despite recent attention to racial and ethnic inequalities in Japan, the myth of homogeneity persists. A recent example was reported in which Mr. Aso, the Japanese Minister for International Affairs and Communications, claimed that Japan was “one nation, one civilization, one language, one culture and one race” (“ Aso Says,” 2005 ). Many of my students say that Japan is a homogeneous society and that they did not study much about minorities in school. Such comments suggest that educational practices may not be assisting students to develop an adequate awareness of the racial issues within their society.

CRITICAL PEDAGOGIES

Critical attention has been turned toward the educational practices themselves. Canagarajah (1999) promotes critical pedagogy to encour-age teachers and learners to rethink the constructs of learning and knowledge in mainstream pedagogical practices. From a perspective of critical pedagogy, educational sites are not neutral places inde-pendent of an external society; rather, educational practices are viewed as signifi cantly shaped by wider sociopolitical forces and in the interests of dominant social groups. Pennycook (1990) states that critical pedagogy has two main aspects. First is the idea of critique with a view to some form of change. This aspect is based on the concept that all knowledge is socially constructed and this construc-tion serves the interests of an individual or group. Therefore, knowl-edge is always embedded within power relationships and these can be negotiated. Second, critical pedagogy investigates the connections between knowledge, power, and culture. Giroux (2005) maintains that critical pedagogy “makes problematic how teachers and students sus-tain, resist, or accommodate those languages, ideologies, social proc-esses, and myths that position them within existing relations of power and dependency” (p. 136).

The fi eld of TESOL is indeed intimately connected with sociopoliti-cal concerns. Second language education is surrounded by issues such as dialect status, the construction of nation-states, minority education, and internationalization. Kubota (1998) notes that the teaching and learning of English in Japan has centered on inner circle forms of English (see Kachru, 1985 ) and promulgated Western perspectives at the expense of other global sociolinguistic viewpoints. Critical pedago-gies foreground culture in the language syllabus as a productive system of meaning rather than relegating it to a background collection of

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static customs and behaviors ( Pennycook, 1990 ). Language itself is also a focus of attention. Morgan (1995) states that:

Language is not something that sits on the sidelines during the struggle over competing social interests and access to material resources. Language is used to put people in their place; people use language to change where they have been placed. (p. 12)

Therefore language teachers are not merely teaching students how to present information in another language and copy the appropriate behaviors; they are also imparting, although often unconsciously, a system in which meanings are interpreted and subjectivities are constructed. Critical pedagogies help teachers and students to become more aware of how these processes operate and to see potential for transformation. One method of critically examining racial meanings represented in language is through critical discourse analysis (CDA).

CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

CDA sees discourses as not only constructed by social practice, but also as constitutive of it. A key aim is “analyzing opaque as well as transparent structural relationships of dominance, discrimination, power and control as manifested in language” ( Wodak, 1995 , p. 204). The critical nature of the analysis serves two goals. First, the ideological assumptions that have become accepted and concealed over time as natural are made clear. These assumptions are interpreted and explained in terms of the wider social practices that shape discourses and that are shaped by them. People are generally unaware of how their linguis-tic conventions carry so-called common sense assumptions that nor-malize inequalities in power within social relations ( Fairclough, 2001b ). Second, the critical analysis moves beyond explanation and toward social change ( Fairclough, 1992 , 2001a ; Fairclough & Wodak, 1997 ).

CDA has been used to show how discursive practices refl ect and shape the social practice of racism. Van Dijk (1993) states that dis-course plays a central role in the reproduction of racist practice. Social opinions are formed through public discourse such as the media, which are controlled by elite groups and promulgate dominant politi-cal attitudes toward minority groups. For example, Teo (2000) revealed how racism against Vietnamese migrants was constructed in Australian newspapers through disproportionate quoting in favor of the white majority’s perspective, generalizing the crimes of a few Vietnamese in -dividuals to the whole Vietnamese community, and using words such as animal-like to separate them from Australia’s mainstream culture.


It has been argued, however, that the use of CDA and the aim of transforming language is problematic. Widdowson (1998) asserts that CDA interprets the meaning of utterances without consulting the speakers or readers and is therefore subject to the biasing infl uence of the analyst’s agenda as to what subjectivities may be intended and constructed. Pennycook (2001) further expresses concern about the tendency of leaving out the process of text production and con-sumption. The textual analysis of CDA can illustrate how meanings are contained within texts, but not what effects this may have on readers. Another concern Pennycook (2001) expresses is about the implied view that there exist discourses that are free from political distortion in favor of certain social groups, and that once the distorting discur-sive practices are made transparent and removed, then some form of ideal, enlightened discourse will remain. He argues that power, ideol-ogy, and discourse will always exist and that there will always be com-peting views rather than an objective truth that lies outside of these. Thus CDA also creates views that are politically situated.

These considerations focus on how a CDA framework is somewhat removed from more objective and positivistic paradigms (the choice of which also serves an analyst’s agenda). However, CDA can explore oppressive ideological language and show that the discourses it con-structs are available to be taken up. The transformative aim of CDA lead -ing to the development of competing discourses, even if they too are ideological, offers more choices of subjectivity.

RATIONALE AND PURPOSE OF THE STUDY

There is some overlap between critical pedagogy and simulation games. Simulation exercises have been used in response to criticism that traditional classroom activities and assignments are inadequate to engage students with issues of social inequality. Simulation exercises take students beyond the limitations of objective, professional written accounts and give them greater understanding of social inequality through experience and refl ection ( Bidwell, 1995 ). However, the games themselves are not value free; they also carry implicit morals and values, and they can lead to students falsely believing they know the reality of suffering discrimination ( Dorn, 1989 ). Furthermore, previous research with simulation games has presented students’ statements about their experiences as illustrating their greater awareness of racism in terms of empathy and desire to learn more; however, the research did not critically examine the language used in the statements.

Because language constructs and maintains values and subjectivities related to social inequality, the ways that a racial-inequality simulation

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exercise contains discursive features that construct and maintain the interests of the dominant group are of interest in this study. Through closer examination of students’ language used to express their under-standing of inequality, CDA can reveal how this understanding may still be embedded within (less obvious) discourses that support racial inequality. Therefore, the current study has two aims. First, it seeks to examine whether students’ written responses to a simulated racial- inequality exercise would parallel the actual experiences of racial dis-crimination found in published narratives. Unlike previous research, this study’s assessment of whether greater empathy and awareness has been achieved is assisted through a thematic comparison with accounts written by people who have actually suffered from discrimination. I obtained such accounts from 17 narratives presented in a special issue on racism in the Journal of Counseling and Development (Robinson & Ginter, 1999). These con tained refl ections by a demographically diverse group of counseling professionals in the United States on their experiences of being discriminated against and in some cases discrimi-nating against others. This issue also contains three thematic analyses of these narratives by Watt (1999) , Glauser (1999) , and Constantine (1999) that provided a useful guide to themes. The second aim is to critically examine the language used by the students to see if it sup-ports a discourse of racism. This second analysis of the students’ state-ments is situated in the framework of CDA as described by Fairclough (2001b) . The textual features are described and then interpreted and explained in terms of how they are located within discourses that sup-port the wider social practice of racism.

METHOD

Participants

The participants were 43 Japanese 1 fi rst-year EFL students from my two intact, compulsory classes undertaking the English language pro-gram at a private, liberal arts university in Tokyo. The fi rst simulation exercise involved 25 students in a content-based academic reading and writing (ARW) course, and the second involved a class of 18 students the following year. Approximately 75% of the participants were female. From data provided in the second year, the average time spent over-seas was approximately 3 years. This average was based on information from 16 students, all of whom had lived overseas for at least one year.

1 It was assumed that all of the students were Japanese. In some cases, people of non-Japanese descent, such as Koreans, conceal their backgrounds.


The students had a high level English profi ciency; admission to their class required TOEFL scores averaging 570. The classes were con-ducted in English.

The ARW course included 5 weeks on issues of race in which the students read and discussed four readings ( Diamond, 1994 ; Gould, 1994 ; Shreeve, 1994 ; Shipman, 1994 ) focusing on the historical origins of human classifi cation into racial groupings and the social effects of this practice in the 19th and 20th centuries. They also watched a video about racism in Japan ( Floodpage, 1991 ). The main assignments were an essay, vocabulary quizzes, and two group discussion posters. One poster illustrated the history of racism in America from one of the readings, and the other illustrated the history of racism in Japan from sources the students had found. During the fi rst year, students also kept nongraded course refl ection journals, but during the second year they completed a guided pre- and postcourse questionnaire instead because this provided more focused refl ection.

Procedure

General Setup

The exercise took place during two class periods. The procedures in both years were based on Elliot’s (1973) study in which children were assigned to one of two groups and then experienced being treated as a favored and a nonfavored group. Discrimination in this study was based on the color of clothing in the fi rst year, and wearing a pink sash in the second. The chairs for the favored group were well spaced and at the front of the classroom. The chairs for the nonfavored group were insuffi cient in number and jammed together in the back corner of the room. In order to have everyone experience being in both the favored and nonfavored groups, the groups switched between sessions. The exercise and a short debriefi ng were held during the fi rst class, and a more detailed refl ection session was held during a second class period. The procedure of the second year differed somewhat from the fi rst based on refl ections made following the fi rst year exercise. Most notably, in the fi rst year the two groups were an even split numer-ically (requiring two 20-minute sessions, followed by discussion), while in the second, the favored group formed a two-thirds majority (requir-ing three 20-minute sessions with discussion following in a later class period). Because the exercise was done in the last week of the course, the students had read all the course articles, watched the video, heard my experiences, and prepared their posters. Thus, they had an under-standing of a history of racism illustrated with the American context

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and had also studied a little of racism in New Zealand and Japan. Some student essay topics included racism in Japan.

Precautions

In recognition that simulation exercises can evoke unpleasant feelings ( Cohen, 1995 ; Dorn, 1989 ; Eells, 1987 ), participation in the favored and nonfavored groups was optional and not graded. In addi-tion, I removed some responsibility from the students by perform -ing or initiating the most obvious discriminatory behaviors; that is, I behaved consistently unfavorably toward the nonfavored group (see Teacher Behaviors) and I led the students to be a part of discrimi-natory tasks in the three sessions. Following recommendations by Eells (1987) , good rapport had been established within the class and with me. In the class prior to the exercise I informed the students of (a) the aim of the simulation to help them understand what discrimina-tion felt like (I assumed due to the context of the course that they would understand this to be racial discrimination), (b) the structure of exercise in that I would separate them into groups and treat one group less favorably and then switch the groups (the details of the less favorable treatment were not specifi ed in advance of the class), and (c) its emotional risk in that it might make them feel uncomfortable. In the second year, students could participate, observe, or work on their writing in another room if they wished to avoid the exercise. In the second year, three students observed but none chose to avoid.

Teacher Behaviors

In both years I followed six general behaviors: 1. Keeping distance from the nonfavored group. 2. Using minimal or no eye contact to the nonfavored group. 3. Using an enthusiastic voice when speaking to the favored group. 4. Invalidating any efforts of the nonfavored to be like the favored

group. 5. Praising all efforts of the favored group. 6. Using the individual names of the favored group and using the

group name for the nonfavored.

Exercises

Because of space constraints and the fact that I obtained similar results from both years, I will describe only the details of the second


year exercises, although the data presented later are from both years. There were three sessions containing discrimination exercises. Before each session the favored group was allowed to enter the classroom while the nonfavored group waited outside. Prior to the nonfavored group’s entry, the favored group was given instructions relating to the session where necessary. The sessions and preteaching instructions were as follows:

Session 1

Adopt a friend: One nonfavored member was adopted by the favored group as a friend to show that the majority does not discriminate. The favored group was told to treat this friend well.

Named by the majority: The favored group invented a name to call the nonfavored group. The favored group was told this could be any name they liked (no positive or negative slanting was suggested).

Chair vote: The favored group had an overabundance of chairs. A vote by the favored group was held to decide whether any chairs would be given to the nonfavored group. The favored group was told that it did not matter if they decided to give or keep the chairs.

Session 2

Gibberish discussion: The favored group was given a list of fi ve instruc-tions associated with subtle fi nger movement cues. When doing this activity, I spoke in gibberish and indicated subtly which instruction should be followed so that only the favored group was able to “follow” the instructions.

Paper ball throw: The favored group members received a piece of paper to make a paper ball to throw at the nonfavored group. The nonfavored group was given one piece to share and was criticized if they tried to throw it at the favored group. No preteaching was given.

Session 3

Fake Scholarship: Students took a fake scholarship test with impossi-ble-to-answer questions to decide who would join the favored group. I told the favored group to just read out the “correct answers” if called. For the nonfavored group, one test paper had the correct answer on it to ensure that person would win the scholarship. The “winner”

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of the scholarship was then promoted to the favored group, but still wore the pink sash of the nonfavored group.

Debriefi ng and Statement Collection

Debriefi ng is an essential element of simulation exercises ( Dorn, 1989 ; Eells, 1987 ; Miller, 1992 ). The students had time to talk about their feelings and experiences with their classmates and with me. In the fi rst year I asked them to write down their refl ections and whether they thought the exercise was effective in helping them understand discrimination. I also asked them to suggest improvements. I did not take notes about their behaviors or verbal comments and left the writ-ten refl ections fairly unstructured so that the students would not feel pressured to react in a certain way. In the second year I gave them more guidance with a detailed handout that asked them to include comments on particular activities within the sessions. The students’ written statements on their experiences in each group and general comments about the exercise, written in English, were collected at the conclusion of the refl ection sessions if the students agreed to submit them. These showed which group the student had belonged to for each statement but were otherwise anonymous.

FINDINGS

Parallels Between Student Refl ections and the Narratives

To investigate whether the simulation exercise resulted in students reporting similar experiences to those who have experienced discrimi-nation and whether this led to greater understanding as was reported in the previous literature, the statements were examined for similarity between the categories appearing in the 17 narratives in the previous literature. The students had not read these narratives. In the fi rst year, 20 students submitted their refl ection sheets. In the second year, 16 students submitted their statements and 2 did not. Although a direct comparison is not possible in terms of knowing if the experiences are very similar, this comparison can show if similar themes emerge. A bilingual Japanese-American colleague (native fl uency in both lan-guages) also checked the themes I interpreted from the statements. To develop clear defi nitions, we coded statements from the fi rst year with tentative categories based on features emerging in previous literature and in the statements. The comments for the fi rst year were coded and interrater agreements reached an acceptable level of 90% based on percentage agreement ( Monette, Sullivan, & DeJong, 2005 , p. 435).


The statements from the second year were coded by me based on the high percentage of intercoder agreement from the previous year.

The comparison of student statements with the narratives showed several similarities in categories of uncomfortable feelings in the non-favored group, uncomfortable feelings in the favored group, entitle-ment, coping strategies, and emerging awareness.

The category of uncomfortable feelings in the nonfavored group was defi ned as the expression of feelings such as being hurt, angry, sad, devalued, or confused when commenting on the experience of being in the nonfavored group. For example, one student wrote, “Although I know this is not a real thing, I felt like becoming antagonistic to make the situation change. I don’t like the feeling of me becoming not real me.”

The category of uncomfortable feelings in the favored group was defi ned as the experience of negative feelings such as shame, guilt, or other painful feelings when commenting on the experience of being in the favored group. The following quotes refl ect these feelings: “Guilty to let discrimination happen,” “It was uncomfortable to see people being discriminated,” “I felt kind of guilty/sorry for people being treated badly,” “Felt scared of what the unfavored people would think,” and “Uncomfortable — you get good treatment and others don’t.”

Conversely, entitlement was defi ned as responses noticing the privi-leges of the favored group either from the perspective of the favored or nonfavored group. For example, their reports included feeling good, relieved, smart, not having to struggle when in the favored group, or just normal. Suchet (2004) notes that part of white entitle-ment and subjectivity is the feeling of being “unmarked and invisible” (p. 423). For example, one student wrote, “Everything seems easier and smooth. Easy to live. Could be more confi dent. Not thinking seri-ously about anything.” In terms of feeling relief, one student wrote, “Though I knew it was a discrimination, I still felt relieved that I knew the secret answer. I was a racist.” Another wrote about feeling good by stating, “I felt dignity to welcome a friend from other group. I had secret superiority over who I had welcomed.”

Coping mechanisms included feeling a sense of bonding with the group, trying to fi t in with the favored group, or offering resistance. Regarding group bonding, one student wrote, “I didn’t feel disap-pointed when I wasn’t adopted to favored group because I feel more safe being in nonfavored group.” Another student tried to cope by resistance but soon realized the futility of it: “I tried to challenge/fi ght against the hard situation in non pink world as it was only ten minutes … but I gave up sitting in front when everybody rejected me. If it was all day or longer hour, I would have completely stopped chal-lenging non pink.” Another statement showed the student’s awareness

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of trying to cope by following the favored group: “Realized myself try-ing to follow the ‘good race’ ways.”

Emerging awareness of the process of racial discrimination appeared in several ways. Students became aware of the connection between being in a particular group and the feelings they experienced. For example, one student wrote, “Being well treated, I did not see the segregation strength, but when the groups were switched, the racism and all were more vividly felt,” and another mentioned, “I felt there was a wall between favored and nonfavored more than when I was in the favored group.” Some statements showed the students expanding their vision of the group dynamics to beyond the classroom. For example, one student mentioned, “In the session, favored group asked to ‘friends’ what their culture is like. For example what kind of food they eat. In reality, too, we ask about culture that is easy to see and feel like we understand their culture. And sometimes we feel superior to others.” Awareness also emerged from the exercise when students’ responses refl ected some self-awareness of seeing their own role in discrimination or racism. One student mentioned, “I didn’t do anything. I felt there was no reason to discriminate, but I was discriminating by not bothering to speak up.”

To summarize, several parallels emerged between the students’ refl ec-tions on their feelings as they experienced being favored and unfavored and the previously published narratives describing this experience. Students developed greater awareness of racism through noticing their feelings and actions when experiencing each group. Similar to previous research using simulation games, such responses refl ect students’ greater awareness of racial discrimination and thus suggest that this simulation game could be a useful pedagogical tool. The next section of the analysis goes beyond the thematic comparisons by moving to a CDA framework to focus on whether, despite the increased awareness, the use of lan-guage constructs a discourse that may support a subtle form of racism.

Discourse of Diversion

One way of discussing racism that avoids challenging it is through diverting away from focusing on one’s own position in a dominant racial group. This tendency to divert appeared in the students’ refl ec-tions as a focus on blatant forms of discrimination or a shift in focus to analogies of other forms of discrimination rather than race. This discourse of diversion appeared in 18% of the statements that were analyzed against the published narratives from the fi rst year and 15% of those from the second. This diversion can occur through more subtle discursive forms of language. Through CDA these subtle forms of diversion as they are practiced through language can be made


transparent. This section describes textual features of the students’ statements, interprets these features in terms of how the students used a discourse of diversion when refl ecting on their experiences of the simulation exercise, and explains how this discourse could serve the interests of dominant racial groups.

Diversion From Subtle Forms of Racism

Some of the students’ statements suggesting improvements of the exercise focused on more obvious forms of racism as being more real. The following statements suggest that the students in the favored group should also have behaved in a more actively racist way:

We didn’t participate well to succeed this class experiences, students should be racists. People will be much more discriminated if you discrimi-nate by what they actually did.

I thought it would be more productive if more students participated (putting their hands up, being an obvious racist).

These statements contain claims that “students should be racists” or “an obvious racist” and people are more discriminated against as a result of “what they [favored group] actually did.” This places the focus on the overt forms of racism rather than on the subtle forms such as the dominant members accepting their privileged treatment without speaking up. Another aspect of being an “obvious racist” in the statements is an element of strong emotion. The following statements suggest that strong emotion is necessary to perform racist acts:

I would rather be in the discriminated group. I really can’t attack the other group/person without any good reasons.

Naming was diffi cult because we needed extra hate to deliberately call a group with lower name.

The claim of being unable to “attack” and “needing extra hate” to discriminate against others also constructs racism as behaviors arising from strong emotion. Subtle forms of racism exist without such strong negative emotions and obviously attacking behaviors. In some cases, oppressive practices actually contain friendly, good intentions, for exam-ple, complementing a group on a narrow range of characteristics such as physical attractiveness or talents, while maintaining the sense of supe-riority of self. Through maintaining a defi nition of racism that focuses on the more blatant forms, the current infl uence of racism and one’s own involvement in it can be denied ( van Dijk, 1993 ; Ross, 2000 ).

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Students in the fi rst year described racism as being a majority group discriminating against a minority group. Two students suggested that the exercise could be improved by making the dominant group a majority to make the experience more “realistic.”

Those who were discriminated against should be small number in order to get the realistic feeling.

Although this is symbolic, I think you should simulate the factor of major-ity and minority, since racism usually has the tendency on many people discriminating a few people. When it is 50:50 it usually becomes a bit softer, either that or it turns into a fi ght.

These statements construct racism as only the oppressive actions of “many people” onto “a few people.” In addition, in the second state-ment there is an attribution of power based on numbers in that racism becomes “a bit softer” or “turns into a fi ght” when the numbers are closer to equal. This statement may refl ect a discourse of majority rules in which quantity forms legitimacy ( Reisigl & Wodak, 2001 ). However, racism is not always structured in this way, particularly in the EFL classroom. For example, Canagarajah (1999) points out that ideology and perspectives that serve the interests of dominant groups are inher-ently contained within forms of knowledge passed on to other groups; therefore the teacher’s role should include helping students to reveal and challenge such assumptions contained within knowledge. In class-rooms where this does not happen, a Caucasian teacher may be (albeit unknowingly) transmitting values that serve the interests of Western groups at the expense of Asian ones. In this case, the racially oppres-sive actions of one person are directed onto many. This may go unno-ticed and unchallenged when students, and teachers, see racism only as acts committed by a majority.

Shifting Focus to Analogies

The initial content analysis of the students’ statements suggested their growing awareness of issues of discrimination in the analogies that the students drew between familiar forms of discrimination such as one’s own experiences of discrimination, bullying, and the problems faced by the disabled and returnees to Japan. The following statement shows a diversion from racism to educational learning problems:

Language problem was something I, myself, had in the States. What is different is that in my case, the teacher was not mean when I ask them answer, but I felt very ashamed every time I got up and went to the teacher because I felt myself stupid. This session was very realistic and


showed what foreigners had experienced very well. In addition, this kind of problem is also the recent issue in education for the students who tend to lag behind in school. Maybe that is why this problem is very complex.

The student begins by comparing the exercise with experience as a racial minority overseas but diverts and dilutes the discussion of race by extending it to the “students who tend to lag behind in school.” This issue related to gaps between families with educated parents who could afford extra classes outside of school in Japan and families that could not; thus, this problem makes no clear reference at all to race. The following two statements focus on non – race-related discrimination.

Racism is like “ijime” [bullying] in Japan.

This reminds of fake equality in a real society. Even [institution name] has declaration against non-discrimination, but still it does not have deafs or wheel-chair people building.

