UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI Date:__12 May 2005_____

I, _Albertina Louise Walker____________________, hereby submit this work as part of the requirements for the degree of:

Ph.D.

in:

Interdisciplinary Studies

It is entitled: Colliding Colors: Race, Reflection, and Literacy in the Kaleidoscopic Space of an English Composition Class

This work and its defense approved by:

Chair: ___Russel K. Durst, Ph.D.______ ___Deborah Hicks, Ph.D._______ ___Annette Hemmings, Ph.D._____ _______________________________ _______________________________

Colliding Colors: Race, Reflection and Literacy in the Kaleidoscopic Space of an English Composition Class

A dissertation submitted to the

Division of Research and Advanced Studies

of the University of Cincinnati

in partial fulfillment of the

requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (Ph.D.)

in the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies

of the College of Arts and Sciences

2006

by

Albertina Louise Walker

B.S. Tuskegee Institute, 1984

M.A. University of Florida, 1987

Committee Chair: Professor Russel K. Durst, Ph.D.

v

ABSTRACT

Current approaches in composition and literacy research reflect a desire to better

understand and serve the increasingly diverse student bodies comprising U.S. colleges

and universities. Many such approaches challenge longstanding pedagogical assumptions

that re-inscribe traditional notions of autonomous literacy and educational standards, yet

leave whiteness as a racial identity transparent.

The present study contributes to this turn in research by considering the role of

race in the experiences and performances of students in an English composition class. A

clearer understanding of what occurs relationally among diverse student writers may

offer insights into why student performance differences persist nationally along racial

lines. The immediate value of this study is its connection to an on-going investigation of

critical pedagogies at the university in which it is situated.

The study focuses on a section of English 102 at a large, urban university in the

Midwest. Without forcing students to address race or other cultural elements, course

readings and writing assignments accommodate critiques of these subjects. Thus, writings

generated by these assignments along with data on classroom dynamics are used to

explore how students experience race as discursive practices.

Management and analysis of data proceeded according to standard qualitative

research protocols for grounded theory. Distinct categories within data sets were

identified and repackaged as observational and textual data. Coded data were reduced to

feature key relationships and textual discourse features. Linkages in the data to the

study’s theory framework were identified and grouped for interpretation.

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Of the twenty students who form the investigation’s base, nine are featured in

case studies: four of the five black students and five of the fifteen white students in the

class. Tentative findings within each case study were cross-checked towards the

construction of an explanatory framework.

Findings suggest that students perform race as discursive social practices in their

classroom interactions and texts that can both enhance and confound literacy learning.

They underscore a vital role of the composition classroom as a site for productive

collisions of culture, literacy, and ideology toward enhanced racial tolerance and

knowledge.

Findings also suggest that students write to and against prevailing social

narratives, employing discursive enactment and recognition work toward authorizing new

narratives, re-authorizing some, and transforming others to create space for new,

developing ideologies on race. Transformative gestures suggest the development of a

critical understanding of the racial self and racial other as discursive social constructions,

an understanding that might be called racial literacy.

ii

© Copyright 2006

iii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The journey to the end of this dissertation has been wonderful, bittersweet,

halting, exhilarating, and bustling with incredible people whose support and

encouragement are woven onto every page. I am most grateful to my maternal

grandmother, Mrs. Louise Marie Stephens Cummings, to whom this dissertation is

dedicated. Thank you, Mommie, for praying while I read, thought, and wrote. Thank you

for dancing with us and for teaching us how to pray, love, listen, work, and live elegantly

on earth.

I am grateful to family members and friends who kept me sane and the children

fed during my late husband Kenneth’s transition—to my mother, Miss Lilla, for

everything; my in-laws Cecil and Ethel Walker; the Aunts; my beautiful sisters—Venus,

Delores, Frances, Angela, Vicki, Mignon, and Ingrid; my church family—Dee Lynn,

Annalisa Patricia, Michelle Moore, Wave, and so many more. Thank you for providing

the support and motivation I needed to resume and complete the journey.

There would be no interdisciplinary dissertation without my committee—Russel

Durst, Chair; Deborah Hicks; and Annette Hemmings. Their scholarship in Composition

Studies, New Literacy Studies, and qualitative research methodology, respectively,

inspires this project and invokes my deepest gratitude. I want to thank Jerrie Cobb Scott

who taught me two decades ago that literacies are socially-situated “ways of knowing,”

that they are infinite, and that their deliberate use can transform lives. I also want to thank

Andrew Hughey whose provocative ways with words and logic make him a writer’s

perfect companion.

iv

I am grateful to the teacher and students in English Composition 102, Section K

for accommodating my presence in their classroom, and to my peer graduate students for

sharing with me their teaching experiences. Also, I am grateful to the students who

participated in the dissertation pilot study, for their contributions helped shape the

research concept.

Finally, to the Two—Victor Kenneth Walker and Lilena Marie Walker: You are

more brilliant than you know. Pray hard. Work smart. And shine, my darlings, shine.

1

COLLIDING COLORS: RACE, REFLECTION, AND LITERACY IN THE KALEIDOSCOPIC SPACE

OF AN ENGLISH COMPOSITION CLASS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS………………………………………………………………. iii ABSTRACT…...…………………………………………………………………………..v CHAPTER ONE ORIGINS OF THE STUDY ……………………………………………………………...2 CHAPTER TWO LITERATURE BASE……………………………………………………………………22

CHAPTER THREE RESEARCH METHODS AND DATA ANALYSIS………………….………………...67 CHAPTER FOUR REFLECTIONS OF SELF AND OTHER IN KALEIDOSCOPIC CLASSROOM SPACE…………………………..……………107 CHAPTER FIVE REFLECTIONS OF RACE AND LITERACY IN STUDENT WRITING………………………………………………………………160 CHAPTER SIX DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS………………………………………………...247 WORKS CITED………………………………………………………………………..261 APPENDIX…………………………………………………………………………….269 A. English Composition 102, Section K Course Readings B. English Composition 102, Section K Writing Assignments C. Semi-structured Qualitative Interview Questions

2

CHAPTER ONE

ORIGINS OF STUDY

It surprises no one who knows me that I am researching race. I was raised in

southeast Alabama during the era that witnessed the end of legalized school segregation

and the beginning of something foreign: daily interactions with white folks. I joined

white students not only in the classroom but in the marching band and in local

recreational facilities as well. Looking back, I see now that much of my racial self-

awareness was shaped by others’ reactions to me. Until those interactions with white

people, I was aware only of a personal blackness that I experienced naturally, and an

historical blackness made conscious to me through stories I heard from The Aunts, in

books, and during Black History programs in our community. By the time I started high

school in 1976, I felt a sense of peace within our racially diverse world, even though

“diverse” in our town meant black folk and white folk living across town from each

other, with black students being bused to the town’s only high school. It was not until the

fall of 1977 that I became aware of something else, something strained about race, the

world, and my place in it.

Mr. Rickman, my high school band director, asked me and three other members

of the high school marching band—some 200 members strong—to join a community

delegation in receiving former governor of Alabama, George Wallace, during his visit to

our hometown. This visit was to mark Wallace’s return to public life following the 1972

assassination attempt that left him paralyzed. I agreed to do so, as did the three other band

members, and we prepared our horns and uniforms for the honor—Tracy, first-chair flute

3

section leader; Brad, first chair trombone and section leader; Janna, first chair tuba and

section leader, and me, twenty-first chair flute.

When I told my folks about the invitation, they were ecstatic, and after a week of

anticipating it, the day finally arrived.

Once in place at the Civic Center, we stood alongside a state-appointed color

guard waiting to shake Wallace’s hand before he was rolled onto center stage. Each of us

shook his hand, but as Wallace clasped mine with both of his, several bulbs flashed. The

next day, a picture of that hand shake was featured on the front page of our city

newspaper.

In a perfect world, a photo of the aging, partially paralyzed George Wallace

shaking hands with a young black girl might have marked the beginning of racial healing.

Picture it. Now remember the infamous image of a young Wallace standing defiantly on

the steps in front of the University of Alabama fourteen years earlier, protesting a young

black woman’s nationally-mandated admission to the university. In our imperfect

community, the fallout was immediate and intense.

Black leaders from around the city called my mother, demanding to know how

she could allow me to be used by “the Wallace machine” to further its racist goals.

Willful tokenism was synonymous with Uncle Tom-ism in our part of Alabama, and the

fact that I even attended the event after black leaders called for its boycott meant I had

crossed the line. White students I did not know ridiculed my having been chosen to

represent the band—“She’s twenty-first chair out of twenty-three flutes!” Black friends I

adored shied away from me for weeks following the event, and recently-acquired white

friends disappeared altogether. White southern conservatives lashed out at the paper for

4

publishing the picture of their beloved icon of the old South so disposed, and angry

townsfolk made prank calls to our home for weeks. The communal outrage culminated

for me with a very public denunciation by Hannah, another flutist, who lost control

during a band practice and yelled, “You’re black and you’re nearly last chair! Why did

you get picked?!” In her tear-filled eyes, I saw myself reflected as the larger world might

have seen me—different from her, separate from her, and yet connected to her by social

and historical forces that mediated space and power differentials between us. At that

moment, I became acutely aware of the guilt, shame, assumptions, and fear constituting

black and white folks’ notions of themselves, and each other, as raced.

The context for this dissertation is an understanding, shaped especially by this

experience, that beliefs about race affect what happens in social and learning

environments, and that what happens in social and learning environments affects beliefs

about race. The site for this research is a large university located in a Midwestern city

known for its volatile race relations. At the time this research data was being collected,

events leading up to the 2001 Cincinnati race riots—or uprising, as it is known in some

black communities, were well underway. Civic rage was being fueled by charges of

systemic police brutality against black men. It culminated in April, 2001 with a white

police officer shooting and killing a 19 year-old black man. Three days of looting,

rioting, and shooting followed, the likes of which the city had not witnessed since the

1960’s.

Presently, the city’s police are embroiled in a federal investigation of its racial

profiling and excessive use-of-force, and the subject of race dominate public

conversations. In fact, race related news coverage by the city’s media collaborative is

5

maintained online in a site called, “Matters of Race: Bridging the Divide in Greater

Cincinnati.

While recent events and current attempts to stem the tide of racial tension are

newsworthy, the racial divide in Cincinnati is not new. History shows that Cincinnati was

and remains one of the most racially segregated large cities in Ohio, a status maintained

by ideological and residential borders. In 1913, Sociologist Frank U. Quillin published a

survey of racial prejudice in several Ohio cities including Cincinnati that was nearly

prophetic. He found racial prejudice in Ohio to be markedly stronger in 1910 than it had

been in 1865. Moreover, he found that racial tensions in Ohio cities increased as the

proportion of blacks in these areas increased. Most surprising, Quillin found that blacks

in Ohio were worse off economically than blacks in the South, and predicted that “in

time, northern racial attitudes would be no different from attitudes in the South, and then

‘the Negro problem’ would take on national dimensions” (125-127). Among Ohio’s large

cities, Cincinnati emerges as a quintessential site for studying the national race dilemma.

Approaching Racial Literacy and Racial Parity in U.S. Universities

Efforts to heal racial ideologies and the separations they preserve assume their

most aggressive forms in U.S. colleges and universities. In response to current legal and

popular challenges to race-based college admission practices—and to affirmative action

in general—scholars in educational leadership have found it necessary to “articulate

clearly” the educational purposes and benefits of diversity. In the article, “Diversity and

Higher Education: Theory and Impact on Educational Outcomes,” Patricia Gurin, Eric

Dey, Sylvia Hurtado, and Gerald Gurin explore relationships among racially-diverse

college students in a university setting and examine their educational outcomes.

6

Specifically, they sought to examine “whether informal interaction with diverse peers had

significant effects independent of the effects of classroom diversity” (342). Their study

and findings are summarized as follows:

Rooted in theories of cognitive development and social psychology, the

authors present a framework for understanding how diversity introduces

the relational discontinuities critical to identity construction and its

subsequent role in fostering cognitive growth. Using both single- and

multi-institutional data from the University of Michigan and the

Cooperative Institutional Research Program, the authors go on to examine

the effects of classroom diversity and informal interaction among African

American, Asian American, Latino/a, and White students on learning and

democracy outcomes. The results of their analyses underscore the

educational and civic importance of informal interaction among different

racial and ethnic groups during the college years. The authors offer their

findings as evidence of the continuing importance of affirmative action

and diversity efforts by colleges and universities, not only as a means of

increasing access to higher education for greater numbers of students, but

also as a means of fostering students’ academic and social growth. (330)

The data sets used in their study are Michigan Student Survey (MSS), a survey of

students who entered the University of Michigan in 1990 and a subsequent survey four

years later; and the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP), a national survey

conducted by UCLA’s Higher Educational Research Institute. The MSS sample was

composed of 1,129 White students, 187 African American students, and 266 Asian

7

American students while the CIRP survey included 216 African American, 496 Asian

American, 206 Latino/a, and 10,465 White students who entered 184 predominantly

White, four-year institutions in 1985 and who also completed surveys four years later.

With so few non-white study participants, their findings reflect informal interactions

between diverse student groups, not formal, classroom interactions. They explain their

research instruments as follows:

Experiences with informal interactional diversity were measured in both

studies. In the CIRP, this experience was measured by an index

summarizing responses to three questions asked in 1989 about the extent

to which students, over their college years, had socialized with someone

from a different racial/ethnic group, had discussed racial issues, and had

attended a racial/cultural awareness workshop. In the MSS, an index

summarizing responses to several questions asked in 1994 was used to

measure informal interaction. Two questions probed the positive quality of

interracial/interethnic interactions in college, asking students how much

such interactions had involved “meaningful and honest discussions about

race and ethnic relations” and “sharing of personal feelings and

problems.” Another asked students to describe the gender, geographical

home residency, and race/ethnicity of their “six closest friends at

Michigan.” For this measure we coded for the number of friends who were

not of the students’ own racial/ethnic group. The last question focused on

quantity rather than quality, asking how much contact they had at

Michigan with racial/ethnic groups other than their own. For White

8

students we included contact with African American, Asian American,

and Latino/a students, and for African American and Asian American

students we included contact with White students in this measure of

informal interactional diversity. (343)

Despite their inclusion of a few qualitative elements, the nature and goals of the

Gurin et al. research are quantitative: to demonstrate using statistically-significant

evidence that the educational benefits of diversity cannot be achieved without the

presence of racially/ethnically diverse peers. As they predict, the researchers discover

positive diversity effects for white and Latino students at statistically-significant levels.

Thus, they demonstrate that a majority of students at predominantly white institutions

benefit from informal interactions with diverse learners in ways that contribute to cultural

tolerance, understanding, and the democratic ideals conducive to effective learning

environments. According to the authors, this demonstration refutes suggestions by the

1996 Hopwood v. University of Texas ruling abolishing affirmative action in admissions

that the educational benefits of diversity could be achieved via curricula and without the

presence of racially or ethnically diverse peers (359). What does not get explored further,

however, is that they find, also at statistically-significant levels, that diversity experiences

for African American and Asian American students are mixed, inconsistent, or negative

(350-362).

Thus, while the Gurin et al. study acknowledges and investigates whiteness along

with other racial identities in a scholarly exploration of diversity on educational

outcomes, their research contributes little to understandings of how diverse learners’

formal classroom interactions affect educational outcomes.

9

In order to approach an understanding of how racially-different learners’ formal

interactions affect literacy performances and experiences, it is important to move beyond

numerical descriptions and deductive interpretations of student encounters and reported

beliefs. The examination of qualitative ethnographic data on the students as “raced”

individuals might have provided answers to the Gurin et al. observation of black and

Asian students’ mixed, inconsistent, and/or negative diversity experiences. Toward such

qualitative ends, this dissertation study aims to examine and interpret inductively what

students’ diversity experiences mean in terms of learning within the locally-specific

context of an actual classroom.

A Location for Observing “Raced” Individuals: The English 102 Classroom

Most English composition programs consist of either one course or a sequence of

courses that require an entire year to complete, unless students test out of one or more

courses during placement examinations. The first writing course, English 101, typically

certifies that students recognize and can produce persuasive variations of the major

genres of academic discourse—e.g., the profile, causal analysis, and argumentation

essays. The second course, English 102, often aims to help students develop a critical

stance on issues relevant to on-going cultural debates and features an extensive set of

readings used to stimulate critical dialogues and well-documented essays. The third

course, English 103, seeks to further refine students’ critical abilities while honing their

interpretive skills as they read and write about world literatures.

The composition program examined in this investigation differs little from that of

most large, urban universities in the Midwest. Run on academic quarters, the English

composition program employs the three-course sequence of writing courses summarized

10

above. It appears to be rather homogenous both in terms of socio-economic class (mostly

middle-class) and racial composition since there are often no more than three or four

visually distinguishable “races” of students in a classroom. At the same time, success

rates and performance patterns among students reflect a starkly heterogeneous population

of students.

An English composition 102 course serves as the site of this investigation. I chose

English 102 since students struggle more with it, particularly the critical reading and

research components, than with the other two. Because of this, the course is

acknowledged as an informal indicator of whether or not students complete the three-

quarter course sequence. Part of the reason students often do poorly is that here they

refine and extend the production of written arguments with the addition of critical reading

and writing activities. They must also include appropriately used sources to support their

essays. Another part is that the English 102 research paper requires a depth of inquiry

with which many students are unaccustomed. A final part may be students’ discomfort

with the goals and tasks associated with the course. During the four years preceding this

study, English 102 aimed to help students develop a critical stance on issues relevant to

on-going cultural debates involving gender, race, conservative and liberal politics, social

inequities, social privilege and so forth. The text used in the course at that time was

Rereading America, an overtly politically-charged set of readings that encouraged

students to articulate their developing political and personal ideologies. An earlier

researcher of this program noted that students do not readily participate in critical

conversation on issues they consider to be either sacrosanct or difficult, avoiding the

issue of race more consistently than they did any other topic:

11

Throughout the 102 course, students strongly resisted the textbook’s

questioning and critical attitude toward United States culture. They

defended and affirmed the existence of the traditional family; expressed

faith in the idea that, with hard work and a good attitude, anybody with

talent and desire can become successful; and voted with their feet by

avoiding the potentially controversial topics of racial difference and

prejudice. (Durst 157)

The theoretical and pedagogical underpinnings of English 102 as it existed before

this study are as follows:

English 102...shifts the focus from writing about primarily personal

experience and knowledge to reading and writing about larger cultural and

political issues that help to shape contemporary thought....The course was

based on a cultural studies and critical pedagogy framework applied to

composition, drawing upon the work of Giroux (1983, 1988), Harkin

(1991) and McLaren (1994), and other politically and socially oriented

perspectives. Emphasis in the class was on self-reflection, critical analysis

of one’s own positions and those of others, and development of increased

understanding of the rhetorical and political power of texts not just to

communicate but to shape thought. (Durst 17-18)

While the value of cultural studies is firmly established in the field of composition

studies from a theoretical perspective, the practical business of having it work to

administrators’ desired ends is quite challenging for teachers and students alike. For

teachers, the act of presenting, eliciting, and allowing culturally-charged discourse

12

requires continuous self-reflection and repositioning. It means remaining disinterested in

a sea of discourse that, by its nature, constitutes ingrained beliefs. For many young

people, the act of constructing, sharing, and commenting on culturally-charged discourse

is often highly emotional since it can threaten their developing sense of who they are,

expose vulnerabilities, and invite criticism. This occurs most often when discussions of

politics are reduced to the cultures and socio-histories of students in the class. It can

occur when zealous instructors aim at “pointing out injustices and instigating change”

(Villanueva 249). It can occur because students’ cultural contexts invalidate the required

tasks. These were the experiences of the ten black students whose experiences I explored

an earlier dissertation pilot study.

In the pilot, ten African American students in a spring quarter English 103 course

were interviewed and asked about their experiences in the English program. Transcripts

of the audio taped interviews and copies of student essays were coded for patterns of

activities, behaviors, and attitudes according to standard, qualitative procedures for open-

coding. Patterns were arranged into seven categories of experience: Experiences of

writing tasks, reading tasks, and classroom activities for each of the three English

composition courses; student-teacher interaction; educational contexts for writing

experiences; family and social contexts for literacy experiences (these include material

and economic contexts); and students’ ideational contexts for writing, their values and

beliefs about literacy.

Pilot study findings suggest that while African American students enter the

English composition program with knowledge of writing conventions, they may

encounter writing tasks requiring the revelation of thoughts on subject matter deemed too

13

personal to write about in class. I observed that students possessing greater mastery of

writing conventions simply “wrote around” their deeper, personal insights, crafting

sophisticated essays that reflected what they perceived to be acceptable “safe” positions.

One of the stronger writers, Leroy, explained:

We were talking (in class) about male sensitivity and this guy was talking

about how it was okay for men to cry and all that. Most of the Black guys

I know, they don’t talk like, “Yeah, man, I just cried and hugged all my

friends,” and stuff like that. That’s silly to me. I think growing up Black,

you don’t have time for male sensitivity stuff. I was too busy dealing with

everyday nonsense that a lot of them didn’t have to put up with. Maybe

my being middle-class as far as money goes, some might see me as being

less than Black in some way. It just seemed, though, that all these people

were talking about their world. I have my world too, and it ain’t got no

room for “male sensitivity” stuff…. I don’t write about my world, but I

talk about it. I’ll tell my friend about a subject that I want to write about,

and he’s like, “Naw. It’s too Black. They won’t understand.” He says I

should do something everyone could relate to-- something that would go

over easy. Like, instead of writing about the Black Family Reunion, you

might write instead about going to [a local amusement park] ....I’d like to

write about race dating-- how Black men relate to Black women and

White women, but there is no forum for that here. If I wrote about [these

things]... some of the white people I’m cool with might look at me in a

different way. My teachers might look at me in a different way and form

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opinions or whatever. So, in a case like this, I would have to go with

whatever would make everything a little smoother as far as coming to

class, getting the grade and all that is concerned. Yeah, it’s important, but

you got to think the couple o’ thousand we’re paying for school is more

important.

Leroy is unwilling to either discuss in class or write down on paper his truest thoughts

about the issue at hand—male sensitivity, or bring up the subject he would not mind

discussing in class—race relations. Leroy was the only black student in his writing class.

