RantWoman is reflecting on
--the beginning of the college school year in vicinity of her Meeting and how different the world and studying might look 40 or 50 years on and what spiritual quests today's students will be embarking on.
--50 years of women undergrads, including Sonya Sotomayor '73 at her alma mater and 40 years since RantWoman entered the same ivy-covered halls.
--A whole muddle of topics including women in academia, women / Quaker women in STEM, tenured women professors, professional mentoring, #MeToo
Below this introductory exposition, RantWoman reposts with permission a wonderful long article about decolonizing writing.
RantWoman is happy to acknowledge. this post is likely to drive both her humanities major readers and her engineer / technocrat/ science geek readers crazy. Isn't it glorious to be an equal opportunity offender?
Basically, problem sets are necessary for learning math, learning to build bridges that do not fall down RantWoman has read the article below. RantWoman wants to say "YES, This!"
And RantWoman still thinks the story needs some problem sets. In other words, just to balance a certain rhetorical capacity to drive engineers crazy with liberal arts major language and rhetorical capacities, here RantWoman is also unabashedly offering to drive liberal arts majors mentioning problem sets. Consider yourselves held in the Light, all of ya!
Decolonizing
the Classroom. An Essay in Two Parts
Frances
McNeal and Peter Elbow
Writing
On the Edge 28.1 Fall 2917
Part One. Frances McNeal
It is obvious that there is not a university in
this country that is not built on what was once native land. We should reflect
on this over and over, and understand this fact as one fundamental point about
the relationship of Indians to academia.
Janice Gould (Concow)
The
Story Begins: Honoring Ancestors and Rhetorical Sovereignty
I
write from the Ouchita and the
Comanche Territories of Indigenous people in Turtle Island/North
America. Honoring our homelands as Indigenous people, I begin this story with
acknowledging the original peoples and protectors of these territories and land
who are alive, present, and still fighting for sovereignty: the right to govern
and express ourselves the way we see fit. I also honor my African American
ancestors on this land of Turtle Island/North America who have and continue to
resist enslavement, apartheid laws, and violent persecution. Furthermore,
beloved reader, I honor your ancestors who have fought for justice and peace. I
welcome our ancestors into this circle created through this essay as we
together reflect on decolonizing our classrooms and honor our web of relations: seen and unseen.
Notably,
I enact what Scott Lyons (Ojibwe/Mdewakanton Dakota) describes as rhetorical
sovereignty: “the inherent right and ability of peoples to
determine their own communication needs and desires” (450). This rhetorical
sovereignty is something I will do throughout my section of this essay as a
means to create a decolonial dialogue that calls for listening deeply, speaking
across our differences, honoring our uniqueness, and recognizing our
interrelatedness. I will draw on the assistance of my elders and relatives by
putting their quotes (words of wisdom) in stand-alone places while also posting
questions for you to ponder that are italicized. This is my way of inviting
you, beloveds, to pause and reflect while listening to the voices of those who
are marginalized in the social order.
We scholars, whether American Indian,
African American, Chicana, Latino, Asian American or Euroamerican, perform our
work on stolen, bloody ground. That should give us more than pause” (511).
Malea
Powell (mixed-blood
Indiana Miami, Eastern Shawnee, and European-American ancestry)
An
Offering of Stories
Beloved Community,
I come to you with a clear heart and good intention with an offering in my
hands of precious stories. These are the stories of the survivors and the resisters
of genocide, imperialism, colonialism, white supremacy, patriarchy, and multiple
forms of oppression. I invite you to
tell them in your classrooms. In an appeal to our interconnectedness as living
beings, beloveds, my offering ushers forth a call for urgency to listen closely
in our classrooms to other stories! Let
us remember together: “[stories]have the power to make, re-make, [and] un-make the
world” (Powell, “Rhetorics of Survivance” 396). In this essay, I share stories
about why decolonizing the classroom is necessary through the use of braiding
sweet grass (knowledge production), kitchen tables (relational learning), and created
stories (creation awareness of stories-knowledges).