In the fi rst statement racism is seen as “like” bullying. Although bullying can contain an element of racism in some instances, it is not commonly considered the main characteristic of racism; thus this state-ment focuses on similarities with other forms of discrimination. The second statement shows a diversion from racism to able-ism; the state-ment refers to racism as “this” and says that it reminded the student of something else.

Such a shift in focus to other forms of discrimination diverts atten-tion from talking about one’s own position in a dominant racial group or about racism altogether. The students drew analogies between the position of minority races and other forms of discrimination that the students were more familiar with to gain an understanding of how minority groups feel. Grillo and Wildman (2000) noticed that this pat-tern frequently occurred when whites discussed racism, even after such patterns had been pointed out. Dundes and Harlow (2004) also noticed this diversion.

However, believing that such an understanding has been reached through analogy is misleading. Grillo and Wildman (2000) state that although analogies are useful for explaining and understanding oth-ers’ experiences, they also provide “the danger of false understanding” (p. 649). To illustrate this point, Grillo and Wildman showed how, when the group was racially mixed, invariably analogies were made to sexism to illustrate racism. They mention several dangers in using anal-ogies when discussing racism. For example, when analogies are drawn between race and other -isms, the importance of race is marginalized. Also, this change in focus allows the concerns of the whites to become

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central and makes them believe they have understood the experiences of nonwhites, which in turn preserves their white privilege. Furthermore, the differing and complicated situations are obscured when multiple forms of discrimination are perceived. This similarity of oppression gives a false sense of everyone being equally able to discuss each form of oppression.

In the current study, the issue of racism shared the stage with issues of educational learning problems, able-ism, bullying, and being a re -turnee from overseas. These are current issues of concern to Japanese people. However, they might have functioned to divert students’ atten-tion from racism and their privilege.

To summarize, diversion strategies, such as focusing on only overt racism and drawing analogies to other forms of oppression, suggest that although students became aware of racial discrimination, they were not fully engaged in challenging more subtle forms of racism. The next section addresses how I may have infl uenced this outcome by unconsciously supporting racism in the classroom through choosing and presenting the simulation exercise.

SELF-REFLECTION ON THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE SIMULATION

An analysis of the ways in which the exercise supports subtle racism requires attention to the nature of the exercise itself and the teacher’s role. Although as a white New Zealander I am a racial minority in Japan, I am also a member of the dominant white group globally and much of my pedagogical practice will refl ect norms and values of Eurocentric dominance that are inherent in my experiences.

Several aspects of the exercise structure and my language supported unconscious racism through diversion. First, when informing students that the exercise was to give them a feeling of “what discrimination feels like,” I unconsciously encouraged them to focus on constructing their experiences from a position of being discriminated against. This diverted focus away from speaking from a position as a member of a racially dominant group. Second, the setup for each exercise had a deliberately obvious element of discrimination that may have diverted students to focus on blatant racism. For example, the paper ball throw simulated obvious physical violence. In addition, the obviously negative general behaviors toward the nonfavored group simulated open shun-ning that is characteristic of blatant racism. These activities supported a defi nition of racism as something that is readily seen. Modifying the exercise in the second year in response to students’ previous suggestions of making it more realistic by having the nonfavored group a minority


also supported a form of diversion. This change constructed racism only as a majority-rules process instead of revealing the ways in which powerful minorities can also dominate. Therefore, teachers should be cautious when incorporating students’ suggestions for modifi cations because their suggestions also may contain unconscious forms of racism. I also encouraged diversion in the three sessions, when I per-formed most of the overt discriminatory behaviors. The intention was to prevent unduly hurting the students’ feelings and causing any lasting upset as a result of the class exercise; however, this procedure also constructed racism as being obvious and conducted by an individual rather than as an often subtle intergroup process.

These characteristics in the structure and conduct of the exercise show how subtle racism can be manifested even within educational activities supposedly encouraging awareness and abolition of racism. Suggestions for modifying the exercise are included in the pedagogical implications section. In addition to the impact of my classroom be -havior on the exercise, the impact of my racial identity should also be considered.

A WHITE MINORITY TEACHER IN A JAPANESE MAJORITY CLASS

Educators are increasingly refl ecting on racial position as an infl u-ence on teaching. For example, a study investigating the effects of the positionality of African-American mathematics teachers showed they often faced issues of credibility in a white male dominated fi eld ( Brown, et al., 2000 ). In the current study, within the physical space of the classroom I was a member of a minority group teaching mem-bers of the majority group in Japan. However, I was also located within a discursive space in which my whiteness and my membership in one of the six inner circle countries are seen as superior. This privilege is echoed in Simon-Maeda’s (2004) description of the Japanese context in which “EFL teachers from Western countries are commonly per-ceived as a privileged group entrusted with teaching subject matter of considerable sociopolitical value” (p. 419) and that “native speakers of English are considered to be the sacred dispensers of standard English” (p. 422). I have heard some Japanese people say they have a racial inferiority complex to Caucasian foreigners, but not other minorities.

I explored how the students felt about my racial identity in the second year by asking them in a pre- and postcourse questionnaire, “What do you think about learning about racism from a white Western woman?” The most common response in the precourse questionnaire was a concern about bias in the teaching. One student wrote, “Maybe

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this is just a stereotype but I think many of white western people, especially American thinks they are the number one. Therefore, if I learn about racism from a white western people that information might be biased.” The specifi c nature of how the bias might be mani-fested within the teaching of racism in Japan was not explained. In the postcourse questionnaire, the most common response was that they learned a different perspective on race. One student wrote, “It was a great opportunity as I could know white people’s view to racism — they tend to think they have no culture, etc. I’d like to have chances to learn from different races.” Another student wrote, “It is always instructive to learn about racism whether she/he is white or not. What is important is knowing that it is just a racism from one point of view.” Therefore the students were cautious about how I would approach the issue, but found the additional perspective useful. As a member of one of the white minorities that could be characterized generally as uni-versity graduate, professional English teachers from core English speak-ing countries, I need to be mindful that I can present the complicated perspective of discrimination and privilege related to this minority only in terms of my membership to this racial white minority. However, even members of this group demonstrate a tremendous amount of diversity. The concept of a social group is indeed complicated by mul-tiple factors such as ethnicity, age, gender, sexual identity, and social class. Yet a particular treatment of people, including discrimination, is often based on our view of who they are as a group. In presenting certain perspectives and experiences, I need to speak from the posi-tion that acknowledges both group identity and diversity within the group.

LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY

A limitation of this study is that the students’ discussions and refl ec-tions of their experiences were in English. It is possible that if their discussions had been conducted in Japanese, the results may have dif-fered because language and identity are interconnected and this may have also minimized potential linguistic limitations. Future research could compare students’ refl ections made in Japanese to determine if their discursive practices and refl ections differ from those noted in this study. In addition, because the simulation exercise cannot be assumed to replicate real-life experiences of racism, discussions and written refl ections based on actual experiences could be examined and compared with those gained from the exercise. For refl ections in English, there should be suffi cient time given to the postexercise writ-ing and discussions. In the fi rst year, refl ections averaged 45 words.


With more guidance in the second year, the refl ections averaged 139 words.

The data in this study are relatively sparse because the focus of analysis was on the students’ brief written responses. Because there was no previous research on how Japanese students would react to such a simulation exercise, I kept the procedure similar to what had been used in overseas research. In addition, there were time constraints in how much class time I could devote to the exercise. Future research could include audio- or videotaping of the simulation exercises and debriefi ng sessions. Follow-up interviews could also offer greater oppor-tunity to discover why students chose particular forms of language and how they interpreted language about racism. This would offer greater detail on the students’ written response and expand the investigation into the social life of such texts ( Pennycook, 2001 ). In such detailed investigations, other categories, such as gender, can be taken into con-sideration as factors infl uencing students’ reactions and views.

PEDAGOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS

The analysis of the simulation exercise suggests several pedagogical considerations for using them to promote understanding of racism. First, it is essential to recognize that the simulation exercises’ tradi-tional measures of success in terms of being more engaging than term papers ( Bidwell, 1995 ), facilitating empathy ( Groves, et al., 1996 ), and motivating students to participate in programs ( Jakubowski, 2001 ) are insuffi cient to address the more subtle forms of racism that are con-tained in language. Despite the engagement with the exercise noted in this study, through a discourse of diversion in the way the exercise was set up and discussed, the discursive practice of diversion to analo-gies and overt forms of racism was not challenged. Allowing diversion to go unchallenged preserves and legitimates racist practices through a sense of “false understanding” ( Grillo & Wildman, 2000 , p. 649) and fails to prepare students to join a multiethnic society ( van Dijk, 1993 ). Students and teachers may interpret the diversion to analogies as engagement with the exercise and a positive learning process. As an initial step this could be so, but it is important for the discussion to go beyond these analogies and return to the focus issue. This section suggests some modifi cations of the exercise and considers some fur-ther limitations of the study.

Simulation exercises could be modifi ed to encompass racism in subtle forms. First, to direct focus to the relation between groups in racism, the exercise could be introduced as an activity to give an expe-rience of the process of racial discrimination from both dominant and

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oppressed group perspectives. Second, some tasks should contain sub-tle forms of discrimination to encourage critical awareness of them (e.g., praising a positive characteristic of the nonfavored group, such as the beautiful color of their sashes, while leaving the oppressive sys-tem intact). This activity would demonstrate the positive feelings that are characteristic of some of the modern forms of subtle racism. In addition, the favored group should sometimes be a numerical minority to show that racism is maintained through power rather than only numbers.

In the refl ection session, the language used when talking about rac-ism should be critically examined to reveal the more subtle forms of oppression. This examination can be done through critical pedagogy. Fairclough (1995) recommends that language education contain a component for developing critical language awareness. An important aspect of developing this awareness includes using the language abili-ties and experiences the students already possess ( Clark, Fairclough, Ivani�č�, & Martin-Jones, 1991 ; Fairclough, 1995 ). Wallace (1992) points out that EFL students already have an awareness of grammar to discuss language construction. Therefore, such students can go beyond a sim-ple analysis of form and examine language for its ideological assump-tions. The students’ attention needs to be drawn to this discursive strategy of diversion through analogy and they need to be encouraged to locate themselves within their own position as a member of the dominant racial group.

The development of a critical consciousness alone is insuffi cient to lead to social change. In addition to a critique of language, the devel-opment of alternative, nonoppressive expressions will aid alternative visions for society and a genuine pursuit of social change and democ-racy ( Clark, et al., 1991 ; Fairclough, 1995 ). To this end, students need to see themselves as active agents in the shaping of language and in how the language they use affects the people they talk about. Through consciously chosen, socially responsible language, more positive con-ventions could be developed for the future ( Clark & Ivani č , 1991 ). Kubota (1998) recommends that both the ideological elements and communicative skills of English are necessary. The ideological aspects raise student awareness of oppression and the communicative skills give students the ability to voice their opinions. She concludes that “both critical awareness of the power of English and communicative skills in English would enable us to transform our psychological biases and enable us to use English as a weapon for social transformation” (p. 304, italics in original).

One way to guide students to greater understanding of how people are affected by language would be to have students consider how they felt as the nonfavored group when they were named by the favored


group. They could match this feeling and practice to names used in Japanese society to refer to minority groups, such as gaijin (outside person), a term used for foreigners in general, but often applied more to white foreigners. Many Japanese feel that the word is acceptable because they do not use it with ill feeling and claim to use it only as an abbreviation of the word gaikokujin (person from an outside coun-try); however, for many foreigners, the term feels exclusionary and is therefore upsetting. A further complication is that the word gaijin is often used to mean white foreigners only. Students could be asked to refer to their experience in the simulation and consider how they could open discussions about these words with foreigners and other Japanese people outside of the classroom.

Considering the transformative aim of critical pedagogy, the simula-tion exercise could also be modifi ed to include a positive process of giving up privilege rather than ending the exercise with the inequality remaining. Benesch (2001) states that critical pedagogy should give students hope rather than paralyze them with a sense of futility when analyzing social problems. By divesting themselves of privilege in the exercise, an opportunity to experience transformation is possible. In-class work could support this goal with real examples of people who have challenged racism and how it benefi ted their society. In this way students are offered a positive sense of self for moving toward greater awareness and making changes. This is preferable to pedagogy that fi nishes with only a sense of shame, which may not be as motivating and may lead to further avoidance of examining issues of racism.

Another important aspect of using a simulation exercise in language classes is assessment. In my classroom the exercise was not evaluated for grades. However, this focus on awareness of racial discrimination can deprive students of a chance to develop skills necessary for their social needs if they focus on their growing awareness of racial discrimi-nation but fail to develop any linguistic tools to counter racism in their lives. Benesch (1993) questions whether academic English curricula give students the linguistic and social skills to deal with the reality of life outside of the classroom. Morgan (1995) argues that successful language lessons blend language skills with social and community needs, and therefore assessment can be based on the students’ ability to achieve social tasks and thereby include both language and social perspectives. Therefore, the simulation exercise should be used not only to raise awareness but also to help students develop applicable skills for life beyond the classroom.

This study contributes to the critical pedagogy literature that exam-ines the subtle forms of oppression that can remain unquestioned in educational practice. Essed (1991) cautions that when examining racism, “if we should fail to perceive its integration into the routine

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practices of everyday life, we would miss the point, and we would leave racism intact” (p. 283). Closer examination of established educational methods, such as simulation exercises, that purportedly serve to reduce racism are needed for English language teaching professionals to develop pedagogical practices that combat racism at all levels and offer real possibilities for social change. As Pennycook (1994) states,

It is essential that as language teachers we have not only ways of thinking about language and language learning but also ways of thinking about education and inequality. (p. 299)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I thank the special issue editors, Ryuko Kubota in particular, and the two anony-mous reviewers for their helpful comments. I am also grateful to Akiko Fujii, James Tollefson, and Chris Gallagher for their valuable comments on earlier drafts. I also express my gratitude to the participants in this study for their courage and willingness to explore a diffi cult topic.

THE AUTHOR

Kay Hammond teaches English for academic purposes in the English Language Program at International Christian University in Tokyo, Japan. Her research interests include issues of race, gender studies, discourse analysis, research ethics, and public speaking.

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Racialized Research Identities in ESL/EFL Research ENA LEE University of British Columbia Vancouver, Canada

ANDREA SIMON-MAEDA Nagoya Keizai University Inuyama, Japan

There has been increasing recognition of the need to pursue critical research in the fi elds of ESL/EFL; however, the role that race plays in our research practices has not been frequently discussed. In-depth explorations of how a racialized identity shapes (and is shaped within) complex interactions between the researcher and researched can uncover the ways that race affects all aspects of our investigations, from collecting data to reporting. This article presents personal narratives of two ESL/EFL researchers, White and Asian, who critically refl ect on the implications of racialized identities in conducting their respective studies. Both authors’ accounts share a common theme of tensions around researcher positionality, locatability, (self-)refl exivity, and how best to represent those we are researching and writing about. However, while the fi rst author brings to the fore the complexities of race and racism in ESL/EFL research through her narrative of studying “the other,” the second author attempts to further complexify these issues by highlighting the distinctly unique tensions which arise when a researcher of color attempts to study “her own kind.” The report will thus contribute to an enhanced understanding of the intersections of postcolonial identities, race, and critical research methodologies and ideologies in the TESOL fi eld.

RACE, POSITIONALITY, AND ESL/EFL RESEARCH

In recent years, there have been increasing calls not just for critical approaches to ESL/EFL, but for the application of critical method-

ologies to ESL/EFL research ( Norton, 2000 ; Pennycook, 1994 , 2001 ). Recognizing that all research is political and inherently biased, a criti-cal research orientation promotes questioning regarding the formation of knowledge, the social constructions of race, ethnicity, class, and gender (among other categories), as well as an examination of power


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relations between the researcher and researched (see, e.g., Barton, 2001 ; Canagarajah, 1999 ; Goldstein, 1997 ; Lincoln & Denzin, 2000 ; Ramanathan & Atkinson, 1999 ). Few scholars in the areas of ESL/EFL research, however, have specifi cally examined how a racialized identity shapes (and is shaped within) research interactions, 1 and how race, like any other positioning, fundamentally affects our studies’ methodologies and conclusions ( Merchant & Willis, 2001 ). Thus, in this article, two authors working within a postmodernist critical framework present introspective accounts of the problematic situations they encountered during the course of their investigations. Andrea presents her experi-ences as a White female academic living, working, and conducting research in Japan, and Ena presents her experiences as a Chinese-Canadian conducting research in a diverse multilingual/multicultural city in Canada. Although the authors tell their stories from different standpoints, there is nevertheless an overarching commonality of ten-sions that evolved during investigative and write-up processes. Within this understanding of similar ESL/EFL research tensions, however, the authors recognize the unique differences between and complexities of researching “the other” and “one’s own kind.” Andrea’s account was infl uenced by feminist critical race scholars such as Anzaldúa (1987) , Fine (1998) , Ladson-Billings (2000) , and Mohanty (1988) , who point out the inherent epistemological dangers of White Western researchers’ Othering tendencies that “construct ‘third-world women’ as a homoge-neous ‘powerless’ group often located as implicit victims of particular cultural and socio-economic groups” ( Mohanty, 1988 , p. 66, italics in original). Ena’s narrative was inspired by Mehra’s 2001 ) narrative account of her experiences as a visible minority researcher in the fi eld of education. However, Ena addresses how Mehra’s concept of one’s own kind remains a tenuous notion. We hope that these stories will help readers located in diverse sociopolitical contexts to refl ect on the myr-iad ways these tensions might work out in their own unique situations, how privileged researcher positions may become disrupted during the course of a study, and how a refl ective awareness of these disruptions can be built into our methodologies and reporting styles.

STUDYING THE OTHER: ANDREA’S STORY

It is not a solution, the idea of the disenfranchised speaking for them-selves, or the radical critics speaking for them; this question of representa-tion, self-representation, representing others, is a problem …. as long as

1 For an example of a critique of a White researcher’s Othering practices in a cross-racial study in the fi eld of SLA, see Kubota’s (2005) review of K. Ogulnick’s, Onna Rashiku (Like a Woman): The Diary of a Language Learner in Japan.

RACIALIZED RESEARCH IDENTITIES IN ESL/EFL RESEARCH 575

one remains aware that it is a very problematic fi eld, there is some hope. (G. Spivak cited in Harasym, 1990 , p. 63)

In this statement, Spivak, a foremost cultural theorist and postco-lonial critic, succinctly captures my researcher’s dilemma while con-ducting an investigation of female EFL educators of diverse racial/ethnic backgrounds (Korean, White, Filipino, Black South African, Japanese) each at different professional levels (part-time, full-time, tenured) of EFL teaching in Japanese tertiary institutions ( Simon-Maeda, 2004 ). Race and racism are everyday realities, and the White critical femi-nist’s best intentions to avoid marginalizing women of color 2 in her study may in fact reproduce the same oppressive conditions she claims to be concerned about. Postmodern feminist commentators in the social sciences have warned us to be wary of the “what we can do for you” ( Gore, 1992 , p. 61) emancipatory rhetoric and recommend ongoing skepticism of critical agendas that claim to be “self-refl exive and politically conscientious and yet remain theoretically entrenched in gender-and-color-blind patriarchal liberalism” ( Luke, 1992 , p. 49). Researchers in the ESL/EFL fi elds are not exempt from these cau-tionary notes, and my introspective account attests to the diffi culties of portraying the complexities of racial oppression without co-opting participants’ meanings. This last point, in particular, was one of the challenges both my coauthor, Ena, and I faced in our studies — that is, we needed to fi gure out how we could legitimately access the authentic voices of our participants from our researcher (outsider) positions. However, being of the same or different ethnic/racial back-ground as our participants could not be unproblematically singled out as the sole factor determining how we explored and wrote about racialized experiences. Even among “people like us,” there are numer-ous divisions in our social lives being constantly (re)negotiated, and, likewise, our research writing (as one crucial part of our academic lives) is, as Pennycook (2005) states, “a performative rather than a representational act” (p. 300). Hence, my narrative is not intended to represent the truth obtained through critical research practices. Instead, my refl ective account is only one part of a process that needs to be continually questioned (as Ena does in her section) — a situation that involves “the performance of an academic participant who is uncertain of what he or she knows [and] that unsettles relations of refl exivity in the writing” (p. 302).

2 Designations such as of color, Other, Third World Women, and Asian are used in this report to describe racialized categories produced outside the exclusionary boundaries of “Whiteness.” At the same time, these categories are not meant to imply fi xed entities with no variation among their members.

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Refl ecting on Refl exivity

To examine the interactional devices used for the identity work undertaken during life story interviews with female educators in Japan, I followed Ochs and Capps’s (2001) narrative analysis framework. Their approach views narrativization as an unfolding social activity between interlocutors rather than as a fi xed set of discursive formats found in more traditional methods (e.g., Labov & Waletzky, 1967 ). Aware of the negative implications of White Western researchers “speaking for others” ( Weedon, 1999 , p. 109), I tried to create more opportunities for a collaborative “authorial shaping of a storyline” (Ochs & Capps, p. 24), particularly with the women of color, so that their narratives could be heard on their own terms without any undue distortions from me. However, during interviews and while transcribing and analyzing data, I realized that my plans for a democratic research relationship would not automatically erase the gaps that have histori-cally separated ivory tower academics and disenfranchised groups. Postmodernist interpretations of the intellectual’s role in struggles against hegemonic discourses offered a hopeful (albeit partial) solu-tion to my dilemma. Foucault (1977) invoked the phrase “the indignity of speaking for others” (p. 209) in reference to those who claim a privileged speaking position, but he nevertheless suggested that through serious refl ection on the constraining elements in our own “specifi c” locations it becomes “possible to develop lateral connections across different forms of knowledge” ( Foucault, 1972 , p. 127). Put (not so) simply, we are all subjugated to greater or lesser degrees in various sectors of our lives; a state of affairs that oftentimes creates a fuzzy boundary between insider/outsider positionings and allows (read: behooves ) those in more advantageous positions to speak in solidarity with (and not on behalf of) oppressed minorities. The additional point that refl exivity “can help free intellectuals from their illusions — and fi rst of all from the illusion that they do not have any, especially about themselves” ( Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992 , pp. 194 – 195) constitutes an important epistemological step in dealing with the messiness of representation (see Denzin & Lincoln, 2000 , pp. 16 – 17, for a com-prehensive explanation of the crisis of representation in qualitative research).

However, further reading on the role of refl exivity in qualitative research (e.g., Ellis & Bochner, 2000 ; Fine, Weis, Weseen, & Wong, 2000 ) suggests that acknowledging researcher positionality for the pur-pose of easing a cross-racial investigation’s problematics revolving around (mis)representation was predicated on what Pillow (2003) has described as a “modernist seduction” (p. 186). In other words, my assuming that I was an enlightened researcher able to discover and


explain the truth of my participants’ situations was, in effect, a coloniz-ing practice that positioned my participants as incapable themselves of theorizing and refl ecting on their own lived experiences as marginal-ized individuals.