When several of the other ten students expressed similar experiences, I knew I wanted to

explore how race, pedagogy, and diverse classrooms support or detract from literacy

learning. I decided to ask the teachers of these diverse writing classrooms, my peer

graduate students primarily, about their experiences with teaching racially diverse

classes.

Appearing and Disappearing Colors in the Composition Classroom

During the year of study, there were approximately 340 African Americans

enrolled in Freshman English out of approximately 1,900 Freshman English students. In

other words, 18% of the students in freshmen English were African American, a ratio

consistent with university statistics on student race for the past ten years (see Chapter

Three). As a result, many of the graduate teaching assistants had taught two or three

black students in their classes in an academic year. At the same time, eight out of ten

students in the pilot study had been the sole black student in her or his English classes

during the three-quarter academic year. This suggests that more black students may have

placed in Arts and Sciences English than actually took the A&S English course sequence.

15

When I asked students in the pilot study why they though this occurred, several

reported that many black students opted to stay in University College English, the

university’s developmental English sequence, because “their friends are there.” They

attend the first A&S class meeting or so, gauge their comfort levels, and decide to take

the UC English sequence. Thus, it appears that for some black students on this racially-

tense campus, being among others of their race was more desired than being in the

English course sequence appropriate to their abilities.

Many graduate teaching assistants and composition instructors also notice that

black students often appear and then disappear from their class rosters. When I asked

them what happened, some said the students simply “don’t come back.” I so wanted to

ask, “Where did they go? Why didn’t you find out where they went? Why didn’t you call

and discover why they went away?” But I did not. As the only black doctoral students in

the program at that time, and one who asked questions about race almost as soon as she

arrived at this university, in this city, I was not always a welcomed inquisitor. I made

people uncomfortable, I was uncomfortable, and yet I could not stop wondering where

“race appears and disappears,” as articulated by Catherine Prendergast, for my doing so

was driven by my scholarly desire to understand the phenomenon, as well as by a healthy

sense of self-preservation. So I began a list: Race as an issue in the classroom, according

to these teachers’ observations, disappears physically against a backdrop of white, “non-

raced” students. It had become a non-issue, and was not explored beyond the updated

class roster.

A few other graduate students reported that of the black students who remained in

A&S English, many did not participate in class or group discussions–did not share their

16

perspectives or voices–and subsequently did not produce evidence of the critical,

engaged, dialogic thinking valued in the program in either their essays or their classroom

interactions. My list grew: Race may disappear aurally in the classroom, becoming and

remaining a silent and challenged master narrative.

A few of the teaching assistants noted that black students tended to struggle with

sentence-level and development issues that interfered with the clear communication of

critical ideas and thoughts, especially in English 102. These teachers followed a

traditional protocol of referring students with sentence and other writing anomalies to the

writing center. Students whose writing did not meet teachers’ established criteria, even

after numerous visits to the center, often disappeared (officially known as “unofficial

withdrawal”) before outright failing the course. In these instances, race was referred out

of the classroom in the form of nonconforming discourse patterns and disappeared

rhetorically.

A couple of teachers observed that there were “no race issues” observable in their

classes—that black students and white students got along swimmingly. Indeed, they

attested that there were few cultural distinctions in students’ writing styles, obvious

academic experiences, discursive content, or participation patterns. For these instructors,

racially different individuals had morphed into a singular, mono-raced entity, suggesting

that race as an issue disappeared essentially.

By this time, I understood that researching race would be a most challenging

undertaking because researching any element of culture entails coming to terms with its

intertwining attendant elements. I had interviewed ten black students about their isolated

experiences in English composition. I had talked to their instructors about teaching

17

composition in diverse classrooms. I had explored my own experiences as a black student

among a nearly all-white peer group. And all I had were racialized perspectives—

fragments that neither cohered nor coalesced. I was no closer to even imagining a whole

story, or approach, or picture of how race might figure in a composition classroom

because of the ever-dynamic, fragmentary, polyphonic influence of culture on it all. One

thing was clear: I would need to observe black and white students’ experiences in a

classroom in order to better understand their dynamic, intersecting relationships. A

second thing would become clear after the collection of data: I would need a tool for

managing the competing, noisy eruptions of culture in my research and in myself.

Research Question and Metaphor as Tool: “Raced” Intersections of Culture in the

Kaleidoscopic Space of a Classroom

The semi-structured research question shaping and driving this investigation is as

follows:

How might race be implicated in students experiences and writings in this English

composition classroom?

By imagining the classroom space as kaleidoscopic space, I create a tool for

accommodating the nearly overwhelming, competing manifestations of culture in the

data—one that would cast them as a unifying, co-constructing context for race. Indeed,

the multi-racial students in the classroom, the pedagogy, the teacher, and my presence

there collided in unexpected ways to create a dynamic, time-bound palette for

interpreting the affect of race on writing and literacy.

This interrelationship is analogous to the relation of angles and mirrors in a

kaleidoscope, and to the transparent colored objects that take any number of perceived

18

forms according to how their images reflect, refract, and collide within the kaleidoscope

tube. The metaphor is inspired by Mikhal Bakhtin’s theory of carnival:

Carnival is the place for working out a new mode of interrelationship

between individuals…People who in life are separated by impenetrable

hierarchial barriers enter into free and familiar contact on the carnival

square. (123)

The topsy-turvy themes of carnival created new relations between human agencies and

social relationships that flaunted established hierarchies and transcended “existing social

forms” (Bakhtin 280). The images of colliding “colors,” raced subjects interacting and

jostling about each other in the classroom, allowed for a certain creativity, an un-fixed

quality that invited multiple interpretations and multiple focal points. Of a truth, the

whole business was so messy that I struggled far too long before finally deciding to

isolate a set of themes and follow them through the data. Upon reflection, I see now that I

needed this metaphor more than the research did; it helped me achieve and maintain a

level of creative disinterestedness by allowing, at least theoretically, a place for

everything—class issues, gender issues, and kinship patterns that jostled about race data,

construing and un-doing observations on nearly every turn.

Moreover, the metaphor serves as a heuristic, reminding me to remain

deliberately mindful of “where race appears and disappears,” again as inspired by

Catherine Prendergast and Patricia J. Williams’s call for scholars to do this very thing

(Williams 1991; Prendergast 1998). Even current understandings of race are expressed in

terms of constantly changing, bright, interesting, thwarting, multi-colored, multi-layered

language redolent with kaleidoscopic imagery. Consider the following definition of how

19

race is understood in contemporary scholarship. It is written by educational scholars Fine,

Weis, and Powell in their article, “Communities of Difference,” shared here for both its

kaleidoscopic nature as well as its reiteration of the present study’s assumptions about

the complexities of researching “race”:

Following the lead of scholars such as Henry Louis Gates Jr. (1985),

Stuart Hall (1991), and Martha Minow (1990), we believe that differences

in race, ethnicity, class, and gender are, at this moment in history,

constructed by politics, power, and biography, and are fluid and mutable.

But they are also, of course, intimately lived (Plummer, 1995; Stevenson,

1995).Differences are at once real and fictional, material and invented,

enduring and mutable, rejected and embodied (Marcia, 1980; Semons,

1991). Drawing on the writing of Lani Guinier (1994), William Cross Jr.

(1995), and Kimberle Crenshaw (1992), we see race as a critical and

defining feature of lived experience that young and old and people of all

colors reflect upon, embody, challenge, and negotiate (see Marcia, 1980;

Thorne, 1993). While race, class, ethnicity, and gender certainly influence

the standpoint from which each of us views the world (Collins, 1990;

Hartsock, 1984; Weis &Fine, 1993, 1996), it is as true that no one

demographic box can fully contain one’s point of view (Cross, 1995;

Hurtado & Stewart, 1997). There is too much wonderful variety, too much

moving around, and indeed too much playing with race for these

categories to sit still. (251)

20

The kaleidoscopic metaphor also accommodates the study’s qualitative nature. For I

understand that the resultant images, i.e., the things I see to say— the theory-observation

overlays, the emergent patterns in the data, and my final interpretations—are ultimately

little more than kaleidoscopic images, subjective and time-bound.

In light of this understanding, an elaborate triangulation of data is used to

maintain internal validity among the findings and filter enough of my subjectivities to

make them useful to other scholars in the fields of composition, literacy, and qualitative

research studies. Here, I share what I observed, heard, saw, asked, was told, interpreted,

and felt, knowing full well that the “I” doing the telling now is just as much a constructed

artifact as this present text. What’s more, the “experiences” I observe are also artifacts—

i.e., they are others’ actions and reactions, stories and writings filtered through my

experience of them as researcher.

Research Limitations

The present research does not attempt to address or answer several related issues

in race, composition, and literacy research. First, it does not address linguistic issues,

overtly social issues, or psychological issues. The study neither seeks nor accommodates

explorations of racism, racist behavior or attitudes, or any other manifestation of social

pathology. Instead, it deals with students’ discourses—words, ways with words, overt

and suggestive communications and so forth— as they reflect, refract, and otherwise

respond to traditional notions of “race” in an attempt to understand how such experiences

affect learning in a writing classroom.

21

Russell Ferguson observes that discourses on race in the U.S. tend to proceed

along firmly established, deeply rooted lines of separation and absence in the United

States:

In our society, dominant discourse tries never to speak its own name. Its

authority is based on absence. The absence is not just that of the various

groups classified as “other,” although members of these groups are

routinely denied power. It is also the lack of any overt acknowledgement

of the specificity of the dominant culture, which is simply assumed to be

the all-encompassing norm. This is the basis of its power. (11)

This study looks closely at the lines of discourse hierarchies and power negotiations

among students in a diverse classroom. It examines the influence of race as a symbolic

system of cultural ideology on individual and group experiences.

22

CHAPTER TWO

LITERATURE BASE

Culture, Race, and Composition: A Select Review of Literature

The theoretical framework for this exploration of race as a symbolic system of

culture combines accepted definitions and scholarship with definitions and scholarship

that challenge established understandings of race, culture, and English composition.

Before it attempts to critique discourse hierarchies and power negotiations operating

potentially in the classroom, this study will lay out a foundation of theory that critically

addresses the issues of race, discourse, hierarchies, and power negotiations operating in

the disciplinary field of English composition.

Culture, as defined by anthropologists Spradley and McCurdy (1994), is the

acquired knowledge people use to interpret experience and generate behavior. It is not

fixed although we often become fixed in it. Because culture is learned, we can easily (in

theory) generate new cultural knowledge as we adapt to other people and situations. This,

according to Spradley and McCurdy, allows for the dramatic variations in behavior and

perceptions observed among individuals of the cultural group, however you subdivide it,

e.g., by ethnicity, class, race, gender, or age, for instance (424).

Spradley and McCurdy explain that culture can be tacit or explicit. Tacit culture is

shared knowledge of which people are usually unaware and do not communicate

verbally, while explicit culture represents the rules and other structures deliberately

imposed and of which people are consciously aware. Ideologies of race, I would argue,

reside somewhere between tacit and explicit culture, assuming a position between the

23

conscious and unconscious worlds of awareness, a place where symbols assume

liminality.

In Racial Classification and History: Essays on the Social Construction and

Reproduction of “Race,” series editor E. Nathaniel Gates notes that the influence of

“race” as a symbolic system constitutes the term’s essential reality. He traces its origin as

such in the following rather lengthy excerpt, included here for its concise yet rich

rendering of an impressive set of social history:

In the U.S. context…the ideological notion of “race” was formed over the

course of the eighteenth and the early nineteenth century. The process by

which this came about was, of course, part of a wider movement, and

cannot be fully understood in isolation from the other social and

intellectual productions of that era. To obscure this fact and treat the

fabrication of “race” as a phenomenon distinct in itself, set apart both from

its social substrate and from other ideological developments, would be to

reduce it to the status of a mere “psychological trait,” and in so doing

suppress its singularity and diminish its import.

…The rise of “race” as an ideological construct invariably took

place in the midst of radical political and economic change. In the U.S.,

the necessary conditions coalesced at a time when its socioeconomic

organization and the concomitant distribution of political power were

evolving with especial rapidity. With the triumph of “Jacksonian

democracy” in 1828, the traditional, colonial era, U.S. governing elite was

finally dispossessed of political power and displaced by a broad new

24

grouping. This development, and the putative opportunity it afforded

nonenslaved laborers, was to play an enormous role in setting the stage for

the appearance of a full-blown, comprehensive racist ideology. (9)

Thus, beliefs about race are ingrained historically, politically, and economically, so much

so that scholars, researchers, and students, like most people, cannot easily critique them

or allow them to be critiqued without uncomfortable psychological consequences. At the

same time, it is often not until bold encounters with un-interrogated ways of thinking take

place that an important sort of self knowledge and knowledge about the way things are

with others—i.e., human literacy—can occur.

Among the scholars in composition studies who are making bold statements,

challenging existing narratives, and encouraging others in the field to do so are Deborah

Brandt, Keith Gilyard, Catherine Prendergast, Jacqueline Jones Royster, Victor

Villanueva, and Jean Williams among others. Their articulation of the intersections of

race, culture, and literacy fuels the present study’s exploration of race in the writing

classroom.

In Race, Rhetoric, and Composition, Keith Gilyard calls for researchers to

“inspect race more critically in rhetoric and composition,” since it remains under-

theorized in the disciplined (ix). Recognizing the difficulty of examining racial ideology

and understanding, Deborah Brandt asks, “How do we study the social structures of

practices so ingrained as to be unconscious–so extremely scenic as to go unnamed and

unnoticed? (348). This observation anticipates the critique of whiteness as a racialized

identity and also suggests that ingrained performances of race may themselves be

25

complicated by the pervasiveness of what Victor Villanueva calls “the colonial

sensibility” in our nation and universities (183).

In her article, “Race: The Absent Presence in Composition Studies,” Catherine

Prendergast argues that scholars in the field not only avoid discussing race but employ

“color- and power evasive paradigms” for thinking about and researching race in public

discourse and in composition studies. Through an examination of the transgressive

writing practices used by critical race theorists Patricia J. Williams and Derrick Bell,

Prendergast challenges composition scholars to discover ways to foreground race in

composition’s discursive space:

The present challenge for compositionists is to develop theorizations of

race that do not reinscribe people of color as either foreign or invisible,

nor leave whiteness uninvestigated; only through such work can

composition begin to counteract the denial of racism that is part of the

classroom, the courts, and a shared colonial inheritance. (51)

Prendergast concludes her article by challenging us to “look where our colonizing

impulses lie—to track, as Patricia Williams does, the places where race appears and

disappears...” (46).

In “History in the Spaces Left: African American Presence and Narratives of

Composition Studies,” Jacqueline Jones Royster and Jean C. Williams accept this

challenge. Specifically, they challenge the dynamics of privilege and subordination in the

field of rhetoric and composition. Moreover, they argue for the inclusion of subordinated

African American scholarly perspectives and the excision of narratives on black student

performances that reinscribe stereotypes.

26

First, Royster and Williams advocate the creation of space within the discipline

for African American contributions at the theoretical and historical foundation of the

discipline–its authorizing narratives. Their advocacy creates theoretical discursive space

for research currently unsupported by the primary narratives on student performances

operating in the field. They assert that while the narratives of composition have

successfully increased disciplinary understandings of differing and broad views of

composition studies, they have also “directed our analytical gaze selectively, casting,

therefore, both light and shadow across the historical terrain (581). Light, they say,

infuses disciplinary understandings of the influence and presence of multi-racial

perspectives in composition. They note that the work of John Brereton in particular

creates a space for the influence and presence of races other than Anglo American, but it

“does not fill the space, or substantially credit African American viewpoints of it, or

permit it to enrich, refine, or redefine: the larger documentable story of composition

studies” (566).

One of the problems created by this omission, according to Royster and Williams,

is an essentializing of black experiences based on widely-held, non-inclusive, disciplinary

assumptions. As an example of this, they point to Valerie Balester’s study of black

students’ successful writings. They note that Valerie Balester unwittingly describes all of

her students as speakers of Black English vernacular who are “attempting to construct a

scholarly identity which, as novices, they had not yet fully assumed and to address

audiences of whom they as yet had little knowledge” (2-3). By doing so, Balester’s study

attempts to fit her black students’ experiences into a framework she sets up according to

27

the available scholarly narratives on student experience, although her participants and

their experiences resist the categorization altogether.

This almost stereotypical framework for interpreting black experience, according

to Royster and Williams, effectively reinscribes black student experience along lines

familiar and invisible within the discipline:

Even though Balester acknowledges the success of these students, she still

positions them as non-universal outsiders, as aliens to the traditions to

which other students lay claim, and essentially as “basic writers.” (569)

They continue their critique by pointing to Jimmie Killingsworth’s foreword to Balester’s

book in which he notes that while much of the work in composition studies “reveals the

inherent consistency, the rhetorical integrity, even the brilliant folkways that emerge

among students whom we have labeled “basic writers,” Balester’s work has an

“interesting twist” in that it examines African American students who have “made it”

across “the cultural divide between life in a second-dialect minority and the life in the

educated classes represented by the American university (vii-viii).

Royster and Williams argue that this foreword “assigns monolithically “second-

dialect” status to all of the students in the study, without recognizing class stratification in

the African American community and the class distinctions of this particular group of

African American students. They continue as follows:

This Foreword also assigns this group a place outside of “the educated

classes represented by the American [our emphasis] university,” ignoring

the long-standing presence of African Americans in arenas of higher

education. (570)

28

Royster and Williams note that Balester, perhaps following a normalized, uncritiqued

tradition conflating race and basic writing, describes her students in the same way most

basic writers are described, i.e., as students “seeking a way into an academic culture to

which they presumably have no traditional moorings,” and continue this way:

Balester’s study illustrates that the connections that we have made in the

field in conflating ethnicity, otherness, and basic writing are strong and

remain compelling, despite the extent to which these connections are not

automatic. (570)

They conclude their critique as follows:

Our intent has been to counter mythologies about African American

presence in composition studies in two ways: 1) By acknowledging that in

officialized narratives, the viewpoints of African Americans are typically

invisible, or misrepresented, or dealt with either prescriptively,

referentially, or by other techniques that in effect circumscribe their

participation and achievements; and 2) By identifying more instructive

ways of looking at African American experiences that support a different

view of presence in terms of:

An historical view of African Americans in higher education that

begins in the nineteenth century, not the twentieth century

Representations of students that are not keyed by the metaphor,

“basic writer” A recovery of specific contributions that suggest a

history of scholarship and a tradition of professional engagement.

(570)

29

They note the following about the selection of their essay title, and in it extend their

argument for the inclusion of culturally rich narratives alongside established narratives in

the field:

In choosing the title of the essay, we have based the central image “history

in the spaces left” on an image used by William Cook in his 1992 CCCC

Chair’s address, “Writing in the Spaces Left.” In that address, Cook

asserted that historically our “official” national narratives have excluded

from metaphors of universality groups that have been systematically

suppressed by sociopolitical constructions of power. Inside these

narratives, such groups are typically unacknowledged and rendered

invisible, or positioned as non-universal or “other,” or inscribed in ways

that circumscribe and often misrepresent them. Cook asserted, however,

that the members of these groups have persistently resisted this treatment

and taken the authority to write themselves in more animated ways onto

the narrative landscape, as we have ventured to do in this essay. (580)

Their rationale for this argument is as follows:

In wanting field narratives to be more inclusive of historically suppressed

groups, our view is that we need to take a critical stance in composition

studies against the negative effects of primacy. The imperative is to

emphasize the need for historicizing practices that both contextualize the

historical view, as composition narratives typically do, but that also go

beyond contextualizing to treat that view as ideologically determined and

articulated. This imperative indicates that, while we recognize that

30

narratives of composition have been successful in increasing our

understanding of long-range views of the field, we recognize also that

these same narratives have simultaneously directed our analytical gaze

selectively, casting, therefore, both light and shadow across the historical

terrain. (581)

Thus, by arguing for and challenging the field of composition studies to accommodate

historically valuable narratives emanating from the black scholarly tradition, they

effectively construct a discursive space for new perspectives, new voices, new research

that expands disciplinary understandings of race, culture, and their manifestations in

English composition.

While the aforementioned scholars challenge monolithic and hegemonic

understandings of race in composition, other scholars challenge the assumption that

whiteness is a non-raced identity. These scholars, like others, recognized that because

language is one of the most pervasive ways our ideas about race are conveyed and

reinforced (Takaki 1995; Gates 1997, Goldberg and Solomos 2002), narratives on

whiteness as “race” should also be included in composition scholarship and research.

Their inclusion along side other narratives on race reflects a recognition of the role

whiteness as a racialized identity plays in the field as valuable contribution and valuable

inquiry.

In “White Is a Color!,” Leslie Roman examines how whiteness as a racialized

identity constructs experience. She argues that whiteness needs be recognized as “a

structural power relation, an institution that both individually and collectively confers

cultural, political, and economic power” (qtd. in Goodburn 71). Similarly, Ruth

31

Frankenberg, in The Social Construction of Whiteness, examines how discourses on race,

particularly “whiteness,” construct and transform how people think about and act upon

raced assumptions by exploring the “discursive repertoires” of strategies people learn,

use, and propagate by way of culture (22).

AnnLouise Keating problematizes the inquiry of challenging assumptions in her

article “Interrogating Whiteness, (De)Constructing ‘Race.” She looks at the problems of

naming and interrogating whiteness in ways that often reinforce fixed categories of

racialized meanings that perpetuate and support negative stereotypes. Keating concludes

by pointing out the relatively short-lived usefulness of having students name “whiteness”

or “blackness” in writing situations and texts, and anticipates a better understanding of

how teachers and researchers read and write students as “raced” texts (901-904).

Like efforts to understand how individual and collective experiences respond to

and reflect ingrained notions of race, the task of providing diverse groups of students

access to corporately- and culturally-valued discourses without reifying some over others

is difficult. Thus, many scholar-teachers seek to achieve these goals in ways that critique

students’ notions of normative discourse, i.e., “standard English,” challenge cultural

stereotypes, emphasize the value of individual and cultural contributions within learning

environments. This often means coming to terms with group differences and cultural

dynamics in ways that resist essentializing group experiences. Chief among scholarly

contributions that value individual and group dynamics, yet express observed group

tendencies in non-totalizing, non-essentializing ways, are those made by educational

anthropologists.

