Читать книгу More Than an Ally - Michael L. Boucher Jr. - Страница 17

To understand the interplay of race, power, and pedagogy in classrooms headed by White teachers, it is important to understand the power of whiteness as a concept and as a force in the classroom. According to Frankenberg (1993), there are three dimensions to whiteness. First is the “structural advantage” of the White power structure and its accompanying privileges. Second is the “standpoint” or positionality of being White and seeing the world through that lens. Third, whiteness “carries with it a set of ways of being in the world, a set of cultural practices, often not named as ‘white’ by white [people] but looked on instead as ‘American’ or ‘normal’” (p. 54).

The powerful concept of normality allows White people to assume that all others are abnormal or diverse and that their diversity from the norm is pathology. Oftentimes a cure is sought through the education system. As Levine-Rasky, (2000) explained,

traditional solutions to inequitable educational outcomes for racialized groups of students have been directed to the putative problems of these racialized others (“them”) and to the challenges in implementing culturally sensitive pedagogy (the space between “us” and “them”) rather than to the workings of the dominant culture itself. (p. 272)

This division between us (White, middle class, legacy educated, dominantly cultured) and them (anything not in that list). Levine-Rasky (2000) continued,

There is a willingness, for example, to increase the skills of marginalized groups through programmes catering to “their needs,” such as special education, remedial reading, and segregated behavioural classes. There is a concomitant failure, however, to penetrate the source of marginalization for these identified groups, and thus little commitment to provide these students with the same possibilities as those available to dominant groups. Indeed, the need for special programmes and the student failure observed in them continues to be explained by problems residing with the students and their families. (p. 272)

One example is the enforcement of standard English in classrooms. Whiteness allows teachers who enforce rules about what is acceptable speech in the classroom to think they are caring and equipping the next generation to cope in a world where the values and language of whiteness are the norm. These teachers are able to view themselves as empowering their students by acculturating them more deeply in the culture of whiteness. Frustratingly, many acts of White supremacy are so wrapped up in how White teachers show caring that it is often difficult for White people to even see themselves as having this mental framework (Gaztambide-Fernández, 2012; Gray, 2019).

The debate over African American Vernacular English (AAVE) rages among teachers and scholars of different backgrounds (Gay, 2010; Seltzer, 2019). Godley et al. (2006) found that teacher attitudes about and against AAVE result in deficit thinking and stigmatization, which lead to lower expectations of students who use AAVE. However, AAVE is not a deficit. It is a fund of knowledge and a community asset. It allows communication within the group, and White teachers of African American students would be well served by being versed in it.

Teachers in solidarity with students around the issues of communication and language understand that strategizing with students, enabling them to code-switch between AAVE and the dominant register in class is necessary for long-term success (Delpit, 1988/2006). To insist on a White culturally specific register as the only way to speak in a classroom alienates teachers from students, inhibiting the creation of solidarity (Souto-Manning, 2013).