Responding to Multicultural Literature

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Responding to Multicultural Literature

• Rick Beach, CI5441, 9/22

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Blatant bigotry Rush Limbaugh

• Referring to an incident in which a white student
  was beaten by black students on a bus, Limbaugh
  said I think the guys wrong. I think not only
  it was racism, it was justifiable racism. I mean,
  thats the lesson were being taught here today.
  Kid shouldnt have been on the bus anyway. We
  need segregated buses it was invading space and
  stuff. This is Obamas America.

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Robbinsdale 281 CARE (Citizens Acting for
Responsible Education)

• 9,000 in advertising on a billboard, lawn signs
  and professional services
• "district problems are brought in with
  nonresident students.
• "all problems come from open enrollment"
• "5.5 million could be saved by throwing out
  1,000 students
• Jason Lewis "Freedom Dogs" interview

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Institutional racism Housing policies
Segregation

• Sheryll Cashin,The Failures of Integration How
  Race and Class Are Undermining the American Dream
• Racist real estate policies desirable
  neighborhoods higher housing prices
• Segregation and schooling Higher property tax
  support for suburban schools advantage for
  suburban students

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Institutional racism Health care

• In Maryland, African American babies die at a 2.5
  times higher rate than white babies.
• African Americans' life expectancy is six years
  shorter than whites at birth.

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Institutional racism Advertising and obesity

• CDC 36 of black Americans, 29 of Hispanics,
  and 24 of whites are obese.
• Medical costs of obesity could have risen to 147
  billion per year by 2008.
• Children see 7600 food commercials a year 35
  and 45 of commercials are for food. Almost all
  advertised food is unhealthy.
• African Americans are consistently exposed to
  food promotion and distribution patterns with
  relatively greater potential adverse health
  effects than are Whites. American Journal of
  Public Health

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Institutional racism Media representations of
race

• Power of white hegemony in film/media
• Predominating control/portrayal of whites
• People of color not shown as subservient and not
  engaging in human/complex practices

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Identity construction as mediated

• Cultural models
• Reflects common sense assumptions
• Evident in perceptions of hierarchies and
  discussion of what one values
• Discourses ways of knowing/thinking
• Uses of language accountability business
  discourse respect flag patriotism

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McDermott Meaning of white identity context
dependent

• Observations white/black interactions in
  convenience stores in similar working-class
  neighborhoods different histories
• Atlanta no sense of working-class/ethnic
  solidarity
• Whites perceived as failures
• Boston privileged as working-class whites
• Strong positive identification with neighborhood

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White privilege

• White students in homogeneous, largely white high
  school (Perry, 2001)
• Less aware of racial identity
• Perceive Whiteness as norm
• Students in diverse high school
• More aware of racial identity
• Race as the principle of social organization

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My research Different schools

• Suburban school discourse of individualism
• We just need need to get along better
• Underneath, were all alike
• Urban school Diversity Club
• Aware of the benefits of diversity
• More aware of institutional racism

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Arguments

• Need to focus on institutional critiques of
  forces shaping race, class, and gender
  differences
• Employ a pedagogy of discomfort/hope based on
  grappling with dialogic tensions and
  perspective-taking

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Racism as Racialized Social Systems

• Placement of people in social categories
• Attaching meaning to groups
• Creation of hierarchies
• Top group--economic, social, political power
• Conflict maintain vs. challenge hierarchy
• Application of racial ideology to explain and
  justify hierarchy
• Blacks as lacking motivation to work

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Racial Ideologies as Interpretive Repertoires

• Common frames
• Fear of the other Token inclusionism
• Racetalk
• Avoid being seen as racist/Archer Bunker
• Storylines used to justify hierarchy
• the past is part/my friend lost out on a job
• Categorizing whiteness as normalizing
• White lives isolated in schools/suburbs/peer
  group
• Whites as racial tourists-- others defined by
  what whiteness is not

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Issue Multicultural literature

• Token add on to high school canon (largely
  white male authors)
• Authors perceived primarily in terms of race,
  class, or gender identity

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Multicultural literature Role in a pedagogy of
discomfort

• Not simply exposure to the other or diversity
  just in the text
• Tensions due to institutional racism, class
  conflict, and sexism
• Value lies in mixture of texts, teacher
  activities/challenges, and student discussions of
  dialogic tensions

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Students responses to multicultural literature

• Study change in high school students responses
  due to experiences with dialogic tensions in
  class discussions of multicultural literature.