32

For instance, Dorothy Perry Thompson suggests that differences an African

American worldview and a European American worldview may be implicated in the

difficulties some black students have with writing Eurocentric argument. She writes:

The African American world view includes an ethos based on the survival

of the group, inclusiveness, synthesis, cooperation, and collective

responsibility, whereas the European American ethos espouses survival of

the fittest, exclusiveness, dichotomy, competition and individual

writes….African/African American tendencies toward corporateness,

interdependence, circularity, complementarity, and understanding with

regards to values and customs; and European/European American

tendencies toward separateness, independence, ordinality, and

intervention. The psychobehavioral modalities of the two groups show the

same kind of dialectic pattern: groupness and sameness on the one hand,

and uniqueness and difference on the other. Some of these philosophies,

values, and customs (perhaps arguable, as they have been for years) do

manifest themselves in the assignments we design for our students and in

their responses to them. (223-224)

Although it may be simplistic in that it does not accommodate the influence of multiple

worldviews operating in either or both groups, Thompson’s argument merits close

consideration since its guiding notion—that contrasting worldviews in the writing

classroom might complicate learning processes and products—is a valid one. She

observes that many black students hold an understanding of argumentation that differs

33

markedly from that held by many white students, and she describes the Eurocentric

argumentation as follows:

In Eurocentric Academic Discourse (EAD) there is, in form and content, a

move from the abstract idea (thesis) through detailed examples back to the

abstract idea. It is a discourse formula that prioritizes in this way: First,

what is most important is the abstract idea. Second, concrete details are

needed, but they are only incidentals used to support the abstract idea.

Finally, this abstract idea is so important that it is restated in the

conclusion. One circles back to it in the most elemental paradigm we offer

students in our composition courses. (224)

Near the end of their book, African American Literacies Unleashed, Arnetha Ball

and Ted Lardner also discuss cultural predilections of which teachers may want to be

aware when teaching black students in predominantly white classrooms. They note that

“it is important for composition teachers to create a space for affect in the classroom—a

place for feeling.” Ball and Lardner then move into a discussion of black versus white

“styles” as they often manifest themselves around lines of class and race:

According to Kochman, the predominant mode—that of the middle and

upper class—is relatively low-key: dispassionate, impersonal,

nonchallenging, and characterized by a detachment is cool, quiet, and

without affect (18). Kochman further notes that ‘emotional expressiveness

has considerably less force and effect in white cultural activities and

events, because white norms for proper participation require that

individuals exercise greater emotional self-restraint’ (112). According to

34

Kochman, whites sometimes become distressed or resentful when blacks

let their feelings become too expressive or intense in disregard of

established white norms or when blacks, as audience members respond

verbally to some action that is taking place. Therefore, the norms

governing “proper” participation in many composition classrooms and the

engagement of individuals in public discussion of an issue require that

participants keep their emotions contained and relatively subdued and that

turn taking be regulated by an empowered authority. (150-151)

This observation figures significantly in the present research, especially their following

note on the seemingly confrontational nature of some black students’ persuasive

discourse. They write,

According to Kochman, African modes of discussion are generally more

high-keyed, interpersonal, and at times may even appear confrontational.

Early research in linguistics found that when arguing to persuade,

blacks sometimes assume a challenging stance with respect to their

opponents. But…blacks are not being antagonists here. Rather,

they are contenders…cooperatively engaged in a process…that

hopes to test the situation through challenging the validity of

opposing ideas. (Kochman 18, emphasis added). (151-152)

Both the Thompson and Ball and Lardner studies underscore the challenges and

opportunities involved in teaching writing amidst myriad cultural collisions occurring in

learning environments, i.e., the collision of course pedagogy with students’ ideologies;

the collision of student ideologies along racial and other cultural lines; the collapse of

35

physical and social boundaries; the collision of student personalities in the classroom

communities; and the collision of contemporary theories about what constitutes literacy

learning and competing traditional notions as held by students, teachers, and society.

These interacting, intersecting contexts have been theorized by a diverse group of

scholars whose contributions equally interact and intersect, making the discovery of race

research interpretations difficult and delightful.

Included among them is Mary Louise Pratt, who calls the site of such collision the

“contact zone” and characterizes it as the “social spaces where cultures meet, class, and

grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power”

(“Arts” 34). Arnetha Ball and Sarah Warshauer Freedman note that Pratt uses the image

of the “contact zone” “to invoke the spatial and temporal copresence of subjects

previously separated by geographical and historical disjunctures, and whose trajectories

now intersect” (Bakhtinian Perspectives 7). Ideally, according to Min-Zhan Lu, race and

the imbalances of power inherent in raced subject positions could theoretically be

examined and constructively hashed through in the contact zone, with both students and

teachers alike emerging enriched by the interaction (“Arts” 34).

Similarly, Mikhail Bakhtin refers to the “contact zone” as the site where literary

characters struggle with “various kinds and degrees of authority,” against the “official

lines” (qtd. in Ball and Freedman 7). Observing that what happens in literature often

happen in life, Ball and Freedman extend the following idea from Bakhtin’s literary

concepts:

These struggles occur in what Bakhtin calls a “contact zone,” that “zone of

contact” where we struggle against various kinds and degrees of authority”

36

(p. 345). This is not to say that all people struggle against all authority or

all authoritative discourses, but rather that there are times in our lives

when what we think as an individual is not the same as some aspect of the

official doctrine of our larger world. It is at those moments of struggle that

we develop our own ideologies. (7)

The theory of how ideologies develop, emerge, and perhaps change is particularly

important here, for this research seeks to observe if and how students’ ideologies about

race respond to their proximities to and interactions with different ideologies. In their

introduction to Bakhtin’s concepts, Ball and Freedman define ideology within the context

of Bakhtin’s notion of “ideological becoming.” They write:

Before discussing why we find this concept so helpful, we define

ideology in order to clarify what Bakhtin and his followers mean by the

term. According to the American Heritage (2000), ideology means:

1. The body of ideas reflecting the social needs and aspirations of an

individual, group, class or culture

2. A set of doctrines or beliefs that forms the basis of a political,

economic, or other system

The second, more political meaning is often ascribed to Bakhtin.

However, the Russian word ideologiya does not carry strong political

connotations. Morris (1994), who writes about British English, sees

Bakhtin’s meaning as most consistent with the first definition:

The Russian ‘ideologiya’ is less politically coloured than the

English word ‘ideology’. In order words, it is not necessarily a

37

consciously held political belief system; rather it can refer in a

more general sense to the way in which members of a given social

group view the world. It is in this broader sense that Bakhtin uses

the term. For Bakhtin, any utterance is shot through with

‘ideologiya’, any speaker is automatically an ‘ideolog’. (p. 249)

Emerson (1981) makes a similar but somewhat expanded point, writing

from a U.S. vantage:

Its English cognate “ideology” is in some respects unfortunate, for

our word suggests something inflexible and propagandistic,

something politically unfree. For Bakhtin and his colleagues, it

means simply an “idea system” determined socially, something

that means. (p.23)

In Bakhtinian writings, ideological becoming refers to how we develop

our way of viewing the world, our system of ideas, what Bakhtin calls an

ideological self. (4-5)

Race is conceived in this research as a set of discursive practices based on a system of

ideas about self and other. If students’ encounters with each other, writing tasks, and/or

texts affect their idea systems, then such encounters may affect discourse practices and,

by extension, experiences of race. As the primary site of these encounters, the

composition classroom emerges as a critical variable in students’ “ideological

becoming.” A close examination of how composition classroom space is construed in the

field is warranted for this reason.

38

Composition Classroom Space: Community, Public, and Private Places

In his book, A Teaching Subject: Composition Since 1966, Joseph Harris recalls

that “in the past few years” of composition scholarship, the idea of community emerged

as “somehow central” to the business of teaching writing (98). Scholars who theorize

community and the teaching and learning of language include David Bartholomae,

Patricia Bizzell, Linda Brodkey, Kenneth Bruffee, Bruce Herzberg, and Min-zhan Lu.

Perhaps the most common notions of community recognize “the power of social forces in

writing,” acknowledged the plurality of communities created by differing social forces,

and proceed along a line of argument similar to the one Harris extends from Bartholomae

(98):

We write not as isolated individuals but as members of communities

whose beliefs, concerns, and practices both instigate and constrain, at least

in part, the sorts of things we can say. Our aims and intentions in writing

are not merely personal, idiosyncratic, but reflective of the communities to

which we belong. (98-99)

This recognition that what gets composed in the writing classroom is more a response to

ideological and socio-cultural situations than to individual readings of the world joins on-

going conversations about the value of teaching academic discourse and the pedagogical

challenges of teaching multi-cultural classes.

Conversations such as these produce insights, questions, and doubts regarding the

aims and limitations of postsecondary writing instruction from the perspectives of theory,

practice, and perceived student need. At issue for Harris are the warm, romantic, and

metaphorical notions of community that would reduce competing and colliding

39

discourses in writing classrooms to manageable and consensual practices. He cites

Patricia Bizzell’s argument that

Healthy discourse communities, like healthy human beings, are also

masses of contradictions.... We should accustom ourselves to dealing with

contradictions, instead of seeking a theory that appears to abrogate them

(“What is a Discourse Community” 235). (Harris 106)

Harris takes his investigative method from Raymond Williams’ Keywords: A Vocabulary

of Culture and Society, and his goal is to show why the notion of community remains

enigmatic and contested (99).

He begins by locating several points of contention among the ways community is

currently conceived in the discipline. First, Harris observes that community as a concept

in composition–e.g., academic community, discourse community, community of learners--

has no “positive opposing” term and runs the risk of becoming “an empty and sentimental

word” (99). At the same time, Harris notes that this potentially “empty and sentimental”

word packs impressive rhetorical power and can be of great use in the business of

inspiring cooperation:

It is a concept both seductive and powerful, one that offers us a view of

shared purpose and effort and that also makes a claim on us that is hard to

resist. For like the pronoun we, community can be used in such a way that

it invokes what it seems merely to describe....(I)t invokes...a community of

those in power, of those who know the accepted ways of writing and

interpreting texts. (99-100)

40

Resisting theorizations of the classroom as “community,” replete with images of

co-operation and consensus, Harris posits an opposing theory of the classroom: public

space. Public, he says, “refers not to a group of people (like community) but to a kind of

space and process, a point of contact that needs both to be created and continuously

maintained” (109). He goes on to say, “What I do want to argue for here is a view of the

classroom as a public space rather than as a kind of entry point into some imagined

community of academic discourse.” Harris continues as follows:

Most English classrooms are, I think, set up to move from conflict to

consensus, from a diverse and competing set of readings (and maybe

misreadings) to a single interpretation that teacher and students forge

together as a group. (109)

Similar notions of community exist in linguistics (speech communities) and literary

criticism (interpretive communities). Moreover, linguists and many literary critics

generally tend to approach consensus with regard to what constitutes the borders and

boundaries of community in their disciplines.1 In the field of composition, however, the

notion of community remains–in Harris’ words–“little more than a notion–hypothetical

and suggestive, powerful yet ill-defined” (101). He characterizes most existing theories

this way:

First, recent theories have tended to invoke the idea of community in ways

at once sweeping and vague: positing discursive utopias that direct and

1Speech communities in linguistic refers to a group of people characterized by

shared linguistic forms, shared regulative rules, and shared cultural concepts (Swales, John. Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990. P.24). Interpretive communities in literary criticism refer to a non-localized network of people who share particular “habits of mind” (Harris 101).

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determine the writings of their members, yet failing to state the operating

rules or boundaries of these communities. (99)

Harris suggests that this vagueness exists in part because composition studies tends to

draw definitions of the term from those already established in linguistics and literary

criticism. However, the evolution of the idea as a counter-expressivist concept might also

explain why community remains a nebulous, highly-contested notion in composition

studies: it arises in response to a theoretical need--not gradually or from the kind of

questioning and intellectual rigor it now receives. Harris thus refines his notion of public

space as a more useful way of thinking about the broader community of composition

scholars and learners:

I would urge an even more specific and material view of community: One

that, like a city, allows for both consensus and conflict, and that holds

room for ourselves, our disciplinary colleagues, our university coworkers,

and our students. In short, I think we need to look more closely at the

discourses of communities that are more than communities of discourses

alone. While I don’t mean to discount the effects of belonging to a

discipline, I think that we dangerously abstract and idealize the workings

of “academic discourse” by taking the kinds of rarefied talk and writing

that go on at conferences and in journals as the norm, and viewing much

of the other sorts of talk and writing that occur at the university as

deviations from or approximations of that standard. It may prove more

useful to center our study, instead on the everyday struggles and mishaps

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of the talk in our classrooms and departments, with their mixings of

sometimes conflicting and sometimes conjoining beliefs and purposes.

He continues:

Indeed I would suggest that we reserve our uses of community to describe

the workings of such specific and local groups. We have other words–

discourse, language, voice, ideology, hegemony–to chart the perhaps less

immediate (though still powerful) effects of broader social forces on our

talk and writing. None of them is, surely, without its own echoes of

meaning, both suggestive and troublesome. But none, I believe, carries

with it the sense of like-mindedness and warmth that make community at

once such an appealing and limiting concept. (106-107)

Harris argues for a notion of community that refers to the local sites of “the

everyday struggles and mishaps of the talk in our classrooms and departments;” the

“workings” of these local sites; and to the students, coworkers, and disciplinary

colleagues comprising these sites, yet he gives little notion of purpose for such

communities. Moreover, he does not address issues of power and agency from the

standpoint of teachers, students, and the contexts they bring to bear on the community.

His notion of community would accommodate conflict and consensus but would exclude

references to what he calls “the perhaps less immediate (though still powerful) effects of

broader social forces on our talk and writing” (107).

The present research hopes to extend disciplinary understandings of how

scholarly and classroom communities might be further theorized. It focuses on what

Harris excludes, i.e., the effects of social forces on discourse. Social forces such as racial

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perceptions and attitudes are not only immediate to talk and writing, they construct and

mediate these discourses. Harris notes that the core values of this “loose form of

community” would be tolerance and respect. Of a truth, tolerance and respect are the

kinds of things that happen in real neighborhood communities. This conceptualization

seems solid on one level, but what appears to be tolerance and respect in writing

classrooms might easily hide ridicule and contempt–also the kind of thing that occurs in

literal neighboring communities. Qualitative examinations of what actually happens

between and among students move disciplinary understandings beyond theory about the

nature of classroom communities.

Harris’s final images portray shared classroom space as dialogic and

kaleidoscopic, but they abandon the dialectic at students’ achievement of individual

enlightenment:

What I have hoped to suggest here is the value of keeping things at the

level of a wrangle, of setting up our classrooms so a variety of views are

laid out and the arguments for them made, but then trying not to push for

consensus, for an ultimate view that resolves or explains the various

conflicts which can surface in such talk….What I do want is a sort of

teaching that aims more to keep the conversation going than to lead it

toward a certain end, that tries to set up not a community of agreement but

a community of strangers, a public space where students can begin to form

their own voices as writers and intellectuals. (115)

The instance of individuals forming “their own voices as writers and intellectuals” is a

hallmark in the evolution of societies and the pinnacle of social achievement:

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Democracy. Harris’s idea of students engaged in logical argument focuses on students

learning argument as a structure; this study looks at interactions among learners, and

examines the ideological grappling with argument substance in their writing. And while

consensus is not the ultimate goal in either approach to teaching writing, respect for how

elements of culture shape the various conflicts is an objective that builds democracy,

perhaps more so than tolerance.

Harris’s image of the isolated individual forming her own voice as a writer and

intellectual opposes this study’s imaging of the composition classroom as a community of

racially-different, ideological “neighbors,” and as a conceptual community whose

existence interrupts Western society’s discursive legacy of racial segregation. While this

study focuses on race in terms of black and white binarism, it does so to underscore the

multiple sets of discourses operating within socially-distinguished groups. It argues that

white and black students’ varying ways of enacting, responding to, and interpreting

discursive practices effectively shade, highlight, or otherwise color their individual

experiences as unique and not at all bound by binary notions of blackness or whiteness.

Current conversations on race in the field of composition studies challenge and

extend each other in ways that bring to light discursive differentials and discourse

hierarchies operating in the field. From critiques of how authorizing narratives in

composition scholarship exclude black scholarly contributions, to critiques of how

unchecked, totalizing assumptions about black student learners construe even sincere

attempts to characterize black students’ writing experiences, conversations on race now

include examinations of whiteness as a racialized identity in tandem with notions of

blackness. In her response to the Royster and Williams critique that opens this chapter,

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Valerie Balester acknowledges the value of examinations that reveal racialized discursive

practices as well as the complications of conflicting awareness. She writes,

I am guilty of describing my students as outsiders. In fact, this was a

model applied to most students of composition, one that appealed to me

and to many composition scholars of the time. Although I viewed all

students as novices reaching toward that elusive “academic discourse,” I

saw African American students as more alien, more outside….I did not set

out in Cultural Divide to “position [students in the study] as non-universal

outsiders, as aliens to the traditions to which other students lay claim, and

essentially as ‘basic writers’” (569). I work to explode that myth, and

while I may have been caught in some of composition’s own misguided

narratives, I believe a careful reading will show my resistance to it on

many levels. (130-132)

Like the Royster-Williams and Balester dialogue, many critical conversations on the

subject suggest that intuitive experiences of race must be made more conscious by

casting light on how race operates in learning communities, those dynamic, conflict-

ridden “contact zones” where ideologies form, collide, persist, and sometimes change.

Collectively, these conversations construct a theoretical framework for better

understanding how ingrained sensibilities about race affect the teaching, learning, and

assessment of student literacy.

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Racing Literacy, Post-secondary: A Select Review of Literature

As James Berlin observes in his book Rhetoric and Reality: Writing Instruction in

American Colleges, 1900-1985, “Literacy has always and everywhere been the center of

the educational enterprise. No matter what else it expects of its schools, a culture insists

that students learn to read, write, and speak in the officially sanctioned manner” (1). In

most colleges and universities, the unenviable task of confirming and certifying students’

post-secondary literacy falls upon the English composition program.

This task poses a particular challenge to writing programs, for while inequality

and class polarization are ever-active anathemas in larger society, voice equality and

cultural impartiality are core assumptions of contemporary post-secondary literacy

instruction (Howell and Tuitt 2002; Greene and Abt-Perkins 2003; Gurin et. al. 2003). An

understanding of how these core assumptions prevail within the crucible of students’

experiences is vital to English composition’s mission of teaching and assessing post-

secondary literacy in increasingly diverse classroom communities.

Also at the center of current understandings of post-secondary literacy is a

theoretical valuation of the cultural heterogeneity in classroom communities. Indeed,

literacy itself is no longer recognized as a static set of knowledge but as a host of

dynamic, inter-dependent, and multiple “ways of knowing” that transcend standard

communicative forms and Western academic substances. The evolution of this idea as it

is developing within the field of New Literacy Studies is neither linear nor complete, for

scholars continue to grapple with the multiple dimensions and dynamic manifestations of

literacy as it is controversially construed.

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In their book, Literacy and Literacies: Texts, Power, and Identity, James Collins

and Richard K. Blot trace the emergence of current literacy understandings as a

countermovement against traditional notions of literacy. Traditional notions view literacy

as “autonomous,” ideologically neutral, universal sets of skills that assume Western

forms of literacy to be superior to other forms of literacy, particularly oral ones.

Accordingly, literacy is “a uniform set of techniques and uses of language, with

identifiable stages of development and clear, predictable consequences for culture and

cognition” (4). As a result, this view of literacy propagates without critique the cultural

values underlying its apparent neutrality, and often in ways that maintain imbalances in

power relations (4).

New Literacy Studies (NLS) defines literacy as “intrinsically diverse, historically

and culturally variable, practices with texts” (4). Pedagogical models based on this newer

understanding view literacy as relative, sociocultural, and situated. Citing Shirley Brice

Heath among its early framers, Collins and Blot note that NLS focuses on “the diversity

and social shaping of those ways with text we call literacy, emphasizing the ways as

much as the texts.”(4). The authors locate NLS as follows:

It emerged from anthropological and historical criticism of claims made

for a unitary .or autonomous literacy, questioning literacy’s causal role in

social or cognitive development. The situated perspective was developed

by revisionist historical scholarship, which reframed the debate about

literacy and social development in the West (Graff, 1981). The perspective

is perhaps best exemplified in detailed ethnographic studies of inscription

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and discourse, which undermine the notion of separable domains of orality

and literacy. (4)

Ethnography, the qualitative research method for interpreting and applying finding on

lived culture, is uniquely and inextricably linked to New Literacy Studies. It gives rise to

the understanding that literacy practices are “integrally connected with the dynamics of

identity” and with the “construction of selves” (Collins and Blot xviii). It also grows as a

field out of an appreciation for cultural values, and out of an understanding that

knowledge of the self and of others is most clearly grasped through a bottom-up approach

to inquiry. While ethnography as used in NLS provides an egalitarian tool with which to

critique literacy uses and assumptions at individual and local levels, the scope of its

application needs to be expanded to shed light on larger, cultural phenomena. Collins and

Blot write:

…Although ethnographic scholarship has demonstrated the pluralities of

literacies, their context-boundness, it still has also to account for general

tendencies that hold across diverse case studies—for example, the frequent

historical correlation of female gender and restricted access to literacy and

schooling.” (5) […To which this study would add, ‘the frequent historical

correlation of people of color and restricted access to literacy in schools.’]

Thus, New Literacy Studies introduces in scholarship the notion of literacies, i.e.,

multiple literacy practices that are socially situated and responsive to cultural

constructions of what knowledge sets are culturally meaningful for particular groups of

individuals. It holds that writing and reading only make sense when studied within the

context of social and cultural practices, of which they are a part.

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Academic ground rules constitute one such group of literacies. They are situated

ways of negotiating academic learning, i.e. Discourses, valued in and constructed by the

academy, and all students are expected to have mastered many of them before coming to

college. James Gee defines Discourses, capital D, as follows:

Discourses…are ways of behaving, interacting, valuing, thinking,

believing, speaking, and often reading and writing that are accepted as

instantiations of particular roles (or types of people) by specific groups of

people….Discourses are ways of being ‘people like us.’ They are ‘ways of

being in the world’; they are ‘forms of life’. They are, thus, always and

everywhere social and products of social histories. (Social Linguistics viii)

As products of social histories, academic ground rules, or “underlying expectations of

what students need to know and do in order to successfully carry out an academic task”

(Durst 66) are not evenly reflected in diverse students’ literacy contexts:

…Sheeran and Barnes (1991) argue that privileged, middle-class students,

because of their backgrounds and preparation, typically have a better grasp

of the ground rules than working class and/or minority students, and that,

therefore the differential mastery of ground rules helps to perpetuate

existing power relations through schools and into society as a whole.