Hence, to co-construct a more trustworthy (re)presentation of my interviewees’ lives, I needed to include and go beyond a mere discus-sion of the diverse ways that my female participants and I were excluded from male-centered educational and societal institutions in Japan. 3 My critical feminist stance entailed a further commitment to highlighting, from their standpoints, how experiences of sexism for women of color presented far greater obstacles to their establishing professional identities. 4 Ultimately, the verisimilitude of my conclu-sions concerning my participants’ racialized experiences hinged on an awareness, constructed from multiple perspectives, of how racism is not an isolated frozen social category, but rather is located at the intersections of sexism and other forms of individual and institutional subjugation. This postmodernist view of racism helps us better under-stand its relational, political nature while not downplaying its devastat-ing impact on racialized minorities who can be active agents in theorizing and changing the circumstances of their lives through vari-ous forms of resistance.

White Noise and Racialized Silence

Just as a combination of many different sound frequencies will result in white noise that prevents our hearing any one individual sound in isolation, likewise, an unrefl exive assemblage of multiple voices of women of color simply for the sake of diversity without an appreciation of the layered complexities in their lives will result in White noise that drowns out the unique ways these individuals “are produced as subjects in historically and culturally specifi c ways by the societies in which they live and act as agents” ( Weedon, 1999 , p. 192). In a similar vein, Mohanty (1988) has advised Western feminists who study Third World women that “sisterhood cannot be assumed on the basis of gender; it must be forged in concrete historical and political praxis” (p. 67). That is, in addition to embedding (re)constructed stories and (re)interpretations within a macrodiscussion of sociocultural contexts,

3 See Fujimura-Fanselow & Kameda (1995) and Liddle & Nakajima (2000) for details of gen-dered marginalization processes in different sectors of Japanese society.

4 See the narratives by the editors of this special issue and other female ESL/EFL scholars of diverse racial/ethnic backgrounds in the TESOL Quarterly special issue on Gender and Language Education ( Davis & Skilton-Sylvester, 2004 ); see also, Vargas’ (2002) edited col-lection of narratives of women faculty of color in U.S. contexts.

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a microanalysis of my participants’ agentive roles in confronting ineq-uitable circumstances had to be given some space to surface and con-tribute in a signifi cant way to my theoretical analyses; otherwise, a racialized epistemological silence would permeate the study.

To illustrate how the refl exive considerations just outlined inter-weave with methodological procedures and interpretations of partici-pants’ narratives, consider the following interview segments (cited in Simon-Maeda, 2004 ) from a participant whose racial background emerged as a salient factor in the marginalizing processes she experi-enced in her professional career. Mariah, a Filipino national who was an NGO worker and graduate school instructor in the Philippines, recounted an incident of a discriminatory employment practice she encountered while looking for part-time work as an EFL teacher in Japan:

Andrea: Tell me about when you were hired [for your present job]. I guess you went for an interview, or how did you fi nd out about the job? What was that like?

Mariah: Maybe I could start not directly answering that one. I have another experience when I fi rst came to Japan. Because I’m very active in the Philippines and I want to work, right away, I tried calling a school. But that man, I never met him, I think he’s biased.

Andrea: What happened?

Mariah: Because the announcement said native speaker, but I tried. I mean, in the Philippines, English is our offi cial language, so everything is in English, policies, newspapers, etcetera, and they don’t particularize native speakers.

Andrea: So, in Japan you’re not considered a native speaker?

Mariah: Uh-uh, as capable of teaching English, I don’t know, this is my judgment. And I was thinking it’s not a matter of color or race or religion; it’s a matter of how effective you are as a teacher. If you are Black, Brown, or White, small eyes, big eyes, it doesn’t matter.

Andrea: Is there anything that you can remember specifi cally about what that man said that made you feel that there was a kind of bias about native or nonnative?

Mariah: So, in the hiring announcement itself, I already felt there is a bias. And when he asked me over the phone, asking me about my country’s name, so there I remembered the announcement, what was written there. Though I wanted to tell him that, “Why don’t you just give me a chance to show if I’m capable or not? And if you think I’m not, then I’ll give up.” (pp. 421 – 422)


Although my original interview plan was to focus on female educa-tors’ stories of sexual discrimination, Mariah’s account of her unsuc-cessful job search changed the direction of my questioning and helped me realize that data could not simply be collected and neatly packed into a preconceived feminist research agenda. It was also a mistake on my part to assume that I could identify with Mariah and create a sis-terly chumminess solely on the basis of our both being women. Though the point of departure for the interview from my privileged (color-blind) perspective as a White researcher was gender issues, for Mariah, racism was foremost in her mind at this particular historical juncture in her life. In a postmodern world, realities and subjectivities are mul-tiple and continually in fl ux, and unless our methodologies refl ect and adapt to these complexities, we will end up with reductive interpreta-tions of our participants’ circumstances. Thus, after transcribing the fi rst interview session and in preparation for the follow-up interview, I was compelled to pursue a different investigative course 5 by familiariz-ing myself not only with native/nonnative issues in ESL/EFL fi elds (e.g., Braine, 1999 ; Davies, 2003 ) but also with literature concerning the situation of japayuki (Filipino women who come to Japan on tem-porary work or entertainment visas; see Piquero-Ballescas, 1993 ), a derogatory term from which Mariah said she wanted to disassociate herself:

Mariah: If a Filipino woman comes to Japan you are branded as a japayuki. I don’t want to be, I don’t want that bad image … . And especially another teacher I met, usually the Japanese teachers, male teachers in maybe 50s or 60s, they really have a negative bias about Filipino women. He was tell-ing me that, “Ah, Filipinas, domestic helpers.” I don’t like that, I don’t want anybody generalizing. So, as much as possible I want to distance myself because I want people to know that Filipino women are so diverse.

As a result of Mariah alluding several times to her racial background and how it was affecting and being affected by her social interactions in Japan, I also began collecting textual material that illustrated the more insidious forms of racism within and against which Mariah’s con-struction of a racialized self had evolved:

The Saitama District Court has ordered a real estate agency and an employee to pay 500,000 yen in compensation to an Indian man for ask-ing him the color of his skin when he phoned to rent a home, court offi -cials said Wednesday. An employee of Nikken Juhan persistently asked the

5 See Davis (1995) for an explanation of the iterative nature of qualitative research wherein data collection methods and hypotheses evolve in a cyclical fashion as new insights emerge from on-going interactions between the researcher and participants.

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man, “What color is your skin?” and “Is your skin an ordinary color?” When the plaintiff asked what “an ordinary color” means, the woman responded, “It is a color like Japanese,” according to the ruling (“Racist Question,” Asahi Shimbun, 2003, p. 20).

In light of the racism that exists in society, as this example shows, a critical researcher’s desire to promote social justice is understandably an admirable goal. However, we run the risk of romanticizing the nar-ratives of people of color and inscribing them as helpless victims if data segments highlighting participants’ proactive roles in changing their situations are not included in the study:

Mariah: I’m teaching Japanese students English and I’m a teacher from the Philippines, I’m not White, so always this kind of image. So I don’t know how they feel about that, that’s my question. But that kind of thought did not discourage me, but rather it challenged me. OK, I’m Brown, I’m from the Philippines, a woman, but I will help you learn English in a very relaxed way.

Mariah further explained that because most EFL textbooks in Japan do not contain material about noncenter countries, she deliberately added information about the Philippines to her college-level lesson plans:

Mariah: I can insert information about the Philippines, though it’s not found in the textbook. So they [students] are more aware not only about the information in the book but also about my culture.

Andrea: That’s great. Do they show an interest in that?

Mariah: Yes, often especially when I mention how women are recognized in [Philippine] society. They were so amazed when they know that I work full-time, I have kids. I think on the feedback form that I gave them some-body said that, “I want to be like you.” I was fl attered in a way, that as a woman, I think they can see somebody …

Andrea: A model.

Mariah: Like them. If she can do it, maybe I can do it. Such kind of help, I’m happy.

In this way, from her position of authority in the classroom, Mariah was subverting dominant discourses of both racism and sexism by pre-senting her Japanese students with a more multifaceted image of Filipinas. Mariah’s narrative also disrupted my understanding of agency as something that I (a White, Western researcher) possessed and others (racialized minorities) did not and that my research would somehow


liberate Mariah from her subordinate status in Japanese society. Poststructuralist theorists ( Foucault, 1972 ; Luke & Gore, 1992) have debunked mutually exclusive defi nitions of oppression and resistance wherein power is viewed as a static entity that can be possessed or given away. Instead, as Munro (1998) explains:

The complex and contradictory ways in which subjects take up or choose not to take up identities made available to them through discourse become the site for mapping the local and relational dynamics of power and agency … . The non-unitary subject that is in fl ux, fragmented and decentralized has multiple sites from which to engage in acts of agency. That these acts will work in complex ways to contest and to reify dominant ideologies does not provide cause for consternation, but rather another opportunity to explore the ways in which power works. (pp. 34 – 35)

Critical qualitative researchers have responded to the opportunity that Munro proposes through their use of alternative methodologies such as focus group and life story interviews, performance ethnogra-phy, participatory action research, and so on (for a complete review of recent trends in qualitative research, see Denzin & Lincoln, 2000 ). I recognize at the same time, however, as Ladson-Billings (2000) advises, that “there is no magic in employing participant observation, narrative inquiry, or interviews … . [and] that the qualitative researcher must guard against the connotation that qualitative work represents some more ‘authentic’ form of research” (p. 272). Nevertheless, I believe that the issues being raised in this report will lead to methodo-logical practices that allow our participants’ insider views of racial sub-jugation to become more fully integrated into our analytical outsider perspectives in order to promote a system of knowing that resists epis-temological racism.

STUDYING MY OWN KIND: ENA’S STORY

As Andrea discussed in her narrative, her positionality as a White, Western academic living and working in Japan was an important part of how she constructed the issues faced by her participants. Likewise, the tensions that she grappled with throughout her research because of her differently racialized researcher positioning also served to shape her experience. Andrea’s cautionary notes regarding the co-opting of participants’ meanings and attempting to speak in soli-darity with oppressed minorities are inherent dangers faced by all researchers doing all kinds of research. In this section, I present my own experiences as a researcher of color similarly attempting to avoid

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reproducing oppressive research epistemologies; however, in my case, I brought in my own insider views of racial subjugation similar (at least I believed) to that of my participant. Even so, this mutual experi-ence or understanding of racialization did not make the research process any easier. Instead, the complex intersections of my position-ings as an Asian-Canadian researcher living and researching in a diverse multicultural and multilingual setting highlighted other research tensions and implications as I struggled to negotiate my researcher identity on the inside, outside, and within. 6

From April 2003 to March 2004, I conducted research for my doc-toral thesis at a major Canadian postsecondary ESL program. I was doing a case study of the program because its innovative pedagogical approach set it apart from other English for academic purposes (EAP) programs in the city. The program based its pedagogy on tenets of critical pedagogy ( Benesch, 2001 ; Pennycook, 2001 ) — a pedagogy which recognizes generally that power pervades all aspects of language education, from what we teach to how we teach it. In my research, I investigated the ways in which students and instructors conceptualized and engaged with this pedagogy and argued that this engagement was related to the complex identities they brought to their language teach-ing and learning. Over the course of the year, an Asian instructor (one of only two visible minority instructors in the program at the time) who was participating in my research experienced numerous incidents that served to Other her among her colleagues and her students. What was of interest to me was the silence surrounding these incidents and the way in which they remained relatively unaddressed. While conducting an interview with Lisa, I was struck by how my identity as an Asian woman seemed to be implicated in her refl ective process in relation to her experiences. In particular, I focused on how her attempts to draw out my experiences and to link them to her own represented, I believe, her attempts to make sense of her own trials and tribulations as a visible minority in TESOL. My research led me to question how racialized research identities can unearth issues that may otherwise remain buried. Throughout the investigation, I found myself asking: What are the unique challenges and implications of our own racial identities as researchers of color doing ESL research? What appear to be the implications of studying within for the researched (Lisa)? And what are the implications of studying within for the research?

6 See Merchant & Willis (2001) for examples of other narratives of researchers of color who address the challenges that they, too, faced while conducting research with participants of similarly-racialized backgrounds.


Situating the Research

Because I recognize that the epistemological and methodological frameworks we choose for our research can serve to create and per-petuate racism in the fi eld, I subscribed to a critical pedagogical the-ory that views research as historically situated ( Canagarajah, 1999 ; Norton, 2000 ; Peirce, 1995 ) and looks not only at how conditions of the past have shaped what is currently occurring, but also how an understanding of history enhances our understanding of the present social and political situation ( Dei, Mazzuca, McIsaac, & Zine, 1997 ; Jordan & Yeomans, 1995 ; Simon & Dippo, 1986 ). A critical research framework also focuses on how all knowledge is interested and invested, how it is created, and how certain forms of knowledge maintain author-ity ( Britzman, 1995 ; Lin & Luk, 2002 ; Pennycook, 1989 , Thomas, 1993 ). Canagarajah (1996) further proposes alternative forms of research reporting when conducting critical research to “better refl ect our emerging realizations on the nature of research and knowledge production” (p. 321). As such, I present my data through narrative, in part, as a way of highlighting not just the racism that Lisa experienced, but also the emotional affects of racist incidents — affects that those who experience them do not often address for fear of being accused of oversensitivity or having such experiences relegated to “isolated, random, individual happenings” ( Lin et al., 2004 , p. 494) rather than seeing them as refl ecting larger structural and systemic inequities.

Revealing Silence

Lisa (a pseudonym) was an instructor in her mid twenties who was born in Japan but whose family immigrated to Canada within a year of her birth. She grew up bilingual, speaking both English and Japanese, and received her master’s degree in TESOL at an American university before returning to Canada to teach. At the time of my research, she was one of only two visible minorities in a staff of 24. The other Asian instructor worked at the university’s second campus and was thus very rarely seen by anyone at the main campus except during occasional staff meetings. This research highlights Lisa’s strug-gles as she attempted to negotiate her racial identity with students, staff, and administrators in the program. As such, Lisa recounted to me a number of anecdotes that illustrated how she was racialized and positioned as the Other — from being mistaken for a student by col-leagues to being challenged by students in her classroom. After detail-ing each account, however, she would ask me whether I had experienced similar situations in my own ESL teaching career. In order to not only

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analyze the discourses underlying Lisa’s anecdotes but, simultaneously, the discourses underlying our research interactions, I turned to Pierre Bourdieu’s (1977 , 1991) theories of legitimacy.

Bourdieu’s (1977 , 1991) theory of legitimate speakers and legitimate listeners addresses the demarcation between those considered worthy or unworthy to speak or listen; underscoring legitimacy, however, is the centrality of who has the power to label someone as (un)worthy or (il)legitimate. In relation to how Lisa was positioned by students and colleagues, the perceptions of race and the resulting racialization of her identity relegated Lisa to illegitimacy as an ESL teacher, as a native speaker, and as a Canadian. In relation to our research relationship, however, what was especially interesting to me were the ways in which Lisa perceived me as a legitimate ally and colleague with whom she could share and discuss her experiences. Throughout our interview and between each anecdote, she would intermingle phrases such as, “if you understand what I’m saying” or “I don’t know if you’ve had that [feeling] before.” However, upon further refl ection, I questioned whether Lisa would have made such rhetorical asides if she were being interviewed by a White researcher.

In viewing me as a fellow Asian, Canadian, native speaker of English, and ESL professional, Lisa positioned me as both a legitimate speaker and listener to her experiences as a visible minority in the fi eld of TESOL. She believed I mirrored her hybrid identity (cf. Hall, 1992 ) — caught between being too Asian on the one hand, but being too White on the other. Thus, when I concurred that I had, indeed, also experi-enced incidents of racialization, my claims of understanding her expe-riences (at least to a certain degree) appeared to be interpreted as legitimate rather than as patronizing (a possible interpretation had similar claims of understanding been made by a White ESL researcher). I believe Lisa’s turning to me as a researcher of color for validation of her struggles showed her desire and need for personal and profes-sional support — support that she was unable to fi nd among her col-leagues. However, same-race researchers would critically question how Lisa positioned me as legitimate because a notion of one’s own kind (in this case, a minority teacher who would understand how Lisa was racialized in the fi eld of ESL) assumes that one’s multiple identities (such as the categorizations of race, class, gender, etc.) can be frag-mented and decontextualized. For example, because the large majority of the students in the program were from Mainland China, negotiating one’s racialized identity may arguably be easier for a Chinese-Canadian that for a Japanese-Canadian ESL teacher. Further, from a research perspective, because insider/outsider identities and positionalities are both relational and situational ( Enos, 2001 ; Gallagher, 2000 ; Kim, 2001 ; Twine, 2000 ), it would be “dangerous to presume that because


the researcher . . . is a member of a particular racial or ethnic group, she or he has emic knowledge of that particular group or community” ( Ladson-Billings, 2000 , p. 266); thus, although a shift from a position-ality of research outsider to one of insider (in light of a perceived similarity in racialized positionings) might assist in revealing particular silences (Lisa’s, in this case), same-race research purports that this shift can simultaneously become another form of colonizing research prac-tice if the researcher fails to question her relatively privileged position-ing within the larger research, social, and political context (p. 267).

Nonetheless, even in the face of the researcher’s gaze, Lisa’s candid-ness pervaded the interview. As a result, I was left unsure as to what to do with such confessions of isolation and confusion. Mere words of comfort would seem superfi cial because I interpreted incidents such as the ones Lisa recounted as illustrative of broader inequities within the program. Rather, in examining the data, it appeared that what Lisa was seeking was not just words of comfort, but a space in which she could speak about her experiences as part of the larger social and political structures of her workplace. For example, when asked to explain why she had asked me early in the research to attend staff meetings as part of my data collection, Lisa seemed to allude to larger structures that had an impact on her day-to-day work:

Ena: I remember when I fi rst started [my data collection], you asked me if I was going to go to the staff meeting . . . . Because you told me it makes you feel better [if I attend].

Lisa: Yeah, I don’t know why. But I don’t know if you’ve had that experience as well. It seems like I have to shut up. Do you know what I mean? Because I’ve gotten all these questions like, “Oh, where are you really from?” Or, do you know what I mean? Because people have made me feel like I’m a visible minority in the program within the instructors. And so then I think I feel like I’m being pushed down a little. And then I feel like, “Oh, wow. I can’t speak.” And I don’t know if that’s normal . . . . Have you had that experience before? . . . Have you felt like you can’t speak?

I shared with Lisa my experiences of racialization while teaching in the fi eld in the past, but admittedly, I did so with much trepidation based on the (false) assumption that sharing such personal informa-tion would affect the objective validity of the fi nal data. It is a dilemma and a myth that Kanno (1997) addresses in relation to how some qualitative researchers “still shy away from active involvement with par-ticipants for fear of jeopardizing the research itself” (p. 4); however, she is critical of this practice because “detachment is a stance just as personal involvement is, and both affect what respondents say . . . . They adjust the extent of disclosure accordingly” (p. 6). In the case of the

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interactions between Lisa and me, I argue that these disclosure adjust-ments are signifi cantly determined by the participants relative to how they view the researcher’s and their own raced, gendered, classed, etcetera identities (as well as the intersections of these social construc-tions). Lisa’s indication that my presence at staff meetings would reduce her feelings of otherness and illegitimacy made me question whether I had another role in the program that was, in fact, more signifi cant than that of the researcher . At that moment, I began to hypothesize that my racialized identity was not only implicated in my own research process, but also might have been having an impact on Lisa’s participation within the ESL program as a whole. Her reasons for forefronting my racial identity in her refl ective process became clearer to me when I asked her to discuss another incident I had observed during my research.

Hiding Emotion in ESL Research

During my data collection, administrators at the program decided to create a new marketing brochure, in the form of a multipage glossy program booklet. The new booklet would feature pictures of past stu-dents on the front and back covers and throughout the inside pages. All instructors were asked to submit biographies and have pictures taken for inclusion in a special section of the program booklet entitled “Our Instructors.” There was an understanding, though, that because of space constraints, only a few instructors would be included in the fi nal publication. As had the other instructors, Lisa submitted a biog-raphy and had a photo taken for the brochure. When the program brochure arrived from the printer, however, I was puzzled to see Lisa’s picture on the back cover among the many faces of past students. What made this error all the more obvious was the fact that within the program booklet, the instructors section highlighted the pictures and short biographies of some of the White instructors.

When I brought up the marketing brochure during our interview, Lisa said she felt “pretty shitty” when she fi rst saw the brochure. She told me that because she estimated that ten thousand copies of the brochure had already been printed, she felt there was nothing she could do about the situation and did not raise the issue with the pro-gram administrators. However, in discussing the incident further, it became apparent that the most disappointing aspect of the experience for Lisa was the fact that she felt none of her colleagues realized there was anything wrong with the new brochure in the fi rst place:

Ena: Has anyone else pointed it [your misplaced photo] out to you?


Lisa: My mom. My dad.

Ena: No one else?

Lisa: No. No instructors. No one. You . That’s about it. I don’t think other instructors — see, that’s my point. I don’t think other instructors care . I see, that comes from their not understanding being a visible minority in an ESL atmosphere.

I was saddened when Lisa expressed to me that she believed I was the only one who both realized and cared about how she was continu-ally positioned in the program. By the end of our interview, Lisa voiced skepticism that things would ever change for her and for other visible minorities in the fi eld as a whole. Again, I was left to question whether these issues and Lisa’s resulting feelings would have been revealed in the research had I not been a young Asian woman. At the same time, I realize that my line of questioning signifi cantly infl uenced the responses she gave, but it does not fully explain the complexities of how she interacted with me during my thesis study and how she had positioned me as, perhaps, the only ally she had in the program regarding her struggles with continued racializations. The interview excerpts highlight what I believe to be a diffi cult challenge when study-ing one’s own kind as a researcher of color — namely, negotiating a perceived lack of space for emotional engagement in our research around issues of race that, in effect, may downplay the emotional impact and consequences of such racializations and minimize the sig-nifi cance of racist occurrences in our fi eld.

My positioning as a researcher of color studying from within meant revealing these silences and bearing witness to Lisa’s numerous accounts of how she was positioned disadvantageously vis-à-vis other teachers in the program by her own colleagues, administrators, and students. Lisa’s initial resistance to revealing her experiences of raciali-zation to me, combined with my own initial resistance to revealing similar experiences as an ESL teacher, however, are, I believe, most indicative of the underlying issue. Kubota (2002) has argued how “the discriminations and injuries faced by [Asian and Asian American] stu-dents remain hidden because they try to either walk away from them without confrontation or blend into the mainstream by negating dif-ference in order to survive” (p. 88). She argues that hegemonic dis-courses of Asianness presume such silences to be a characteristic of Asian shyness and, in turn, serve to obscure issues of race and racism from critical analysis. Thus, as exhibited through both Lisa’s and my own cases of racialization, a resistance to recognizing racism in ESL/EFL research not only by those who racialize, but by those who are racialized and, more important, resistance to recognizing the

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emotional effects of racist actions in our research serves only to per-petuate the continued (re)production of such incidents.