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Study Urban High School

• 14 students obtaining college credit in a
  multicultural literature course
• 8 Whites, 3 Asian-American, 1 Hispanic, 1 African
  descent
• Instruction in critical lenses
• Focus on issues of whiteness, class, gender
• Application of feminist, neo-Marxist, critical
  race theory perspectives

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Texts read in the course

• House on Mango Street
• Bless me Ultima
• Kindred
• Their Eyes Were Watching God
• Obason
• Woman Warrior
• Love Medicine
• Bastard Out of Carolina
• Yellow Raft in Blue Water

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Co-construction of lived and text worlds

• Lived worlds
• Identities/.roles
• Objects/purposes
• Norms
• Beliefs
• Traditions/history
• Dialogic tensions

• Text worlds
• Characters
• Objects/purposes
• Norms
• Beliefs
• Traditions/history
• Dialogic tensions

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Characters hybrid identities

• Readers experience imaginative performances of
  alternatives to their own fixed notions of
  identities.
• Kindred African-American female main character,
  Dana, moves between the contemporary world and
  the world of slavery
• Dialogic tensions in her conflict allegiances to
  these different worlds
• Heritage of slavery has a profound influence on
  her current identity as a contemporary African
  American

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Shift from first-person to third-person reflection

• Perceiving a character as subject operating in
  systems
• Perceiving a character as an object constructed
  by status-quo systems
• Nora The Dolls House
• Subject subservient, childlike identity as
  wife
• Object of the patriarchic system

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Questions

• What were the dialogic tensions in the class
  associated with allegiances to competing
  discourses in lived and text worlds?
• In what ways did students change in voicing
  discourses?
• Do students begin to reflect on institutional
  forces?
• What were reasons for these changes or lack of
  change?

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School culture

• School in a changing working-class neighborhood
• Increasingly diverse populations
• Challenges to status-quo traditions
• Winter-Fest celebration
• Discourse of order/control
• Sports traditions
• Racial segregation

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Tensions School versus Classroom Cultures

• School culture
• Discourse of control/order
• Lack of discussion in other courses
• Male status/power sports
• Hierarchical racial segregation

• Classroom culture
• Dialogic exchange and tensions
• Focus on discussion
• Challenges to male status/power
• Discussion about issues of race

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Teaching methods

• Critical lenses (Appleman) Feminist, Marxist,
  reader-response, psychological
• Discussion starters quotes from journals
• White people as a group enjoy an easier life
  than anybody else in this country.
• Monologues character voices
• You think you know me, but you dont.

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Institutional racism and class Savage
Inequalities

• Parks example of 2,000 home in East St. Louis
• Reasons for low value of housing related to
  racism and housing policies

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Students who adhered to status quo discourses

• Corey white male
• allegiances to a discourse of masculinity/individu
  alism
• competition and hard work being self-assured,
  authoritative, and in control
• Michelle white female
• content with allegiances to expected roles in her
  family, marriage and work in a fast-food
  restaurant familiar roles

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Student attitudes towards affirmative action

• Student opposition to affirmative action
• job hiring practices and college admissions
  framed in terms of race rather than class
• conservative discourse
• individual as a free agent not constricted by
  institutional or governmental forces
• pits Whites against people of color

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Corey job hiring

• I want to be a police officer, but supposedly now
  a day it is not easy to be a cop if you are
  white. If you are white and you are better than
  the person next to you and he is black, the white
  person might not get that job. Just because that
  person is a different color. It is also that way
  for college, white people get no help at all
  because they think every white person is rich.
  Minorities get enrichment programs to get help
  with their scholarships, when most white people
  dont get help with any money for college.

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Students who interrogated status quo discourses

• Kayla white female
• operating in a future world of college
• perceived high school and community cultures as
  limited
• not concerned about the social consequences of
  challenging peers
• Adopted feminist perspectives in n challenging
  some of the males

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Students who interrogated status quo discourses

• Devin white male
• Involvement in youth church trips to Mexico and
  Native American reservations.
• Classroom identity as provocateur and the
  successful student
• Vacillated between progressive and traditional
  discourses

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Devin Response to McIntosh, White Privilege

• We just dont see it because we have unearned
  advantages of being white. We dont see that
  because we are brought up this waynotice there
  isnt a whole lot on how poorly we treated
  others. In a way we are dictators of other
  cultures. I say this because we enclaves a race
  for almost 200 years.

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Devin Response to Savage Inequalities

• But what values lie in a city like this? The
  school can hardly be considered an institute of
  learning. The sewage is backed up so bad it
  squishes underneath the one piece of decent land
  they have, they are poorly fed, and the crime
  rate is unbelievable.

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Devin Response to Yellow Raft in Blue Water

• We thought that life on a reservation itself
  automatically puts you in a lower classhow being
  born into certain situations or lifestyles put
  you closer or further from the goal line in the
  game of success. Being born into life on a
  reservation puts you down at the bottom a ways.

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Devins development

• Others worlds are different from his own
• Characters identities are shaped by worlds that
  limit them
• Shift from model of individualism to one of
  institutional critique
• They said if you work hard for it, you get what
  you deserve, and thats not necessarily true,
  because the racism in society is really strong
  when you try to get a job.

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Blog role-play and wiki writing Montana 1948

• Montana 1948
• http//missboeser.googlepages.com/montana1948
• Blog Roleplay "Fighting Sioux" mascot
• http//roleplaymascots.blogspot.com/
• Wiki site
• http//jhscollegewritingmontana.pbwiki.com/

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Dan Snidyr, owner of the Washington Redskins

• I believe that we should not change it. The name
  the "Redskins" is not meant to affend anyone of
  any race. "It means wonderful things. It means
  success, it means pride, it means integrity,
  honor and winning tradition. All of those great
  things, plus many more, are what the Redskins are
  all about for Washington and all of the
  Washington Redkin fans throughout the nation."
  http//web.syr.edu/ajhill/dan.html

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Winona Yepa

• As a Native American women, I am also very
  offended by the name "redskins". Perhaps your
  name should be changed to Washington Whitetrash"
  then perhaps you could see why I feel the way I
  do about the name. We are native American's, not
  redskins. I find it to be a very offensive name.
  At least NDSU has enough respect for Native
  americans to address us properly as "Sioux" the
  fighting part is debatable but they don't refer
  to us as "redskins". we have names.