(Durst 70)

This example demonstrates the socio-historical context of academic ground rules and

other academic discourses as situated literacy. It also provides a pre-study look at how

race may be implicated in the students’ experiences in an English composition classroom.

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As noted earlier, the field is itself engaged in “ideologically becoming,” and

revisions of its major tenets are already underway. For instance, Gee, in the online article

“New Literacy Studies and the Social Turn,” notes that NLS scholars have already come

to see the understanding that meaning is “situated in context” as too static. According to

him, words give meaning to contexts and contexts give meaning to words”: “Words and

contexts are two mirrors facing each other, infinitely and simultaneously reflecting each

other” (“New Literacy Studies”). Gee suggests that literacy and their contexts are

mutually constitutive of each other, not unlike cultural beliefs about race. Most important

here, though, is Gee’s discussion of what he calls “enactive work” and “recognition

work” and their roles in “creating, sustaining, negotiating, resisting, and transforming

contexts,” for they constitute a key part of the interpretive framework for assessing the

appearance and disappearance of race in students’ writing. Gee explains:

What do I mean by enactive work and recognition work? Think about the

matter this way: Out in the world exist materials out of which we

continually make and remake our social worlds. The social arises when we

humans relate (organize, coordinate) these materials together in a way that

is recognizable to others. We attempt to get other people to recognize

people and things as having certain meanings and values within certain

configurations or relationships. Our attempts are what I mean by “enactive

work” and others’ active efforts to accept or reject our attempts—to see or

fail to see things “our way”—are what I mean by “recognition work.”

(“The New Literacy Studies”)

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An exploration of how particular discourses come to constitute valued discursive practice

over other textual constructions of meaning is outside the scope of this study. At the same

time, the present study recognizes the cultural capital (or lack thereof) associated with

particular forms of discourse in higher education. For this reason, a characterization of

how black and white students organize, coordinate, and execute discourse in response to

each other and their shared pedagogical context might yield glimpses of how race affects

what is expressed, repressed, or revised in literacy performances.

Preemptively, race has perhaps irrevocably altered social and academic notions of

what constitutes literate practices despite expansions in literacy theory to validate diverse

ways of knowing. Literacy education cannot affect within an academic term the politics

and socio-economics that shape individuals’ semi-conscious, ingrained notions of race. It

can, however, provide the physical and discursive space for individuals to grapple with

what it means to be raced in diverse communities, and thus potentially affect future

enactments of and responses to race.

Contemporary writing and literacy theory employs critical literacy pedagogy to

help achieve such goals. Major contributors to disciplinary understandings of critical

literacy include Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, Henry Giroux, and Ira Shor. Durst

summarizes its uses in composition studies as follows:

A critical literacy approach…stresses awareness and appreciation of group

differences, multi-perspectival consideration of ideas, and the questioning

of established ways of thinking. The postmodernist ideas that reality is

socially constructed and truth rhetorically determined are fundamental

assumptions of this pedagogy. In terms of actual writing and reading

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strategies, a critical literacy approach emphasizes rigorous development of

ideas, the opportunity for feedback from a number of different sources,

extensive invention and revision, and careful reading and re-reading of

one’s own texts and those of others. (Durst 37)

What follows in this chapter is a discussion of how literacy, race, and post-secondary

composition studies reflect, intersect, and turn kaleidoscopically around notions of

literacy as form—rhetorical and essayist, and as substance—dialogic and transactional.

Theorizing Academic Literacy as Form and Substance

Stuart Greene and John M. Ackerman in their article, “Expanding the

Constructivist Metaphor: A Rhetorical Perspective on Literacy Research and Practice”

explore a conceptualization of literacy that might be considered a type of critical literacy

yet has at its core a uniquely different objective. This perspective is born out of the

observation that current constructivist theories, with their emphases on the ideational

processes and linguistic outcomes of reading and writing, fail to account for “either the

source of knowledge that people draw upon in building representations of meaning or

how this knowledge reflects cultural, social and material circumstances” (405).

After tracing the conceptualizations and implications of constructivism through an

extensive review of literature, Greene and Ackerman argue that literacy is a purposeful,

“critical activity of engagement” (403) which reflects itself “in the ability to both

represent one’s ideas and interact with others” (405). They conclude by arguing that

much of the discipline’s most important literacy research suggests a rhetorical dimension

to literacy and that this rhetorical dimension is the constructive moment.

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Although they initially define rhetorical as referring to “the means and

circumstances through which readers and writers represent and negotiate texts, tasks, and

social contexts,” Greene and Ackerman note that the term also refers “to those instances

when a composer must consider factors beyond the content and organization of a

passage”:

Composing becomes rhetorical when someone chooses to consider other

participants in an act of composing, or chooses to consider elaborated and

structured information that leads to a context for understanding. (390)

Pilot study participants’ rhetorical patterns implicate students’ perceptions of authority,

agency, and societal expectations as viewed through colored lenses. Successful students

learned the art of rhetorically crafting “good papers” for teachers by often masking,

denying, or elevating their real or perceived social and educational contexts. Likewise,

Greene and Ackerman find that students often engage in rhetorical dances with language

and contexts, authority and expectation. They write:

We found across a range of studies a need to (re)create context, and that

context took the form of models of texts, prior textual experience, social

relationships and even material and historical circumstances replete with

nonlinguistic systems of meaning. (410)

While Greene and Ackerman assert that students’ performances of literacy are

socio-rhetorical, James Gee asserts that valued literacy performances proceed via a

knowledge and mastery of dominant discourse practices. Drawing on the work of Ronald

and Suzanne Scollon, Gee outlines ways in which one such form, essayist literacy, is

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privileged in formal schooling and thus privileges the practices of particular social groups

over others. Major features of essayist literacy are identified as follows:

• Essayist literacy (written or spoken) is linear, it values a particular type of

explicitness, it has one central point, theme, character or event at any one

time, it is in the standard version of a language.

• Essayist literacy aims to inform rather than to entertain.

• The most important relationship in essayist literacy is between sentence and

sentence, not between speakers/writers, nor between sentence and

speaker/writer.

• The successful reader/writer/speaker of essayist literacy has to constantly

monitor grammatical and lexical information and be explicit (in expression if

writing/speaking; in consciousness and comprehension if reading) about

logical implications.

• The audience in essayist literacy events, like the writer/speaker, is idealized;

“a rational mind formed by the rational body of knowledge of which the essay

is a part.”

• The author is a fiction “since the process of writing and editing essayist texts

leads to an effacement of individual and idiosyncratic identity” (Social

Linguistics and Literacies 63)

Inspired by Gee’s likewise inspired notion, Theresa M. Lillis affirms the following

characteristics of essayist literacy in her book Student Writing: Access, Regulation,

Desire:

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Firstly, it indicates that student academic writing constitutes a very

particular kind of literacy practice which is bound up with the workings of

a particular social institution. Acknowledging the specific nature of the

practice in which students are expected to engage challenges the common

deficit approach towards student writing. Whilst people may be unfamiliar

with the privileged literacy practice within academia, there is no

justification for constructing [second-discourse writers] as ‘illiterate’, or

by associating use of this literacy with cognitive development, construing

them as intellectually inferior in some way. Secondly, and relatedly, the

term ‘essayist literacy’ is useful for signaling that this particular practice

involves and invokes particular ways of meaning/working, and can

consequently serve to exclude others. Thirdly, by foregrounding, in

general terms, that current student writing is part of a particular tradition

of literacy and knowledge making, essayist literacy serves to mark out the

socio-historical, rather than any presumed universal, nature of such

writing….In brief, essayist literacy provides a way of talking about student

writing which acknowledges the relationship between literacy practices

and knowledge-making practices whilst situating both within a specific

socio-historical tradition. (Lillis 39-40)

By making explicit the institutional nature and purposes of essayist literacy, Lillis’

description preempts the criticism of essayist literacy as one based on a unitary vision of

literacy, or literacy restricted to specific forms, and thus maintains the status quo. Indeed,

both essayist and rhetorical literacy seem to arise from a liminal realm, that is, the border

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between traditional notions of literacy as autonomous and unitary, and literacy as

sociocultural and situated. They recognize simultaneously the value of some traditional

academic discourse forms and the necessity of continually critiquing these forms, their

proponents, and the contexts in which they are generated and assessed for hegemonic

impulses and power differentials. At the same time, neither essayist nor rhetorical notions

of literacy as discussed in this study assumes normative status for forms of academic

writing. They acknowledge both the cultural capital associated with such these forms and

their socially-constructed, artificial nature. Ultimately, both essayist and rhetorical forms

of writing as literate require critical consideration and reflect critical literacy, i.e. an

awareness of “group differences, multi-perspectival consideration of ideas” (qtd. in Durst

37).

While presented separately in this chapter for organizational purposes, notions of

literacy as form and literacy as substance are not appreciably different and often proceed

along similar lines. What come to be viewed in the academy as literate content are

embedded social practices permeated with power relations. Six principles of literacy as

social practice are outlined as follows:

Literacy is best understood as a set of social practices; these can be

inferred from events which are mediated by written texts.

There are different literacies associated with different domains of life.

Literacy practices are patterned by social institutions and power

relationships, and some literacies become more dominant, visible, and

influential than others.

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Literacy practices are purposeful and embedded in broader social goals

and cultural practices.

Literacy is historically situated

Literacy practices change, and new ones are frequently acquired through

processes of informal learning and sense making. (Barton and Hamilton 7)

Discourse analysis grounded in NLS understandings explores linkages between literacy

practices (discourses and how they are used) and power differentials (who benefits, who

does not, and to what ends). This concern with the issue of power and its operation in

social relations makes social and cultural criticism theories important to both NLS and

the present research, particularly the work of Mikhail Bakhtin.

Like the notion of carnival discussed in Chapter One, and the notion of

ideological becoming explored in Chapter Two, Bakhtin’s notion of dialogism reflects a

conceptualization of the ways discourses and discursive practices move within and

beyond the contexts in which they are used. At the center of the concept is Bakhtin’s

focus on language as utterances, or dialogic by nature because they both come out of and

constitute socio-cultural practices. He explains the utterance as follows:

It is entangled, shot through with shared thoughts, points of view, alien

value judgments and accents. The word, directed toward its object, enters

a dialogically agitated and tension-filled environment of alien words,

value judgments and accents, weaves in and out of complex

interrelationships, merges with some, recoils from others, intersects with

yet a third group: and all this way may crucially shape discourse, may

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leave a trace in all its semantic layers, may complicate its expression and

influence its entire stylistic profile. (Bakhtin 276)

Many literacy educators have theorized the notion of dialogism as it corresponds

to post-secondary literacy education. Among them are Lisa Delpit, Signithia Fordham,

Shirley Brice Heath and Carol Lee, scholars who focus on the ways students (and black

students in particular) experience writing and literacy instruction in culturally-

compromising discursive contexts. The process of literacy development is dialogic when

students invite or otherwise allow educational objectives to become meaningful parts of

their discourse experiences. Bakhtin explains:

The work in language is half someone else’s. It becomes “one’s own” only

when the speaker populates it with his own intention, his own accent,

when he appropriates the word, adapting it to his own semantic and

expressive intention. Prior to this moment of appropriation, the word does

not exist in a neutral and impersonal language (it is not, after all, out of a

dictionary that the speaker gets his words!), but rather it exists in other

people’s contexts, serving other people’s intentions: it is from there that

one must take the word, and make it one’s own. (Bakhtin 293-294)

Conventional approaches to literacy instruction exist as meaningful only in academic

contexts. They appear to function poorly as invitations for students to “own” secondary

discourses; students struggle with appropriating secondary discourses, with fitting them

into their own contexts, and with giving them their particular intentions. While top-down,

superimposed pedagogies have virtually failed to achieve such goals for students, top-

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down, relativistic research likewise reveals little about what students’ active resistance

(and passive compliance) to instruction means in any pedagogically appreciable sense.

The influential composition pedagogies of Peter Elbow, Ken Macrorie, and

Donald Murray, though different in goals and methods, have been characterized as

dialogic (Ward 15). However, if we are to compare them to Bakhtin’s notion of

dialogism—the one that inspires much of the work in literacy being discussed here–we

see the three-part speaker-hero-listener interaction in expressed in new terms: the writer

engaging language in a dialogue with herself for the purpose of self-discovery. James

Berlin explains:

This type of expressionist rhetoric focuses on a dialectic between the

individual and language as a means of getting in touch with the self.

Indeed, even the dialectic between the writer and the editorial group is

designed to enable the writer to understand the manifestations of her

identity in language through considering the reactions of others. (153)

Heteroglossia, as it emerges in dialogism, is not too different in form from the “rich

stew of implication” Donald Murray sees as the place writers discover meaning:

When we discover what we have said we discover who we are. In finding

your voice you discover your identity. Style is not a fashionable garment

you put on; style is what you are; what you have to say as well as how you

say it....We write to explore the constellations and galaxies which lie

unseen within us waiting to be mapped with our own words. (Murray 7)

Another scholar whose work reflects the kind of dialogism discussed here is

Louise Rosenblatt. In her seminal work, The Reader, the Text, the Poem: The

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Transactional Theory of the Literary Work, Rosenblatt explores the reader’s role in

interpreting literary works. In it, Rosenblatt discusses the nature and processes of reading,

i.e., literacy as transactional–a dynamic interaction between the reader, the text, and their

respective contexts. Rosenblatt establishes the role of readers with texts–interpreting

what is read—as an active, dynamic, transactional one. She writes:

The act of interpretation requires a wide range of such angles of vision,

and it can avoid the dessicating effect of excessive abstraction by

incorporating as much as possible the personal matrix within which the

work crystallized. Hence my insistence that much greater concern than is

usual should be accorded the “first step,” the registering or savoring of the

literary transaction. Whatever the reader may later add to that original

creative activity is also rooted in his own responses during the reading

event. His primary subject matter is the web of feelings, sensations,

images, ideas that he weaves between himself and the text. (137)

Note the similarities between Rosenblatt’s description of the act of interpreting and

Sondra Perl’s description of what writers do during the act of composing–again, a

dialogic, transactional process but this one more internally so:

...Writing is a recursive process....Recursiveness in writing implies that

there is a forward-moving action that exists by virtue of a backward-

moving action....The move is not to any words on the page nor to the topic

but to feelings or non-verbal perceptions that surround the words, or to

what the words already present evoke in the writer. The move draws on

sense experience, and it can be observed if one pays close attention to

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what happens when writers pause and seem to listen or otherwise react to

what is inside of them. The move occurs inside the writer, to what is

physically felt. (150)

Here we see that in reading and writing, what transpires between the individual in terms

of feelings, the text, and contexts and the heteroglossia they evoke–in both read and

written texts–is what characterizes the act as initially successful. Indeed, Rosenblatt

asserts that the personal contribution to the act of reading is crucial to the ultimate

knowledge experienced by readers.

For Rosenblatt, this “web of feelings, sensations, images, ideas” can be

experienced by way of aesthetic reading–reading centered on what the reader is “living

through during his relationship with that particular text” (25). Efferent reading, the type

of reading assumed by many students to be the “right” sort of reading activity, centers on

what the reader might carry away from the reading (24). Acknowledging the feeling is

just the first part of the transactional relationship with a text. According to Rosenblatt, a

reader must go further:

The reader needs to realize fully, to honor, what he is living through in his

evocation of the work. This can spark a sense of engaging, in no matter

how amateur a fashion, in the same kind of creative enterprise as the

expert, the critic....The emphasis should be...on a creative transaction, a

coming together of a human being (with all that implies of past

experiences and present preoccupations) with a text (with all that implies

of potentialities for participation). (143)

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Perl describes a writer’s focused attention during the writing process in a similar manner,

using the term “felt sense” as coined by University of Chicago philosopher Eugene

Gendlin to describe what happens inside a writer during the writing process:

Felt sense is the soft underbelly of thought...a kind of bodily awareness

that can be used as a tool...a bodily awareness that encompasses

everything you feel and know about a given subject at a given time....It is

felt in the body, yet it has meanings. It is body and mind before they are

split apart. (151)

This act of physically, personally engaging the text and the work of realizing, of

honoring, of interfacing humanity and textuality are pleasures many students do not trust

or acknowledge as valid learning experiences. This aspect of student learning was

observed in the dissertation pilot study. The more successful students in the study used

complex rhetorical structures to construct impressive formal essays, but they avoided

writing about heir true or authentic insights. These more successful students assumed that

success in the Arts and Sciences English program entailed writing about issues or topics

important to their teachers and peers.

Similar discursive gestures have been documented. In her book, Blacked Out,

Signithia Fordham explores the experiences of students in a Washington D.C. high school

and observes that successful students employ strategies of “racelessness” in their writing

and other behaviors to effectively blend into academic contexts and discourses. These

studies suggest that mastery of skills alone will not support the kinds of critical, dialogic

interaction between primary and secondary discourses valued in postsecondary writing.

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Each of the approaches discussed for eliciting, assessing, and characterizing

students’ literacy experiences assumes dialogic, transactional interactions between

students and their texts, writing tasks, and writing contexts. This framework of theory is

important, for it creates space for the present exploration of how black and white students

engage each other and reveal themselves in dialogic classroom interactions.

Recognizing the constraints of earlier English composition pedagogy on eliciting

explicit, open dialogue around sensitive cultural issues in racially heterogeneous class

communities, and in light of the theoretical issues regarding composing communities,

program administrators reexamined the program’s pedagogical assumptions (as well as

those valued and contested in the field of composition) of what constitutes meaningful

college writing experiences in light of students’ attitudes, expectations, and goals for

post-secondary literacy. They called upon scholars of composition studies to reexamine

disciplinary (de)valuations of students’ instrumentalist goals for writing and embrace

critical, reflective pedagogies that both allow for and challenge these goals. Durst’s

conclusion articulates a new pedagogy:

I would like to propose an approach to teaching composition that attempts

to foster what I call “reflective instrumentalism.” This approach preserves

the intellectual rigor and social analysis of current pedagogies without

rejecting the pragmatism of most first-year college students. Instead, the

approach accepts students’ pragmatic goals, offers to help them achieve

their goals, but adds a reflective dimension that, while itself useful in the

work world, also helps students place their individual aspirations in the

larger context necessary for critical analysis. This pedagogy seeks to

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establish a truly common ground between student and teacher by

welcoming, incorporating, and then building upon students’ primary

reasons for coming to college and studying composition. As a composition

teacher and administrator, I want my students to learn ways of thinking

and writing that help them do well in their studies and in their careers.

(Collision Course 178)

The current reflective instrumentalist English 102 pedagogy that responds as a theory

both to students’ expressed values and established disciplinary values was implemented

during the 1999-2000 academic year. The reader for the course, You Are Here: Readings

on Higher Education for College Writers, contains three thematic units of readings:

“Education and Difference,” “Being in College,” and “The Purposes of College.”

Assigned writings take the form of reflective reading responses, formal essays requiring

the use of cited references, and a final research essay. For the final research essay,

students conduct interviews and/or collect field data on their prospective professions and

write reflectively on some aspect of their findings as informed by course readings and

class discussions. In-class activities include open discussions, peer review of essay drafts,

and a hand-drafted, in-class essay. Durst describes the course objectives as follows:

…The course does not attempt to position students as critics of the

academy and of the society in which it operates, a role they are in any case

loathed to fulfill as they struggle to enter the academy successfully.

Rather, the course provides an opportunity for students to better

understand what college can offer them and to take greater responsibility

for their own learning. An important purpose of the course is to assist

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students as they clarify their own educational goals by reading, thinking,

talking, and writing. (176)

Durst concludes by emphasizing that the pedagogy “combines the complex, demanding

aspects of academic, civic, and personal literacy with the aim, not just of improving

students’ abilities to communicate in writing, but of encouraging in students a reflective,

questioning intelligence and a willingness to use that intelligence as fully participating

members of a critical democracy” (37).

It seems fitting to conclude a discussion of literacy in this study with an allusion

to democracy, for democracy and autonomous literacy in the United States share a

systemic, national burden at the intersection of race, namely, their collusion throughout

history in the systemic disfranchisement of black Americans. As recently as early

twentieth century, despite federally legislated guarantees, eight Southern states barred

blacks from voting if they could not read, understand, and/or interpret sections of their

state constitutions (Franklin 287). In this way, supremacist and legal discourses colluded

in the deferral of black American’s full citizenship rights.. Racist ideologies were so

entrenched in the South, so discursively potent, that even literacy failed to confer on

black Americans living at the turn of the twentieth century access to either democracy or

democratic regard. John Hope Franklin summarizes those Southern sentiments towards

black Americans with the words of J. K. Vardaman of Mississippi:

I am just as opposed to Booker Washington as a voter, with all his Anglo-

Saxon re-enforcements, as I am to the coconut-headed, chocolate-colored,

typical little coon, Andy Dotson, who blacks my shoes every morning.

Neither is fit to perform the supreme function of citizenship. (289)

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The failures of both unitary literacy and democracy at the beginning of the twentieth

century dramatically underscore the importance of critiquing literacy’s role in

maintaining sociocultural and political hierarchies. These failures attest to the value of

revisionist historical scholarship in providing new, situated perspectives on literacy as

socially constructed, with political and economic implications.

Thus, a five-hundred year-old legacy of legislated white supremacy fuels current

critiques of discourse practices perceived to exclude, limit, or devalue blackness as a

racialized identity. It inspires efforts, including this one, to identify literacy practices that

promote, resist, or occlude democracy in education and in society. An archaic legacy

resonates in contemporary social policies and educational assumptions. Many of its

heirs—black, white, and otherwise racially or ethnically construed— envision an ideal

democracy, one which in which competing parties “share state power, resources and

media of representation in a repeatedly renewable negotiation of balance…without any

one, or any alliance--racially or otherwise configured--dominating to the exclusion of or

control over others” (Goldberg “Post-Racial States”). The task of reestablishing black

experiences of literacy as culturally valuable (or establishing for the first time in history,

some might argue, since the original democratizing goals of Reconstruction were never

realized), and having them recognized as such, is one currently engaged in by many U.S.

colleges and universities. The present research seeks to contribute to the ongoing

validation of interracial literacy experiences in composition and literacy studies.