Researcher Responsibility in Racialized Spaces

More than a year after the research was completed, I am still left wondering what my responsibilities were and still are to Lisa. She con-tinues to teach ESL but continues to question whether it would be easier to change to another fi eld of work. Carter (2003) states that “[researchers] have an obligation to the experiences that we expose” (p. 33); as a researcher of color, specifi cally, however, I posit that an internalization of researcher obligation can potentially become further complexifi ed if one believes that the degree of exposure was/is cor-related with some notion of shared racialized or other experiences, essentialized or not (cf. Carter, 2003 ; Tyson, 2003 ). Even so, I believe so-called objective research would claim that I have no responsibility to Lisa past ensuring that her participation in my study was entirely ethical; however, critical research can only be labeled as such if it exhibits catalytic validity which “represents the degree to which the research process reorients, focuses, and energizes participants toward knowing reality in order to transform it” ( Lather, 1986b , p. 272; see also Lather, 1986a ). 7 Conversely, Kanno (1997) highlights the danger of reinforcing the relations of power between researcher and partici-pant if the inquiry implies “that the participant needs fi xing in some way” (p. 8) and hence becomes “confused with a mission to ‘save’ the participants” (p. 4). Instead, she emphasizes personal growth through critical refl ection on the research process — a learning experience not only for the participants, but for the researcher as well (cf. Jordan & Yeomans, 1995 ). In her study, Kanno became friends with her partici-pants and played the role of a supporter and, at times, a therapist when they shared diffi cult experiences, but I question whether her actions served to change any of the underlying inequities in the system in which their identities and experiences were entrenched. For this reason, I remain concerned that providing Lisa with an opportunity to voice her experiences (perhaps cathartically or perhaps furthering her feelings of desolation) and simply revealing her silence in this forum shirks my responsibilities as a researcher of color attempting to do critical work. If catalytic validity is central to critical research ( Chaudhry, 2001 ; Zurita, 2001 ) but one’s catalytic validity fails to directly address and challenge the continued reproduction of inequi-

7 For a similar notion, see Goldstein’s (2003) notion of critical refl exivity (cf. Denzin, 1997[0]; Pennycook, 2001 ).


table discourses, how do we make sense of it as we conduct critical ESL ESL/EFL research? It is a question I am still struggling with in the tenuous terrain of studying my own kind.

CLOSING REMARKS

In this article, we have both argued through narratives of our research experiences for the importance of uncovering the complexi-ties of our multiple positionings and those of our subjects (cf. Carter, 2003 ; Islam, 2000 , Ladson-Billings, 2000 ; Ramanathan, 2005 ; Twine, 2000 ). Through a careful reconsideration of an interview with a research participant of color, Andrea has become aware of the unshared racial-ized positionalities and experiences of racism and, at the same time, has been enlightened by her participant’s resistance to racism. Conversely, Ena shared the same racial positioning problems as her participant and yet continues to wonder what her responsibilities should be as a researcher in confronting the hegemony of racism. By present-ing our introspective comments alongside the verbatim data of our participants, we have highlighted how the research process as well as the reporting must include in-depth analyses of how both participant and researcher experience their racialized positions, how they both engage in resistance to racism, and how researchers negotiate the com-plexities of their positionalities vis-à-vis participants’ lived experiences.

By recognizing the centrality of race and racism in conducting our ESL/EFL research, we resist research racelessness ( Carter, 2003 ) and work to facilitate multivocality in order to reveal (and change) the silences of epistemological racism ( Kubota, 2002 ; Ladson-Billings, 2000 ). In both same and cross-group studies carried out by researchers in privileged positions, it is crucial to fi rst acknowledge our own poten-tial implicatedness in the exclusion of participants’ points of view through our methodologies and reporting styles. To this end, by look-ing very closely at our transcripts and (re)considering what and how something is said (or not said), researchers can break away from the paralysis of confessional tales (“I am White/Asian,” “I cannot speak”) or the moral platitudes of redemption discourses ( Roman, 1997 ) in order to enact a refl exive methodology described by Harding (1991) as “strong objectivity … [which] requires that we investigate the relation between subject and object rather than deny the existence of, or seek unilateral control over, this relation” (p. 152). Both the researcher and researched are complex beings involved in a dynamic relationship, and methodologies that do not refl ect the socially constructed complexity of this relationship are, in effect, helping to proliferate hegemonic representations of participants’ experiences.

TESOL QUARTERLY590

As this report illustrates, an effective way of opening up (de)racialized spaces in academic publishing spheres is by promoting collaborations between researchers who face differently racialized experiences. The authors had originally submitted their individual proposals separately; however, the editors’ suggestion for a joint publication enabled us to gain a more in-depth understanding of our own racialized subjectivi-ties while providing the TESOL Quarterly readership with a more nuanced, messy version of the complex theoretical and methodologi-cal issues involving race and racism in our fi eld. Through such col-laborations, authors and readers can gain a deeper appreciation of the different standpoints and directions a cross/same-racial study can take depending on our gendered, raced, and classed backgrounds. In sum, the authors propose that refl exive research practices involving a criti-cal questioning of the researcher’s positionality and relationship to participants in studies aimed at social change is a prerequisite for bridging the gulf between emancipatory intentions and actual steps toward progressive reform in the ESL/EFL fi eld.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Ena Lee gratefully acknowledges fi nancial support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada; she also thanks Lyndsay Moffatt for her invaluable feedback during the initial conceptualization of her narrative. In addition to the special issue editors, Ryuko Kubota and Angel Lin, both authors thank the anonymous reviewers for insightful comments on earlier versions of this article.

THE AUTHORS

Ena Lee is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Language and Literacy Education at the University of British Columbia. Her current research interests include identity and language learning, critical language teacher education, and antiracist education.

Andrea Simon-Maeda is an associate professor in the Career Design Department at Nagoya Keizai University (Junior College Division). Her research interests include critical ethnography, narrative inquiry, and postmodern feminism.

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THE FORUMTESOL Quarterly invites commentary on current trends or practices in the TESOLprofession. It also welcomes responses or rebuttals to any articles or remarkspublished here in the Forum or elsewhere in the Quarterly.

English Lessons

RUTH SPACK Bentley College Waltham, Massachusetts, United States

■ I imagine most of us remember the moment when we realized that teaching English to speakers of other languages is not an innocent endeavor. In my case that moment came in the Air Force in 1971, not long after I had received a master’s degree in English and certi-fi cation to teach ESOL. My husband, a pediatrician, was stationed at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, where I volunteered to teach Vietnamese brides of returning servicemen. What a wonderful oppor-tunity, I thought. Armed with verb tenses and vocabulary, I could make use of my own basic training to help these women learn English and adjust to American culture. There was a war raging out there, and I could aid people who had suffered as a result of that very confl ict.

At fi rst things went just as I had hoped. But I soon came to understand that my work entailed more than simply teaching a new language and culture. In that classroom, I was compelled to engage with a perilous mix of race, class, gender, and colonialism. As the women learned more English and became more comfortable talking with me, I heard stories that revealed a deep pain that they had hidden while we were studying verb forms and idioms. I learned that it was common practice for their soldier husbands to have taught the women English during their stay in Vietnam but that these “lessons” included curse words whose meanings were not explained. The husbands would later roar with laughter, when, now living in the United States, their war brides would respond to their


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mothers-in-law’s comments with such expressions as “No shit!” and “That’s fucking unreal!” Such linguistically inappropriate language exacerbated already tenuous relationships, for several of the sol-diers’ mothers had trouble adjusting to the presence of their racially different daughters-in-law. Even the verb forms I had been teaching lost their innocence when I became aware of a dangerous link between language and social class identifi cation: One woman suf-fered abuse when she corrected her husband’s English, telling him he should say “He doesn’t,” not “He don’t.”

As I reflect back on this teaching experience, I understand now that I entered the field rather naively, unaware of the colonialist mentality that may impinge on the teaching of English to speakers of other languages. I did sense that what Stephanie Vandrick (2002) calls “a colonial shadow” (p. 411) had enveloped the minds of the U.S. ser vicemen who were teaching English to their spouses. I did not realize, however, that it had also affected me: an ESOL instruc-tor who mistakenly thought I was in the classroom to do good rather than to teach. In “ESL and the Colonial Legacy,” Vandrick critiques her own childhood behavior toward those who lived in the village in India where her parents served as missionaries, and she extrapolates from that experience to analyze her current teach-ing. In retrospect, Vandrick recognizes that she unwittingly saw herself as a miniature hostess in a foreign land, “graciously dispens-ing gifts, hand-me-downs, trinkets, wisdom, religion, and Western culture” (p. 413). Now an ESL professional in a U.S. college, she asks herself whether she is still positioned as a gift giver, this time dispensing the “wisdom made available through the English lan-guage, ‘American culture,’ and academic skills for the American university” (p. 413).

Vandrick extends this question to other ESOL instructors, asking whether the colonial shadow may have enveloped our unconscious behavior as well. Are we unintentionally infantilizing students by viewing ourselves as nurturers or saviors (as I once did) or by speak-ing loudly, making large gestures, or extending excessive or exag-gerated praise? Are we unwittingly ignoring diversity if we set a particular Western standard of achievement or language (standard English) and measure students against that standard (as I once did)? Are we unconsciously positioning ourselves as superior if we prede-termine the curriculum based on our perceptions of what students need — without consulting the students themselves — and then expect students to be grateful for all that we have done for them (as I once did)? Even if the answer to each of these questions is no for most of us, it is important to be aware that such attitudes exist and that multilingual students, if not always their instructors, may have a

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heightened sensitivity to such attitudes. It certainly is worthwhile, as Vandrick says, to grapple with this issue, not only as individual instructors but also as a profession.

What I learned from teaching the Air Force brides was that the moment I strayed from my preset curriculum, allowing for natural conversation to arise, I enabled the students’ openness, which in turn opened my eyes to the real contexts in which their language learning was taking place. I had discovered what I would later learn is a “participatory approach” to language instruction ( Auerbach, 2002 ), which is rooted in students’ realities and promotes literacy as “a tool for making change in the condition of students’ lives” (p. 273). I came to understand that, because acquiring another language is inextricably linked to a learner’s identity and background, my classroom needed to be responsive to students’ sense of who they were and what they had already experienced and to the complicated ways their linguistic, cultural, and racial identities impacted their acquisition of new ways with words. Together, collaboratively, the stu-dents and I reshaped the curriculum to address their actual needs and concerns.

I would like to be able to say that after my Air Force experience, I immediately and radically changed my teaching. However, in other settings, I continued for a while to depend on materials that were state of the art but not meaningfully related to students’ real con-cerns or not sensitive enough to their racial, cultural, religious, class, or gender identities. My own slow progress can be explained by the fact that transformative teaching rarely follows a straightfor-ward path. But my Air Force volunteer effort did lay the groundwork for a lifetime of refl ection on teaching ESOL. My own experience and research have shown that the key to meaningful language acqui-sition does not lie solely in well-intentioned teachers or inventive pedagogical strategies.

An early example of this phenomenon is evident in a 19th-century educational program for Native Americans at the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute in Virginia (see Spack, 2002 ). Hampton received government funding to “civilize” the students, as the Indian Bureau put it, by teaching them English, in English only — for English was seen as the language of a superior Anglo-American Christian culture. Unlike most of the Indian schools supported by the federal government, however, Hampton was committed to put into practice what it considered to be the best educational philosophy of the era. The Hampton teachers believed in their students’ ability to learn at a high level, and, in the best sense of the term, their classrooms became laboratories as the teachers experimented with pedagogical approaches to fi nd ways to help students develop thought and

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expression. In fact, the ideas the teachers generated about teaching and learning compare favorably with contemporary principles of sec-ond language acquisition theory. Nevertheless, the teachers contin-ued to use texts that promoted an ideology of European American superiority, such as William Swinton’s (1882) Introductory Geography in Readings and Recitations , which includes the following passage:

There are differences among men far greater than differences in com-plexion and features. We ask which kinds of people are the best educated, and are the most skilled in fi nding out and doing things which are useful for all the world? Which are making the most progress? And, when we fi nd a people very much noted for all these, we say that they are a highly civi-lized people.

When we fi nd people who are not so enlightened, but who still are not savages, and seem to be on the way to become civilized people, we call them semi-civilized , which means half-civilized.

The races who, in their way of living, are the least civilized, — who have no written language, and only the rudest arts, — are called savage races. (pp. 19 – 20)

The Hampton teachers did not reject the racial paradigm promulgated in the schoolbooks. In fact, they reinforced it through recitation lessons in which they asked questions to which the whole class responded. One such recitation was reprinted in Southern Workman , in an article titled “Our World: Work and Fun in the Geography Class” (1885):

9. To what race do we all belong?

9. The human race.

10. How many classes belong to this race?

10. There are fi ve large classes belonging to the human race.

11. Which are the fi rst?

11. The white people are the strongest.

12. Which are next?

12. The Mongolians or yellows.

13. The next?

13. The Ethiopians or blacks.

14. Next?

14. The Americans or reds. 1 (p. 20)

1 The fi fth race is not identifi ed in the article.

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Students diligently reproduced what they had learned, as is evident in the essays that were published in the same issue and which had received an excellent mark from the teacher. One student wrote:

The white people they are civilized; they have everything, and go to school, too. They learn how to read and write so they can read newspaper.

The yellow people they half civilized, some of them know to read and write, and some know how to take care of themself.

The red people they big savages; they don’t know anything. (p. 20)

That the students internalized demoralizing lessons and that they were subsequently rewarded for expressing self-deprecating attitudes shows that the Hampton teachers’ good intentions and pioneer-ing teaching strategies did not counteract the negative effect of their own unexamined prejudices. Although the teachers constructively transformed language methodology, they continued to believe that English and its associate culture were superior. Although they respected the intelligence of their students, they continued to hold assumptions about race and class that placed Native people at the bottom of a scale of human beings. Although they were critical of colonizing authorities, they participated in a destructive effort to convert students to a European American way of life. Designed to weaken the link between students’ heritage languages and identities, the Hampton teachers’ pedagogical strategies inevitably undermined most students’ sense of self-worth.

None of us in the ESOL fi eld today would intentionally promote an ideology of racial and cultural superiority. But there is evidence that scholarship in the fi eld continues to perpetuate cultural essential-ism and determinism (for a discussion of this phenomenon, see Kubota, 2001 ; Kubota & Lehner, 2004 ; Leki, 1997 ; Spack, 1997 , 1998 ; Zamel, 1997 ). For example, a claim persists that Asian cultures aim to reproduce information rather than to extend knowledge as Western cultures do ( Ballard & Clancy, 1991 ; Silva, Leki, & Carson, 1997 ). Such cross-cultural comparisons may be designed to offset misunder-standings about cultural difference. But, ironically, such generaliza-tions may foster the very misrepresentations they attempt to refute. The idea that students from Asia are reproductive learners becomes a self-fulfi lling prophecy, often blinding instructors to students’ actual competence, adaptive strategies, and critical thinking skills ( Watkins & Biggs, 1996 ).

How different are the 20th-century statements about Asian stu-dents from the 19th-century statements about Native Americans, cited earlier? After all, the ideas about Native Americans were perceived as truths in their time and were construed as merely descriptive of

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cultural differences, a way of identifying who had developed a written form of language and who had not. The teachers at Hampton never stated that Native students were innately incapable of performing in school. Nor do the ESOL researchers state that students from Asia are incapable of critical thought. Nevertheless, the way these teachers and researchers inscribe cultural difference has damaging consequences.

TEACHING TOWARD A CRITICAL UNDERSTANDING

I have often wondered how my own education might have been different so that, earlier, I could have taken a more critical stance toward language teaching and learning. Perhaps it could have been more like an undergraduate course I teach, “Language and Literacy: Theories into Practice,” in which students tutor English language learners in community agencies and schools. Some of the class time focuses on theoretical and pedagogical material to prepare students for their tutoring. But my goal is for students to gain a critical understanding of the underlying historical, social, political, and eco-nomic structures that inform the ESOL experience — information that had been missing from my own early training. To that end, we read historical studies of immigration and language policies to see how minority populations have been both welcomed and discrimi-nated against, how the U.S. government has both fostered and restricted linguistic diversity, and how English became the medium of learning in U.S. schools, if not the offi cial language. We examine such issues as the English-only debate, the literacy crisis, and the global impact of English — how it is spreading worldwide, how local conditions are spawning varieties of the language, how mastery of English establishes positions of power in government and com-merce. We raise questions about the nature and dominance of standard English and the new linguistic colonialism that is taking root. And we read the Vandrick (2002) article, discussed earlier, so that students can address their own ethnocentric tendencies. In addition to scholarly texts, we read news articles, personal narra-tives, and poems that focus on the themes of language and literacy. We also analyze classroom scenes in fi lms such as Good Morning, Vietnam and Lilies of the Field, not for pedagogical purposes only but also to consider the colonialist context of the movies’ language les-sons or to question the underlying assumptions about the primacy of standard English.

Perhaps the most compelling course materials are works of fi c-tion, for they render the lived experience of language learning in

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a way that theoretical, research-based, pedagogical, and even auto-biographical materials simply cannot capture. The stories’ imaginary constructs offer a distance that enables a frank and open conversa-tion in the classroom. At the same time, ironically, the literary quali-ties of the stories, their poignancy, and the raw truths they reveal, draw students in, inviting them to refl ect on their own experiences, practices, and expectations. Together, the stories show how linguistic and geographical background, social and economic positioning, age and gender, and racial and religious identity play a role in English language learners’ educational lives, infl uencing whether, when, how, and to what extent they acquire a new language and adopt new ways of behaving and knowing. It is precisely this kind of knowl-edge and understanding that I want students to bring to their own experience as tutors.

Among the most powerful stories I teach are those that reveal the impact of English in New Zealand, Hawaii, and Native America, for they refl ect the linguistic humiliation and cultural displacement that characterize colonial domination. 2 In Patricia Grace’s (1998) story, “Kura,” for example, we learn how Maori children in an English-only school were severely punished “for not speaking when they were spo-ken to,” even though they did not understand the language (p. 33), and how these children grew into traumatized adults who were silenced by memory. The child narrator of Lois-Ann Yamanaka’s (1996) “Obituary” listens as her teacher in a Hawaiian school explains that the students’ must “Speak Standard English” because their “unedu-cated,” “low-class” language will take them “nowhere in life” (p. 154). Having internalized this lesson in linguistic and cultural denigration, the narrator then thinks:

how ashamed I am of pidgin English. Ashamed of my mother and father . . . . Ashamed of my aunties and uncles at baby luaus, yakudoshis, and mochi pounding parties . . . . Sometimes I wish to be haole. That my name could be Betty Smith or Annie Anderson or Debbie Cole, wife of Dennis Cole who lives at 2222 Maple Street with a white station wagon with wood panel on the side, a dog named Spot, a cat named Kitty, and I wear white gloves. (pp. 154 – 155)

Even as they portray the negative consequences of colonialist attitudes, the authors of such stories typically reveal the pride and resistance of colonized people. The narrator in Marie Hara’s (1990) “Fourth Grade Ukus,” placed in a Hawaiian school for children who speak nonstandard English, is intimidated into silence by her teacher’s disdain for her herit-age language and culture. However, she also experiences joy when the

2 These and other stories will be reprinted in Spack & Zamel (in press) .

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supportive principal leads her to view Queen Kaahumanu as a model of accomplishment and power. In Zitkala- Š a’s (1900) “The School Days of an Indian Girl,” the child protagonist suffers indignities in a school that denigrates Native languages and cultures but fi nally learns enough English to rebel against authority.

CONCLUSION

In the 19th-century records of the Hampton school, an occasional example can be found of a student’s resistance to misrepresentations of Native identities, as the following excerpt from the graduation speech of Dakota student Zallie Rulo (1885) shows:

During last year in Dakota, there was one white man killed by the Indians. How many Indians do you suppose were killed by the white men? There were six Indians killed by the white men. Of which savage out West do you think you would be most afraid, the red savage or the white savage? (p. 62)

The Hampton teachers did not recognize — or at least did not acknowl-edge in the school reports I examined — such resistance. They pre-ferred to see students as willing participants in an acculturation process. It is easy in hindsight to be critical of these teachers, to dismiss them as agents in a colonial system of education, to shake our heads in dismay at the way they allowed their teaching to per-petuate hurtful stereotypes. But hegemonic views about language, culture, and race shaped their conceptual framework. And I think we need to question how prevailing views of cultural essentialism and determinism may continue to shape our own conceptual frameworks. Far from being a neutral vehicle for communication, as the 1885 graduation speech demonstrates, English is a site of struggle over meaning and representation. But how often in our own classrooms do we allow room for subversive discourse such as Zallie Rulo’s? What opportunity do we provide for students to challenge the ideology of the institutions in which we teach; question our pedagogical approaches; or contest our views on linguistic, cultural, or racial issues? My reading of history and literature suggest that we need to leave plenty of room for subversion in our classrooms. Otherwise, 120 years from now, researchers examining our school records may shake their heads in dismay.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author thanks Vivian Zamel for her insightful comments on an earlier draft.

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THE AUTHOR

Ruth Spack, professor of English and ESOL director at Bentley College, Waltham, Massachusetts, United States, has published numerous articles and books, includ-ing the co-edited volumes, Crossing the Curriculum and Negotiating Academic Literacies . America’s Second Tongue was awarded the Mina P. Shaughnessy Prize by the Modern Language Association and named a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title.

REFERENCES

Auerbach , E. ( 2002 ). What is a participatory approach to curriculum development? In V. Zamel & R. Spack . (Eds.), Enriching ESOL pedagogy: Readings with activi-ties for engagement, refl ection, and inquiry (pp. 269 – 293 ). Mahwah, NJ : Lawrence Erlbaum .

Ballard , B. , & Clancy , J. ( 1991 ). Assessment by misconception: Cultural infl uences and intellectual traditions . In L. Hamp-Lyons (Ed.), Assessing second language writ-ing in academic contexts (pp. 19 – 35 ). Norwood, NJ : Ablex .

Grace , P. ( 1998 ). Kura . In P. Grace , Baby no-eyes (pp. 29 – 39 ). Honolulu : University of Hawai’i Press .

Hara , M. ( 1990 ). Fourth grade ukus . In M. Hara , Bananaheart and other stories (pp. 47 – 62 ). Honolulu, HI : Bamboo Ridge Press .

Kubota , R. ( 2001 ). Discursive construction of the images of U.S. classrooms . TESOL Quarterly , 35 , 9 – 38 .

Kubota , R. , & Lehner , A. ( 2004 ). Toward critical contrastive rhetoric . Journal of Second Language Writing , 13 , 7 – 27 .

Leki , I. ( 1997 ). Cross-talk: ESL issues and contrastive rhetoric . In C. , Severino , J. C . Guerra, & J. E . Butler (Eds.), Writing in multicultural settings (pp. 234 – 244 ). New York : Modern Language Association .

Our world: Work and fun in the geography class . ( 1885 , February). Southern Workman , 19 – 20 .