This is my story:
For
most of my time in educational institutions, my communities’ knowledges,
stories, and histories were not told in the classroom. The messages I received
through this erasure was that all the people who loved me the most in the
world: my grandmothers, grandfathers, mothers, fathers, aunties, uncles,
sisters, and brothers’ lives and knowledges didn’t matter! I also have seen how
these erasures in the classrooms are intimately connected to the perpetuation
that our lives don’t matter in society (Turtle Island/North America). Through
the daily assaults on our humanity, continual discrimination, horrific
violence, land theft, and the outright killing of people who look like me, I
learned that these harmful interactions in education and in society caused me
to question the dominant narratives told to me. I have been influenced by
destructive teaching practices, which caused me as a teacher to always ask: who
am I not making integral in the subjects I teach and how can my teaching
encourage decolonization and social transformation? The teaching practices disregarding
subjugated communities I survived through caused me to work on a decolonial
pedagogy, which invites students to tell other stories that encompass acknowledging
Indigenous homelands, the most vulnerable in our society, multiple forms of
oppression, and land redress. My borderland living inspires me to invite you to
join me in transforming our classrooms into spaces that create stories that re-make our world as a place where all living
beings have a place of honor, including in our educational systems. And for us
to work together to decolonize our classrooms and the world we live in. I hope
you are ready because I sure am!
“Choctaws have a mysterious word that
represents a kind of creation. It is
nuk
or nok,
a suffix or prefix that has to do with the power of speech, breath, and
mind. Things with nok or nuk are
so powerful that they can create. A teacher, for
instance, is a nukfokchi” (123).
LeeAnne Howe (Choctaw)
The
Web of Relations and Braiding Sweet Grass (Knowledge Production)
In what ways can we invite students in
our teaching to feel-think about listening, reading, and writing in relationship
to subjugated histories, stories, and worldviews?
Decolonial
pedagogies require that we honor our web
of relations by being deeply aware of each one’s valuable contributions and
our connections with each other. This is why the knowledge systems we braid in our classrooms with our
students must make our marginalized
relations an integral part of our discourse, curriculum, and approach to
teaching. The voices and personhood of our marginalized relations become an
imperative aid to understanding the complexities of diverse knowledge system(s)
and multiple lived realities. In order to address current atrocities, historical
trauma, and colonialism we must create strong braids of awareness that are
sturdy bridges to new stories. These
stories help us reimagine the world as diverse global citizens: a reimagining grounded in the promotion of
justice for all, including the Earth. In this fashion, what we braid and
how we braid knowledge systems in our classrooms is so important.
[T]he sweetest way [to braid sweetgrass]
is to have someone else hold the end so that you pull gently against each
other, all the while leaning in, head to head, chatting and laughing, watching
each other’s hands, one holding steady while the other shifts the slim bundles
over one another, each in its turn. Linked by sweetgrass, there is reciprocity
between you, linked by sweetgrass, the holder is as vital as the braider. (ix)
Robin Wall
Kimmerer (Anishinaabe and European)
Like braiding sweet grass, we must recognize
each one is valuable to the process and all actions impact our web of
relations. When we don’t, the subjects taught become one-sided, bias stories
cutting off the contributions and stories of the most vulnerable in our society,
including our students, and ignore the material impact of injustices in our
social order. As we reflect on braiding sweetgrass (creating relational knowledge)
and our web of relations, let us consider why it is imperative to teach our
subjects in relationship to subjugated histories, stories, and worldviews. When
we dare to teach subjugated knowledges, our subjects are expanded by recognizing
other traditions and ways of being in
the world. For example, by making women of color(s) and Indigenous women’s
histories, especially of transformative activism, an integral part of my
courses, students expanded their rhetorical strategies and their understanding
of the role social location plays in writing. When we include subjugated
knowledges as integral to the curriculum, we transgress the silencing and
erasing of our marginalized relations and their voices in an ‘eurocentric’
educational system. Thus, we defy the fictitious tale of the “eurocentric
worldview” being the only story;
therefore, the only truth and superior truth. One
story, One truth, One worldview leaves us blind to the
complexities of our world and the diverse realities of the people in it.
“Our educations have been biased. The eurocentric
educational systems, media outlets, and other institutions omit and distort
information about our own groups and those of others. These hidden mechanisms
sustain oppression, including an often invisible and normative ‘white’
supremacy. Not surprisingly, we all have “blank spots,” desconocimientos
(Anzaldúa), and so forth” (125).