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CHAPTER THREE

RESEARCH METHODS AND DATA ANALYSIS

The semi-structured research question driving this investigation is this: How

might race be implicated in students’ experiences and writing in this English composition

classroom? The research methods and data analysis techniques are qualitative in nature.

Grounded theory is the qualitative research approach used to investigate observable

group behaviors; to characterize complex interactions between race as an element of

culture and literacy in a composition class, and to do so against a background of brilliant,

competing elements of culture. As products of empirical research that relies on situated

relationships, the results do not purport to be generalizable. However, findings may be

transferable in theorizing other explorations of race, writing, and literacy.

Grounded theory is the most appropriate qualitative research method for this

study. It refers to theory generated inductively from qualitative data. Based on the work

of Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss, grounded theory accommodates a case-oriented

research perspective, effectively allowing researchers to suggest conclusions about whole

research populations as reflected in case studies of the whole. It assumes that observed

phenomena reflect collusions of variables that operate in complex ways to locally situate

research findings. Also, this methodological approach allows researchers to draw

information from participants for the purpose of making implicit belief systems explicit.

The following account of how the research proceeded, developed, and culminated reflects

an awareness of and adherence to accepted qualitative observational research methods,

including extensive triangulation of data, the use of many data gathering methods, such

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as field notes, interviews, writing samples, and other data designed to maximize

transferability.

Narration of Methodology

The dissertation study takes place at a large, urban university in the Midwest.

Management and analysis of data proceed as follows, according to the protocol

established by Carney (1990): Interview transcripts, field notes, and student writing

samples were prepared and examined for coding categories, highlighting or repackaging

categories within data sets that specifically or tangentially fit within the parameters of the

theoretical framework discussed above. Themes, trends, and relationships in the data

were observed, as well as obvious gaps of information in the data. Maps of class session

seating arrangements within the context of daily field notes were created and analyzed

along with conversational interaction flow diagrams.

The bulk of coded data was reduced to feature relationships, experiences, and

writing that most immediately resonated with the study’s research focus. Linkages in the

data to the study’s composition and literacy theory framework were also identified and

grouped for interpretation.

Nine of the original twenty students are featured in case studies: four of the

original five black students in the class, and five of the fifteen white students in the class.

Their selection was based on salient interpersonal interactions among them and recurrent

patterns and themes in their writing that appear to reflect or respond to dialogic

interactions. Tentative findings were cross-checked toward the construction of an

explanatory framework.

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The study finds that students experience race as discursive practices that reflect,

resist, reinscribe, or re-write dominant social narratives, stereotypes, and prejudices

within a dynamic classroom community. Their intense, often volatile classroom

interactions reveal the operation of ingrained ideologies and social texts that guide critical

inquiry of cultural issues, including race, in classroom discussions and student writing.

Collisions of racial ideologies give rise to enhanced understandings of the self and other

as raced in ways that can extend, thwart, or transform literacy learning.

Securing Entrée

After the research proposal was approved by the university’s Institutional Review

Board (IRB), English department chair, and writing program director, three English 102

instructors were contacted and asked to allow their classes to be observed. Class

selections were based on compatibility between class meeting hour and the researcher

availability. Each of the instructors agreed. On the first day of classes, the instructors

introduced the researcher as a graduate student in the English Department who might be

sitting in, taking notes, and perhaps interviewing students later in the term about their

experiences. Students were then allowed to as questions and were encouraged to do so as

the term progressed.

For the first week of classes of the study, three racially-diverse sections of

approximately 25 students were observed and field notes of each observation

documented. Black-to-white student ratios were relatively consistent for each class. By

the end of the university’s drop and add period when class rosters were finally

established, Jane’s section of 20 students was selected since the original set of students

changed least among the three sections.

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During the year of study (1999-2000), there were approximately 340 African

Americans enrolled in Freshman English out of approximately 1,900 Freshman English

students; thus, 18% of the students in freshmen English were African American, a ratio

consistent with university statistics on student race for the past ten years. Originally,

Jane’s class consisted of 22 students, 5 of whom were African American (22% black), but

by mid-term, there were 20 students, 5 of whom were African American (25 %). On

average that semester, black students comprised between 10-20% of the English 102

class sections’ population. Thus, the ratio of African American students in Jane’s class

was slightly higher than ratios typically observed at this institution and in this program.

Once Jane’s section was selected for study, the researcher introduced the study to

the students in detail and to answered questions about what would be her term-long

presence in their classroom. Student participants were kind but visibly suspicious since, it

was later discovered, they actually believed the researcher to be some sort of class

evaluator. Two weeks into the term, a student told the researcher that her clothes—

usually dark and sometimes dressy with few if any accenting colors—made her appear

more serious than other graduate student teachers, including Jane. Indeed, two students

later told confided their suspicion that the researcher was there to evaluate the class. The

students and their conversations relaxed markedly by week three as they became more

comfortable with Jane, each other, the course materials, and the researcher’s quiet,

attentive presence. Also by week three, the researcher was wearing jeans.

Observational Inquiry

Qualitative field notes of classroom observations were made for each of Jane’s

EC102 class meetings except for two. Class observation field notes were recorded as

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single-sided notebook entries, and researcher comments were later noted on facing pages.

Along with field notes, ethnographic maps of seating charts were constructed for each

meeting. Diagrams of the classroom’s circular seating formation were enhanced with

colored arrows to illustrate conversation hubs and flows. Silent areas around the

classroom circle and researcher reflections/impressions as they occurred were also noted.

Jane’s conversations with students occurring after, during, and/or before class were

recorded, and students’ conversations with each other were noted as well.

Near the end of the term, Jane allowed the researcher fifteen minutes of class time

to introduce the interview process and questions. Students were given a copy of the IRB

approval letter, the informed consent form, and the semi-structured interview questions to

examine during the explanation of the research process. Interviews were to take place

over a three day period during the final week of classroom instruction, one week before

final exams. Students then signed up for one-hour time slots according to their schedules

and were reminded of their interview dates/hours each day of the interview week.

Formal 35-55 minute interviews were conducted during the final week of class in

an office located in the English department. The semi-structured ethnographic interview

questions were designed to elicit descriptive data on how students understood reading

tasks, the readings themselves, how they understood writing tasks, and how they

experienced writing processes. Questions also elicited information about their

experiences of class discussions, peer review activities, and the writing class community

as a whole. Jane was interviewed using a modified set of semi-structured questioned

designed to elicit descriptive data on how the class as a whole responded to the literacy

tasks and texts from her perspective. Information on individual student performances was

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not requested directly. Some information did, however, emerged naturally during Jane’s

interview, e.g., during her discussions of particular events. Audio tapes of the interviews

were appropriately labeled and stored. Duplicate copies of the audio tapes were later

generated, labeled, and stored.

Two of the twenty did not show up for interviews and were later contacted by

phone. Arrangements were made with two to get their informed consent forms signed

since their final exam schedules would not accommodate rescheduled interviews.

The average length of interviews was approximately 45 minutes, with the longest

extending to one hour and fifteen minutes and the shortest ending in thirty minutes. The

interview process proceeded as follows:

(1) Displayed and discussed IRB letter approving research proposal and interview

questions.

(2) Read the Informed Consent form together, addressed questions. Students (and

instructor) signed and dated the form. Participants were asked earlier in class

to prepare pseudonyms for identification in research. They recorded their

chosen pseudonyms on the bottom of their signed Informed Consent forms.

(3) Participants were provided with a copy of the interview questions and allowed

to use it during the interview.

(4) Tape recording function was tested; interviews were conducted using 60

minute audio-cassettes.

One student requested that she not be audio taped. Her interview was thus handwritten

and later typed in transcript format. Another student stayed in the class until near mid-

term but produced only one English 102 essay. He signed an informed consent, granted

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an interview, and gave the researcher written permission to copy his English 101 writing

portfolio from the English Composition director.

Audio cassette tapes of student interviews, writing samples, and interview

transcripts comprise the largest portion of data. As noted above, participants are

identified in this study by pseudonyms they selected themselves, with four exceptions.

Because three of the students chose as pseudonyms names of actual students in the class,

similar names were re-assigned to them and are used in this study. A fourth student

refused to select a pseudonym and asked that none be provided her. So, the letters in her

name were scrambled and a used to craft her “non-pseudonym.” Individual folders were

created for each participant and used for storing writing samples, interview transcripts,

informed consent copies, and personal information sheets. Transcripts were word

processed and formatted for hand-coding of qualitative information—double-spaced with

generous right margin allowances for hand-written notes and pattern identification—and

later converted into text-rich files for qualitative computing using NVivo Qualitative

Data Management software. However, the time required to master the advanced research

software slowed research progress tremendously. An appreciable amount of time had

already been spent massaging data, identifying patterns, and organizing preliminary

findings the old-fashion way. Thus, the quest for mastery of the new research technology

was postponed.

Data Description and Lists

Early in the term, students were asked to provide copies of their formal essays and

informal reading responses (see appendix for writing assignments). This was not a

problem since Jane encouraged them to keep their papers to use as reference material

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throughout the term. While many students provided an abundance of material to work

with, others held back notably. The complete data set is as follows:

1. English 102 Course syllabus

2. Course writing assignments (4)

3. Course reading assignments

4. Critical reading handouts

5. Fieldnotes of classroom observations with ethnographic maps (17 sets out

of a possible 19)

6. Researcher comments and reflections (17/19)

7. Interview transcripts (n=21--20 students, 1 instructor)

8. 21 signed informed consent forms

9. 20 sets of writing samples (for detailed listing, see Student Data List

below)

10. Informal surveys from teaching assistants/adjuncts in the English

Composition program on the attendance and performance of African

American students in their sections (administered and provided by the

English Composition Program director)

11. Statistical data on student matriculation by race from the university

archives

12. Experiential/observational data from former and (then) current English

Composition Program administrators

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Student Data in Context

This group of often volatile personalities reflects a near balance of students who

placed originally in the Arts and Science program and students who moved into Arts and

Sciences English program from University College, the university’s developmental,

educational foundations, and ESL component (Table 3.1).

Eleven of the 20 students scored below the proficiency requirements established

by the Arts and Science English program and placed in University College (UC) English.

None of the eleven repeated the first UC English course, and all achieved grade point

averages at or above 2.5 which enabled them to transfer to the Arts and Sciences English

sequence by the Winter 2000 term. Of these eleven, three are black, seven are white, and

one is an international student (See summary of students’ English classes in Table 3.1).

On the first day of class, students were given an informal writing prompt directing them

to discuss their course expectations and/or their goals for higher education. Excerpts from

each student’s response are included in text boxes in this chapter.

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Table 3.1

Spring 2000 English 102 Section K Class Profile UC English A&S English 101 A&S Eng 102 Race/Ethnicity FG Jill No F99 W00, S00 White A- Teresa No F99 W00, S00 White B+ Arthur Yes F99 W00 (NR) Black NG Kari Yes F99 W00 Black B+ Amber Yes F99 W00, S00 White B Tree No F99 W00, S00 White B Brooke F99 W00 S00 White B Rambo F99 W00 S00 Italian B Andy No F99 W00, S00 White B+ Odessa No W00 S00 Black A- Rain F99 W00 S00 White C Raul No F99 S00 White A Sherry No F99 S00 White B Jim No F99 S00 White A- Samantha F97 W00 S00 Black B+ Char F99 W00 S00 (IP) Pacific Isle. IP Kate F99 W00 S00 White B Holden F99 W00 S00 White A- Stella F99 W00 S00 Spanish B+ Coco No F99, W00 S00 Black C+ NR = Not registered IP = In-process; did not pass the course FG = Final course grade

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Of the students who placed originally in A&S English, only two, Coco and

Teresa, had to repeat A&S English 101. When asked why she had not passed the course,

Coco responds,

Well first of all, the class was in 8:00 in the morning and the teacher didn’t

really care. We’d come to class, turn in our papers, and we went home.

We never really sat around in groups and talked things out or talked about

problems with the work….So at the end of the quarter, everybody had low

grades. So, he picked a couple of people and said, “Well, you did this, and

you did that,” and he passed them. But half of the class had to repeat 101.

She does not address her writing performances and focuses instead on her and her peers’

collective disappointment with the instructor. When asked whether or not she knows on

what the instructor based the decision to pass a few students, and she notes that his

expectations for the class may have been frustrated ones:

Most of the students were in English for the first time and a couple had

taken [UC] English 100. But the students he passed had taken advanced

writing classes [in high school], so that’s what he based it on.

Teresa, a nursing major, failed to complete her 102 research paper the first time she took

the course and, according policy, had to repeat the entire course. She explains this

immediately on the first day of class on her Student Information Sheet:

Let me just say this first off: I am repeating 102. I got an A and 2 B’s on

my essays in 102 previously. I had a bad week and supposedly my

Research Paper was unacceptable. I just didn’t want you to think I failed

for not doing my work or goofing off.

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Four of the twenty students are repeating most or all of English 102 at the time of

the study. Jill, a white female majoring in Art, dropped English 102 winter quarter after

three weeks of instruction. When asked why, she said that while her 101 instructor was

“good,” her first 102 instructor had not been. When asked to qualify “good” and “not”

good, she reframes and clarifies her original response:

I kind of got off on the wrong foot. I had a lot of stuff going on. I didn’t

like the teacher last quarter. It was a female and she was from China. I was

kind of comparing this class to my 101 class….In this class, we started out

talking about the research paper and we read different readings from those

we’re reading this quarter. I like the ones we’re reading now better since

you put more of your opinion and experience as a college student into

your writing.

Andy is repeating 102 after having failed it and nearly all his other classes winter term.

Tree, a music performance major, is repeating 102 after having also nearly completed it

the first time. Having missed the class before his in-class writing essay date, he relied on

information from friends and thought he could bring a completed rough draft of the paper

to class instead of the allowed one-page outline. He says:

I was getting A’s and B’s before the in-class essay. I was absent on the

day before it, so I brought in one of my papers when I returned. [My

teacher] accused me of cheating, and after that he never graded me the

same. He said the rough draft was too close to what I was going to write in

class, so I got an IP.

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Of the nineteen students who completed the course, only one fails—Char, a male student

of Filipino descent majoring in computer engineering who is already on academic

probation at the time of this study. Although he projects overconfidence during the

interview and in class, Char’s inability to hold a steady gaze and his self-deprecating

comments suggest otherwise. In his description of himself as a writer, Char begins and

diverges:

I used to write love poems. It was funny. I got my own distinct voice. I

used to play piano and sing while I played. My mom made me take

lessons. I took them for ten years. I started going to talent shows. It got

cheesy; I got corny. That was in junior high school—I didn’t play sports, I

wasn’t the person I am now. I was really shallow, sheltered. Now, I’m the

kid who’ll go out and never get embarrassed. I just have enough self-

esteem that I don’t care what people think. I’ve got attitude now.

His unsolicited self-explanations seem to be part of an unsolicited apology for his

behaviors that quarter. I observe only three sessions in which he is not engaged in either

playing games on his advanced calculator or reading video equipment catalogs furtively

tucked inside his You Are Here text during class discussions. Periodically, he punctuates

his “absent presence” with off-handed comments. When Jane tries to draw him into the

conversation by prompting him to say more, Char smiles, waves the class off, and goes

back to his game or magazine.

Char : A Pre-Analysis Case Study in Race and Literacy Intersections

Char’s experiences in the classroom are included in the chapter on methodology

because they reflect contexts and inspire the analytic framework within which other

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students’ experiences of race will be characterized. His role in the classroom is a liminal

one; neither black nor white, he becomes a trickster figure who neither develops

consistent relations with any of his peers, nor participates as part of the class. He

entertains his peers with witty quips, gestures, and comments that underscore his

disconnectedness from the community of learners. His writing reflects disconnectedness

from both in-class conversations, the readings, and the writing assignments. At the same

time, his contexts for literacy are not accommodated by the class readings or discussions.

They assume a normalized, liberal perspective on culture and socio-cultural influences.

Char’s literacy is complicated by race, ESL, and family contextual elements so atypical

that polite pedagogical invitations to critique their influence on his learning experiences

are summarily laughed off. As a result, they are unaccounted for in research and

unanticipated in contemporary instructional approaches.

In her interview, Jane notes that Char’s inability to participate functionally with

the class parallels his inability to generate functioning, logical connections with his ideas.

He receives IP’s on each essay, a grade designation indicating an “in progress” status, but

he does not submit revisions by their due dates, with one exception according to Jane.

After revising his second paper extensively, revisions Jane helps him orchestrate through

written comments on his essays and reading responses, Char earns a B. Still, Jane often

finds herself unable to help him satisfactorily by her own standards because Char does

not read the texts. During the interview, Char admits, “I don’t like the readings at all. It’s

hard to understand the words because they are really professional.” When asked how

much time he spends on the readings each week, he replies, “One hour each week day.”

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Unable to grasp that literacy learning is about more than unitary skills, Char laments not

having his grammar and mechanic needs pointed out:

Jane says in the reading responses, grammar doesn’t really matter. But that

doesn’t make any sense because we can write better on the essays if we

get the grammar things [indicated] for us.

Char provides me with only one writing sample, assignment three, the in-class essay.

This assignment requires students to choose one of five positions provided as prompts.

Char responds to ideas expressed in several prompts, ignoring the all-caps admonition to

CHOOSE ONE. Having failed a ground rule of literacy, i.e. “follow directions,” he thus

produces more of a response essay, replete with errors, than an argumentative one:

In many at today’s colleges and universities, a lot of school focus

on majors requiring so much specialization. It enlightens one to say that

college except these out of future alumni. At the University of Cincinnati,

I feel that they do indeed for me to choose a major on engineering. Since

engineering is such a broad subject and major, I am forced to choose a

specific type of engineering. It has caught my attention and it seems to be

the most interesting for me. It’s kind of weird that it is the case but in

reality I think I am okay with it.

At the University of Cincinnati, I am preparing myself by taking

classes such as calculus, chemistry, and physics so that I can apply that to

a future job which I might have. Mark Edmunson writes an essay about

how some students are bored and how they do not take their classes

seriously. It has bothered me how Edmunson can make a judgement so

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blunt without any back up at all. It shows no character and has allowed me

to make an observation. My observation is that in reality, he expects too

much out of those students whose attend the University of Virginia. It is

simply arguable that students should not be forced to take certain classes

such as literature which does not pertain to future occupations

In many competitive colleges, females are starting to accomplish

more and more over the years. Every year, many have received graduate

and PHD diplomas for fine work at their specific area. Brandon L.

Koerner claims that these girls now days have evolved to become better

students than boys. It starts making people thinking that maybe the male is

not the dominant one after all. I can’t believe this. This would be a

disgrace to the male ancestors who had traits at being the strongest,

smartest, and the fattest. In college however, I have discovered that

females have seemed to be smarter. They also seem to have the attitude at

being smart. I personally think that many of the females which attend U.C.

seem to bear that ‘I am so cool’ motto which is printed on all of their very

faces. The males however seem to be more humble. Males in our society

seem to lay back and relax. Men do not want to study, we want to play,

and especially have fun. This probably explains why my paper is lacking

grammar, sentence structure, and flow for this paper.

In the article at the New York Times, it was said that Computer

Science can be self taught, while other subjects such as humanities and

social sentences should be taught to along with the computer science

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classes. This got me thinking as to why I need to take English if my major

is engineering. Engineering tends to consist of classes such as Physics,

Calculus, and Chemistry. It seems to stir up animosity in most

administration offices world rule if it is right to take English classes along

with other engineering classes.

In conclusion to my essay, I feel that I have suffered from having

to take humanities such as English along with any other classes. I guess

its not too bad having to take English but than having to take classes like

Psychology & Sociology. It seems to persuade me that my area of interest

which is engineering is suffering with my having to take classes such as

English. It all boils down to your opinion. My opinion is that it is not

necessary to take humanities with or math or related major.

His advocacy of pre-professional training over liberal education is clear, but Char’s

treatment of the subject is unfocused and unorganized. Although Char plays computer

games in class, avoids serious engagement in class discussions, and assumes the role of

class jester most of the term, he attends class faithfully and seeks help with his work from

his teacher. Jane experiences Char’s failures this way:

With Char, sometimes I don’t know what to do. He brought me his

research paper draft to look at. There were sentences in that paper so

muddled and so virtually meaningless because of this strange syntax and

vague diction that if somebody had asked me to construct a sentence that

said nothing I could not have done a better job. Worse, I failed to make

him realize that the problem was there because there was no way in. I

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couldn’t begin with “Look, you know, this parallelism is faulty,” or “This

is vague, passive,” or anything. I referred him to the writing center. He

never went. Char was unaccountable for what he was even trying to say.

Few writing centers and fewer teachers are equipped to handle Char’s writing and

literacy challenges, for the factors surrounding his post-secondary writing and reading

contexts (beyond those he inflicts personally) are complicated. As such, they represent

the kinds of challenges typically associated with some black students’ literacy learning—

experiences that are too often characterized in scholarship and research in isolation from

the larger, classroom experiences of literacy.

Char is a 19-year old self-identified Pacific Islander. His father is Filipino, his

mother is Spanish, and his 21-year old brother is both physically handicapped and mute.

Both parents speak their native languages in their home, and Char’s home language is a

pidgin of Spanish, Filipino, English, and a unique sign language developed with his

brother.

A longitudinal examination of Char’s contextual writing experiences might reveal that

the language practices characterizing his racial or ethnic identity co-compromise with his

behaviors and attitudes his academic literacy experiences. On the other hand, Char’s

behaviors and attitudes might be most implicated in his writing woes, family language

issues notwithstanding. Further analysis might reveal that Char’s classroom resistance

and rebellion results from his marginalized status among his class peer group as the only

speaker of his family’s particular pidgin language at his university.

With college classrooms becoming more diverse, approaches to teaching that

better anticipate resistance and a shying away from self-critique in the face of dominant

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social groups and dominant discourse experiences need to be theorized and articulated.