Rulo , Z. ( 1885 , June). The Indian woman . Southern Workman , 62 . Silva , T. , Leki , I., & Carson , J. ( 1997 ). Broadening the perspective of mainstream

composition studies: Some thoughts from the disciplinary margins . Written Communication: An International Quarterly of Research, Theory, and Application , 14 , 398 – 428 .

Spack , R. ( 1997 ). The rhetorical construction of multilingual students . TESOL Quarterly , 31 , 765 – 774 .

Spack , R. ( 1998 ). The author responds to Nelson . TESOL Quarterly , 32 , 732 – 734 . Spack , R. ( 2002 ). America’s second tongue: American Indian education and the ownership of

English, 1860 – 1900 . Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press . Spack , R. , & Zamel , V. (Eds.). (in press). Language lessons: Short stories about learners of

English. Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press . Swinton , W. ( 1882 ). Introductory geography in readings and recitations. New York :

Ivison . Vandrick , S. ( 2002 ). ESL and the colonial legacy: A teacher faces her “missionary

kid” past . In V. Zamel & R. Spack (Eds.), Enriching ESOL pedagogy: Readings with activities for engagement, refl ection, and inquiry (pp. 411 – 436 ). Mahwah, NJ : Lawrence Erlbaum .

Watkins , D. A. , & Biggs , J. B. ( 1996 ). The Chinese learner: Cultural, psychological, and contextual infl uences . Hong Kong SAR , China: Comparative Education Research Centre.

604

Yamanaka , L.-A. ( 1996 ). Obituary. In L.-A. Yamanaka , Wild meat and the bully burgers (pp. 154 – 163 ). New York : Harcourt .

Zamel , V. ( 1997 ). Toward a model of transculturation . TESOL Quarterly , 31 , 341 – 352 .

Zitkala- Š a. ( 1900, February). The school days of an Indian girl . Atlantic Monthly , 185 – 194 .

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Comments on Jennifer Jenkins’s “Implementing an International Approach to English Pronunciation: The Role of Teacher Attitudes and Identity”

A Reader Responds

MITSUO KUBOTA Kansai Gaidai UniversityHirakata, Japan

■ In order to explore the feasibility of an English as a lingua franca (ELF) approach, Jenkins (2005) examined the role of nonnative-English-speaking (NNES 1 ) teachers’ attitudes and identity toward English accents by interviewing eight NNES teachers from the expand-ing circle. The study, based on the actual voices of the participants, illustrated the NNES teachers’ adherence to acquiring so called native-English-speaker (NES) accents because of their attitudes toward NES accents — considering them to be appropriate targets. The study also showed that the participants’ struggles led them to realize that their accents are part of themselves and therefore should not be devalued.

1 Jenkins uses the terms NS (native speaker) and NNS (nonnative speaker) without refer-encing a language. The use of these terms is problematic because this unmarked usage requires marked versions when discussing other languages, thereby making English the norm to which other languages are compared.

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I was in sympathy with the participants because their experiences echo my own, having been a learner and teacher of English in both the expanding and inner circles. However, I found Jenkins’ underlying assumptions problematic because they fail to consider the sociopoliti-cal/historical context, in a way parallel to an ideology of Othering ( Kumaravadivelu, 2003 ; Palfreyman, 2005 ; Pennycook, 1998 , 2001 ) which marginalizes and stereotypes NNESs as one group in contrast to Self . In this brief article, I isolate Jenkins’s problematic assumptions toward identity, attitude, and teaching ELF shaped by Othering ideology hoping that it will provide insights for future research on pronuncia-tion in relation to identity. Nevertheless, I recognize that my interpre-tations are also driven by my assumptions; thus, they are subject to challenge as well.

ASSUMPTION 1: OTHER WANTS TO ACQUIRE NES ACCENTS BECAUSE THEY WANT TO IDENTIFY WITH SELF

I found problematic Jenkins’s assumption regarding identity, which directly equates a desire to sound like an NES with a desire to identify with NESs. Jenkins, quoting Norton (2000) , highlights the learners’ understanding of their future possibilities as an important aspect of identity in language learning. In addition, the list of questions in the interview prompts (p. 543) focuses on NNES teachers’ perceptions and attitudes toward teaching pronunciation and their own and NESs’ accents, with one question asking about bad experiences regarding their accents 2 that Jenkins used to reason about the participants’ atti-tudes. This procedure suggests that Jenkins assumes the learners’ desire to identify with an NES group is infl uenced by past experiences and awareness of future possibilities, which results in their attempting to approximate their accent to one of the NESs. I, as an NNES teacher, would like to point out that the desire to acquire NES accent among learners in the expanding circle as well as sojourners in the inner cir-cle oftentimes is devoid of a desire to identify with NESs. Based on my experience, many NNES teachers studying in the inner circle are privileged members at home, and oftentimes intend to go back to their homeland after their study. They do not necessarily wish to par-ticipate as a member in the inner circle community. Looking back on

2 Jenkins only asked NNES teachers about bad experiences caused by their accent, instead of posing the question more neutrally.

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my own learning experience, the attempt to approximate my own accent to a particular NES group did not always coincide with an attempt to become a member of the group. The participants in Jenkins’s study also perceived their hypothetical ability to produce native-like accents as “a good command of the language,” “to sound as much as the model,” and “linguistic ability to pick up accents and reproduce them” (p. 538); it is important that none of these com-ments suggest that they perceived NES accents as markers for identify with a NES group. Given that the participants’ current or future pro-fession is English teaching, it is natural that they wish to acquire an NES accent to model as a target. The participants’ voices as well as my own learning experience led me to infer that NNES teachers feel they need to acquire an NES accent to be identifi ed as a good learner and a capable teacher of English, which is not equivalent to identifi ca-tion with NESs.

ASSUMPTION 2: OTHER SHARES THE SAME CONCEPT TOWARD DESIRABLE ACCENTS AND NES ACCENTS AS SELF

It appears that the collected data are interpreted solely based on Jenkins’s etic point of view, as if she and the participants share an identical view or concept toward NES and favorable accents.

It is evident that Jenkins interpreted her data assuming that NNES teachers would fi nd their accents favorable if they think it is close to NES accents. This assumption led Jenkins to conclude that the four participants who liked their accent despite their inability to sound like an NES were contradictory, whereas she concluded that the other four participants who did not like their accent because they did not think it sounded like an NES accent were consistent. I found this assumption simplistic, and it echoes what I see as a common, fallacious NES belief — that NNESs are trying to emulate them, when in fact they may be trying to emulate successful NNES teachers’ and learners’ accents and pronunciation. 3 I believe that the ideal and favorable accents for experienced learners, such as Jenkins’s participants, are constructed through complex negotiations while these learners are exposed to both NESs and NNESs.

3 Some might argue that these NNES accents are to some degree infl uenced by those of NESs, but they still are negotiated products between an idealized target and their identities.

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Additionally, I wondered to what extent all the participants, includ-ing the researcher, agree with the concept of NS. I suspect a discrep-ancy regarding the concept may have led to Jenkins’s interpretation of the participants’ attitudes as being contradictory. It has been pointed out that defi ning NS is a very complex matter (e.g., Davies, 1991 ; Kachru & Nelson, 1996 ; Paikeday, 1985 ; Phillipson, 1992 ; Rampton, 1990 ), yet it appears that the term NS was used uncritically without questioning the possibility of discrepant interpretations among the participants. Jenkins summarized NNES teachers’ perceptions for NES accents as “‘good,’ ‘perfect,’ ‘correct,’ ‘profi cient,’ ‘competent,’ ‘fl u-ent,’ ‘real,’ and ‘original English’” (p. 541). These comments suggest that the participants hold diverse notions about NES accents, ranging from a hypothesized ideal speaker to an image more closely tied to an actual speaker. I believe that the participants’ attitudes toward NES accents varied depending on the type of NES they were thinking about. Thus, the interpretation of the data requires clarifi cation of the NS concept.

ASSUMPTION 3: SELF CAN PROVIDE OTHER WITH A PREFABRICATED ELF IDENTITY

It appears the underlying assumption that led Jenkins to conduct the study is that NNESs could take on a prefabricated ELF identity “as members of an international English-speaking community” (p. 535) if their attitudes and identities are well understood. As many studies have demonstrated, language learners develop their identity with consider-able negotiations while being exposed to various speakers (e.g., Kramsch, 1991 ; McKay & Wong, 1996 ; Norton, 1997 ; Ochs, 1993 ; Peirce, 1995 ). In other words, Englishes that NNESs use are the prod-ucts of constant reshaping while testing intelligibility and negotiating their identities rather than something provided by NESs. I believe Jenkins’s introduction of ELF was motivated by a desire to empower NNESs; nevertheless, I could not stop myself from seeing her attempt to design a pedagogical intervention by providing learners with a “learnable” or “teachable” target as keeping them in a powerless posi-tion, which resonates with the colonial practice pointed out by Kumaravadivelu (2003) — trying to provide the colonized with English that is just good enough for the colonizers without changing the status quo of English.

As Jenkins is also aware, one of the factors that makes many NNES teachers reluctant to take on the ELF identity is that ELF is seen as a compromised target. For example, one participant commented that

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she “would teach it, but only because she regarded native-like pro-nunciation as beyond her students’ abilities” (p. 540). It may be pos-sible for learners to compromise if language is used solely for exchanging messages. However, language is also a means to express identity, and it is extremely diffi cult for learners to compromise their identity.

The largest drawback of ELF as a means of expressing one’s identity is that the proposed ELF is a theorized pronunciation model that lacks NSs. There is no NS of ELF available as a model for learning. I believe that Jenkins herself recognizes that learning pronunciation is closely tied to learners’ identity, leading her to conduct the current study. However, I would ask how can learners identify with a model that does not have identifi able users? How many NESs are willing to identify with ELF identity as members of an international English-speaking com-munity? And is ELF for NESs as well, or only for NNESs to facilitate their participation in global communication? Jenkins states that “it seems likely that ELF pronunciation will only be taken up if teachers themselves ultimately see an ELF identity as providing their students with accents which will enhance rather than damage their future social and economic prospects internationally” (p. 542). It may be possible that the implementation of the ELF approach would gradually produce ELF users, and those users’ productions would someday be perceived as a socially and economically powerful model in the international community. However, if this is the goal, TESOL professionals need to critically examine the underlying motivation for making ELF a desira-ble model for NNESs.

THE AUTHOR

Mitsuo Kubota is an associate professor in the Foreign Language Department at Kansai Gaidai University, Hirakata, Japan, where he teaches sociolinguistics and gen-eral English courses. He is currently conducting research in an English classroom in a Japanese university context focusing on students’ construction, negotiation, and presentation of foreign language identities.

REFERENCES

Davies , A. ( 1991 ). The native speaker in applied linguistics. Edinburgh, Scotland : Edinburgh University Press .

Jenkins , J. ( 2005 ). Implementing an international approach to English pro-nunciation: The role of teacher attitudes and identity . TESOL Quarterly , 39 , 535 – 543 .

Kachru , B. B. , & Nelson , C. L. ( 1996 ). World Englishes . In S. L. McKay & N. H. Hornberger (Eds.), Sociolinguistics and language teaching (pp. 71 – 102 ). Cambridge, England : Cambridge University Press .

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Kramsch , C. ( 1991 , March ). The challenge of the student: Learning language in context or language as context? Plenary address delivered at the Annual Meeting of the American Association of Applied Linguistics , New York, NY .

Kumaravadivelu , B. ( 2003 ). Critical language pedagogy: A postmethod perspective on English language teaching . World Englishes , 22 , 539 – 550 .

McKay , S. L. , & Wong , S.-C. ( 1996 ). Multiple discourses, multiple identities: Investment and agency in second-language learning among Chinese adolescent immigrant students . Harvard Educational Review , 66 , 577 – 608 .

Norton , B. ( 1997 ). Language, identity, and the ownership of English . TESOL Quarterly , 31 , 409 – 429 .

Norton , B. ( 2000 ). Identity and language learning. London : Longman . Ochs , E. ( 1993 ). Constructing social identity: A language socialization perspective .

Research on Language and Social Interaction , 26 , 287 – 306 . Paikeday , T. M. ( 1985 ). The native speaker is dead! An informal discussion of a linguistic

myth with Noam Chomsky and other linguists, philosophers, psychologists, and lexicogra-phers. Toronto, Ontario, Canada : Paikeday .

Palfreyman , D. ( 2005 ). Othering in an English language program . TESOL Quarterly , 39 , 211 – 233 .

Peirce , B. N. ( 1995 ). Social identity, investment, and language learning . TESOL Quarterly , 29 , 9 – 31 .

Pennycook , A. ( 1998 ). English and the discourse of colonialism. New York : Routledge . Pennycook , A. ( 2001 ). Critical applied linguistics: A critical introduction . Mahwah, NJ :

Lawrence Erlbaum . Phillipson , R. ( 1992 ). Linguistic imperialism. Oxford, England : Oxford University

Press . Rampton , M. B. H. ( 1990 ). Displacing the “native speaker”: Expertise, affi liation and

inheritance . ELT Journal , 44 , 97 – 101 .

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The Author Replies

AYAKO SUZUKI King’s College London, England

JENNIFER JENKINS King’s College London, England

■ We begin by thanking Mitsuo Kubota for taking the trouble to respond at such length and in so much detail to Jennifer Jenkins’s original article. Clearly the issues Jenkins raises are immensely impor-tant to him, and this is no doubt responsible for the autobiographical

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element in his response. To enable Jenkins to incorporate an authentic Japanese perspective into her reply to Kubota, she has joined forces with Ayako Suzuki, a doctoral student at King’s College London, to write what follows. Indeed, Suzuki engaged so intensely with the task that she is responsible for much of what we say. Our reply focuses on Kubota’s misrepresentations of Jenkins’s position as well as his miscon-ceptions about English as a lingua franca (ELF).

First of all, we deal with a point in Kubota’s original version, 1 where he misquotes a statement in Jenkins (2005) . He said “I … was puzzled with her concluding remark which claims that participants ‘wish une-quivocally to use their accented English to express their L1 identity or membership in an international (ELF) community.’” Kubota includes the following footnote to this sentence: “The expression ‘accented English’ reveals Jenkins’s assumption that there can be an unaccented English.” (Had he been familiar with Jenkins’s work, he would have known that this is not at all the case.) However, in her article, Jenkins states that “ it cannot be taken for granted that teach-ers … wish unequivocally to use their accented English to express their L1 identity or membership in an international (ELF) commu-nity” (p. 541, emphasis added). Kubota originally used this misquota-tion to support his unfounded claim that Jenkins’s interpretation of her participants’ voices is shaped by an Othering ideology and that she ignores sociopolitical-historical context. Although the quotation no longer appears in his revised text, we believe that his argument remains heavily informed by his original misinterpretation of Jenkins’s point.

As regards “Assumption 1: Other wants to acquire NES (native English speaker) accents because they want to identify with Self, ” Kubota seems to be overreacting to Jenkins’s comment that “in some as yet unclear way, these factors may cause them to identify with NSs” (p. 541). He thus presents her tentative suggestion as an “assumption.” We, on the other hand, question his assumption that it is natural for NNES (nonnative-English-speaking) teachers to wish to acquire NES accents because of their current or future profession. His monolithic view of NNES teachers, which seems to be based entirely on his own ex perience, leads him to overlook the complicated nature of Jenkins’s participants’ attitudes toward NES accents. For instance, one of the participants questioned NES accents as a norm and showed her resist-ance to them, yet Kubota does not take this into consideration. We

1 Kubota’s original comments on Jenkins (2005) , to which we wrote our response, have since undergone redrafting in order to save space. However, we feel it is essential to mention this particular point, even though it has been omitted from the subsequent version of his comments.

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maintain that NNESs’ perceptions of NES accents are far more multi-layered and multifaceted than he claims. This point is supported by Suzuki’s (2006) empirical doctoral research on several Japanese student English teachers’ perceptions of English for international communication.

Turning to “Assumption 2: Other shares the same concept towards desirable and NES accents as Self, ” we would agree with Kubota’s point that Jenkins’s participants would have different concepts of NESs. However, it would seem Kubota does not understand that in a short article, only key points could be included in the discussion. Thus it was not possible for Jenkins to present in detail the differ-ences between her participants’ concepts. Also, because one of Jenkins’s fi ndings was that despite differences in their descriptions, all her participants had positive (or idealised) images of NES accents, it was more important for Jenkins to discuss the extent to which her participants’ views were similar than to explore differences in their concepts. As in the latter case of concepts of NES accents, many other points problematised by Kubota (e.g., his Footnote 1) are obvi-ously those on which Jenkins could not elaborate because of the limited length of her original article, although they are discussed in detail in several of her other publications, including her book ( Jenkins, 2000 ). However, it seems that Kubota is not familiar with Jenkins’s work.

“Assumption 3: Self can provide Other with a prefabricated ELF iden-tity” appears to come not from Jenkins’s text but from Kubota’s mis-conceptions of ELF and his own self-contradictions. Although we found several misunderstandings of ELF and inconsistencies in his argument, we could not identify from where in Jenkins’s article he derives this assumption. Again, because it involves so many misunderstandings and inconsistencies, we focus only on the two that seem to be at the root of this (mis-)assumption.

First, it seems that Kubota believes ELF is an armchair theory. However, as many empirical studies of ELF clearly show (see Seidlhofer, 2004 ), ELF is a real global phenomenon which we cannot ignore (see Graddol, 2006 ). Though we know a good deal about the English used by NESs, we do not yet know as much about ELF because ELF research is currently engaged in describing and understanding its nature. The unavailability of descriptions of ELF probably leads to Kubota’s misapprehension that ELF does not have identifi able users.

2 However, this is not the case. For example, on the basis of her longitudinal empirical data, Cogo (2005) demonstrates convincingly how bilingual English speakers express their identity in ELF.

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However, ELF does have identifi able users — they are NNESs who use English as a medium of communication with other NNESs. Just because we (researchers) do not yet have a complete understanding of ELF speakers and their English does not mean that they do not exist.

Kubota’s misconception about ELF’s lack of identifi able users brings us back to an issue which has been discussed for more than 10 years: the ownership of English (e.g., Widdowson, 1994 ), which Kubota seems to believe belongs only to NESs. He argues that ELF’s lack of native speakers leads to an inability to express identity 2 and to a view of ELF as a defi cient model for teaching purposes. His argument implies that only NESs are legitimate users of English, and that these users should control the English that is used by NNESs. This position clearly confl icts with his criticism of ELF as a “colonial practice,” that is, his claim that NESs are manipulating English for NNESs under the pretext of ELF. Although we would like to point out Kubota’s misun-derstanding — ELF research’s interest is in NNESs not in NESs, and NES have little control over ELF — it reveals his ambivalence toward NESs. He resists NESs’ control over NNESs, but at the same time, he prefers to follow NESs as norm providers. It seems that Kubota has the same love-hate relationship with English as the participants in Jenkins’s study.

THE AUTHORS

Ayako Suzuki has a master’s degree in English from Tamagawa University, Tokyo. She is now fi nalizing her doctoral research at King’s College London on English as a lingua franca and Japanese students’ perceptions of English. She has appeared at several international and national conferences, including AILA, IATEFL, and JACET.

Jennifer Jenkins is a senior lecturer at King’s College London, England, where she teaches World Englishes, phonology and phonetics, and sociolinguistics, and super-vises doctoral research in World Englishes. She has been researching English as a lingua franca for more than 15 years and is currently writing her third book on the subject.

REFERENCES

Cogo , A. ( 2005 , September ). The expression of identity in intercultural communication: The case of English as a lingua franca . Paper presented at 38th BAAL Annual Meeting , Bristol, England .

Graddol , D. ( 2006 ). English next. London : The British Council . Jenkins , J. ( 2000 ). The phonology of English as an international language. Oxford, England :

Oxford University Press .

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Jenkins , J. ( 2005 ). Implementing an international approach to English pronuncia-tion: The role of teacher attitudes and identity . TESOL Quarterly , 39 , 535 – 543 .

Seidlhofer , B. ( 2004 ). Research perspective on teaching English as a lingua franca . Annual Review of Applied Linguistics , 24 , 209 – 239 .

Suzuki , A. ( 2006 ). English as an international language: A case study of student teachers’ perceptions of English in Japan. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, King’s College London. Manuscript in preparation .

Widdowson , H. G. ( 1994 ). The ownership of English . TESOL Quarterly , 28 , 377 – 389 .


BRIEF REPORTS AND SUMMARIESTESOL Quarterly invites readers to submit short reports and updates on their work. These summaries may address any areas of interest to Quarterly readers.

Edited by RYUKO KUBOTA University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

ANGEL LIN University of Hong Kong

Hard Times: Arab TESOL Students’ Experiences of Racialization and Othering in the United Kingdom

SARAH RICH The University of Exeter Exeter, England

SALAH TROUDI The University of Exeter Exeter, England

INTRODUCTION

� This article reports the fi ndings of a small-scale study into the sig-nifi cance of racialization to fi ve male Muslim Saudi Arab learners in a TESOL graduate programme at a university in the United Kingdom. By racialization we mean the ways in which the idea of race might contribute to an experience of Othering ( Kubota, 2001 , 2004 ; Palfreyman, 2005 ) for these learners. A particular interest was how far and in what ways recent political events involving Arabs and Muslims, as well as an increasingly racialized discourse of Islamophobia in the UK media and wider society, had affected their experiences in this learning community.

In recent years a considerable body of literature has stressed a need to acknowledge that TESOL classrooms are embedded in and thereby

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seen to refl ect important institutional, societal, and global discourses in subtle and nuanced ways and as such, that the practice of TESOL is neither value-free nor apolitical ( Ibrahim, 1999 ; Norton & Toohey, 2004 ; Pennycook, 2001 ; Phillipson, 1992 ). Interest has focused on how these discourses are implicated in the ways that English language learners may be subjected to Othering with consequences for their learning. To date, however, these studies have focused on how these discourses can marginalize or inferiorize learners on the basis of their cultural or ethnic background (see, e.g., Holliday, Hyde & Kullman, 2004 ; Kumaravadivelu, 2003 ; Zamel, 1997 ), and the impact of race on this process has received little explicit attention. 1

Kubota (2001) suggests that this lack of attention may refl ect a reluctance among those who construct TESOL’s dominant liberal humanist discourses to engage with issues of race and racism. However, this reluctance may also stem from the fact that TESOL practitioners and researchers fi nd the term race problematic given its historical defi nition as an objective condition based on physiological character-istics, which has for sometime been discredited ( Murji & Solomos, 2005 ; Torres, Miron, & Inda, 2003 ; Harris & Rampton, 2003 ). Whatever the reasons, as many writers have observed (see, e.g., Omi & Winant, 2004 ), race continues to have signifi cance as a fundamental principle of social organization and identity formation. Race also continues to feel real to people in their everyday lives, and it is therefore important to acknowledge that learners may well foreground ideas of race when interpreting their experiences. To develop a deeper and better informed understanding of how Otherization operates in English lan-guage teaching, we suggest that research should focus more explicitly on how issues of race may be implicated in TESOL practices and classroom processes and, as in this study, the ways race may intersect with other identity categories.