AnaLouise
Keating
Layers of realities become
essential to the braids we weave in our classrooms. Soon we find, similar to braiding
sweet grass, we can’t centralize one slim
bundle of knowledge in a diverse world and hold on to it only. In order to
create knowledge that is relational, we must hold on to multiple slim bundles
of different knowledges while “shift[ing]
the slim bundles [knowledges]over one another, each in its turn” (Kimmerer ix).
In this way, we braid together knowledges that are conceptual frameworks to our planetary existence as living beings
who are diverse. We offer students an opportunity to expand their education and
awareness, as well as listen to other stories and tell their stories. In
addition, the students become an intimate part of making knowledge as they hold
onto the strands (knowledges). As holders of knowledge, students’ knowledges
become an integral part of the sweetgrass (relational knowledge systems) they
are participating in braiding (creating). Similar to braiding sweet grass, reciprocity,
relationship, and recognition that we are all learner-teachers strengthens the
braiding of sweetgrass (producing of relational knowledge) between the creators
(teachers and students). Our classrooms become transformative kitchen tables
that invite all our relations to exchange knowledges and listen deeply while
sitting in a place of honor.
Kitchen Tables (Relational
Learning) and Transforming Our Classrooms
In what
ways can we transform our classrooms into spaces where students question
status-quo stories while honoring other worldviews and knowledges as an
imperative part of their lives, discourses, writing, reading, and listening?
Join me in the creation of kitchen tables to decolonize our
classrooms. Let us address the deep need to create a multifaceted dialogue
calling for participation, interaction, and listening across our differences
while recognizing our connections. At these kitchen tables we decentralize
status-quo stories in our classrooms. Our classrooms and our world are haunted
by the many stories of activism and
resistance to what AnaLouise Keating describes as status-quo stories:
“worldviews and beliefs that normalize and naturalize the existing social
system, values, and norms so entirely that they deny the possibility of change”
(23). Challenging these status-quo stories grounded in an ‘eurocentric
worldview’ in our classrooms, we make room for other stories not as alternatives, but viable options.
Our classroom kitchen tables can become a place of exchange questioning the
normalization of status-quo stories by serving dishes called other realities,
transformation, and change while welcoming everyone to sit at them through our
discourse, curriculum, and approach to teaching in relationship to subjugated
knowledges. For instance, what happens when we create teaching activities on
the stories of some of the most vulnerable in our society such as African American mothers who have lost their
children to police brutality, Native women who have been sexually assaulted,
and Latina/Chicana women who have been discriminated against on their jobs?
How might hearing these stories invite students to become more consciously
aware of the severe social injustices of those who are not centralized or
studied in most classrooms?
“The 'kitchen table' is a
key metaphor for understanding the womanist perspective on dialogue. The
kitchen table is an informal, woman centered space where all are welcome and
all can participate” (59).
Layli Maparyan
The decolonization of our classrooms
through kitchen tables that invite our learning communities to address and
challenge status-quo stories is not a means to demonize Greco-Roman
philosophies or European and Euro-American histories, rhetorics, and stories.
Instead, these kitchen tables of decolonization are a means to question why in
the 21st century are most U.S. educational systems centralizing a ‘eurocentric’
worldview as the only and highest truth in a diverse world that
has multiple histories, stories, and truths? Because of centralizing one
worldview (one story) as the ultimate truth, we are plagued with deep biases,
injustices in our educational system and social order that have horrific
societal impact. Classroom kitchen tables are a valuable means to expand
student learning.
“Blame is not
useful, but accountability is. It is nonproductive to blame ourselves and/or
others for the misinformation we have learned in the past or for ways we have
benefitted and continue benefitting from these unjust social systems. However,
once we have been exposed to more accurate information, we are accountable! We
should work to do something with this information--perhaps by working towards a
more just future.”(125)
AnaLouise Keating
Created
Stories (Creation Awareness of Stories-Knowledges)
How can decolonizing our classrooms open
integral space for oral traditions, art, writings, and rhetorical strategies
that address issues of oppression, subjugation, genocide, colonialism, slavery,
patriarchy, and sovereignty as integral parts of our classrooms?