Unlike many of the approaches that have characterized research on black student learner’

literacy, these new approaches should assume actively dynamic dissonance, internal

collisions of discourses through which students must be reached and from which students

must be taught to speak. Char’s example emerges as a transitional and contextualizing

example of how discordant experiences of race, language, behavior, attitudes, and any

number of indeterminable factors affect literacy performances and experiences in writing

classrooms (products), as well as struggle, negotiation, and success in the class

community (processes). It informs the analytical framework with a reminder that where

there is conflict, there is often knowledge. Char’s inability or unwillingness to articulate

his uniquely raced perspective on issues covered in the readings and discussions points to

the importance of examining most closely those students who do. The nine students

featured in this study—Odessa, Jim, Sherry, Kari, Samantha, Coco, Rambo, Holden, and

Andy—have been selected because their interactive experiences and writings

demonstrate engagements with race as either subject, object, or thematic complement

more saliently than their peers. Moreover, the discord that often marks their interactions

becomes the basis for dialogic interchanges on race-related issues that extend from

classroom conversations, through observable literacy processes, to final textual products.

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Jill

“Ever since I was little, it has been my dream to be a great artist. That’s why I’m here I suppose.

When I got accepted into the Department of Art, Architecture, and Planning, it was like a dream come true. I was in shock for weeks after getting my acceptance letter. I don’t think I realized at the time, however, how much work was going to be involved. I mean, I love a challenge, but man is it hard! Most of the time, I love what I’m doing. Right now I have eighteen credit hours, and I don’t know how I am going to survive. I even had to quit my job because I don’t have time anymore. Even though it’s hard I still love it. Probably the hardest thing for all art students is to stay positive. It can be so easy to give up on art and to do something more practical. People often ask me, “What kind of a job are you going to get with an art degree!?” It can be very frustrating at times, but somehow I get through it. I just hope that I finish.” Data on File: Reading response #1 Essay #1

Reading response #2 Essay #2 draft w/ peer note by Samantha

Reading response #4 Final essay Audio tape of interview (5/25/00)

Interview transcript (19 pp) Signed informed consent form

Teresa

“Let me just say this first off: I am repeating 102. I got an A and 2 B’s on my essays in 102 previously. I had a bad week and supposedly my research paper was unacceptable. I just didn’t want you to think I failed for not doing my work or goofing off.” Data on File:

Essay #1 draft w/ peer notations by Holden Essay #1 Essay #2 draft w/ peer notations by Rain Essay #3

Final essay Signed informed consent form (No interview)

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Kari “I like to get my work done and I’m serious about my work. If I’m interested in a topic then I give it my best effort. I take more interest in work that I can actually apply to my life, and I especially like hands-on experiences. This is important since my major is Nursing.” Data on File: Essay #2 Final essay Audio tape of interview (5/25/00) Interview transcript (24 pp) Signed informed consent form

Tree “Although it is my second year at Cincinnati Conservatory, I still feel as though there are many more goals to accomplish. Playing the cello, initially, was a very difficult thing. However that was fourteen years ago. Since then I have developed the technique and performing skills necessary to put me through four grueling years at CCM. Poetry has been one of my longstanding hobbies. I have been writing poetry since high school. The combination of my own poetry and music being done in one performance is a feeling ideal for me to comprehend. In the future, I hope to play in coffee houses and clubs, speaking the message of music. Data on File: Essay #1 Audio tape of interview (5/25/00) Essay #2 Interview transcript (17 pp) Essay #3 Signed informed consent form Final essay

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Amber “I have come to college to obtain an education in Industrial Engineering. My

educational goal is to complete college successfully and use my knowledge to have a great career. My college experiences so far have progressed in a wonderful way. I am a junior and have had many great learning experiences. One major thing has been my professional practice assignments. My biggest disappointment has been in my academics. My first couple of years were very difficult for me academically. I tried my best but it has taken some time to adjust to college. Reading response #1 Essay #1 draft w/ peer notations by Asia Reading response #2 Essay #1 Reading response #3 Essay #2 draft w/ peer notations by Kari Reading response #4 Essay #2 Final paper Audio tape of interview (5/25/00) Interview transcript (15 pp) Signed informed consent form

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Rambo “Hello, my name is Rambo. I am originally from Verona, Italy. I have lived most of my life in Macon, Georgia going through elementary, middle, and high school there. I chose [this university] for many different reasons, the main one being I wanted to get away from home and live life on my own. I also wanted to live in an urban area. Since I was a kid I have always wanted to live in a city because in a city one can find all sorts of entertainment. Being a part of [this university] has been a real experience for me. I have gained a lot of knowledge in my two quarters here about the world. My grades have been high because of the fortune of having mostly interesting teachers.” Reading response #1 Essay #1 Reading response #2 Audio tape of interview (5/25/00) Reading response #3 Interview transcript (22 pp) Reading response #4 Final essay Signed informed consent form

Rain “College is my opportunity to be a great student and a great nurse. I want to

graduate with my B.S.N. degree and hopefully come back for my Master’s. I plan to start working at a hospital in the area in emergency medicine. College is definitely a new experience for me. So far I have had a lot of struggle. School is a totally different atmosphere that I will soon get used to. This term I plan on doing my best in my classes. My biggest challenges are the work and dedication as a student. Having to study a lot was never a big thing with me. Now I am learning to deal with all of the pressures of college that have nothing to do with work along with the actual studying and work of college life. Data on file: Final essay Signed informed consent form

Raul “I came to UC because I knew of their reputation as a good engineering school. Since I wanted to major in Computer Science, I thought UC would be a good fit for me. UC is convenient since I do not have to live on campus and I save money that way. College has been a new experience. I consider it challenging. In high school, I had success while doing a small amount of studying. However, in college I find myself studying everyday and sometimes on weekends. In my opinion, the biggest challenge is trying to learn each teacher’s style. In high school, I had pretty much the same teachers, but in college I’ve had a wide range. Some teachers talk the whole class, while others expect input from the students. Also, some teachers have different style tests. Sometimes you need to study all the examples in class or sometimes you need to go over almost all the problems in the text. Since most of my time is spend studying, there is not much time to socialize. This would be my biggest disappointment. I was hoping to meet a lot of new people, but that really hasn’t been the case. I would say that I have changed the most in that I am more school oriented. Data on file: Reading response #1 Essay #1 Reading response #2 Essay #2 Reading response #3 Final essay proposal Reading response #4 Final essay Audio tape of interview (5/31/00) Interview transcript (21 pp) Signed informed consent form

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Kate “My college experience has been pretty good so far. When I first came to

college, I really didn’t know what to expect. But now starting spring quarter I think that I have learned how to manage my time a lot more. Managing your time is the big key to college success. Being able to study, write papers, and also have a job will mean that I’ll have to organize and be very disciplined.

My biggest challenge so far has been proving to myself that I could handle college and live far away from home. Since coming to college, I think that I manage my time better and also study more than I did in high school. Overall, college has been a good experience for me. Data on file: Essay #1 Audio tape of interview (5/31/00) Essay #2 Interview transcript (20 pp) Essay #3 Signed informed consent Final essay

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Jim “When I went through the daunting task of choosing a university, I decided on

[this university] for several reasons--the highly regarded engineering program, the co-op program, and, oh yes, the Reds had something to do with that. Now that I’ve completed two quarters, I am still pleased with my decision. I came here to receive a degree in computer science, and I am on my way. To this point it has been a little more difficult than I expected. My first quarter went great. I made the Dean’s list. However, my second quarter wasn’t so positive. I got caught up in the Bearcats basketball season, among other things, and attempted to get by on my high school ways. I found out the hard way that I need to study more often. I breezed through high school with minimal studying.

College is not only a “book learning” experience but also a learning-about-life experience. Here I have been faced with many choices and been put into many situations. Above all, college should put the finishing touches on ‘real world’ preparation. One of the most important aspects of higher learning at a large university is the cultural diversity. You can really learn something about yourself and others, and this will prepare you for the real world better than anything.” Data on file: Reading response #1 Essay #1 draft w/peer notations by Char Reading response #2 Essay #1

Reading response #3 Essay #2 draft w/peer notations by Holden

Reading Response #4 Essay #2 Final essay Essay #3 Audio tape of interview (5/31/00) Interview transcript (25 pp) Signed informed consent form

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Sherry “I live here in Cincinnati and my major is Social Work. Well, actually it’s still pre-psychology; I don’t know yet whether the college of Social Work is going to accept my application. I work 30 or more hours a week, mostly evening hours. Working and going to school is probably my biggest challenge. On Monday, I work at the hospital 7:00 p.m. until 3:30 in the morning, and then I come here on Tuesdays. Normally, I skip my first two classes on Tuesdays so, like today, I didn’t go to my first two classes and I don’t usually work on Tuesday, but I’m working tonight. And I work every other Wednesday, every other weekend, three hours on Thursday and eight hours on Friday. And I have a 3 ½ month-old little girl.” Data on file: Reading response #1 Essay #1 draft w/peer notes by Amber Reading response #2 Essay #1 Reading response #3 Essay #2 draft w/ peer notations by Tree Reading response #4 Essay #2 Final essay Essay #3 Audio tape of interview (5/25/00) Interview transcript (21 pp) Signed informed consent form

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Thera “I came to college last year from Spain to study music. English is not my first language and I am a little bit scared as usual with this class.

I met my current cello teacher in Spain in a summer camp. He was pleased with my playing and invited me to come over to study with him. I thought it was going to be a great opportunity so I came to Cincinnati. I feel happy here. I think that my college experience has progressed in a very good way. I had the chance to learn a new culture, a new language and different approaches to music.

At the beginning everything was so hard: I wasn’t able to understand people talking, I had no friends, and CCM was also hard for me. Orchestras were good and it was the first time I got to play in one. I think my biggest challenge has been everything. It is like I am living a new life; I am in a different country, speaking another language with everything kind of difference--culture, life-styles. I have changed a lot since I came here. I have learnt how to live alone, without parents always telling you what to do. I learnt how to resolve problems by myself. I learnt how wonderful life is and also how lucky I am that I’m having the opportunity to spend these years of my life here in Cincinnati. Data on file: Reading response #1 Essay #1 Signed consent form Reading response #2 Essay #2 Reading response #3 Final essay Reading response #4 Interview transcript (6/1/00)

(9 pp; Student did not wish to be audio-taped. Her responses were hand-written and later typed)

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Samantha “The reason I came to college was to get a degree in Electronic Media. With

two years behind me, I plan to gain all the information I can through the College Conservatory of Music and get a job after graduation. My college experience has been very well these past two years (this is my third year at UC). I have learned a lot about my major and I plan to use what I learn in the future. The biggest challenge I’ve faced so far occurred last year when I gave birth to my first child and found it difficult to stay in school full-time and care for a newborn. Though I stayed out a quarter at UC and had to deal with certain personal situations my sophomore year, I have been able to continue to my education. But even this challenge became a strength: becoming a mother has changed me as a student for the better. I am much more focused and much more determined to succeed now that I have a child to support.” Data on file: Essay #1 Audio tape of interview (5/25/00) Essay #2 Interview transcript (27 pp) Essay #3 Signed informed consent form Final essay

Char “I play golf well, but I cannot write papers very well. I am in the pre-

engineering program and I’m originally from Dayton, OH. “My freshman year has progressed rather slowly academically. However, there have been many classes in which I have been successful even though they were hard. My biggest disappointment was getting bad grades in Psychology 101 and 102.

My biggest challenge is to develop better study habits. This first year of college is forcing me to be more disciplined and more open to help.” Data on file: Essay #3 Signed informed consent form Audio tape of interview (6/1/00) Interview transcript (16 pp)

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Kate “My college experience has been pretty good so far. When I first came to

college, I really didn’t know what to expect. But now starting spring quarter I think that I have learned how to manage my time a lot more. Managing your time is the big key to college success. Being able to study, write papers, and also have a job will mean that I’ll have to organize and be very disciplined. My biggest challenge so far has been proving to myself that I could handle college and live far away from home. Since coming to college, I think that I manage my time better and also study more than I did in high school. Overall, college has been a good experience for me. Data on file: Essay #1 Audio tape of interview (5/31/00) Essay #2 Interview transcript (pp) Essay #3 Signed informed consent Final essay

Holden “I chose UC mainly because it’s here in Cincinnati, it’s good, and both my

older sisters came here. I haven’t declared a major yet, but I’m thinking about architecture. This has been one of my dreams for a long time. I want to be successful with what I do, to have a job that I really want to do throughout my life, but it takes time to make a decision that’s this important.

I can be a good English student, but sometimes I have a lapse resulting in poor work. I’ve always gotten pretty good grades, but I don’t think I truly put all the effort I should into my classes. Still, if I can enjoy a class, then that’s when I do best.” Data on file: Reading response #3 Essay #1 Reading response #4 Essay #2 Final essay Audio tape of interview (5/25/00) Interview transcript (pp) Signed informed consent

Coco “I chose the University of Cincinnati because I live here in the city, I want to become a successful corporate lawyer, and I’ve heard that the law school here is great. I plan to receive my undergrad degree in Communication and then attend law school.

My college experience has been kind of rough, especially in English. I have gotten good grades in every other class except for English. Many say that English Comp 101 is the easiest one of the three, but I had to repeat the course last quarter.

My biggest challenge is continuing to do well in college while working almost 30 hours each week. My biggest academic challenge in college, like I said before, is writing. If you give me a math or science problem, I can probably solve it in a matter of seconds. If you ask me to write a paper about anything other than math and science, it would probably take me a week or so.

I really want to be a good writer, but it seems like the harder I tried in the Fall, the worse my writing got. My biggest disappointment was finding out at the beginning of second quarter that I had to repeat English 101. I had worked so hard on my papers and stayed up many, many nights to make them as close to perfect as I could. It felt like all my hard work was worth nothing.

Since becoming a college student, I have improved my study habits. In high school I really never had to study at home because the work came so easy to me in class. Now, nothing is easy. The only way to learn is by studying the work. The bottom line here is that if you don’t study, you won’t succeed.” Data on file: Essay #1 Essay #2 draft w/ peer notations by Asia Essay #2 Essay #3 Final essay Signed informed consent form Audio tape of interview (6/1/00) Interview transcript (26 pp)

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Arthur I am majoring in health promotions, athletics training. I want to work with high school or college sports teams. I’m a freshman here, I’m on the track team, and I took English 101 in the Fall but received an IP. I retook it Winter quarter and passed. Something happened with my financial aid, so I was not able to register for English 102 on time. I still came to the class, and [Jane] signed my add slip. But I just forgot to add the class until it was too late. I plan to take English 102 in the summer or next year.” (From the end-of-term interview) Data on file: Writing samples from EC101 portfolio Interview transcript (6/1/00) (5 pp) Signed informed consent form

Holden “I chose UC mainly because it’s here in Cincinnati, it’s good, and both my

older sisters came here. I haven’t declared a major yet, but I’m thinking about architecture. This has been one of my dreams for a long time. I want to be successful with what I do, to have a job that I really want to do throughout my life, but it takes time to make a decision that’s this important.

I can be a good English student, but sometimes I have a lapse resulting in poor work. I’ve always gotten pretty good grades, but I don’t think I truly put all the effort I should into my classes. Still, if I can enjoy a class, then that’s when I do best.” Data on file: Reading response #3 Essay #1 Reading response #4 Essay #2 Final essay Audio tape of interview (5/25/00) Interview transcript (24 pp) Signed informed consent

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Rain “College is my opportunity to be a great student and a great nurse. I want to

graduate with my B.S.N. degree and hopefully come back for my Master’s. I plan to start working at a hospital in the area in emergency medicine. College is definitely a new experience for me. So far I have had a lot of struggle. School is a totally different atmosphere that I will soon get used to. This term I plan on doing my best in my classes. My biggest challenges are the work and dedication as a student. Having to study a lot was never a big thing with me. Now I am learning to deal with all of the pressures of college that have nothing to do with work along with the actual studying and work of college life.” Data on file: Final essay Signed informed consent form

Odessa “My educational goal at this point is to obtain a degree in Communication

with a specialization in Women’s Studies. My ideal plan for a career would be to open my own center addressing women’s needs. I would like to work with teen mothers and/or battered women.

The biggest challenge has been trying to choose a major that would best fit with my long-term goals. My biggest disappointment with this whole thing is that most of the fields of work that I am interested in (Social Work, Counseling, and other majors that focus on working with discouraged people) don’t pay very much at all. I find it to be greatly discouraging that we as a society are willing to pay millions to some guy who can throw a football but give pennies by comparison to the people who teach our children and to the social workers who help so many of the families in crises.”

Data on file: Essay #1 Audio tape of interview (5/31/00) Essay #2 Interview of transcript (24 pp) Essay #3 Final essay Signed informed consent

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Lynn “I am a first year nursing student. I will specialize in neo-natal nursing. I have

come to UC because it is relatively close to home and has a respected nursing program. My college experience so far has been quite enjoyable. I have made a lot of new friends, and found a lot of different activities that students can participate in. But I haven’t joined any yet. The first quarter was quite an adjustment. I went to a small school, and coming to UC was quite a change. One of my biggest challenges so far has been keeping my grades up, because the nursing program requires a 2.5 or better for acceptance for your sophomore year. Also keeping up with homework has been a challenge. I feel like most professors think that you are only taking their class!” Data on file: Final essay Audio tape of interview (6/1/00) Interview transcript (14 pp) Signed informed consent form

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Andy “I came to college to meet people and to further my education so that I may

find a job doing something that I enjoy--Chemistry. I have found that the college experience is very different than anything I had previously encountered in my 18 years. From education, to service and socializing, I have become more involved at U.C. than any other school that I attended. My goal is to be involved with people and graduate with a respectable grade point average. My college experience has been wonderful so far. Living in a dorm with sixty other students has led me to be much more open than I ever have been. In high school, I didn’t have too many true “friends” or participate in too many activities. But here at U.C., I have changed so much. I now have many friends and have done things with them that I had never done before, including my first experience with alcohol. I hope to continue learning to open my mind, heart, and soul to my friends and neighbors. My biggest challenge has been learning to control the fun that I’m having. I have evolved socially, but educationally, that’s a different story. In high school, I graduated third in my class. In my first two quarters, I have received the worst grades of my life. Socializing is wonderful, but I know that it shouldn’t come before classes. This quarter, I am striving for self-control. I will attend my classes and I will work hard. My future depends on my actions in the next ten weeks. I have taken many steps backwards with classes, but am working to fix that this quarter. I hope that college will be even better for me in the future.” Data on file: Reading response #2 Essay #1 Reading response #3 Essay #2 Reading response #4 Final essay Audio tape of interview (5/31/00) Interview transcript (27 pp) Signed informed consent

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Data Analysis

Management and analysis of data proceeded along the protocol established by

Carney (1990). Interview transcripts, field notes, student writing samples, and ancillary

data were prepared and examined for possible coding categories (see Data List). Along

with categories anticipated by the semi-structured interview questions, additional

categories that specifically or tangentially fit within the theoretical framework/foundation

of what constitutes evidence of “race” in students’ experiences and performances were

noted. In the beginning, obvious or salient categories of data were highlighted, pulled out,

and repackaged so that themes and trends among them could be identified. Relationships

in the data were identified along with obvious gaps of information. Maps of class session

seating arrangements were examined within the context of daily field notes, and analyses

of conversation/interaction flows per class meeting were conducted.

Identification of coding categories

Standard qualitative procedures participant-observation and open coding of

qualitative data were followed. Instead of examining data for predetermined sets of

patterns and then analyzing them according to an established research protocol, salient

patterns of experience were documented and to textual and thematic patterns observed

within data sets.

While the enormous, painstaking challenge of coding rich, multi-layered

information was anticipated, the challenge of characterizing their noisy, colliding

nuances, suggestions, and loose ends was not. The research’s guiding metaphor—

kaleidoscopic space, inspired by Bakhtin’s heteroglossia and swirling images of

carnival—helped focus data analysis. It seemed to validated divergent data as qualifiable

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cores of insight waiting to be clarified and documented in ancillary studies if not the

present one.

Results of the open coding yielded the following emergent pattern types in student

data:

• Educational contexts for post-secondary literacy (including previous writing

experiences at this university)

• Family and socio-cultural contexts for post-secondary literacy (including

support systems, responsibilities)

• Ideational contexts for post-secondary literacy (how students felt about and

valued post-secondary knowledge and what they believed it would do for

them/allow them to accomplish).

• Observed outward behaviors that might be implicated in setting/maintaining

classroom atmosphere (e.g., willingness to speak out in class; ability to do so

in ways to which peers responded favorably/approvingly; observable

evidences of tolerance and intolerance; observable evidences of admiration,

approval, ridicule, disregard, respect, familiarity, comfort, discomfort,

acceptance, rejection, etc.; approachability; willingness to approach others;

willingness to interact with classmates outside immediate peer associates;

types of interactions w/ peer associates—i.e., inclusive and exclusive ones;

eye contact and glancing behaviors; body language during interactions with

immediate peer group; body language during interactions with larger

classroom…these, by the way, continue on and on, often with only two or

three supporting cases.) Many of these are subjective and would appear to rely

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principally on researcher interpretation. For this reason, only observed

outward behaviors that the students and instructor co-observe and/or

corroborate with unsolicited comments are included.

• Reported inner attitudes that might have been implicated in classroom

performances

• Post-secondary literacy performances (e.g., ways of reading and using

readings in this class; ways of writing and using writing in this class;

researcher analysis of writing products)

• Proximity of expressed goals to subject location/time to degree

Identification and repackaging of categories that specifically or tangentially fit within the

theoretical framework for what constitutes evidence of “race” in students’ experiences

and performances

The bulk of coded data was reduced to feature those relationships (and marked

gaps in relationships), experiences, and written discourses that most immediately

resonated with the study’s research questions, i.e., How might race be implicated in

students’ experiences and performances in this English composition class? Evidence in

the data pointed out key relationships, themes, and expressed ideas about race and/or

socially associated with notions of blackness and whiteness.

Among the challenges of identifying and examining data as evidence of “race” in

students’ experiences and performances is the acknowledgment that conceptualizations of

race research problems and interpretations of data as raced are often preceded by “a priori

ideological and cultural biases that determine the production of ‘objective knowledge’”

(Stanfield and Rutledge 4). For this reason, the gathering and interpretation of both

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statistical and ethnographic data in race research frequently only lends “a professional

gloss to what are in reality nothing more than cultural and social stereotypes and

presumptions derived from historically specific folk wisdom” (4). Thus a deliberate,

conscious goal for this research on race was to design and execute a research project that

would generate data necessary for the formulation of adequate explanations for the racial

and ethnic dimensions of observed and documented experiences.