RACIALIZATION AND ISLAMOPHOBIC DISCOURSE

The term racialization has for some time been used in the literature in preference to race because it draws a distinction between a static conception of race as the drawing of boundaries between people purely on the basis of physiological differences and an understanding of race as a “fl oating signifi er” ( Rattansi, 2005 , p. 272) that can be applied differently at different times. That is to say, racialization high-lights a need to understand race (and thereby racism) as a situated, socially constructed response to sociocultural, political, and historical

1 See Ibrahim (1999) for exception.

BRIEF REPORTS & SUMMARIES 617617

conditions at a given point in time. As such, it is helpful in showing how the discourses circulating in society can link identity categories such as culture, ethnicity, gender, and religion to race in subtle and complex ways. In this way new racisms, which use different metaphors to marginalize and exclude certain social groups based on more than just biological traits, can be seen to emerge ( Blackledge, 2003 ; May 2001 ).

Thus, as van Dijk (1993) suggests, given that an explicit reference to race is no longer politically acceptable, at least in offi cial Western discourse, new forms of cultural racism have emerged through which to perpetuate a colonial discourse of inferiorizing, marginalizing, and excluding certain groups in society. Such a discourse may make racism harder to name and detect, but it is as invidious as a more overt refer-ence to race. We suggest that this process of racialization enables us to understand how Islamophobic discourses may be linked with race and construed as racist with important consequences for how certain groups are positioned as Other in their daily lives.

Islamophobia, broadly defi ned as an irrational fear of Muslims and what Islam represents, is not an exclusively modern phenomenon ( Muir & Smith, 2004 ). However, since 9/11, Islamophobia has increas-ingly found its way into academia, journalism, and all aspects of the media ( Said, 2003 ). This post-9/11 discourse takes the form of reli-gious prejudice and discrimination; physical and verbal abuse on the basis of physiology and dress; and anti-Islamic manifestations in the media, education, and other institutions addressed to individuals or groups based on their belonging to the Islamic faith ( Haque, 2004 ; Runnymede, 1998 ).

Recently, a number of writers have argued that Islamophobic dis-courses should be seen as involving more than straightforward dis-crimination on the basis of religious affi liation, and in particular they should be seen as increasingly racialized. For example, Sheridan (2004) points to the complexity of separating racial and religious discrimina-tion and argues that it is important to understand how UK Muslims in the post-9/11 era may be victimised on account of their religious affi liation, their physical appearance, and their cultural norms and values. Rattansi (2005) endorses this view, claiming that “anti-Islamic discourses and racialization intersect to create exclusionary practices against Muslim populations, especially in Western Europe and North America” (p. 295).

Recent studies conducted in the United Kingdom by Weller, Feldman, and Purdam (2001) and Muir and Smith (2004) point to some of the potential effects of these exclusionary practices on the lived experiences of Muslims in the United Kingdom, indicating how, on one hand, an atmosphere of Islamophobia has exacerbated Muslims’

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sense of alienation from British society but how, on the other hand, it has strengthened their determination to assert their identity as Muslims. Although the students who participated in this study are not citizens of the United Kingdom, we believe it is important to acknowl-edge that they may well be affected by the ways in which race and religion are seen to conjoin in a discourse of Islamophobia in wider UK society. In seeking to explore the signifi cance of issues of race to their experiences in this community, we cannot therefore afford to ignore the phenomenon of Islamophobia.

THE STUDY

The study sought to address the following research question: How far and in what ways do Arab Muslim students perceive racialization to be signifi cant to their experiences of Othering in a TESOL com-munity in the United Kingdom? The study is informed by an interpretive framework of research that considers the individual to be the centre of any understanding of social reality. Inquiry in this tradition focuses on the “intentional, meaningful behaviour of people and the inter-pretations people give to their own behaviour and that of others” ( Smith, 1989 , p. 137). The research tools we therefore selected for this explorative study — an open-ended questionnaire and interviews — were designed to help us collect informative qualitative data ( Holliday, 2001 ; Richards, 2003 ).

Participants

The fi ve Saudi students who took part in this study were selected on two criteria: purposiveness and accessibility ( Silverman, 2001) That is to say, they were participating in a masters in TESOL education programme at the time we conducted the study and were seen to represent all the Saudi students in the faculty because they were all male, Muslim, Arab, and in their late twenties, came from different regions of Saudi Arabia, and had all completed their education to the undergraduate level there.

Procedure and Methods

Data were collected in two stages at the end of the academic year in June 2005, which was 2 weeks prior to the July 7 bombings in London. First, we distributed an open-ended questionnaire and invited

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participants to complete it before attending an interview 2 weeks later. Questions focused on their experiences inside and outside of the uni-versity and the factors they felt these could be attributed to. Details of the questions asked are shown in Appendix A. This questionnaire was not seen as a primary source of data but was undertaken to help pre-pare participants for their interviews and to direct us to raise certain questions in the interviews.

Following Radnor (2001) , the interview framework comprised a number of themes with prompt questions for us to explore these in more depth. Under the fi rst two themes, we enquired about their experiences both as students in the learning community and as mem-bers of the wider community outside the university at different stages of the programme. Under the last theme we asked them to identity factors they perceived to have affected these experiences, and in par-ticular how recent political developments and incidents associated with the Middle East had affected their experiences. Details of the interview framework are shown in Appendix B.

Both researchers took part in data collection and analysis. Three of the interviews were conducted by one of the researchers and two by the other. Data analysis was a joint endeavour. All the interviews were conducted in English and audiotaped and fully transcribed. Although aware of our stance vis-à-vis issues of race and the phenom-enon of Islamophobia, we did not seek to confi rm these views in the data. We tried to limit the effect of the “established theoretical lens” ( Rubin & Rubin, 2005 , p. 209) by adopting an exploratory approach to data analysis as we embarked on a journey of discovery through the interview transcripts and questionnaires. This exploration allowed for preliminary categories to emerge, which were thematically coded. The major research aims were used as guides for topic ordering and construction of categories ( Radnor, 2001 ). With a content analysis approach to discourse we sought to confi rm the preliminary themes in the rest of the data as we looked for thematically related instances. A constant comparison between incidents led us to establish categories with similar properties and overlapping themes. The analysis also resulted in individual thematic occurrences and subcategories with thematic differences. However, in this brief report, we focus on the major themes.

We acknowledge our involvement in the study as members of this particular learning community and our positions of individuality. One of us shares the same language and religious background as the participants and the other is from a white British background. We acknowledge too the power we have as researchers through reconstruction of the participants’ world according to our inter-pretation. However, we sought to use a “strategic and technical

619

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detachment” approach to both data collection and analysis ( Holliday, 2001 , p. 178). We also followed established ethical protocols for undertaking qualitative research of this nature and have endeavoured to represent participant’s emic views. Throughout the discussion, par-ticipants are referred to by the pseudonyms Mohammed, Karim, Ali, Ahmed, and Saif.

FINDINGS

The results emerging from this study are presented in two sections: The fi rst reports on the identity categories participants invoke in describing their ongoing experiences within this learning community and the extent to which they construe these categories as racialized. The second considers to what extent participants perceive the recent political events in the Middle East and Islamophobia to affect their experiences of Othering and to what extent they see these as racial-ized. For the sake of brevity, the reported results refer, in the main, to their experiences of the learning community rather than the wider community.

Forms of Othering and Racism Perceived by the Participants

Accounts of Othering Based on Nonracial Categories

All participants invoked the identity of international student or foreigner to account for the diffi culties they initially experienced in negotiating the community’s cultural practices. This identity position was brought up in the context of the diffi culty they felt in negotiating the requirement for independent study, a more interpretive style of teaching, and the assessment processes. Thus, for example, Mohammed said, “The prob-lems I face here are because I’m an international student. All interna-tional students feel the same,” and Karim stated, “People here look at you fi rst as a foreigner.”

Although Mohammed consistently saw international student as the primary identity category affecting his experiences throughout the pro-gramme, the other four participants also saw gender, culture, ethnicity, nationality, and religion as infl uencing their experiences to different extents and at times as intersecting in complex ways. For example, Saif and Karim both felt that gender was important to the ways other stu-dents interacted with them, and they linked gender to nationality, eth-nicity, and religion. As Karim stated,


You know we are all male Saudis here. They [the other students] I think maybe they have a bad impression of men, they don’t say it but I feel it. They ask me why in Islam they marry four wives, I try to answer but I feel uncomfortable.

Saif too mentioned how other students quizzed him on the treatment of women in Saudi Arabia and wondered how they found marriage partners in such a “closed society.” In describing his experiences, Ali invoked ethnicity, culture, and religion. Thus he claimed,

Sometimes, not sometimes, many times, I would be questioning attitudes you know a lot, whether this person did that to me because I’m from the Middle East. A smaller or no beard with more smiles eases the misconcep-tion of many towards me. Many feel that due to what they hear about strict Islamic practices.

Ahmed’s account offers a clear example of how an event within the community was instrumental in shifting his initial investment in a position of international student to a stronger alignment with national, ethnic, racial, cultural, and religious identity positions. This he described in the following way:

I remember once during the fi rst semester I came late to one of the classes and one of my teachers came to me and whispered, “In our culture we respect time but I don’t know about your culture.” That means an insult to my culture so I wished that x punished me or kicked me out but don’t say something about my culture. After I heard what x said to me I hated that module really.

This led Ahmed to become aware of his racialized identity. According to him:

Before [this event] I didn’t see myself as a Muslim Arab Saudi. I saw myself as an international MEd student. But after my experience, after four or fi ve months I found it mixing as TESOL student and as a Muslim, but mostly Muslim.

Accounts of Othering Based on Racism

In contrast to the accounts just presented, one participant, Saif, a Saudi of African origin, explicitly invoked the category of race in describing his experiences as he progressed through the programme. Although like the others, he claimed to have initially foreground the identity of international student and foreigner in making sense of his experiences, he pinpointed interactions with two different tutors as

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leading him to conclude that he was being subjected to racial discrimination.

In the fi rst critical incident, Saif described how a tutor had sug-gested that he had copied part of his assignment from a book. He remarked on how he felt upset, because he hadn’t understood what paraphrasing meant and the tutor had assumed that “Arabs have limited knowledge, are lazy, and do cheating a lot.” In the second incident, which occurred shortly after the fi rst, Saif described a conversation he had had with a different tutor who suggested that he might be overusing tutorial support at the expense of other students in the group. He saw this incident as reinforcing his view that he was being subjected to what he called “special discrimina-tion,” that is, Otherized in particular ways on account of his colour. As he remarked, “I was really shocked you know when X [the tutor] said I signed up too much. I asked myself why X said this to me. I felt sure X wouldn’t say this to other students.” Saif went on to claim that both of these instances were examples of racism done in what he called “a professional way.” To him, the tutors achieved this professional racism by cleverly using institutional practices to disguise it.

The Impact of Political Events and Islamophobia on Othering

Although explicit associations between the discourse of Islamophobia and recent political events involving Muslims and Arabs did not feature in participants accounts of their experiences within this particular community, all the participants except Mohammed alluded to the impact of events in a general sense on their experiences of living and studying in the United Kingdom. Saif, for example, felt these things meant that Saudi students in general were likely to have an especially hard time in the United Kingdom. Thus, he remarked that he felt sure there was a direct link between the fact that so many of the per-petrators of the 9/11 attacks were Saudi citizens and the way Saudi students were treated in higher educational institutions in the United Kingdom. As he said, “Saudi students get especially bad treatment because everyone thinks we might all be terrorists.” He went on to describe a number of meetings he had attended with Saudi students studying at different universities in the United Kingdom who, he claimed, shared his views.

Ali and Karim talked of the emotional impact of Islamophobic dis-courses on the ways they interpreted their experiences and a tendency toward a kind of paranoia ( waswasa in Arabic) in their dealings with others. Thus Ali remarked:


What is going on around the world politically and what is going on in the Middle East is always looming in the back of my mind. When they ask me where I am from I say, “I’m from Saudi Arabia.” Some of them smile, they say, “Oh, Saudi Arabia.” They are joking, but I know that joke it has something inside it … looking down at you as a terrorist.

Ahmed’s accounts also provided some insights into how the effects of these Islamophobic discourses led him to develop a kind of counter-discourse that entailed prioritizing national, ethnic, cultural, and reli-gious aspects of his identity as a way of resisting negative representations of Muslims and Arabs in the press. As he said, “I’m proud of my iden-tity myself. I mean my religion, my people, my nation. If they don’t think we are good people, that wouldn’t affect me inside. That would maybe increase my love to my top, my identity.”

IMPLICATIONS FOR INQUIRY INTO RACIALIZATION

Undertaking this small-scale study has led us to a deeper under-standing of the complexity inherent in undertaking research into racialization and othering in TESOL communities.

First, it has led us to question how explicitly participants need to invoke racialization in order for us to claim that they experience their identities as racialized. That is to say, although we are mindful of a need to acknowledge Berard’s (2005) point that the relevance of race should not be overplayed when interpreting data such as ours, we sug-gest that despite the fact that only one participant referred to race in his accounts of Othering, the foregrounding of religion, culture, and ethnicity in these accounts is evidence of racialized Othering taking place. In making this claim, we adopt the position taken by a number of writers such as Blackledge (2003) and van Dijk (1993) , namely, that these participants’ accounts of Othering need to be understood as constructed against the backdrop of their lived experiences of margin-alization and inferiorization as Arab Muslims in the wider community in which a racialized Islamophobia is increasingly evident.

Second, the fi ndings have led us to consider the ways in which TESOL community practices may contribute to an experience of racial-ized Othering. Two participants, Ahmed and Saif, perceived specifi c incidents as having led them to reconstruct their initial understandings of their positioning in racialized terms. These incidents led them to a shift from perceiving of themselves as international students to a mar-ginalized and inferiorized position on account of their culture, colour, ethnicity, and nationality. Though it may be open to debate as to whether community practices were necessarily racist, a key point of

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learning for us is the recognition that these practices may be con-strued as such by learners already sensitised to societal and global dis-courses of racism. Thus, undertaking this study has highlighted the need to be aware of subtle linguistic nuances when interacting with learners from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Moreover, we should be mindful of the need to exercise self-refl exivity with regard to our academic practices and the Western normative approaches to which we adhere, such as the way we approach the issue of plagiarism ( Pennycook, 1996 ). That is, we must remain alert to the ways in which our discourse may hide “the old hierarchy of racial superiority that determines which form of cultural product or practice is the norm or deviant” ( Kubota, 2001 , p. 28).

Third, undertaking this study has deepened our understanding of the challenges in investigating racialized Othering and posed a number of questions. For example, how does the position of a researcher affect the nature of the data generated? If researchers are insiders in the communities they are researching, how might this position affect the extent to which learners feel able to explicitly invoke racialization in their accounts? In addition, how far does a shared sense of linguistic, ethnic, and cultural identity between an interviewer and participant infl uence the ways and extent to which learners articulate their under-standing of Othering as racialized? Does a shared sense of identity enable learners to foreground racialization in their accounts? Might it also lead them to overplay the signifi cance of racialization? Finally, how does asking learners to articulate a sense of racialized Othering in a foreign or second language affect the nature and quality of data generated?

Our data suggest that these learners may go through an especially hard time in light of the Islamophobic discourses that increasingly determine how they are positioned in wider society. Some insights into the strategies they develop to cope with this positioning has emerged from the data. Future research could usefully seek to explore these issues in greater depth. Such a focus would deepen our understanding of learners’ experiences and is in itself a useful way of further illumi-nating how far and in what ways learners perceive their identities to be racialized.

We believe that other cultural and ethnic groups within TESOL communities may also experience their identities as racialized in dif-ferent but equally compelling ways. We hope therefore that the issues raised in this article will resonate with other TESOL practitioners around the globe who are committed to subjecting their practice to critical scrutiny in the ways we have done. Although the insights may be unsettling, they have the potential to stimulate the kinds of debate necessary to help us develop the equitable practices and democratic


learning communities that TESOL practitioners everywhere should strive to promote.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors thank the fi ve participants who took part in this study as well as Ryuko Kubota and the two anonymous reviewers who provided helpful comments.

THE AUTHORS

Sarah Rich is a lecturer is applied linguistics and directs a masters in TESOL programme at the University of Exeter, England. Her research interests and pub-lications focus on issues of identity and learning and teaching in multicultural classrooms.

Salah Troudi teaches applied linguistics and language education at the School of Education and Lifelong Learning at the University of Exeter, England. His research interests include teacher education, critical applied linguistics, and language poli-cies. He coordinates the doctor of education in TESOL program in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

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Blackledge , A. ( 2003 ). Imagining a monocultural community: Racialization of cul-tural practices in educational discourse . Journal of Language, Identity and Education , 2 , 331 – 347 .

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Harris , R. , & Rampton , B. ( 2003 ). The language, ethnicity and race reader. London : Routledge .

Holliday , A. ( 2001 ). Doing and writing qualitative research. London : Sage . Holliday , A. , Hyde , M., & Kullman , J. ( 2004 ). Intercultural communication : An advanced

resource book . London : Routledge . Ibrahim , A. ( 1999 ). Becoming Black: Rap and hip-hop, race, gender, identity, and the

politics of ESL learning . TESOL Quarterly , 33 , 349 – 368 . Kubota , R. ( 2001 ). Discursive constructions of the images of U.S. classrooms . TESOL

Quarterly , 35 , 9 – 38 . Kubota , R. ( 2004 ). Critical multiculturalism and second language education . In B.


Kumaravadivelu , B. ( 2003 ). Problematising cultural stereotypes in TESOL . TESOL Quarterly , 37 , 709 – 718 .

May , S. ( 2001 ). Language and minority rights: Ethnicity, nationalism and the politics of language. Harlow, England : Pearson .

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Muir , H. , & Smith , L. ( 2004 ). Islamophobia: Issues, challenges and action . Stoke on Trent, England : Trentham Books .

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Radnor , H. ( 2001 ). Researching your professional practice: Doing interpretive research. Buckingham, England : Open University Press .

Rattansi , A. ( 2005 ). The uses of racialisation: The time-spaces and subject-objects of the raced body . In K. Murji & J. Solomos (Eds.), Racialisation: Studies in theory and practice (pp. 271 – 301 ). Oxford, England : Oxford University Press .

Richards , K. ( 2003 ). Qualitative inquiry in TESOL. Hampshire, England : Palgrave Macmillan .

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Runnymede , C. ( 1998 ). Islamophobia: A challenge for us all. London : Runnymede Trust .

Said , E. ( 2003 ). Orientalism (6th ed.). London : Penguin . Silverman , D. ( 2001 ). Interpreting qualitative data: Methods for analysing talk, text and

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341 – 352 .

APPENDIX A

OPEN-ENDED QUESTIONNAIRE

Instructions:

The purpose of this questionnaire is to stimulate your thinking in preparation for your interview. Please complete the questions below as fully as you can. Please feel free to give


examples or descriptions of incidents to elaborate your views. Please bring this questionnaire with you to your interview.

Questions:

1 . What are the factors that you feel affect the way you relate to other members of the learning community at the university?

2. What are the factors that you feel affect the ways you relate to the wider community outside the university?

3. What do you think affects the way other students in the learning community relate to you?

4. What do you think affects the way people in the wider community relate to you? 5. To what extent and in what ways has you experience in this university affected your view

of yourself as an Arab? 6. To what extent and in what ways has your experience in the wider community affected

your view of your self as an Arab?

APPENDIX B

INTERVIEW FRAMEWORK

Early experiences

- Can you describe your experiences of studying in this learning community during the fi rst 3 months after your arrival?

- Can you describe your experiences of life in the wider community during the fi rst 3 months after your arrival?

- What challenges did you face? Were there any particular events which you feel impacted on the way you saw yourself and the ways you engaged with others? How did these affect you? How did you cope?

Later experiences

- What about your later experiences? - Were these different from the earlier ones? In what ways? - What impact did these have on you?

Factors affecting experiences

- Do you think recent political developments and incidents in the Middle East have affected your experiences of living and studying in the UK? In what ways and to what extent?

- What else do you think has affected your experiences of studying and learning in the UK?

TESOL QUARTERLY Vol. 40, No. 3, September 2006628

Language Learning and the Defi nition of One’s Social, Cultural, and Racial Identity

KHADAR BASHIR-ALI Abu Dhabi Women’s College Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

Maria: Watch yal talkin’ bout, a’m Black from ma mama side, and Poto Rican from my daddy side.

A group of ESL students in the class: No, Ms. A., she Mexico, she liein ta ya.

Maria: Weel, yal go head, n belie whatcha wanna belie, A know whada A am. Yal jus jelous ‘cause A be talkin lak everyon n here!

(Exchange between Maria and other ESL students in the class)

� Immigrants and refugees constitute the majority population of English language learners or English as a second language (ESL) stu-dents at K – 12 schools in the United States. These groups typically reset-tle in urban areas and attend urban schools where a large number of African American students enroll. In the schools they are expected to acquire two forms of English: standard academic English (SAE) as used in the classroom and African American vernacular English (AAVE), the socially accepted language spoken by the majority of their school peers. AAVE is also the linguistic and cultural identity marker for African American students who use language as a way to defi ne their common histories and establish a social, cultural, and linguistic allegiance to their group in and outside the school context.

Many ESL newcomers feel pressured to assimilate into the domi-nant social culture of their schools, causing them to deny their own language and cultural identities (see Cummins 1996 ; Goto, 1997 ; Kaser & Short, 1998 ; Nieto, 2000 ). For such learners to be admitted into the social milieu of a school, they must fi rst master the social, linguistic, and cultural codes of the dominant group — which exist in a tacit social hierarchy within a school. Often these ESL newcom-ers are relegated to a subordinate status, partly because they are seen as racially and culturally different, and partly because they do not know the particular choice of words, phrases, and phonological forms that will allow them greater access in the dominant speech community ( Alim, 2005 ; Ogbu, 1987 ). Kubota (2001) alerts us to the “unwelcoming atmosphere” (p. 31) encountered by ESL learners in urban schools, who are often victims of ridicule because of their “funny accents,” their low level of English profi ciency, and their dress.


In reaction to this subordinate status, such ESL students may over-compensate by trying to emulate the social, linguistic, and cultural codes of what they perceive to be the dominant group within their particular school. Ibrahim (1999) reports on the desire of young African refugees to emulate the language and style of what he called “Black Stylized English” (BSE) and popular Black culture (p. 351), and Walcott (2003) talks about the notion of the “salability and bank-ability of Blackness — and therefore its commodifi cation” (p. 139). This notion that popular Black culture has great value among young adults is signifi cant when attempting to understand their behavior, motivations, and identity formation, particularly for those living in urban areas.