Beloveds, the
stories-knowledges we create as
teachers in our classrooms impact not only our students, but the way they
interact in the world with others. In decolonizing our classrooms, we must become
deeply aware of the stories-knowledges we are generating by asking what narratives
are we creating? How are we
normalizing particular stories-knowledges and what fruit are they producing in
the world? And, who is being made an integral part and who is being left out of
knowledge production? Ultimately our world reflects the stories we are telling
and not telling in our classrooms. All we have to do is reflect on most curriculums, in most disciplines, and at most universities that leave out the
realities, knowledges, and stories of women of color(s) and Indigenous women.
As a result, we are saying to our students that these groups are not
significant knowledge producers, they are not worth learning about, and they
are expendable. This is why I believe that decolonizing our classrooms must
include creating multiple stories-knowledges stemming from many cultural
traditions as an essential part of knowledge production that will give our
students the tools to expand their learning, address injustices, and re-make
our world.
For example, our
promotion of subjugated stories, that includes the origins of a place, from Indigenous
nations in Turtle Island/ North America such as the Wampanoag and the
Haudenosaunee who question the tale of Columbus, a colonial-settler,
discovering America when it was already populated and continues to be by Indigenous
people with many rich traditions. Or, our telling of stories from the
perspective of Indigenous nations that describe the survival and resistance
against the horrific impact of violence, killing, and rape of Native people when
Columbus and other colonial-settlers came to Turtle Island/North America. These
are stories that allow us to come face-to-face with colonialism and social
injustices as well as narratives that underscore survival and resistance as an
imperative part of the learning journey. As teachers, our stories we create in our classrooms make a difference as we invite
students to develop tools to address oppression and re-make our world. I
conclude with some questions: What type of creator
are you in your classrooms? What stories are you telling to create a better
world for all people, including the most vulnerable in our society? How will
you begin to decolonize your classroom through telling multiple diverse stories?
Together as teachers let us create teaching
practices that enact decolonizing our classrooms, which is intimately connected
to decolonizing our world.
“It's
about honoring people's otherness in ways that allow us to be changed by
embracing that otherness rather than punishing others for having a different
view, belief system, skin color, or spiritual practice. Diversity of
perspectives expands and alters dialogue, not in an add on fashion but through
a multiplicity that's transformational, such as in mestiza consciousness” (4).
Gloria Anzaldúa
Part Two.
Teaching on Stolen Land. Peter
Elbow
How I Might Decolonize My First Year Writing
Class
I’m long
retired and not about to teach a first year writing class, but after hearing Frances’
presentation on decolonizing our classrooms at the UMass Symposium for Writing
and Teaching Writing (which I’d set up in 2000 and led till 2015 when I moved
to Seattle), I wanted to challenge myself:
How should I have been
teaching first year writing all these years when I was doing it in classrooms
on stolen land?
Some
Premises
--Especially
for a project like this, I need to acknowledge that I function as a white male
and I must try to stay aware of my privilege from that identity.
--The highest
priority for the classroom will be respect for all members. Free speech is desirable, but if it leads to
disrespectful speech, I'll claim the right to interrupt it.
--I and all
my students often have what we might charitably call “inappropriate feelings”--feelings
that are racist, sexist, and all the rest—feelings that are distorted by our
past personal experiences. I have found it helpful to learn to acknowledge such
feelings to myself. (Indeed such feelings actually make sense given everything
that has happened to me in the past). The important point is that I don’t have
to condemn myself or my students for having such feelings. But I can try not to express them, and as
teacher I can interrupt disrespectful words and actions that stem from such
feelings.
--I will set
up lots of private freewriting in this class--some every day. That is, given the premise of respect to
others at every moment, we often need to use private freewriting to explore and
acknowledge certain thoughts and feelings and thus keep them to ourselves.
--I find it
important to “profess” what I happen to believe, namely that everyone at every
moment is always doing the best they can--while at the same time often being
bent out of shape by past hurt and oppression. Bad words and actions are still
bad, but they don’t make us bad as persons.
--Grading. I will use a system of contract grading (see
Danielewicz and Elbow) to try to create a culture where students don’t have to
compete with each other for grades or try to “please” the teacher as adversary
who must be won over.