One way to achieve this result is by laying out the traditional parameters of the

methodologies used in composition studies and discussing how they have been applied to

race studies in the field so that what is investigated evolves from a firm theoretical base

and what is discovered anticipates new and logical extensions. The base for this is

explored in Chapter One. A methodology that reflects a combination of traditional and

critical understandings of qualitative research is outlined in this chapter.

At the core of this inquiry is an investigation of how the concept “race”—

understood to be a symbolic system of discursive practices socially constructed—figures

in an educational atmosphere attentive to the ways difference and silence work in

culturally heterogeneous groups to assist the ultimate performances of some and detract

from, or outright thwart, the performances of others. The analysis is sensitive to patterns

in the data that highlight how “raced” students—black and white—remain “flexible,

adaptive, resistant, reflective, and responsive” to the shifting demands made on them in

their classroom by the pedagogy, by their peers, and by their own aspirations (Durst 118).

Salient patterns suggestive of “raced” experiences and performances were identified as

follows:

• Instances of competing and/or subversive narratives

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• Instances of assistive and/or assenting narratives

• Primary narratives and discourses operating within the classroom community

• Secondary narratives and discourses operating within the classroom community

• Emergent ideas about what constitutes “normal” and “different” in the classroom

community

• Students’ representations of others in terms of racial identity

• Students’ representations of themselves in terms of racial identity

• Observed and/or documented collusions of race, gender, and class

• Observed relationships between race and power in the data

• Reported relationships between race, gender, and/or social class in the data

Reduction of data and linkage of findings toward the construction of an explanatory

framework

Of the twenty students whose observed and reported experiences form the

investigation’s study base, nine are featured principally in the study: four of the five

black students in the class, and five of the fifteen white students in the class. Again, this

reduction of data features those relationships, and gaps in relationships, that resonate with

the study’s research focus. More specific themes and trends were identified for this

repackaged data with particular attention to how observations and data for the nine case

study students compare to data on the larger group. Linkages in the reduced data to the

interdisciplinary research framework were identified and grouped for analysis and

interpretation.

Interpretations of data arise from theory and procedures established in the fields of

composition and literacy. Reflections of race in student interaction are interpreted

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through the framework for theorizing classroom discourse communities established in

Chapter Two. Analysis of student writing for characterizations of textual experiences of

race is based on the concepts of textual enactment and recognition work developed by

James Gee. Because it assumes that language is “recruited” to establish and respond to

socially-situated contexts,” this discourse analysis method accommodates the

identification of discourse as action. Race, conceived as an array of discursive practices,

probably reveals itself in the form of authoritative discourses and “colonized” discourses;

primary, secondary, and tertiary narratives; and appropriating, assimilative, and

accommodating discursive gestures. Gee’s analytical approach locates within texts

instances of “enactive and recognition work,” interweaving actions in discourse that

create, sustain, negotiate, and transform textual contexts such as race. Discourse

community interaction and student discourse analysis findings are discussed in Chapters

Four and Five, respectively.

Together, these methods for identifying, coding, analyzing, and interpreting race in

students’ experiences adhere to contemporary qualitative research methods and provide

as objective a handling of data as situatedly possible. The difficulties of handling such

preponderance of data cannot be overemphasized, especially given the co-construing,

nearly indistinguishable affects of race, gender, and class on observed phenomena. For

this reason, student data, writing samples in particular, are presented relatively intact,

thereby accommodating co-interpretations of students’ experiences of race in a way that

extends the study’s valuations of dialogue, difference, and dynamic interaction beyond

the limits of theory. The study may appear to reduce the complexities of race to binaries

of blackness and whiteness; this is neither the intention nor the effect. Instead, it responds

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to black/white race relations as the most insidious, least theorized variable in

contemporary composition and post-secondary literacy scholarship and suggests

multicolored, multi-layered experiences of race.

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CHAPTER FOUR

REFLECTIONS OF SELF AND OTHER IN KALEIDOSCOPIC CLASSROOM SPACE

Constructing the Mandala

“We need to get in a tight circle so that folks aren’t looking at the backs of

heads,” Jane, the instructor, admonishes on the first day when she notices some students

sitting behind others in a configuration loosely resembling the figure eight. “On

Thursday, get into a tight circle so that no one gets marginalized and we create space for

all voices.” Twenty students—twelve female students, eight male students; twelve white

students, five black students; one Spanish, one from Italy but raised in the states, and one

Pacific Islander—form a circle of desks and claim a place on it. The room is large—90’ x

80’—and this request is not unfamiliar to most of them. This generation of students has

been sitting in classroom circles since kindergarten. Two of the original twenty-two

students would transfer to another section before the third class meeting, both white

males. “Let’s introduce ourselves,” Jane says to the group after it settles down somewhat.

The introductions proceed with increasing light heartedness, and effectively warm the

too-cool classroom atmosphere. After introductions, the academic work begins.

“This composition class engages your critical thought and critical writing about

issues in higher education. Before we go into the readings, let’s start here.” Jane

distributes a handout, “Dimensions of Personal Literacy,” that suggests approaches and

guidelines for reading and learning in the course. She highlights from the handout the

necessity of maintaining focused, sustained attention to the readings; entertaining

complexity and ambiguity in both the readings and written responses; remaining “okay”

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with the idea of being wrong; and being tolerant of failure in one’s own and others’

interpretations, logic, and articulations.

At the time of this study, Jane, a doctoral student in creative writing, has been

teaching college writers for over five years and participated in piloting Durst’s You Are

Here: Readings on Higher Education for College Writers, the course’s principal

textbook. As a result, she is acutely familiar with the objectives and assumptions of

reflective instrumentalist pedagogy and has established a personal approach to teaching

that incorporates the best of administrative goals with the most contemporary literacy

instructional techniques, and these are enhanced by her unique contributions as an

accomplished writer of poetry and fiction. Jane summarizes her goals for the students as

follows:

I want my students to come away with from the class with the power of

articulation. How empowering is it to be able to articulate a thought

clearly and precisely. It’s something that I can’t always do, but I will

always try to impart it especially to freshmen. I want them to know that

just because something appears in a textbook or on television or whatever

doesn’t mean it’s right or true for most people. I want them to know

healthy cynicism, to have a healthy element of doubt about what they’re

hearing all the time. I want them to know that as far as perspective and

point of view goes, now that we’re doing this real inquiry, culture shapes

what we understand. So it’s important to be skeptical about what they read

and what they hear and what they see so that they’re not just blindly and

dumbly swallowing down what they see and hear in the media.

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The class seating arrangement, one that remains fairly constant for the rest of the

quarter, finds Jane sitting just left of the center of the chalk board; three black female

students sitting to Jane’s immediate left—Kari, Odessa, and Coco. Continuing clockwise

are an Italian American male, Rambo; a white male called Tree, Thera, a white Spanish

female studying abroad at the university; Andy, a white male; Raul, a white male; Arthur,

a black male; four white female students—Kate, Teresa, Brooke, and Rain, all of whom

are nursing majors; Amber, a white female majoring in Engineering; Char, a Pacific

Islander; an empty seat or two; me; two white males—Joe and Mark; two empty seats

and a great deal of space; and finally three females who become close during the course

of the term: Samantha, a black female; Jill, a white female; and Sherry, a white female of

Appalachian descent. Three empty seats separate Sherry from Jane. Jane’s instructor

position remains near, just left or right of, the center of the chalkboard, effectively

creating a “front” of the class.

“Where do our images of college come from?” Jane asks, opening the first class

dialogue. Students are tucking their handouts into folders or notebooks. They are more

relaxed. Single-word and single-phrase answers—“television,” “the movies,” “the

media”—erupt from different places around the circle. “’Animal House,” shouts Char,

nodding his head. A few smiles appear on faces. “’Good Will Hunting’,” “’Yeah, Good

Will Hunting’,” Jim and Holden offer respectively. “Oh, yeah,” Scott says, “That movie

about the genius who is a janitor at M.I.T. and gets discovered and tutored by another

genius, a professor—Robin Williams plays that part.” “That’s the one,” says Jim. “Matt

Damon plays the lead. It shows the deep, inner conflict in this man and the things outside

him that pressure him plus that other stuff.”

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“’School Daze’ is another movie that shows what college life is like,” Odessa

offers. “That movie by Spike Lee, yeah,” Kari adds while nodding toward Odessa. “It’s

about these different groups of students on a college campus—the light-skinned girls and

the dark-skinned girls, and Greeks versus the non-Greek fraternities—and how they all

conflict with each other over that craziness,” Kari explains. Char adds, “’Animal House’

shows college as being fun, wild, carefree, with lots of partying and sexy bodies, man!”

Several male students smile, nod. “’School Daze’ does too,” Odessa says, “But it has a

message in it about how we should not waste time hatin’ and start working together to

build something. But a lot of what goes on at other college campuses, the great parties

and stuff, never goes on here because this campus is so conservative,” says Odessa.

Immediately, and to most people’s surprise, Mark spits out, “What do you expect?!” The

mood tightens. Odessa resumes. “There’s just nothing to do around here,” she says

coolly. “This city even is too conservative. At Jackson State, things are a lot different…”

Jim leans over to Holden and says, “I’m getting a headache.” “Holden smiles tentatively

while looking at me.

With that first conversation, the lines demarcating race and culture in classroom

conversations are drawn. The major contenders are Odessa and Jim. They are positioned

directly opposite each other on the class circle. Odessa, with Kari and Coco beside her, sit

in the front, northern most part of the circle, next to Jane. Jim and Holden sit in the back,

southern most part of the circle. Nearly all of the tension-filled class discussions volley

between these two points on the circle. Students sitting in the spaces other than these—

the spectators— often wait for or yield to Odessa or Jim’s comments before initiating

their individual responses. The four nursing students collectively establish a unified,

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singular voice in class conversations. They sit in the southeastern part of the circle. Their

commentaries usually communicate a single idea that they collectively articulate. These

four nursing students co-construct and affirm each other’s insights with nods and verbal

agreements. While often generating provocative insights, especially in response to class

readings on gender in education, the nursing students seek little to no confirmation of

their ideas from other members of the class. Before the end of the class, Kari, also a

nursing major, will join them.

The principal peer referee of the verbal conflicts, regardless of with whom they

originate, is Andy. Other referees are Teresa, decided leader of the nursing contingency,

Kate, Tree, and Jill. During the most heated conversations, one of these class diplomats

bravely offers new perspectives for consideration, fresh insights on the conflict at hand,

or affirms the validities of clearly-irreconcilable points of view. If their efforts fail, then

Jane, by executive order, quells the impending storm.

The twin issues around which most race-related conversations turn, issues that

recur throughout the quarter, are individual responsibility and social accountability: Who

is responsible for an individual’s success—the person or society? On what does

accountability for what gets learned in school, or not, finally rest—institutions, or

individuals? The students in this class know the statistics. They are familiar with

pervasive, stereotypical images of struggling students, and the effects of poverty as a

cultural code for “race” on health statistics and probable educational outcomes. They are

equally familiar with pervasive, stereotypical images of successful middle class students

and the opportunities afforded by affluence, another cultural code for “race,” on probable

longevity and happiness. Students’ assertions about and responses to these issues reveal

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assumptions underlying perceptions of themselves and others as raced individuals and

groups that will be reflected in the form of dominant and non-dominant classroom

narratives.

Simultaneously, two ancillary race-colored questions emerge in discussions, the

responses to which are not expressed overtly in class, yet echo in students’ narratives: In

what ways should students assist each other’s learning? In what ways do students affect

each other’s learning for better or for worse, and who gets to decide what’s good and

what’s bad? For instance, during a classroom discussion on how social contexts might

influence learning, the first instance of a recurrent pattern—teaching members how to

belong to the group—was observed. After Jane prompts the class to consider external

factors that might affect students’ academic success, the following conversation ensues

between Kari, a black female, and Holden and Tree, two white males:

Kari: You can tell by a teacher’s attitude who’s going to pass and who’s

not. Also, students can sense how much a teacher’s going to require, and

then decide how much they’re going to work. They may do just what they

need to get by, and folks I know, including myself, will do this. It’s not

good because you set limitations on yourself that may become a pattern

through life, but if it’s a class I like, and it’s an easy A, I’ll take it.

Here, Kari openly articulates what is perhaps a common sentiment but one that is

inappropriate according to prevailing notions of acceptable college beliefs and behaviors.

Kari, on the other hand, is sharing a strategy many students use to succeed in college, and

probably thinks her peers will support her expression of such. The dialogue commences:

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Holden: I’d take the more challenging class, whether I’m interested in it or

not. It would be harder for me to be in an easy class because I just

wouldn’t put myself in it—might not go and whatever—and I might not

get an A.”

Here, Holden establishes the “appropriate” position on the issue, a dominant narrative

reflecting middle-class values. They continue:

Kari: It might be wrong or whatever, but you’ve got to think about your

G.P.A.

Undaunted, Kari recognizes the position’s social appearance, but asserts a more working-

class value of expediency over form. Tree affirms Holden’s assertion:

Tree: “Your brain will kind of become “tracked.”

Kari: Sure, but you’ve got to think of your G.P.A.!

Jane: The only “D” I ever got in college was in an easy class.

With Jane’s comment, it has becomes obvious to Kari that her position on the issue,

while perhaps felt by many of her classmates, should not have been expressed so openly

in class. Many avoid looking at Kari as the conversation picks up, communicating

embarrassment for her as well as personal uneasiness with the exposure of this secret way

of looking at education. Odessa looks on supportively while Jim suppresses what looks

like a smirk. Jane picks up on the perceived faux pas and helps Kari find her way back

into the community fold of appropriate discourse:

Jane: What about the idea that if you “come” to class, attempt the work,

‘just “be there,” you deserve a B?

Kari: (softer) No, I don’t think that’s right.

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Holden: Yeah, because all you’d have to do is go, not do much, and then

get by. And that’s not good.

Holden’s final certification of Kari’s revised position characterized the sort of discursive

guidance and certifying of ideas that often proceeds in this class unilaterally from a

typically white, middle-class ethos to a black working-class ideology. Middle-class

values govern not only class narratives but shape students’ experiences as well. At the

same time, class values are not the possession of one group or another. When Jane asked

whether or not they, the class as a whole, preferred challenging classes over easy ones,

students indicated by show of hands or brief comment there in class that they preferred

the more challenging classes, most students indicated that they did. Samantha, a black

female who does not speak readily in class said in her interview, “As far as classes go, I

always go for the ones people tell me not to take. Harder teachers make me want to work

harder. I like a good challenge.”

Indeed, many of the ideas expressed in student writing and interviews support the

idea that challenges are to be met nobly, without excuses and without failure, including

those created by socio-cultural and socioeconomic factors and lying beyond students’

influence and, in some cases, consciousness. For the most part, students whose

socioeconomic and or socio-cultural contexts support academic success attribute their

successes to such middle-class values and perceived personal factors as dedication,

strength of will, and a commitment to excellence. At the same time, students whose

socio-cultural and or socioeconomic contexts pose challenges to academic success often

find themselves defending their ways of learning as well as their ways of succeeding in

hostile or unsupportive learning environments. Thus, the notion of personal responsibility

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for success despite the odds becomes a primary narrative in the class that takes on racial

overtones.

A problem with this particular narrative of primacy’s operation in the classroom

space is that it systematically privileges middle-class narratives in general and marks the

systematic exclusion of narratives celebrating success achieved along different lines.

Kari’s observation that students “sense how much a teacher’s going to require” before

deciding how much they are going to do suggests a way of approaching learning not

admittedly valued in dominant discourse communities. Kari’s commenting that, “Folks I

know, including myself, will do this,” echoes the comments of several black students in

the research pilot study. Like the pilot study participants, Kari admits that her approach to

college success is not ideal, but given the stakes, one must do what is necessary to pass.

She notes:

It’s not good because you set limitations on yourself that may become a

pattern through life, but if it’s a class I like, and it’s an easy A, I’ll take it.

The systematic exclusion of Kari’s narrative by peers operating under a middle-

class ethos instantiates Min-Zhan Lu’s notion of displacement, the relegation of students’

idiosyncratic approaches to the realm of “error” in the face of dominating narratives of

normalcy (“Professing” 447). Another idiosyncratic college success strategies Kari and

pilot study students employ is aligning themselves with the teacher, bonding and

becoming friends, developing close personal relationships that enhance their chances of

passing the course, regardless of perceived work quality.

This tactic, while not valued by her immediate peers in the classroom, has been

observed as a success strategy used generally by students of color attending

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predominantly white institutions of higher learning. In their article, “Enacting Diverse

Learning Climates: Improving the Climate for Racial/Ethnic Diversity in Higher

Education,” Hurtado et al. demonstrate that positive teacher relationships have a

significant impact on the success of African Americans and other students of color (qtd.

in Tuitt 3). Nevertheless, the tacit rules for belonging to this class discourse community

include adoption of dominant bootstrap narratives: Success comes from personal

integrity, fortitude, sacrifice, and dedication. Failure is not probable if one has personal

integrity, fortitude, and strength of character.

Kari’s experiences within the context of the writing classroom provide a glimpse

of those ways of knowing, i.e., literacies, that mediate personal/group agency, and

personal/group validation, as well systematic inclusion/exclusion of individuals and/or

groups. Eight other students express or experience race as a theme, subject, or object in

ways that collide and collude in their classroom interactions. An examination of their

expressions and experiences, along with the contexts that give rise to them, anticipates an

understanding of how race is implicated in their literacy processes and products.

Odessa

The initial question semi-structured interview questions are designed to elicit

information about students’ family contexts for literacy. In most of interviews, they

generate basic information that presents opportunities to delve deeper into students’

histories with reading and writing. Ancillary questions usually arise from and return to

natural, free-flowing dialogue. This particular set of prompts generates something

altogether different with Odessa:

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Researcher: Do you have family in the immediate area or are you away

from home?

Odessa: My family’s here.

Researcher: [Taken aback by the abruptness of her answer and her stony

regard] Okay. When you were growing up, what was reading and writing

like at home?

Odessa: We didn’t do much reading and writing outside of school. [Quick,

direct, complete]

Researcher: What about mom and dad? Did they do much reading and

writing?

Odessa: No.

Researcher: Are you an only child?

Odessa: No, I’m the oldest.

Researcher: How many are there under you?

Odessa: There’s just one.

Researcher: How old is he or she?

Odessa: My brother is sixteen.

Researcher: And you are…?

Odessa: [Sighs, looks away] Twenty-two.

[Her suspicion towards this line of questioning approaches frustration, and

I feel an explanation is necessary.]

Researcher: Well, the reason I ask questions like this is that some of the

things we do in writing class are similar to what we do at home—like

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reading instructions, or reasoning with someone in a discussion or

whatever—and others are different from the things we do with writing at

home, like writing reading responses! [Smiling] And it’s just helpful for

writing teachers and “aspiring researchers” like me to know how writing

and reading get used at home, that’s all. It just helps us to understand how

what we’re doing in class relates to what goes on with writing and reading

in the real world.

Odessa: [Suspiciously] Yeah.

Later, after the conversation begins to flow naturally, Odessa explains that she

began her academic studies as a dance major, graduated from a local performing arts

school, and left dance to study nursing. Mother of a five-year old son, Odessa, at twenty-

two, is one of the oldest students in the class. She works twenty-five hours a week, typing

her papers in the computer lab during hours that do not conflict with her work hours. This

she does not share in the interview. She notes it in her written response to an inquiry on

the Student Information Sheet filled out in class regarding whether she or her family

owns a computer. In a different interview, Coco shares that she, Kari, and Odessa write

out their essay and reading response drafts and then type their writings together in one of

the university computer laboratories. Odessa discusses her academic major as follows:

I left nursing and went to social work, left social work and went to early

childhood education. Now I’m in communications. One of the reasons I’m

taking the freshmen sequence so late is because I hate it. I’ve tried to take

all the classes I could around it because I thought I was a very, very poor

writer.

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Because Odessa’s responses to the questions were guarded, I did not press her on them.

But about the readings and her in-class experiences with the issues they cover, Odessa

speaks freely:

Some of them were kind of difficult to understand for me personally. A

lot of the readings I like, and I agreed with them because I am a liberal arts

student and really did relate to a lot of the topics. When we were assigned

readings, we were assigned maybe three or four at a time, so it took a long

time for me to work through them. I think I’m a slow reader. And it takes

me a little longer than most maybe. I didn’t have a lot of trouble writing

the essays. After finishing the readings and considering the topics that we

were given, the essays just kind of flowed.

When asked whether or not she has changed as a writer in the past year at university,

Odessa offers this:

I don’t know if I necessarily changed as a writer. I changed the way I look

at my own personal writing. As far as the classes I’ve taken so far go, not

really. But I am going into communications. Critical thinking—I think

that’s going to play a big role in my major once I do finally switch over

and I start taking more of the advanced communication classes.

When asked which of the writing assignments she enjoys best and why, Odessa responds

as follows:

So far, the research paper has been my favorite just because it has helped

me the most. It was on our major and aspects of our major and since I was

so indecisive, it really made me research and sit down and think about

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exactly what I want to do and how I want to approach my degree and my

career. I went ahead and picked communications as my major because I

knew it was a broad degree and since I didn’t really know exactly what I

wanted to do, so it’s it! I found lots of books on careers for people with

degrees in communications. This research assignment is very informative

and it’s really helping me narrow down what I want to get into.

When asked to talk about the social climate of the class, Odessa said, “I think

everyone in the class kind of had a friend, a person in the class they kind of clung to, or

everyone kind of sat in the same place and they talked to the same people.” Odessa

interacts in class with Kari until a few weeks after midterm when Kari moves to sit with

the other nursing students. After Kari leaves, Odessa’s interaction with Rambo becomes

more pronounced. Coco shares in her interview that Rambo sometimes meets the three of

them in the library. Odessa does not mention this. She also does not mention the

incendiary verbal conflicts with Jim, observing instead that he, like she, “contributed

significantly” to classroom discussions when prompted by a final interview question.

Jim

Whereas Odessa is hesitant about sharing personal information about her literacy

contexts and experiences, Jim is delighted to do so. In discussing his high school reading

and writing tasks, Jim notes,

In high school, I never really studied. I did the homework, read the

chapters or whatever, but that’s about it. I did all right with that method

first quarter, but then I got into physics and calculus and all that stuff, and

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it doesn’t work that way. So, I consider myself a good student but it’s

gotten more difficult quickly.

His major is computer science. He says it is a “natural fit” for him because he has used

computers since kindergarten and his mother is director of a library’s technical services.