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Student perspective-taking

• At first I was indifferent and wanted the NCAA to
  leave them alone so the pinion of my character
  was the opposite. Felicia wanted it to be
  changed. After this role-play I think the Sioux
  should be the ones to decide if the mascot should
  stay of not. I feel that since I am more
  educated on the subject and look at the issue
  through another persons point-of-view I can see
  more reason to have the mascot changed that to
  have it stay.

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Summary

• Dialogic tensions serve to challenge status-quo
  discourses
• Temporary trying on of alternative discourses
  when presented with hypothetical situation
• Shifts in perspectives
• possible to challenge the hegemonic discourses
  constituting the students identities

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Carol Lee (Culture, Literacy, Learning)
Cultural modeling

• Textbooks little on knowing how to interpret
  literature
• Model how-to interpretive strategies
• Rules of Notice Titles, key events, ending
• Rules of signification Whats significant
  violation of social norms in stories-- point of
  a story
• Draw on students funds of knowledge
• Cultural data sets rap/signifying --gt
  understanding symbolic language use

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Uses of mapping in studying identity construction

• Recognition of institutional forces shaping
  events and spaces
• Discourses of race, class, and gender
• Visually portray performances according to three
  units of analysis
• Events
• Spaces
• Social worlds/systems

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Teaching strategies

• Concrete examples and issues grounded in their
  everyday experiences
• East St. Louis
• Affirmative Action
• Recognize white students subjective
  defensiveness related to race
• Avoid tokenism As an X minority, what has been
  your experience?

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Teaching strategies

• define the different social worlds/systems
  operating in a text.
• infer how characters switch from first to third
  person perspectives to perceive themselves as
  shaped/limited by these worlds/systems
• determine how characters are supporting or
  resisting status quo practices/norms .
• identify tensions and contradictions reflected in
  characters competing perspectives and discourses

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Coping with own tensions/contradictions

• identify issues/challenges related to status-quo
  discourse or practices in their school.
• infer how these practices reflect competing
  institutional agendas.
• draw on beliefs about teaching to determine the
  limitations of status-quo practices.
• devise alternative, counter-narratives,
  curriculum and strategies to address these
  limitations.

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Importance your own beliefs or theories about
teaching

• document the value of employing this
  curriculum/strategies in terms of student
  engagement and learning.
• gain agency through being a change-agent resist
  pressure to conform to the status-quo.
• continually revise ones beliefs about the nature
  of English and uses of literacy tools.

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Preservice Teachers Contradictions

• Student teaching--Whos the student versus
  whos the teacher
• Schooling teacher basic skills/prepare for test
  versus students active uses of digital
  literacies
• Adopt the status-quo curriculum but be innovative

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Emily 1st

• the school in located is a traditionally white,
  working-class community that in recent years
  (about the last 10 years) has been more and more
  populated by students of color (mostly Latino,
  but also some black kids). All of these things
  converge to make my school a somewhat tense
  building. Never have I experienced that tension
  more than when I first arrived.

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Emily Student engagement in a wiki project

• My students said that they would rather do a
  wiki project, even though it was more difficult,
  because they enjoyed writing for an audience
  besides myself. I also found that I got better
  quality of work and better engagement in the
  project from my students on the wiki projects
  than on the essays that I forced them to write

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Emily Criticism from colleagues

• I was also developing a reputation at my school.
  Before people even really knew my name I was the
  "wiki teacher" who booked up all of the computer
  labs. While most teachers were admiring in their
  comments, I almost got the sense that there was a
  bit of jealousy or "Who does she think she is?
  She should be teaching in the classroom instead
  of futzing with the computers".

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Emily Tensions

• I felt the disconnect between what I had been
  taught to do and what got me the approval of my
  peers, which, like it or not, is actually
  important when you teach in a school. When one
  decides to be an agent of change in his or her
  building, one is going to encounter not just
  professional pressure, but also social pressure.

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Emily Motivation for change

• I have pushed my media literacy agenda perhaps to
  the detriment of my own personal/professional
  life because it is simply more fun to be a
  classroom full of kids who are really engaged
  than it is to fight them.

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Emily Need to take a stand

• If we are going to be agents of change, if we are
  going to teach media literacy and defend it using
  scholastic, theoretical arguments, we will be
  doing so in an actual school, with actual
  teachers whose last education credit was received
  years ago, and who aren't as interested in what
  works for the students as they are in what works
  for them as teachers. We have to be ready to face
  that social opposition and figure out how to
  respond in such a way that we don't compromise
  ourselves as teachers and professionals or as
  social beings who need a relatively pleasant
  place to work.