--A final
overall perplexity. In everything I
write, I can’t help imagining the students I’ve actually had--at UMass Amherst,
SUNY Stony Brook, Evergreen State College, and M.I.T. These were students mostly from the white
middle class--with some from the working class and a few from genuine
privilege.
Opening
Theme: Process
I’d start the
class by trying to give students as much as I can of the experience of hearing
you, Raenea. I hope there’s an on-line
site where we can hear you giving the passionate presentation that I heard this
summer. I’d try to play a video or audio
version. In hearing or seeing you, they
would hear all the reasons why I’m trying to teach in the way I am here. We’d also watch some other clips of eloquent
speakers; then read some written texts that convey passion or strong
conviction.
Then I’d try
to help them do some writing that transfers passion or deep conviction to the
page. I’d ask for story and testimony,
and interludes of speaking too, as primary modes--even for nonpersonal or
academic tasks. Thus lots of speaking
and reading aloud. I want to show them that they can get passion on the
page--even for nonpersonal or academic tasks
Opening
Theme: Content
As Al-Din writes, we are at a moment
when most births in our country are nonwhite and thus we need to prepare for
the reality of a white-minority, multi-racial USA. We need to figure out what
it means to be American in this new era.
I’d start by acknowledging how this
room we are sitting is on stolen land obtained through racist violence, rape
and so on. I’d ask people to freewrite about that: do they (like me) have to work to remember or
experience it?--the reality of it?--even the possible irritation at someone
bringing it up again--someone trying to do a guilt trip on them? It can make people mad. I would make space
for private freewriting where people can freely vent our feelings.
About
Feelings
Even though I’ll try keep this
course from being an attempt to impose “guilt trips,” the fact is that we
whites can never afford to let ourselves be comfortable. By the same token, though I cannot speak for
Native Americans and people of color, no doubt they will find it hard or
impossible ever to get past anger or depression or whatever.
So here’s a major problem of the
course: how to learn to live with
feeling uncomfortable. My own personal
habit has been to push such feelings away and forget them. I need to start the course by acknowledging my
own self-evasion about the fact that this classroom sits on stolen land. And how about feelings for Native Americans
and students of color? I’m not qualified
to say. We whites can try to learn from
them--insofar as they are willing to share their thoughts and feelings--but we
need to recognize that they have no obligation to share.
Guilt will be one of the biggest
problems of the course and a perplexity for me as a white liberal: While we recognize and experience that this
is all stolen land, how can we let it be more than just a guilt trip for us
white or Nonnative American folks? That
is, guilt doesn’t seem to help. So how
can we learn to acknowledge discomfort but not just feel guilty.
For dealing with guilt, factuality
is key. Instead of self-blame, face facts.
Be empirical, not judgmental. Indeed, wallowing in guilt can get in the
way of simply facing hard facts. Facts like these: White privilege is
“unearned.” Even though we and other whites today didn’t steal the land, and
even though we’re not bad people, we didn’t earn the privileges we get through
the original theft and our white identity. Guilt doesn’t help; we present day whiteys didn’t do it
ourselves; we are good people. Still the land is stolen and we benefit
from it.
After the assassination of Martin
Luther King, I became a volunteer teaching a writing course in the (Black)
South End of Boston. Late in the semester, a guy in the class asked me what I
was being paid. I said with quiet pride that I was a volunteer. He said, “I’ll
never trust someone who isn’t being paid; I can’t trust anyone who does
something out of guilt.” We need to discuss this claim. Are we always tainted
if we volunteer to help people who have been harmed by our nation or culture?
I will design exercises and
activities to try to help people to think about living on stolen land without
just taking on guilt. We can write about
times when we did something that was bad in its effects, yet we’re not confused
into feeling guilty. Think, for
instance, of when we were toddlers or small children and we spilled juice on
the floor--even when it stained a rug or a couch or the bed clothes. If we were the parent, few of us would want
to make that small child feel guilty--even though a harm resulted. Another example: we said something that hurt someone a lot,
but we weren’t trying to hurt them; we
didn’t know our words would have this effect
There’s a different issue of
feelings for Native Americans and people of color: anger and what to do with this anger.
