Chapter 6: Race and Anti-racist Pedagogical Possibilities in World Language Teaching
Abstract
Following the recent racial reckoning in the field of applied linguistics (Willis et al., 2022), this chapter offers an overview of the scholarship on the relationship between race/racialization and world language (WL) education. We begin by providing a brief historical background of second language education and its close connection to white settler colonialism throughout much of the world. Informed by frameworks such as Critical Race Theory (CRT) and raciolinguistics – both of which argue that race is a central and inseparable aspect of our everyday social lives, including language use and teaching – our chapter then introduces the existing literature that centers around race in language learning and teaching. As an attempt to decolonize epistemological racism (that is, to challenge and disrupt the ways that racism is embedded in knowledge and ways of knowing) that has been a result of English-centric tendencies in the published scholarship (e.g., Kubota, 2020), our discussion of the current scholarship intentionally avoids studies that investigate English language teaching/learning; instead, we focus on the teaching of Languages Other Than English (LOTEs). We examine how race/racialization is integral to the students’ experience of studying abroad as well as in the classroom. In addition, while raciolinguistic ideologies may reproduce subjective positions that resist change in WL education, we aim to show that it is possible to disrupt white supremacy if we can carefully and deliberately incorporate CRT perspectives in language teaching. We conclude with a case analysis of a US-based Chinese language educator who was struggling with the surging anti-Asian racism during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through reading her interview narrative and journal entries, readers are guided to critically reflect on their own experiences and positions, and to brainstorm possibilities for change.
摘要：
紧随应用语言学领域近年对于种族意识的觉醒 (Willis et al., 2022)，本章概述了种族或种族化与世界语言教育关系的学术研究。我们首先简要地提供了一个关于第二语言教育与白人殖民主义密切联系的历史背景。批判性种族理论 (Critical Race Theory) 和种族语言学(raciolinguistics) 这两个概念都提出种族是我们日常社会生活中（包括语言使用和教学）的一个核心且不可分割的方面。在这些概念的启发下，本章节随后介绍了围绕语言学习和教学中的种族议题的现有文献。目前在学术发表中以英语为中心的倾向进一步造成了认识论的种族主义 (e.g., Kubota, 2020) 而为了对这种种族主义进行去殖民化，我们的综述有意识地避开了调查英语教学的研究，转而集中在关于其他非英语语种 (LOTEs) 教学的研究上。我们通过综述检视了种族和种族化如何贯穿学生在留学以及课堂上的语言学习经历。此外，尽管种族语言的意识形态可能会进一步抵制世界语言教育的变革，但如果我们能在语言教学中谨慎地融入批判性种族理论的观点，则有可能通过世界语言教学来破除白人至上主义。最后，我们分享了一位在美国COVID-19大流行期间与激增的反亚裔种族主义作斗争的中文教育者的案例。通过阅读她的采访和日记，我们希望引导读者批判性地反思自己的经历和立场，并思考促进公平教育的可能性。
Keywords
Antiracism in education, Critical race theory (CRT), Raciolinguistics, Whiteness
Critical race theory (CRT) was originally proposed by legal scholars in the 1980s out of frustration with the existing discourses around civil rights and racism. Racism until then was perceived as a particular set of conditions and actions, which was considered to be no longer common in the American mainstream – and particularly in legal and other institutional spaces. The central proposal of CRT was therefore to reject the status quo as the ideal for racial justice and instead to argue that racism continues to be systemic, epidemic, and institutionalized (Crenshaw et al., 1995). Racism in this sense is no longer limited to explicit and formal exclusion of people of color – which has been largely, if not entirely, prohibited. In order to continuously progress towards racial justice, we must recognize and combat the many implicit forms of discrimination and racial politics. Framed by CRT theory, language educators’ recent work (e.g., Anya, 2021) argues that WL teaching should also reject a color-blind assumption and instead embrace race as a key principle that organizes who comes to language classes, studies what language(s), for what goals, and how they learn.
Raciolinguistics (e.g., Alim et al., 2016) rejects races as a variable that conditions language use; instead, it argues that race and language are inseparable from each other. This line of thinking can be traced to early sociolinguistics research that examines race as a variable that conditions how we use language (e.g., Labov’s works on African American Vernacular English). Later, Jane Hill’s (1998) pioneering work on Mock Spanish – the excessively Anglicized use of Spanish to mock Latinx individuals and communities in the United States– revealed the central role that language plays in reinforcing, redistributing, and normalizing such everyday racism (Hill, 2008).
Critical race theory (CRT) was originally proposed by legal scholars in the 1980s out of frustration with the existing discourses around civil rights and racism. Racism until then was perceived as a particular set of conditions and actions, which was considered to be no longer common in the American mainstream – and particularly in legal and other institutional spaces. The central proposal of CRT was therefore to reject the status quo as the ideal for racial justice and instead to argue that racism continues to be systemic, epidemic, and institutionalized (Crenshaw et al., 1995). Racism in this sense is no longer limited to explicit and formal exclusion of people of color – which has been largely, if not entirely, prohibited. In order to continuously progress towards racial justice, we must recognize and combat the many implicit forms of discrimination and racial politics. Framed by CRT theory, language educators’ recent work (e.g., Anya, 2021) argues that WL teaching should also reject a color-blind assumption and instead embrace race as a key principle that organizes who comes to language classes, studies what language(s), for what goals, and how they learn.