This case study investigated a female ESL student from Mexico who went to extreme measures in an attempt to assimilate in the dominant social culture of her school. Although visibly Mexican, Maria (a pseu-donym) told everyone she was Black, chose to speak AAVE, and denied all knowledge of her native Spanish language. Despite being in the United States for only 2.5 years, and compared with her ESL peers, Maria was curiously profi cient in the use of AAVE and used it both inside and outside the classroom. She also chose to interact exclusively with African American students in and out of the classroom, and dem-onstrated strong resistance to the SAE taught in the classroom. She engaged in what Fordham and Ogbu (1986) called oppositional behavior ; that is, she went against the norms of good behavior in the school as a way to access the dominant African American group. In addition, she continuously made fi ctional claims that she was half Black and half Puerto-Rican.

This investigation hoped to fi nd answers to the following ques-tions: What social and cultural variables forced Maria to negate her own racial and cultural identity and her interpretation of Self in order to be socially accepted by her African American peers? Why was Maria so resistant to acquiring the SAE necessary to achieve future academic success? What common AAVE linguistic forms did Maria use in her spoken English? Of particular interest were the phonological, syntactical, and lexical features unique to AAVE used by Maria.

As a teacher-researcher and a female African American of immi-grant origins, my research interest has been to examine how race, racial allegiances, and domination and subordination impact identity and the notion of Self of newly arrived immigrant students. I have been affected by some of the same attitudes toward my own identity, and I wanted to articulate the daily realities of students like Maria in our classes. These newcomer students come with the burden of being different from the mainstream student body and often try to reinvent

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themselves to be accepted. I was greatly infl uenced by Hostetler (2005) , who challenges us as educational researchers to be committed to what we do, stating that “it is in the power of every researcher and educator to do something to improve the lives of people” (p. 21). I was parti-cularly interested in investigating this topic because I believe it is our mandate to bring forth the lived experiences of our students, parti cularly those experiences that might create tensions in us. Race, racial power dynamics, and subsequent confl icts are an unrecognized reality that touches our students deeply. The current study confronts these unnerving situations and prepares us to better serve all of our students.

DATA COLLECTION

The research was a one-year ethnographic case study based on participant observation from a teacher-researcher framework; that is, I was Maria’s teacher and a researcher at the same time. The study was conducted for 9 months during the 2003 – 2004 academic year. Data were collected from interviews with Maria, Maria’s speech during informal social interactions, observations of teacher-student classroom interactions, and impromptu and informal talking sessions.

Some of the interviews were structured and some were informal. The structured interviews were conducted by this teacher-researcher, or by one of the participant’s friends. Maria’s friend was trained to audiotape Maria’s speech as she was socializing with African American peers. The structured interviews were audiotaped and transcribed. Formal observations were conducted within both content-area and ESL classrooms two or three times a week. Notes were taken at the time of such observations. The informal talking sessions involved interacting with the participant in informal settings such as in the cafeteria, in the school hallways, and while accompanying the par-ticipant home from school (after trust was established). Informal observations of the participant’s behavior were recorded in a log shortly following key incidents. The intent of these informal talking sessions was to gain the participant’s trust. To do this, I needed to relinquish the teacher-researcher’s position of power and refrain from passing judgment, adopting instead the role of mentor and confi dante.

Data collected were categorized into three major themes: linguistic aspects, sociocultural aspects, and aspects regarding resistance to learning SAE. These themes were chosen because most guiding ques-tions in the interviews centered on the initial research questions.


From the initial analysis, an extra theme emerged from the study: teacher empathy (or lack of empathy) toward ESL students. Categorized data were then analyzed to fi nd trends regarding the research questions.

THE PARTICIPANT

Maria is a 15-year-old ninth grade female student from Mexico. At the time of the study, Maria had been in the United States for 2.5 years with her family. She began attending school in this country in the 7th grade. Maria, the oldest child, takes care of her brothers and sisters after school (only one of her brothers is of school age). At home the family speaks Spanish and neither parent speaks English. For this reason, Maria has had to act as their linguistic caretaker on many occasions and has missed many school days interpreting and translating for them. Since all the neighbors are African American, Maria’s friends are also all African American.

THE SETTING

The study is set in a high school located in a city in the Midwestern region of the United States. The majority of the students in the school are African American. As a result, the English language dialect spo-ken by the majority of students in the school is AAVE. The school employs two ESL teachers and four bilingual assistants. It is located in a working-class community that has some variation in socioeco-nomic status. Recently, however, a number of refugees from Africa and immigrants have moved to the area. Within a student body of 1,400 students, about 123 are ESL learners from 33 different countries.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

“Dey Are the Cool, I Wanna Be Wi’Dem”: The Compelling Need to Fit In

Black popular culture was very strong in the school. All students adopted the same social mannerisms of what they perceived was “cool.” These included particular hand signals, head and body movements, and conversational style. All these social rituals and signals conformed to the Black popular culture existing in the greater society. Maria felt

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a strong desire to be part of this collective social identity and to establish these common traits shared by the larger group. Doing so made her feel that she had cohesion with her peers.

“Dey are the cool, I wanna be wi’dem,” she would often say. This cool factor also had a great infl uence on her denying her own eth-nicity, causing her to argue violently with anybody who claimed she was Mexican. Maria refused to speak her native language in public even if addressed by a teacher. Because all of her friends were African American, she interacted with them exclusively and distanced herself from students of her own Mexican ethnic background. She told eve-ryone she was Black and refused to identify herself with her Mexican compatriots, even denigrating them. When her ESL peers questioned her “wanna-be status,” she said, “I am too Black, an nofi n ya’ll can do to take dat away from me, ya’ll jus jelous!” Because of her desper-ate need to identify herself with the cool African-American students, she also refused to acknowledge she was in the ESL program. The ESL students were at the bottom of the school’s social hierarchy and were considered inferior by most students. Maria came late to the ESL class every day and often circulated around until the halls cleared. She did not mind being marked tardy or absent as long as her friends did not see her entering the class. She did not want to be seen as speaking a different language or coming from a foreign country. These facts were evident in the following interview excerpt.

Teacher : So, why did you say you didn’t speak Spanish when we fi rst met?

Maria: Well, … /pause/ because I really don know, I di’int like cause I got used to it, talkin Spanish a home. Mostly, I be talking English with ma friens, I be used to it, talkin on the phone in English, so … /pause/.

Teacher: Why? Do you want be cool?

Maria: Yeah [ emphasis ], basically, das it … . [ Smile ] … nobady lak dem ESL students.

In addition, an outward animosity between the majority African-American students and the minority Mexican and other ESL stu-dents existed in the school, often leading to violent clashes. This reality also infl uenced Maria’s denial of her racial and cultural iden-tity. She would often say out loud, giggling to her friends, “A hat [hate] dose Mexicans” as Mexican students would go by her and her friends in the lunch line. This outward animosity toward ESL stu-dents and using language as a symbol of discrimination and linguis-tic superiority was also recorded by Baugh (2000) during his school years:


I was not only insensitive to many of my fellow classmates who were learn-ing English as a new language, I was also occasionally cruel. I found their speech awkward, and their funny accents served as a source of considera-ble linguistic amusement. In an effort to endear myself to my fellow African Americans I began to mimic the speech of these students who were struggling to learn English; these racist antics were rather pitiful … led to some personal confrontations — many centered on language and my misguided sense of linguistic superiority. (p. 7)

Furthermore, Maria lived in a predominantly African-American neighborhood, and this ethnic and linguistic isolation also infl uenced her decision to negate her own racial and cultural identity.

“Only Teachas Be Talkn Like Dat”: Opposing Linguistic Expectations

In school, Maria knew that the variation of the English language she had been learning (i.e., AAVE) was not the accepted form of English that teachers use or expect of students in their classrooms. The racial and linguistic reality that dominated the school also affected Maria’s lack of motivation to learn SAE. Maria chose AAVE and rejected SAE to avoid the risk of sounding “White.” “ De teachas be talking funny, dey be talking White,” she claimed. This positioning refl ects the observation made by Olivo (2003) , who argues that the two forms of English, the one spoken inside the classroom mostly by teachers and the one spoken outside the classroom by students, have “a complex relationship rooted in opposing ideologies” (p. 51).

The linguistic hierarchy of the school was such that AAVE was high-est. However, in linguistic diglossia, SAE enjoys the high (H) status, while stigmatized variations such as AAVE have a lower (L) status. The language reality of the school is shown in Figure 1 , where AAVE has a position of power, along with Maria’s own language choices.

AAVE is the predominant social language, used both inside and outside the classroom. The position of power Maria gives to AAVE can

FIGURE 1

Language Reality in the School and Maria’s Chosen Linguistic Hierarchy

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also be attributed to the status of the hip-hop culture predominant in her school. The language of next importance to Maria is Spanish; she uses it at home with her family on a daily basis. Maria places SAE on the bottom tier. It is the linguistic medium used in her classrooms, usually teacher-directed and monitored. This leads to a perception of SAE as being “uncool” and a threat to her ability to access the domi-nant social hierarchy of the school. “Nobody laks dem, dey a geeks ya know, lak teachas pet,” said Maria of those students in the class who follow the teacher’s instructions and who do their work.

Furthermore, Maria did not see any value in learning SAE. Her immediate need as a ninth grade ESL student in a predominantly African-American urban high school was to be accepted and to belong.

MARIA’S LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

An analysis of Maria’s speech was made by determining the absence or presence of linguistic features common to AAVE speakers, as indicated by Wolfram and Schilling-Estes (1998) and Fasold (1984) . Figure 2 shows the phonological, grammatical, and lexical features specifi c to AAVE found in Maria’s speech.

Many of these phonological, grammatical, and lexical features are demonstrated in the following excerpt of an interview with Maria:

“Ha, ma name is … Am fi teen years old, Am in the nif grade, am a fresh-min at N.H.S. Uhm, /pause/ de tinks dat make me happy is like when I git to join everybody, and /pause/ when I go where I git to go, when I wanna

FIGURE 2

Sample AAVE Linguistic Features in Maria’s Speech


go where I git to chill wit ‘em or go to the movies, some happy tink like dat [ smile ]. De tink that get me mad is when I git pisst at somebody when like I /pause/ like when Am in school, like dey talk to me and dat git me mad when dey talk too much, dey always be talking ‘bout somebody!”

The authenticity of Maria’s AAVE was further validated by her peers, who believed her claims of being an African American of mixed race. This is an impressive achievement for a second language learner, considering AAVE’s highly sophisticated and complex linguistic features ( Baugh, 2000 ; Fasold, 1984 ; Labov, 1972 ; Lippi-Green, 1997 ; Morgan, 2002 ; Wolfram and Schilling-Estes, 1998 ). In addition, acceptance by her peers would indicate that Maria had also mastered sophisticated social meanings based on direct and indirect speech, such as the use of double entendres for the purpose of mockery ( Morgan, 2002 ).

Maria had a strong desire to be identifi ed as an African American. She tried everything in her power to adopt and adhere to the linguistic and cultural mannerism of the African- American students so that she could, fi rst, pass as one of them, and second, be recognized and enjoy all the privileges that come with being with the cool groups of the school. Her main objective was to fi t in and belong, not to be different ( Nieto, 2000 ). Her academic performance in the school was not at all relevant to her. She would often make fun of other ESL students who applied themselves in class and would ridicule them or call them names.

TEACHERS’ LACK OF UNDERSTANDING

One theme that repeatedly emerged from my observations was an overall lack of empathy among teachers for newcomer ESL students like Maria and a lack of pedagogical skills to be able to meet these students’ needs. This lack of understanding was more prevalent among content-area teachers who did not know how to meet the academic needs of students like Maria. “She is not in class most of the time. I guess she will fail the quarter,” said one science teacher who came to my ESL room to complain about Maria and her absence rate. It did not occur to him that Maria was frequently absent from his science class consisting of mostly ESL students because she did not want to be labeled as an ESL student. Maria had to keep up appearances with the dominant social group in the school and could not risk being found in the ESL class.

This teacher’s lack of understanding could be partly attributed to a lack of understanding of the social, racial, cultural, and linguistic aspects that shape students’ identities within the school. To be part of the dominant social group in their school, linguistic minority students

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may go to great lengths to hide their true identity. For many high school students, being part of the social life of the school is very important.

It can be challenging to understand why ESL students like Maria would want to learn and interact solely using the dominant social lan-guage of their school and reject any chance of academic success by refusing to acquire SAE. However, for learners like Maria, achieving academic success is tantamount to being viewed as a “geek,” a “teacher’s pet,” “acting White” and “uncool.” Therefore, she is highly motivated not to sound like teachers and to be seen as openly rejecting their authority ( Fordham & Ogbu, 1986 ).

Many teachers also lack awareness that there exists a constant lin-guistic power struggle between young learners using the dominant social language of the school and their own demand that all students speak SAE. As a result, an antagonistic power struggle often arises when teachers attempt to force corrections on students by claiming they are not speaking so-called proper English. This linguistic power struggle is not new, as can be seen from the following excerpt from Baugh (2000) describing his experience as a youngster in school more than 35 years ago:

The teacher, a middle aged white man, overheard me “badmouthing” Carlos.

Teacher: John, stop it.

JB: Hey man! He’s hitting me. I ain’t doing nothing.

Teacher: You are making fun of him.

JB: Yeah, but he’s hitting me, I’m just talking.

Teacher: But you’re making fun of the way he talks, so stop it.

JB: (shucking and jiving in my best rendition of exaggerated Standard English) I’m very sorry, I didn’t realize I was doing anything wrong.

Teacher: Now, John, why don’t you speak that way all of the time and improve yourself?

The teacher failed to realize what my black peers sensed immediately; namely my rendition of Standard English was an overt attempt to mock the teacher and Standard English with one blow (p. 9).

In Maria’s school, many teachers are also not aware of their stu-dents’ background, and most of them do not make the effort to fi nd out the personal histories of ESL students in mainstream classes. In addition, they seem to lack knowledge of the diversity of linguistic minorities that exist within their school (Banks, 1997; Nieto, 2000 ; Sleeter, 1995 ). This lack of knowledge was made clear when one


teacher in a former middle school who was visiting my ESL classroom said, “What is that Caucasian student doing in this class?” (pointing to a young female student from Kosovo). The teacher failed to under-stand that the ESL classroom is not just for students of color. Content-area teachers, who are often not given the necessary training, are increasingly being expected to meet the needs of the second language learners who are placed in mainstream classrooms. There is increasing need for such teachers to receive training that leads to greater understanding of multicultural diversity ( Nieto, 2000 ; Youngs & Youngs, 2001 ). In the school district where this study was conducted, such professional development opportunities are offered but remain optional and are attended by few.

CONCLUSION

Maria felt a strong desire to be part of the collective social identity in the school. She did so by adopting the common linguistic and social traits shared by the dominant African- American social group of the school. The study indicates that teachers should be aware that linguistic minority students may go to great lengths to hide their true identity, so as to become part of what they perceive to be the crucial center of power. The racial, linguistic, and social realities in the school affected Maria’s motivation to learn SAE for academic pur-poses. SAE was the least valuable language to Maria, and her priority was not to be academically successful but to be socially accepted and included within the social sphere that dominated the school. Teachers need to understand the social motivations that affect the racial and linguistic identities of ESL students like Maria, students who want to learn and interact solely using the dominant social language, while resisting acquisition of SAE. I agree with Nieto (2000) , who stated that “the negative peer pressure to which most students are subjected can be very diffi cult to resist” (p. 203). This is also very true of new-comer students like Maria, who want to fi t in at any cost. Teachers must also consider the consequences of using their position of author-ity when they attempt to impose SAE and its social norms on stu-dents. Further research is needed in this area to investigate ways that would make SAE more acceptable and relevant to students (not only ESL learners) in these urban schools. To gain greater empathy for these students, teachers must attempt to understand their personal, linguistic, and cultural backgrounds by making the effort to fi nd out the personal histories of ESL students in their mainstream classes as well as these students’ relationships with peers in the school community.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am grateful to Rachel Grant, Awad Ibrahim, and Brian Nielsen who provided me with useful feedback numerous times in the revision process. I am also grateful to the guest editors of this special issue, who believed in me and in my message.

THE AUTHOR

Khadar Bashir-Ali is a veteran foreign and second language teacher in urban schools in the Midwestern United States. She has worked as a mentor teacher, student teacher supervisor, and university teacher trainer. Her research interests include linguistic access, educational equality, and social justice for newly arrived ESL students. She currently works at the Abu Dhabi Women’s College, United Arab Emirates, where she trains preservice EFL teachers.

REFERENCES

Alim , H. S . ( 2005 ). Critical language awareness in the United States: Revisiting issues and revising pedagogies in a resegregated society . Educational Researcher , 34 , 24 – 31 .

Banks , J. ( 1997 ). Teaching strategies for ethnic studies. Boston : Allyn & Bacon . Baugh , J. ( 2000 ). Beyond Ebonics: Linguistic pride and racial prejudice. New York : Oxford

University Press . Cummins , J. ( 1996 ). Negotiating identities : Education for empowerment in a diverse society .

Ontario, CA : California Association for Bilingual Education . Fasold , R. ( 1984 ). The sociolinguistics of language. Oxford, England : Blackwell . Fordham , S. , & Ogbu , J. ( 1986 ). Black students’ school success: Coping with the bur-

den of acting white . The Urban Review , 18 , 176 – 206 . Goto , S. T. ( 1997 ). Nerds, normal people, and homeboys: Accommodation and resist-

ance among Chinese American students . Anthropology & Education Quarterly , 28 , 70 – 84 .

Hostetler , K. ( 2005 ). What is “good” education research? Educational Researcher , 34 , 16 – 21 .

Ibrahim , A. ( 1999 ). Becoming Black: Rap and hip-hop, race, gender, identity, and the politics of ESL learning . TESOL Quarterly , 33 , 349 – 369 .

Kaser , S. , & Short , K. ( 1998 ). Exploring culture through children’s connections . Language Arts , 47 , 185 – 192 .

Kubota , R. ( 2001 ). Discursive construction of the images of U.S. classroom . TESOL Quarterly , 35 , 9 – 38 .

Labov , W. ( 1972 ). Language in the inner city: Studies in the Black English vernacular. Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press .

Lippi-Green , R. ( 1997 ). English with an accent. New York : Routledge . Morgan , M. ( 2002 ). Language, discourse and power in African American culture. Cambridge :

England Cambridge University Press . Nieto . ( 2000 ). Affi rming diversity : The sociopolitical context of multicultural education .

New York : Longman . Ogbu , J. ( 1987 ). Variability in minority school performance: A problem in search of

an explanation . Anthropology & Education Quarterly , 18 , 321 – 334 . Olivo , W. ( 2003 ). “Quit talking and learn English”: Confl icting language ideologies in

an ESL classroom . Anthropology & Education Quarterly , 34 , 50 – 71 .


Sleeter , C. ( 1995 ). Teaching Whites about racism . In R. Martin . (Ed.), Practicing what we teach: Confronting diversity in teacher education. (pp. 117–130). Albany, NY : State University of New York .

Walcott , R. ( 2003 ). The struggle for happiness: Commodifi ed Black masculinities, vernacular culture, and homoerotic desires . In P. Trifonas . (Ed.), Pedagogies of dif-ference: Rethinking education for social change (pp. 137–154). New York : Routledge .

Wolfram , W. , & Schilling-Estes , N. ( 1998 ). American English. Malden, MA : Blackwell . Youngs , S. C. , & Youngs , G. A . ( 2001 ). Predictors of mainstream teachers’ attitudes

toward ESL students . TESOL Quarterly , 35 , 97 – 120 .


REVIEW ARTICLE TESOL Quarterly welcomes evaluative reviews of publications relevent to TESOL professionals.



On Race, Language, Power and Identity: Understanding the Intricacies Through Multicultural Communication, Language Policies, and the Ebonics Debate

Intercultural Communication: An Advanced Resource Book. A. Holliday, M. Hyde, and J. Kullman, Eds., 2004. London: Routledge. Pp. xvi + 233.

Language Policy: Theory and Method. T. Ricento, Ed., 2006. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Pp. xii + 371.

Ebonics: The Urban Education Debate (2nd Edition). J. Ramirez, T. Wiley, G. de Klerk, E. Lee, and W. Wright, Eds., 2005. Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters. Pp. xii + 207.

� “Language prejudice remains a ‘legitimate prejudice,’” warned O’Neil (1998) in The Real Ebonics Debate (1998); “that is, one can gen-erally say the most appalling things about people’s speech without fear of correction and contradiction” (p. 42). Indeed, as overt racism is becoming a less acceptable form of discourse in democratic societies, one could argue that linguicism, or discrimination based on language ( Phillipson 1992 ), is gaining importance as a mechanism for policing the borders of race and class privilege.

Fortunately, in language and cultural studies there has been a grow-ing awareness of the fact that language is not merely a politically neu-tral means of communication, but a social practice that shapes subjectivity and establishes power relations among members of differ-ent racial and class groups. Bourdieu (1991) , whose work has had a


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seminal impact on the way we in the fi eld TESOL have come to theorize about language, has argued that verbal exchanges among human beings take place in linguistic markets that determine the amount of symbolic and material resources a person can claim with his or her speech acts. Linguistic markets produce social stratifi cation by valuing speech acts of people who occupy a dominant position in society while devaluing the ways of speaking of the socioeconomically oppressed.

Foucault (1980) sees discourse as a socially constitutive force that determines subject positions and systems of power-knowledge. Often inspired by Foucault, postcolonial ( Bhabha, 1994 ; Ngugi, 1981 ; Said, 1995 ) and critical race theorists ( Dyer, 1997 ; Gates, 1986 ) have high-lighted how language and discourse have been used to create essential-ized racial identities characterized by power imbalances. Critical voices within language and literacy studies ( Gee, 1996 ; Pennycook, 1994 ; Phillipson, 1992 ; Skutnabb-Kangas, 2000 ) have also taken up these con-cerns and have urged educators, theorists, and policy makers to be aware of the ways in which language affects subjectivity and power relations, especially in linguistic markets where one language clearly dominates others and in learning contexts where the medium of instruction is sig-nifi cantly different from the language or dialect students use at home. As critical linguists have shown, in these inequitable markets and learn-ing contexts linguistic and racial domination often go hand in hand.

In this article, I review three recently published books that can be used as starting points for understanding the relationship between race, language, power and identity. Intercultural Communication: An Advanced Resource provides an analysis of three key concepts in this debate: identity, Otherization, and representation. In the book, these concepts are referred to as themes and are presented sequentially in increasing levels of depth. The fi rst section introduces these terms with clear defi nitions and illus-trations through case studies showing how identity, Otherization, and representation come into play as we use language in our daily social interactions. Not surprisingly, the majority of these case studies focus on the way in which race gets constructed in linguistic exchanges between a normalized Self and a deviant Other. The second section brings these themes in conversation with brief excerpts from infl uential texts that have looked at the role of discourse in creating power imbal-ances between races. These excerpts include works from Dyer and Pennycook. In the last section, readers are invited to further explore the three key concepts by carrying out qualitative research in their sociolinguistic environment. This invitation comes with stimulating tasks and a practical introduction to ethnographic research methodology.