The
Role of Culture
Early white folk--and later folks
too--were themselves mentally colonized by a culture that didn’t think it was
wrong to steal this land: a culture that
simply breathed in with our mother’s milk the notion that white “civilized”
people were not just better but were entitled to take everything from
“primitive” people. If that seems
farfetched, think of a comparable feeling most people still live with. That is, most of us have been led or
“enabled” by our culture to do things that are terrible for the planet: to destroy the earth and use up
resources. For another cultural
underpinning of what’s reprehensible:
think about how much behavior in our culture is driven by sexism and
pornography.
We
Can Explore Restorative Justice: Restitution.
This is a great strategy against
mere guilt. We see a simple form of it
in a common child rearing practice:
“consequences.” It’s helpful when
parents learn to say, “You’re not bad for spilling that juice on the
floor. You simply need to wipe it
up.” (Trickier if it’s on a light tan
couch)
Full restitution to Native Americans
might seem politically “unrealistic,” but what if we simply let ourselves dwell
in the knowledge that it’s exactly what ought to happen?. Instead of just throwing up our hands, we can
realize that In truth, it is perfectly feasible to restore huge amounts
of stolen land. The US government owns
something like 90% of the West. Perhaps
the best we can do in a course like this (realizing that it’s not a sufficient
solution) is to keep our minds on this problem.
Feel the discomfort, but not fall into the useless guilt or inaccurate
feelings that nothing substative is possible.
Keep our minds on facts.
Here’s a good example to
compare: Israel built extensive
settlements on Palestinian land so as to make it seem politically impossible to
return it. Yet actual restitution to the
Palestinians strikes me and some Israeli commentators as in fact feasible--with
less disruption than the return of much US land to the Native Americans. Israelis give in to the myth that it’s not
politically feasible--yet discussion of restitution there does not go away.
A major activity of the course for
any Native Americans and people of color will be to slowly work through their
responses to the realities--perhaps often starting with numbness. And for the rest of us: to learn from an Native Americans and partial
Native Americans. Also from
nonWhites. There are interesting
comparisons to be explored between having ancestors whose land was stolen and
ancestors who were brought here as slaves in chains. In other classes when I explored identity, I
often brought LBGT visitors for testimony if there weren’t any in the class who
felt like testifying. Learning from them
must be major crucial “reading material” for the course: major “content” to study.
In a way, this is a course about
learning to live with awareness. For
native Americans a course about exploring possible anger or numbness. Also about ways to feel anger and still be
friends with whites
Language and geographical names will be a nontrivial theme. Place names themselves tend to have
interesting histories and etymologies:
perfect material for mini-research and presentations by students. I noticed an interesting contrast when I
moved from Amherst Massachusetts and Stony Brook New York to Olympia
Washington. In the East we were surrounded by Native American place names like Massachusetts itself and
Connecticut. To me it seemed as though these names were quietly
honorific (when I bothered to remember that they are Native American names).
But I had little awareness of any stories behind them. Only later when I was first in the Northwest
in the 1970s did I learn of some political activity around the original wound
of theft and displacement. And I heard more active prejudice and some scornful
white talk about “drunken Indians.”
READINGS FOR THE COURSE
Al-Din, Salah
(2015) Also known as Robert Eddy. cited at the end.
Mann, Charles C. 1491:
New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus 2005, Vintage.
ASSIGNMENTS
Daily
freewrites
Recurrent
practice giving oral speeches. The goal is to explore and learn to produce
“weighted words”
Research: Describe the landscape and inhabitants of the
territory where this class is occurring
Reading: Mann, Charles C. 1491 New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus 2nd Edition
A Core Writing Assignment: A Racial Autobiography. (For this we borrow
what Robert Eddy [Salah Al-Din] describes toward the end of his essay. “It is clear that in preparing for white-minority, multi-racial USA we
must re-invent our country, re-invent our universities, and re-invent our disciplines.
. . . [We must] “Co-construct a new sociological imagination of what it means
to be American, democratic and pluralistic” (Al-Din 12)
In particular I’ll start
off as he does assigning a racial
autobiography. And like him,
I’ll have students revisit this assignment late in the semester. Here’s how he
describes this two stage writing assignment:
For typical classroom strangers who need
to actively prepare for our new white minority country, a simple but deeply
potent and complex writing assignment . . . : a brief racial autobiography. It
. . . offers the most concrete,
revelatory, and operative preparation for the rapidly approaching new USA of
multi-racial complexity and opportunity with a white minority who needs to get
seriously better at cross-racial communication . . . :
600 Words Maximum: How has your racial
identity influenced your sense of self?
