Week 10 Reading Response

Week 10: Race, language, and identity: Critical multiculturalism in TESOL


SUMMARY:

The first reading for this week was written by Awad Ibrahim. The title is "Becoming Black: Rap and Hip-Hop, Race, Gender, Identity, and the Politics of ESL Learning". The article focuses on the impact that a social imaginary has on ESL learners in a community. Ibrahim examined the effect that Black Stylized English had on a group of refugee status immigrants within the context of an urban, French-Language high school in southwestern Ontario, Canada. Ibrahim defines BSE as well as how it relates to hip-hop culture. Ibrahim explains his involvement with the school as well, which went beyond the researcher/participant dichotomy. The author conducted individual interviews as well as two focus-group interview sessions. Finally, from his data, Ibrahim discussed how particular individuals perceived themselves in relation to the community they had emigrated to. The author also discussed how this perception influenced their acclimatization to the English-speaking community.


The second reading was a selection from Ryuko Kubota and Angel Lin's book "Race, Culture, and Identities in Second Language Education". The selection was the first chapter of the book and is meants to be an introduction to research and practice. In this section, the authors attempt to define race and culture with respect to TESOL, as well as present some theoretical backgrounds for the understanding of race or ethnicity within the field of TESOL. The authors also invoked Bordieu's concepts of habitus and cultural capital. The authors provide some inquiry themes for  second language education, which problematizes the concept of race within the TESOL classroom as well as examines some of the manifestations of biases within these contexts.


The last reading was "Hard Times: Arab TESOL Students' Experiences of Racialization and Othering in the United Kingdom" by Sarah Rich and Salah Troudi. This article was published in TESOL Quarterly and was included in the brief reports and summaries. As the authors write "The study sought to address the following research question: How far and in what ways do Arab Muslim students perceive racialization to be significant to their experiences of Othering in a TESOL community in the United Kingdom?" The participants were all graduate-level TESOL students at a UK university. The authors discuss two aspects of racism perceived by the participants, which were categorized as such: Othering based on Non-racial categories, and accounts of Othering based on racism. Understanding the limitations of this study being so brief, the authors suggested that it be used as a stepping-stone for further inquiry into racialization with respect to TESOL pedagogy and practitions.


REFLECTIONS:

I really enjoyed all the articles we were to read this week. In particular, the Ibrahim and the Rich & Troudi. It was fascinating to hear the stories of others who have experienced racism. As a white male from a middle-class background, I feel as though I have not experienced much otherization within my lifetime. So I feel as though it is important for me to hear these stories, and that seemed to be one of the cruxes of the readings (and of this class), that we (all) should attempt to experience and hear and understand the experiences of those different from ourselves. Empathy, man, what gives?

On a more serious note, it was at some point in the Kubota and Lin reading that I began to feel guilty about my decision to become a TESOL pedagog. It's hard to communicate, but when they started talking about attitudes toward the idea that native speakers should be the ones to teach English, I began to feel it, the guilt. The authors basically encouraged me to step back and examine the choices I've made in my life, and basically question the things I understood about myself and what I wanted to do as a career choice. It was very troubling to me. I wish I could communicate it more clearly. I'll have to look for the section again and examine the emotions it evoked last night.


Further Questions:

1. How does one broach the concept of race or ethnicity in an ESL classroom without allowing the conversation to devolve into white people talk like this, black people talk like this? (I have a feeling that this may be a loaded question, with a not so clear and straight-forward answer)

2. Can we ever talk about race too much?



Regards,
TfM