Intercultural Communication is intended to be “an advanced resource book”; as such, its aim is to open up a conceptual vocabulary, rather than to develop an extended theoretical argument. The book, however, is built

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on a clear antiessentialist stance that eschews culturism, which the authors describe as a disempowering discursive practice that constricts subjectivity into static, monolithic, and deterministic conceptions of culture (p. 3). The epistemological, and, I would argue, political value of this “resource book” lies in the way it makes accessible the useful but sometimes cryptic warnings that several postcolonial and race critics have given about the danger of reducing subjectivity to fi xed, monolithic conceptions.

Ricento’s Language Policy takes up these interrelated issues from the point of view of language policy (LP), an interdisciplinary area of study rooted in sociolinguistics that explores how institutions such as government, schools, and international organizations affect the way in which language shapes processes of identity formation and social strati-fi cation. Signifi cantly, LP emerged in the wake of colonialism in order to plan the linguistic markets of newly independent nation states in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.

Ricento rejects the notion that the fi eld can be characterized in terms of a unifying, “overarching theory,” given the “complexity of the issues which involve language in society.” Instead, he argues that in order to posi-tion LP as a discipline within the humanities and the social sciences, we must look at the wide range of topics that are being researched (p. 10).

Nevertheless, the infl uence of postmodern conceptions of race, lan-guage, power, and identity is clear if we look at the questions Ricento provides as examples of the fundamental concerns that are driving LP research.

Why are standard languages considered to be “better” than dialects? Why do members of some immigrant groups maintain their language across generations, while members of other groups lose their language after one or two generations? Does the global spread of English entail the marginal-ization and eventual loss of indigenous languages in developing countries? If so, is this a good or a bad thing? (p. 10)

The essays in this collection, which have been written ad hoc by some of the most authoritative scholars in the fi eld, grapple with these and other sociolinguistic concerns and provide an accessible, concise, and thorough introduction to the key theories, concepts, issues, and methodology of LP. These scholarly contributions are grouped into three sections, each of which is prefaced by an introductory analysis.

The fi rst section looks at how LP has emerged as a fi eld of inquiry and provides an overview of some of its areas of investigation. Hornberg reviews models that have sought to map out this wide range of topics and proposes an integrative framework to classify areas of study within LP. Tollefson, Phillipson, Grin, Smith and Schiffman explore, respectively, the relevance for LP of critical theory, postmodernism, economic con-siderations, political theory, and linguistic culture.

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The second section provides an overview of research methodologies that can be adopted in LP. Wiley uses historical investigation to expose how Eurocentric historiography has imposed on newly independent countries language policies that have sought to create monolingual nation states dominated by former colonial languages. Canagarajah discusses the contributions that ethnography can bring to LP by high-lighting “the insiders’ perspective,” or the voices of the people that are most affected by these policies. Woodack presents a discourse- historical approach that builds on critical discourse analysis, while Catwright suggests a geolinguistic perspective that focuses on the proc-esses that create the social, cultural, and physical spaces in which language is used. Baker discusses ways in which psycho-sociological research can inform LP about language attitudes, ethnolinguistic vital-ity, domains of language use, and language testing.

The third section focuses on some key issues in LP, most of which have important implications for race and power relations. Blommaert looks at the role language plays in the building of a national identity and claims that a Western-centric monoglot ideology has regulated language regimes, processes of identity formation, and LP scholarship. May stresses the need to promote minority language rights to prevent the extinction of endangered language species, to remove the socioe-conomic mobility obstacles faced by the speakers of these languages, who, very often, belong to oppressed racial groups. Skutnabb-Kangas argues that minority language rights are fundamental human rights and that their violation is a form of genocide. Bratt and Heiderman focus on how LP affects native speakers of minority languages in edu-cation; Fishman discusses the impact LP can have on language shift; and Regan looks at the peculiarities of sign language and their impli-cation for LP. Phillipson contextualizes his linguistic imperialism the-ory in a postimperial world where political and economic domination is exercised by multinationals and nongovernmental organizations.

The collection certainly succeeds in its intent to make the debate accessible to nonexperts coming from different disciplines. These essays are concise, schematic, and consistently provide clarifi cation by defi ning key concepts and by illustrating theories with sociolinguistic case studies from around the world. The readability of these essays is enhanced by Ricento’s introduction to each section and by the head-ings, subheadings, and conclusive recapitulations that appear in each essay. Each piece also features an annotated bibliography and a series of questions for discussion, making this anthology particularly suitable as a graduate seminar core-text or as the starting point of an in-depth independent study.

Despite its clarity and its broad scope, this anthology does not over-simplify the implications for race of the relationship between language,

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power and identity, but helps to unravel them by taking stock of the insights that have been gained by LP. However, those who see gender as a crucial determinant in processes of identity formation and in race and power relations might be disappointed because this variable does not feature very prominently in the theories and the case studies pre-sented in the essays.

Ramirez’s Ebonics: The Urban Education Debate (2nd Edition) contex-tualizes issues of power relations, language, and identity in the experi-ence of African Americans. This essay collection covers some of the fundamental aspects of the Ebonics debate, which came to the public attention in 1977 after the Oakland board of education passed a reso-lution to use African American vernacular English (AAVE) to help students improve their academic performance. The fi rst part of the book contains six essays written by leading scholars in response to the resolution and the controversy that it generated. These essays seek to dispel the misconceptions about Ebonics that have characterized much of the media coverage. Drawing on Skutnabb-Kangas, Wiley locates Ebonics activism within linguistic human rights advocacy, and points out that the resolution was not a rejection of standard English but an attempt to facilitate access to it to empower the African American community. Rickford provides substantial empirical evi-dence of an academic performance gap that correlates with race and argues that part of this gap can be attributed to language policies in education that fail to take into account the additional diffi culties faced by African American students as native speakers of a language variety that differs from the variety students are expected to use in schools. He then suggests three approaches for using AAVE as a tool for increasing literacy in standard English. Baugh speculates that the resolution’s controversial wording might have presented Ebonics as a separate language from English in order to make its program eligible for bilingual education funding. He draws our attention to the fact that the learning needs of native speakers of nonstandard varieties of English are different from the needs of native speakers of other lan-guages and suggests looking for other sources of funding, now that regulatory restrictions have become less stringent. Smitherman quotes studies that have proven the systemic nature of Ebonics and highlights its semantic effectiveness, its cultural value, and its signifi cance as an identity marker for African Americans. Kifano and Smith reject the notion that Ebonics is a variety of English and claim that it is a sepa-rate communication system genetically related to the family of lan-guages spoken in Western Africa. Adger calls for the need to raise dialectal awareness among educators to dismiss the false notions that AAVE is linguistically defective and that it has no place in academic settings.

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The second part of the book contains some of the landmark docu-ments of the debate. The text of the resolution is presented in its original and its amended versions, and is accompanied by the clarifi ca-tion statements issued by the board of education. Examples of hostile legislative reactions are provided together with favorable responses coming from linguistic institutions such as TESOL and American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL). There are also three per-sonal statements by Fillmore, Wolfram, and John and Angela Rickford. Fillmore provides cogent internal criticism by showing how the reso-lution’s attempt to present Ebonics as a separate language and its infelicitous reference to genetics have contributed to the hostility gener-ated by the Oakland decision:

The language used by the Oakland school board in formulating the reso-lution has occasioned great and continuing misunderstandings … . I think the board should practice what they preach and should do what they want their students to do: learn the language of the larger community so that they can achieve their goals in that community (pp. 168 – 169).

This book is recommended to anyone who has not followed the debate or who has only been exposed to its media coverage. However, those who are already aware of the need to implement language poli-cies in education that take into account dialectal variation will fi nd that they have heard several of the pro-Ebonics arguments contained in this anthology over and over.

In the preface, the editors courageously admit that these arguments have not had a signifi cant impact on public opinion. I fi nd it hard to understand, therefore, why they chose to place Fillmore’s constructive remarks at the end of the book, sandwiched between legal documents that many readers are likely to glance at only casually, while Kifano’s and Smith’s widely discredited thesis features prominently among the core essays.

A reader would have to turn to Baugh’s (2002) Beyond Ebonics to get a fuller understanding of how the problematic wording of the resolution, which was built on Smith’s theory that African American students are not native English speakers, has contributed to the media misrepresentation and to the hostile legislations that ensued. Baugh points out that by positing such a deterministic relationship between language and racial identity, the Oakland resolution violated a basic principle that should be well known to linguists:

One should never defi ne a language or speech community based solely on racial classifi cation of its speakers. The history of colonialism proves this fact. The global spread of English, French, Russian, Portuguese and Spanish — to name a few languages diffused by colonialism — confi rms

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that speech communities and racial communities are not coincident. The fundamental premise of Afrocentric scholarship, which focuses exclusively on people with complete or partial African ancestry, fl ies in the face of the fundamental linguistic principle that a language can never be equated with a single racial group (Baugh, 2000, p. 85).

It is also unfortunate that this anthology left out the voices of the primary stakeholders of the debate: students and parents who, unlike the author of these essays, have not yet mastered the dialect of power. Canagarajah’s invitation to pay closer attention to the insider’s per-spective when doing research in LP is most relevant.

My experience as a teacher of developmental writing at Bronx Community College has been that African American students are often averse to the notion that there is such thing as “Black English,” let alone to the suggestion that they, as African Americans, are not native English speakers. It is true that a lot of my African American students have strong misconceptions about Ebonics, which they often equate with “slang,” “street language,” or “bad English.” These misconceptions certainly have a lot to do with the reason many black learners are not eager to identify with Ebonics, at least in a classroom setting. But stu-dents might also be resisting a discourse that delimits possibilities for constructing a Self on the basis of race. As teachers of academic literacy who seek to increase students’ access to the dialect of power, it is our duty to try to dispel misconceptions about Ebonics. But it is not our duty to essentialize students’ subjectivity by suggesting that they need to identify with any particular language or dialect because of their skin color. As Holliday, Hyde, and Kullman show in Intercultural Communication, discourses that essentialize subjectivity have disempowering effects.

Ramirez et al. predict that the No Child Left Behind Act is likely to bring Ebonics once again to the forefront of the national Education debate (p. x). Avoiding reductive, deterministic traps when theorizing about language and identity and showing more considerations for the voices of the stakeholders when doing research would do much more to bring about empowering language policies than repeating strident arguments based on a color codifi cation of language.

REFERENCES

Baugh , J. ( 2002 ). Beyond Ebonics: Linguistic pride and racial prejudice. Oxford, England : Oxford University Press .

Bhabha , H. ( 1994 ). The location of culture. London : Routledge . Bourdieu , P. ( 1991 ). Language and symbolic power. Cambridge, MA : Harvard University

Press . Dyer , R. ( 1997 ). White. London : Routledge . Foucault , M. ( 1980 ). Power/knowledge. New York : Pantheon .

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Gates , H. ( 1986 ). Writing “race” and the difference that it makes . In H. Gates . (Ed.), Race, writing, and difference (pp. 1 – 19 ). Chicago : University of Chicago Press .

Gee , J. ( 1996 ). Social linguistics and literacies: Ideologies in discourse. London : Falmer . Ngugi , W. ( 1981 ). Decolonizing the mind: The politics of language in African literature.

Harare, Zimbabwe : Zimbabwe Publishing House . O’Neil , W. ( 1998 ). If Ebonics isn’t a language, tell me, what is? In T. Perry & L. Delpit

(Eds.), The real Ebonics debate (pp. 38 – 49 ). Boston : Beacon . Pennycook , A. ( 1994 ). The cultural politics of English as an international language.

London : Longman . Phillipson , R. ( 1992 ). Linguistic imperialism. Oxford, England : Oxford University

Press . Said , E. ( 1995 ). Orientalism: Western conceptions of the Orient. London : Penguin . Skutnabb-Kangas , T. ( 2000 ). Linguistic genocide in education — Or worldwide diversity and

human rights? Mahwah, NJ : Lawrence Erlbaum .

ANDREA PARMEGIANI Bronx Community College and The Graduate Center of the City University of New York New York, New York


REVIEWS TESOL Quarterly welcomes evaluative reviews of publications relevent to TESOL professionals.



Antiracist Education. Julie Kailin. Rowman & Littlefi eld, 2002. Pp. xxi + 240.

� Since the era of civil rights activism and subsequent federal and state antidiscrimination laws in the United States, no problem has been more intractable than the challenge of providing equal opportunity in school-ing for African Americans and other underrepresented minorities. Numerous scholars have documented that school integration throughout the United States has led to White fl ight from urban schools, a predomi-nantly White teaching force in integrated schools, and school failure for poor, Black, and minority-language students confi ned to inner-city schools or bused into hostile and neglectful suburban environments.

These same urban schools are those in which non-English speaking students receive English-language-development services. Thus teachers of English to speakers of other languages are often intimately impli-cated in propagating, resisting, or otherwise bearing witness and bar-ing conscience to racism in U.S. schools.

Julie Kailin’s Antiracist Education explores the theoretical and his-toric aspects of work against racism, and from a unique perspective: As the mother of a biracial child, she is keenly aware of the overt acts or covert nuances of discrimination — the coded language of White liberal teachers’ claims of innocence about, blindness to, or unwilling-ness to address academically disparate circumstances based on race; school discipline meted out unequally depending on race; and the discourse in schools that constructs non-White students as marginal in interest, pathological in behavior, or defi cient in skills. Most frustrating for Kailin is the persistent evidence that mainstream educators lack the disposition or skills to deal with racism even in the face of blatant evidence of unequal schooling outcomes based on race.

What distinguishes Kailin’s work, however, is that it is imbued with optimism in providing strategies to abolish racism. As Maxine Greene


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so aptly observes in the preface, “[Kailin’s] work throbs, not only with a profound sense of injustices, but the passion of someone insistent on a vision of possibility — of a social reality somehow trans-formed in public schools” (p. ix). The fervor of social reconstruction in the face of diffi culty drives this book, and through it, inspires the reader.

Part One of the book features a thorough review of the historical foundations of antiracist education, including an excellent treatment of misguided efforts to use multicultural education as a substitute for educational equity. Kailin carefully teases apart the relationship between multicultural and antiracist education: Multiculturalism focuses on dif-ference rather than more directly on relations of domination and power and the structural inequities that lead to educational iniquities. What renders multicultural education impotent to deal with racism (the alienation, low self-esteem, lack of motivation, and lack of resources that Black children face daily, for example) is its inability to address directly the suffering caused by lack of social justice. Yet, Kailin cautions, multiculturalism must itself be protected against more caustic forms of social oppression.

Kailin is especially careful to analyze the racism of the predominant European-American majority in the United States, most of whom would like to believe that equal opportunity has already come to pass and that discrimination is a condition that existed in the past and is not now the central factor determining minorities’ life chances. According to Kailin, although most whites earnestly believe that they are not rac-ist, their consideration of racism often takes the form of powerful rationalizations that exculpate them from responsibility in the “color-blindness” of the “new racism” (p. 39) and in circumlocutions, innu-endo, half-truths, and evasions that are used to avoid the reality of the lives of oppressed people.

Equally pointed is Kailin’s discussion of the language of White backlash, in which members of the privileged majority co-opt the language of equal opportunity to ensure that their unfair privileges based on White supremacy are not threatened. The political clarity of Kailin’s presentation offers a straightforward exposure of the moves and countermoves in the twentieth-century struggle for racial and social justice in America. One disappointment, however, is that Kailin does not discuss the limitations of critical race theory; in fact, her discussion of its contributions to antiracist education is truncated.

Part Two of Kailin’s work documents a participatory ethnographic study done in a Midwestern university city. Her research includes data drawn from fi eld notes of teacher interviews, review of offi cial documents, student work, and, most powerfully, descriptions of

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in-service workshops for teachers in which teachers confront racism “in their backgrounds and their backyards” (p. 18). Because the majority of public school teachers were themselves educated in racially unequal circumstances, they often deny the existence of the complex problems that rob non-White children of a fair future. Suturing this rupture, Kailin sketches out the agenda for enlisting teachers in the fi ght for equal opportunity as work for White friends of antiracism.

Sympathy for the work of teachers is a persistent theme in Kailin’s book, despite the temptation to castigate teachers’ detachment in the face of the miseducation of African American, American Indian, and poor students. In a “public space pervaded by racism in all forms” (p. ix), teachers often struggle alone in efforts to balance “the moral and ethical development of students with enforcing the discipline of acquiring academic skills” (p. 9). Yet even when the pressure to pro-duce high test scores squeezes the joy and creativity out of education, teachers must not turn against the most needy students whose academic defi ciencies depress the school’s standings. Kailin warns that today’s emphasis on accountability creates a double drubbing for low-achieving students — fi rst, the pain of their own underper-formance on tests and subsequent hostility from teachers and school administrators who are blamed for their defi ciencies; and second, the loss of potentially affi rming curricula based on their strengths and interests.

From discussion of how teachers can be encouraged to expose the racism in school and classroom practices, to ways in which individuals can view their own racialized histories, this work is a handbook that strives to convert lukewarm educators into committed professionals. The book exposes the pitfalls awaiting the unwary cross-ethnic educa-tor, including the lure of romanticizing or exoticizing the Other, appropriating the discourse of the subordinated, normalizing Whiteness, and ignoring the class oppressions of capitalism and glo-balization. Cosupportive staff development is the crux of Kailin’s toolkit for change. This book is a consciousness-raiser, containing a rich literature of other such works. Teachers of English around the world may be inspired by this discussion of racism and the possibili-ties for change. Kailin’s work makes it clear that apathy in the face of racialized failure to educate the world’s children is no longer an option.

LYNNE T. DÍAZ-RICO California State University San Bernardino, California, United States

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Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States . Eduardo Bonilla-Silva. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefi eld, 2003. Pp. x + 214.

� The intriguing title of Bonilla-Silva’s book, Racism without racists , can itself serve as a summary of the book’s focus on how racial inequality persists in the United States, though few White Americans would claim to be (or wish to see themselves as) racists. To address this interesting enigma of how racism continues without racists in today’s world, Bonilla-Silva urges us to understand racism as systemic and institution-alized rather than mere individual prejudice. As the author argues, the constructed nature of race (i.e., race is not a fi xed and stable category but interacts with other social categories such as gender, language, culture, and religion) has led some to argue that race is an illusion and to deny the social reality of racism. According to Bonilla-Silva, however, although race is a socially constructed category, this construc-tion, in turn, produces racialized social structures that reinforce White privilege and are maintained and reproduced by Whites who materially benefi t from the social order. The dominant race thus needs racial ideologies to justify the racial status quo (pp. 8 – 11). One important racial ideology of Whites in the United States is what Bonilla-Silva calls color-blind racism. Many White Americans insist that race does not mat-ter in the post – civil rights era and explain racial inequality (or segrega-tion) in today’s world as the outcome of nonracial matters such as market dynamics, naturally occurring social phenomena, and the cul-tural defi ciency of certain minority groups (p. 2). Racial minorities thus become responsible for social inequality and are sometimes even charged with “playing the race card” (p. 1).

Although Racism Without Racists is not a typical English-language-teaching text, the book has important and pertinent implications for TESOL researchers and educators. First, a critical understanding of how racial inequality can be reproduced through supposedly nonracial practices can provide insights on how color-blind racism can become naturalized in curricula, teaching materials, policies and practices, and attitudes and assumptions of teachers and students in second language classrooms. Second, analyses of linguistic strategies (chapter 3) and racial story lines (chapter 4) of color-blind racism will shed light on how racist discourses are often disguised as cultural and linguistic dif-ferences in discursive constructions of Self and Other in TESOL litera-ture. Although the importance of social categories such as race, gender, class, and ethnicity in second language learning and teaching has

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gained attention in the fi eld of TESOL, race is still poorly conceptual-ized and silenced in TESOL when compared with fairly well-estab-lished research traditions in gender and language (e.g., feminist linguistics) and rapidly increasing literature on gender in second lan-guage research (e.g., Davis & Skilton-Sylvester’s 2004 TESOL Quarterly special issue on gender). Therefore, the predicaments of ESL students and non-White teachers in target society are often attributed to their lack of linguistic and cultural competence in the target language. Third, discussions of the dominant frameworks of color-blind racism (chapter 2), contradictions between Whites’ denial of racism and their racial pattern of social interaction (chapter 5), White racial progres-sives (chapter 6), and the effects of color-blind racism on the Black community (chapter 7) will contribute to a critical understanding of the institutionalized nature of racism and how such system of privilege is maintained. As illustrated in Atkinson’s (2002) interpretation of rac-ism as a moral charge of the “supporters of pure race ideologies” (p. 80, emphasis added), understanding racism as mere individual preju-dice is still prevalent in TESOL theory and practice. Because many White TESOL researchers and educators are in contact with so-called linguistic and cultural minorities (a term that is often used instead of racial minorities in TESOL), some may be inclined to believe that they are already culturally (and racially) sensitized. As such, they may take offense to what is perceived as personal “accusations of racism” ( Atkinson, 2002 , p. 80) and charges that the individual TESOL researcher or educator is racist. In light of this tendency, it is note-worthy that working class women are found to be racially most progres-sive contrary to the popular belief that middle-class whites are racially tolerant (see chapter 6). Because having extensive equal-status contacts with minorities is common among racially progressive Whites (p. 180), the often unequal status of contacts between Whites and racial minori-ties in TESOL (e.g., ESL teachers and students; NEST and NNEST teachers) may illuminate how racism persists in “a nice fi eld like TESOL” ( Kubota, 2002 , p. 84; also see van Dijk’s (1999) discussion of the role of elites in perpetuating racism).

One of the undeniable strengths of Bonilla-Silva’s book is its rich and interesting accounts from survey and interview data with college students and White and Black residents in the Detroit metropolitan area. Bonilla-Silva’s data effectively unfold subtle, institutionalized rac-ism in everyday life and successfully renders accessible the complex topic of the book. As the author argues, using self-reported data sig-nifi cantly adds to survey data to analyze the participants’ contradictory racial views. From a language researcher’s perspective, however, I wanted to see more careful and detailed linguistic analysis of the inter-view data. For example, interested readers will gain insights from van

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Dijk’s (1999) critical discourse analysis of talks about race and racial minorities, which illustrate how a denial of racism serves to perpetuate racism. Nevertheless, second language researchers, educators, and pol-icy makers who are interested in challenging racism in TESOL and applied linguistics will defi nitely fi nd Racism Without Racists a great source of inspiration and insights.

REFERENCES

Atkinson , D. ( 2002 ). Comments on Ryuko Kubota’s “Discursive construction of the images of U.S. classrooms.” A reader reacts . . . . TESOL Quarterly , 36 , 79 – 84 .

Davis , K. A. , & Skilton-Sylvester , E. (Eds.). ( 2004 ). Gender and TESOL [Special issue] . TESOL Quarterly , 38 ( 3 ) .

Kubota , R. ( 2002 ). The Author responds : (Un)Raveling racism in a nice fi eld like TESOL . TESOL Quarterly , 36 , 84 – 92 .

van Dijk , T. A ( 1999 ). Discourse and the denial of racism . In A. Jaworski & N. Coupland (Eds.), The discourse reader (pp. 541 – 558 ). New York : Routledge .

HYUNJUNG SHIN University of Toronto Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Documents

Race and TESOL: Introduction to Concepts and Theories