Describe the impact of racial identity in
your life -- not race generally, but your race, as you define and name it, and
any significant experiences, teachings and values pertaining to that identity.
Optional source of interviewing two family members about their experiences of
and beliefs about being "x" race would give your writing even more
depth and complexity. If you belong to more than one race, by all means
acknowledge that and analyze how having more than one racial identity
influences you. . . . [This assignment]
was given me by a friend who could not locate its source, nor could I. If the
author could identify herself-himself, I will happily acknowledge this
important pedagogical work.)
End-of-semester “Racial Autobiography
Revisited”: Write a 1000 words maximum paper in which you do the following:
1. re-read the assignment above;
2. re-read your paper from the beginning
of the semester;
3. title your new paper: “Racial
Autobiography Revisited: What I have Learned Since Writing My Racial
Autobiography at the Start of the Course.”
Appendix. Two Useful Passages from Eddy’s essay:
For each of us to begin to read
and understand our individual racialization within the politics of
representation of our racialized group, we must each increase and focus our
sociological imagination on our individual identity in terms of our “race,” and
for those of us who are teachers, we must systemically help our students to
individually and collectively do so in a setting not of encouraging guilt for
white individuals or anger for people of color, though these emotions might
indeed be present, but instead in the spirit of increased and satisfying
cross-racial communication as whole human beings invited and in the end
required in the soon-to-be white minority USA. How can or should we study our
racialization? . . .
The political-economic dominance
of white Americans means that even in our multi-racial present moment in the
USA, many white Americans still see themselves as “normal,” “as just a human
being,” as not a race. This routine
normalization of whiteness (Wise), is a major way in which white supremacy and
white privilege give choices to Americans constructed as white, that no other
racialized groups can access.
Works Cited
Al-Din, Salah
(2015) [Robert Eddy]"Racism, Pedagogy and the Renaming of the USA,"
Race and Pedagogy Journal: Teaching and Learning for Justice: Vol. 1: No. 1,
Article 4. Available at: http://soundideas.pugetsound.edu/rpj/vol1/iss1/4
Anzaldúa, Gloria E. “(Un)natural bridges, (Un)safe
spaces.” this bridge we call home:
radical visions for transformation. edited by Gloria E. Anzaldúa and
AnaLouise Keating. Routledge, 2002, pp. 1-5.
Elbow, Peter.
(With Jane Danielewicz) “A Unilateral Grading Contract to Improve Learning and
Teaching.” College Composition and Communication. 61.2 (December 2009).
Gould, Janice. “The Problem of Being
Indian: One Mixed-Blood’s Dilemma.” Decolonizing
the Subject: the Politics of Gender in Women’s Autobiography. edited by
Sedonie Smith and Julia Watson. University of Minnesota Press, 1992, pp. 81-87.
Howe, LeAnne. "Tribalography: The Power of Native
Stories." Journal of Dramatic Theory and
Criticism, vol. 1, 1999, pp. 117-26.
Keating,
AnaLouise. Teaching Transformation:
Transcultural Classroom Dialogues. Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and The
Teaching of Plants. Milkweed Editions, 2013.
Lyons, Scott Richard. “Rhetorical
Sovereignty: What Do American Indians Want from Writing?” College
Composition and Communication, vol.
51, no. 3, 2000, pp. 447-68.
Maparyan, Layli, The
Womanist Idea. Routledge,
2012.
Mukavetz, Andrea M. Riley. “Towards a Cultural
Rhetorics Methodology: Making Research Matter with Multi-generational Women
from the Little Traverse Band.” Rhetoric,
Professional Communication, and Globalization, vol. 5, no. 1, 2014, pp.
108-25.
Powell, Malea. “On Different Ground: A Response to
Michael Eric Dyson.” JAC, vol. 17,
no. 3, 1997, pp. 507-13.
--“Rhetorics of Survivance: How American
Indians Use Writing.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 53,
no. 3, 2002, pp. 396-434.
Posts