Because she is also a children’s librarian, Jim’s mother encouraged him always to “read,

read, read, read!” He adds:

I used to read all the time, as many baseball books as I could get my hands

on through middle school, until high school, when we had so much

reading in class that I [no longer] read for fun, except for the sports pages

and that type of stuff. There’s a lot of books I really want to read, and I’m

sure I’ll get to them sometime, but right now I don’t have free time to

read.

He talks about the demands of his other courses in ways that suggest he neither enjoys the

major nor knows what he might want to do with it. When asked outright how computer

science might figure in his future, Jim confesses,

I’m not really sure what I’m going to do. I mean, I like to work with

computers and it’s a pretty safe field to get into in terms of job security,

and it’s well-paying, and I’d have to—I don’t know if I’m greedy, but

that’s pretty important to me. I’ve been raised in a (pause…) good

lifestyle, so I’m used to it, so I always wanted do better.

It becomes apparent that while Jim does not particularly enjoy the course work that

promises him the lucrative job he envisions, he enjoys exploring ideas in books and

online. His face beams as he recalls high school English tasks:

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I always liked reading novels and writing a response to them. I don’t like

the shorter essays; they’re not interesting to me. I like to read books

you’ve heard of—the classics, Les Miserables, and Mark Twain’s stuff.

We didn’t write plot summaries. Our teacher would pick out a theme in

the book and we would respond to that, elaborate on that a bit more. I

enjoyed that more than what we’re doing now.

When asked to say more about his experiences of English courses at the university, Jim

says he thought he should have tested out of the first English course during the placement

process:

I took 101 my first quarter. But I had to take symbolic logic second

quarter [because] I got locked out of it my first quarter. They created a

special section of it second quarter, so I just moved my 102 class to third

quarter.

Researcher: How did you experience English 101?

Jim: I was extremely bored, to be honest. It just seemed so repetitive. It

was everything I’d done in high school and less. I thought the placement

test was a bit below me. I thought I should have been higher placed, but I

don’t know obviously what’s best.

Jim’s final words denote concession to the “erroneous” placement, but their cocky tone

and delivery suggest otherwise. Jim’s verbal tone and content often convey arrogance and

narrow-mindedness, especially regarding people or issues he views with contempt, and

several of his peers note this in their comments. When asked to identify English 102’s

course objective, Jim begins as follows:

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I’d say [it is] reflective—to hear other peoples’ experiences, relate them to

your experiences, or something along those lines.

Researcher: And what do you think about that?

Jim: Aw, I guess that by reading those essays you find out different

aspects of how other people live and you’re supposed to, I don’t know, to

be more understanding. I’m not sure exactly what they’re geared toward,

but…[sniffs, trails off]

Researcher: [Quietly] But what?

Jim: Well, many of them people were, um, whining. I said that in one of

my reading responses and Jane said the way I was raised and all that is

different from these people and I need to understand that, or something

like that. But I…she’s probably right.

Researcher: Would you say more about the readings?

Jim: Um, one of them was about people who dropped out of school and all

that because they couldn’t resist temptations or something like that. My

point was that I made it through school, I had temptations and all that. I

guess that’s a pretty self-centered view, but I’m kind of stubborn like that,

I don’t know. Some of the readings were interesting. I really like the one

about the computer field, I don’t know if you remember that one, but some

of the stuff I read was absurd. I had my roommate read it to see what he

thought, and it was either so obvious or completely off the wall. Some of

them I didn’t think were very well written. Once again, that’s just an

opinion.

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Jim accurately identifies critical reflection as a course objective. At the same time, he

resists using it as a thinking-learning heuristic. Also, Jim seems to be referring to more

than one offensive article, but he criticizing a single article, the one about which he

complains at the start of this section. Bowser and Perkins’ article, “Success Against the

Odds: Young Black Men Tell What it Takes,” is the only article in their course readings

explicitly about black students’ learning experiences.

Embedded in many of Jim’s statements above are discourse expressions that

emerge from and return to an ideology of exclusion typically associated with race. They

include prejudicial judgment, stereotyping, and psychological as well as social

distancing. Later in the interview, Jim states that his thinking has been enhanced by

course readings and assignments, and reveals perhaps an experience of “ideological

becoming” on the issues of race and class:

Researcher: Have you changed as a writer, reader, thinker?

Jim: Along the lines of critically analyzing things, yes, I’m better, but I

think you’re never done—it’s a life-long thing. I have more of an open

mind when reading papers.

Researcher: What does that mean to you, having an open mind?

Jim: It’s not that I don’t like people telling me I’m wrong—I mean my

girlfriend tells me I argue with her about everything. I don’t think it’s

arguing. If you say something and people agree with you, you never find

out what your thinking really is. I don’t know whether I like to argue, but I

like to question what people are telling me, and I think it makes them

more sure of what they are saying. Too much stuff you learn from high

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school is from just one angle, but if you question it and you see different

angles on it, you have to explain where your reasoning comes from. Then

you’ll have a different viewpoint and the other person would have a

different view point. I just think it works better that way.

While one should not read too much into extemporaneous statements given in an artificial

research context, Jim’s belief that he has “an open mind” about the role of sociocultural

influences in education runs counter to both his peers experiences of his behaviors and, as

reported here, his girlfriend’s experiences as well. For Jim, having an open mind means

questioning others, helping others become “more sure of what they are saying,” and

coming to a new point of view. Neither listening to others nor being questioned by others

is included in his rubric. His final interview response to a more focused question reveals a

more thoughtful, but equally suggestive, answer:

Researcher: What has been most beneficial to you about 102?

Jim: The most advantageous part of the class is the critical thinking, being

able to see where everyone else is coming from better. I don’t think I’m

sheltered, I mean I’ve been in rich neighborhoods, and seen ghettos and all

that and I’ve seen quite a bit, so I don’t think that the only—let me start

that over. I know more than what I was raised as, but I agree with that

way. I mean, there’s obviously so much more that I need to see, but so far,

I mean, I agree with my parents’ views that there are too many excuses

with people, and that drop outs and everything like that, and…my dad’s a

big person against welfare and all this. I don’t say I’m overly Republican

or all that. I’m not really political, I’m not an informed political. The one

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thing the class has done is make me decide to register to vote. I mean I’ve

thought about it, but I’ve decided now to register….I agree with what he’s

saying. I think that part of the problem with the American society, is

‘Sorry, somebody else will take care of that for you,” instead of someone

wanting to take blame for what they’ve done.

Through the use of awkward, strained sentence patterns, Jim avoids naming the black

Bowser and Perkins article, the young black men portrayed in it, and the Odessa-led

position on the issue, even though they are clearly the subject. His near obsession with

this particular issue might suggest a desire to know more about issues. Jim acknowledges

that he does not understand all he needs to know to make an informed decision on the

issue. But based on what he has observed, he decides that conservative social narratives

and his ideational context based on his father’s conservative politics are justified.

Still, Jim’s repeated, unprompted references to the subjects of race, class, and

social responsibility during the interview seem to suggest an ongoing, dynamic working-

through of the issues on a personal level. An ongoing coming-to-terms is likewise

suggested symbolically by the mid-speech gesture of self-revision (“…let me start that

over.”). The notion is an important one in the course pedagogy, and a significant one with

regards to experiences of race. Its significance is not lost on Jim, and he observes later in

the interview the experience of working through issues as a course objective:

Researcher: What do you think Jane wanted us to do as a class?

Jim: She wanted us to have intelligent discussions.

Researcher: How did we do?

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Jim: I don’t think we did too well. It seemed like the same people were

talking…I don’t remember everybody’s name. Holden always seemed to

be prepared… I think that’s about it. I mean, we really didn’t have very

many males in the class saying a lot. Um….[huge pause] I’m drawing a

blank now.

As mentioned earlier, issues of race, class, and gender share boundaries often blurred in

qualitative research data. Jim’s comment here demonstrates the pervasiveness of gender

bias in his perception of “other,” for in his recount of individuals who contributed

significantly to “intelligent discussions,” Jim disavows altogether the contributions of his

female peers. While Odessa neither mentions nor implies Jim in her discussion, Odessa

permeates his comments and experiences of the class. Most interesting about this is that

he does not acknowledge her at all, even when talking about her:

Researcher: What were other students like in terms of conversation?

Jim: Some of them were very opinionated. I mean, they voiced their

opinions. I didn’t always agree with them, but I…I didn’t respond to

them…I mean, there were some things said that were just…[trails off.]

Researcher: Give me an example

Jim: (Long pause)…Um, I guess when people were making comments

about the whole dropping out thing. I think they need to work harder. I

don’t think there’s any reason to drop out of high school. People in class

were making excuses for that whole thing. And, I don’t want to name

names, but…[he trails off, looks away, clearly uncomfortable]. “I really

wanted to say something to her, but…[looks away, stops talking].

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Jim is referring to Odessa’s persistent argument across readings and throughout the term

that sociocultural factors affect academic success more than personal wherewithal. Recall

that one of the primary narratives in this class, established in large part by Jim and

Holden, is that success comes from personal dedication and drive, and that one should not

expect “hand-outs” from educational or governmental agencies. Uncomfortable with

identifying Odessa by name, Jim refers to her using plural pronouns and aggregate terms

such as “them people.” This gesture seems to suggest that he associates her with a

likeminded group, not as a unique individual member of the class, and not at all like him.

A form of discursive segregation, the gesture is repeated throughout the interview and in

his essays. Of all the discourse gestures implicating race observed in the study, distancing

and discursive elimination of raced or gendered subjects during discussions about them

come closest to mimicking racist and/or sexist discourse.

Another discursive gesture thick with racial, sexist, and elitist implication is the

practice of using one’s own experiences as benchmarks and then judging or diminishing

others’ experiences as inferior. During a classroom discussion on whether or not teachers

should relax grading practices in order to keep students motivated, Jim says no, that his

high school experiences were “rich because of the challenges of harder honors classes.”

He then distinguishes between college preparatory classes which were “easy” and honors

classes which were “substantial.” But Odessa offers a similar comparison between her

high school classes, which she identifies as “harder than college” and her university

courses, which do not require as much of her, discursively diminishing Jim’s account of

his high school experiences. Jim returns the gesture with a tight smile, “What classes are

you taking?” Jane interrupts and prevents this turn in the conversation from further

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deteriorating, and the topic of relaxed grading practices is dropped before other students

can effectively contribute.

In this example, both Jim and Odessa engage in discursive benchmarking, and by

this time, one wonders whether Odessa offers it simply to refute the significance of Jim’s

contribution, a gesture she knows will irritate him, or whether she offers it as a sincere

part of the developing discussion. No one acknowledges the fact that college courses in

computer science typically require more technical knowledge sets, many of them new,

than most college communication courses. Still, within the context of the class, Jim’s

final question, buoyed by mocking intonation patterns, extends from and perpetuates the

schism already established between them.

So much is at stake in classroom communities, not the least of which—from

students’ perspectives—is the issue of respect. It is possible that the respect issue

complicates everything, for Odessa and Jim share many of the same personality traits—

tenacity, stubbornness, leadership, competitiveness. It is possible they share similar

psychological needs as well, such as the need to control conversation or the need to have

the final word. As a result, much of what might be read as discord among racially-

different individuals might also reflect personality conflicts independent of race.

Discursive gestures identified in the study as implicating race are again complicated—

first by other elements of culture, and now by an element of human psychology.

Jim and Odessa’s classroom tirades both inspire and occlude many classroom

discussions. Not every instance of their verbal fights, damning glances, and incendiary

gestures could be captured in field notes, but their peers remember and recall many of

them with a mix of frustration and fascination. Jane’s tolerance, however, reaches its

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maximum with their fifth clash. During a conversation on reasons why school spirit at the

university seems suppressed, Odessa says, sighing, “The university is just not a party

school; there’s just nothing to do here.” Jim bursts out, “What do you mean by, ‘there’s

nothing to do’?” Odessa leans forward, glares, and opens her mouth to speak, then Jane

says to both of them, “Don’t get confrontational here.” Odessa backs downs, softening

“There’s just nothing to do.” On cue, Andy steers the conversation into a consideration of

how the commuter nature of the university may be why school spirit is suppressed among

students. But before anyone can join the redirected discussion, murmurs that have been

smoldering at the Odessa and Jim poles of the room—Odessa, eyes on Jim, whispering

inaudibly to Kari, and Jim, eyes on Odessa, smirking and gesturing in his muffled

whispers to Holden—take on a heightened pitch, prompting Jane to admonish them both

with, “I’m sorry, but we can’t turn this into a bitching fest about how there’s no where to

party!” She smiles, feigning complete exasperation, and the class laughs. Jim and Odessa

do not laugh.

Sherry

Like Jim’s, Sherry, a white female of Appalachian origin, holds strong, self-

sufficient images of herself and her people. Unlike Jim, however, Sherry’s self-esteem

comes out of dealing successfully with extreme personal circumstances. She is proud of

the fact that she works thirty hours a week while maintaining her status as a successful

full-time student. Mother of a five-month old daughter, Sherry entered the university as a

pre-psychology major, applied to the college of social work, and at the time of interview

is considering law school. She says, with a relaxed smile, that she is ultimately interested

in being a fire chief. A forthcoming study participant, Sherry comfortably and

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unapologetically discusses her personal successes, failures, shortcomings, challenges, and

dreams with an enchanting yet disinterested narrative style and flair:

My entire family is from Kentucky, north and south. I am a descendent of

a whole bunch of urban Appalachians, and I don’t see it hindering my

performance in any way. My dad is a redneck and proud, and he should

be. One shouldn’t be ashamed of what they are or where they come from

just because someone thought it would be fun to pick on someone because

of how they talk or where they live. I’m proud of who my family is.

They’ve done well for themselves, you know, for being hillbillies.

Sherry notes that she procrastinates on the assignments, dashing off essays the

night before they are due, and often reads her articles only two hours before class, though

one would hardly know this since her participation is consistent. Although Sherry says

she does not enjoy the “persuasive writing this class requires,” she does enjoy writing,

and has written three collections of poems. But dealing with a nearly full-time job and

full-time studies are the least of Sherry’s concerns this academic quarter: Her baby is

currently in the hospital recovering from heart surgery. Sherry explains:

She was born with a hole in her heart. [Doctors] repaired it once, but then

they broke it. They broke her heart. It’s not beating now as well, so they

got her on a pacemaker. But fixing the hole doesn’t do a lot of good if the

heart isn’t beating right and is swelling. They don’t tell me a whole lot.

They talk to my mom more than they talk to me—they say because she’s

older and wiser, 43, and more professional looking than I am, I guess.

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Sherry’s mom is the child’s legal guardian. She mentions in the interview that she’s

gearing up to fight her mom for custody once she has medical insurance of her own. She

and her child’s father are 18, and Sherry admits that he has been supportive during the

baby’s illness, visiting the hospital and sometimes staying with Sherry overnight. “He

doesn’t say anything,” she says, smiling affectionately. “He just sits over there with his

hands folded and his head down. He’s a big idiot.”

Sherry’s cultural and self-pride are balanced by a culture and self-deprecation,

and she often peppers our conversation with light, humorous references to herself, family,

and friends as “hillbillies.” Her forthright revelations started early in the study, for at the

end of the first class meeting, she alone approached me to find out more about the

research study. At the end of that first conversation, she promises to bring pictures of her

daughter to the second class session, and she does.

Samantha

The sole student in the study who initiates a direct conversation explicitly about

race is Samantha. She does so during the interview conversation on her general college

experiences at this particular university:

I’d heard bad things about race at UC, and I know a lot of people have had

bad experiences with teachers. One student got really discouraged because

the teacher told him he needed to go back to high school, and he left and

never came back. I’ve never experienced anything like that.

But in one of my classes—just last week—a girl was telling me

about how at a game, her grandmother had her feet up and a black family

came up and wanted to sit where her feet were. The father asked her to

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move her feet, and the girl’s grandmother said, “You people always want

what you can’t get.” The man said calmly, “That’s rude,” and the girls

grandmother went on to say, “If this was back in the day, you wouldn’t

even speak to me, you couldn’t even open your mouth.” I felt really bad

for her and she told me that she didn’t appreciate her grandmother saying

that. [So the girl was aware of a problem?] Yeah, she knew that was

wrong. To me, it seems like the people in our class are…I wouldn’t say

color blind, but aware that there is something more important than color.

This “something more” could be the power of articulation Jane envisions for her students,

a power Samantha enjoys privately but not openly with her peers in class discussions. As

a result, her in-class silence makes her unprompted discussion of race and her assessment

of how it appears to be handled in the English 102 course so much more compelling. By

the end of the term, only Jill and Sherry identify her by name during their interviews.

Moreover, her non-verbal discourses—her perfect attendance, simple and relaxed clothes,

hair style, and make-up—communicate thrift, economy, and group conformity, messages

quite different from those sent by Kari and Coco whose tight, restrictive clothing,

elaborate, unnaturally-colored hairstyles, and one-inch manicured nails communicate a

non-conformity typically associated with urban hip-hop culture. Kari’s hairstyles make

an impression on Samantha as well. When asked to identify some of the most vocal

students in the class, Samantha thinks of Kari and says the following:

I can’t remember her name. She had braids at the beginning of the quarter.

She then had red hair. Then she changed it again.

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Samantha may have remained silent throughout the quarter, and nearly invisible since her

extremely light complexion allows her to blend into the backdrop of white peers. But she

observes much about her classmates’ behaviors, opinions, and interactions and is the only

student to express during our interview a phenomenon I also observed in the class

community:

I think people kind of grouped with their majors—the two cellists, the

nurses, the engineering computer science people, and a few [art] students.

Jim is majoring in computer science, but Holden is undeclared; Odessa is majoring in

communication, and Kari is majoring in nursing. The two culturally-distinct sets of

relationships appear to function less pragmatically, and more confrontationally, than ones

based on academic interests. Before the end of the term, both sets of relationships are

disbanded as its members forge new in-class relationship. This occurrence suggests the

influence of course pedagogy, with its focus on issues in higher education, in creating

new communities that transgress the borders of race, gender, and class.

Samantha, who identifies her upbringing as “more middle-class than not,” is the

older of her parents’ daughters. Her father works for GM in Dayton, and her mother

works from their home in a middle-class, predominantly black Dayton suburb. She says:

Dad went to school for two years at Sinclair for a program through his job.

He works at a drafting board with engineers and he makes models of their

designs. My mom works for US Airways and she takes reservations. My

mom is 47 and my dad is 53 or 54.

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Samantha smiles brightly, perhaps reading on my face the question I do not know

whether or how best to ask, a question she hears constantly, she says later, and she

continues, internally unprompted:

I am African American! Both my parents are, but my dad looks Spanish, I

think. My boyfriend calls me Puerto Rican. One lady in a grocery store

asked [my dad] if he was Asian, and he thought that was funny.

When I ask what it is like to be mistaken as some race other than black, she admits that it

is usually not a big problem. The bigger problem for Samantha might be in not being

visually distinguishable as black, white, or otherwise raced. Her peers in this class and in

other classes interact hesitantly with her perhaps because she seems shy, she says, but

probably because they cannot easily determine her racial status.

A junior majoring in electronic media, Samantha has recently returned to school

from a maternity break, having given birth to her son. She introduces her goals in an

essay on the Student Information Sheet from which an excerpt appears in Chapter Three:

The reason I came to college was to get a degree in Electronic Media.

With two years behind me, I plan to gain all the information I can through

the College Conservatory of Music and get a job after graduation. My

college experience has been very well these past two years (this is my

third year at UC). I have learned a lot about my major and I plan to use

what I learn in the future.

The biggest challenge I’ve faced so far occurred last year when I

gave birth to my first child and found it difficult to stay in school full-time

and care for a newborn. Though I stayed out a quarter at UC and had to

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deal with certain personal situations my sophomore year, I have been able

to continue my education. But even this challenge became a strength:

becoming a mother has changed me as a student for the better. I am much

more focused and much more determined to succeed now that I have a

child to support.

I want to pursue a career in TV, to write sitcoms. Since 6th grade,

I’ve written plays. I started writing a book but I’ve been stopped. I’ve got

seven chapters so far and I’m trying to finish what I’ve started. It’s about a

black girl growing up with her mom in Chicago in the late 70’s and about

the things they go through while she’s growing up….As a writer, I’m not

really good at going over my work, cleaning it up, but I like to write

what’s on my mind.

Once she and Sherry discover they are both new mothers, they bond immediately and

remain close throughout the term. Samantha sits between Sherry and Jill for much of the

semester, but when Sherry began missing classes near the end, Jim tightens the circle by

removing and rearranging chairs. He sits next to Samantha the final two weeks of the

term. A developing social relationship is suggested by before and after-class face-to-face

conversations that do not appear to be related to reading or writing tasks.

Samantha’s description of English 102 reflects sentiments held by most students

in the classroom; its course content is relevant and the critical skills it develops are

academically important ones:

Researcher: How would you describe the English 102 class?

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Samantha: It’s a class based around what college is and what college

should or could be. It is about at least two different sides to issues in

education. The last unit in the book looked at why liberal education is

good vs. specialization. The first unit was on how the education system

may be to blame for female students not progressing. Unit two talked

about social things and education –I know there was the article there about

the black young men—but basically the book talked about two different

sides in each unit and I guess that’s why the papers had to be

argumentative because you’re looking at both sides, many sides, to

determine where you stand.

Researcher: How did you experience it?

Samantha: That’s why I really liked it—I really learned something.

Researcher: What does the course assume that you already know about

writing?

Samantha: You’d need to know how to set up a paper before you get to

102. I still have some of my papers from freshman year, and my language

too has gotten more, I can’t think of the word…sophisticated since then.

The words I use now are more appropriate for what I mean.

Researcher: Great. What was participation in class discussions like?

Samantha: Most of the same people usually talk.

Researcher: Why is that you think? Are we reading as a group? Shy?

Samantha: I don’t think it’s that most of the people aren’t reading. I think

there are just aggressive students who like speaking up and others, like

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me, like writing more than talking about it. It’s easier to write it since it

doesn’t always come out like I want it to.

The “aggressive students” to whom Samantha refers are Jim, Odessa, Holden, and Kari.

Samantha’s middle-class discourses and behaviors imbue her with a kind of

racelessness in the classroom community that operates similarly to Signithia Fordham’s

concept by the same name. “Racelessness” is a strategy Fordham identifies among some

high-achieving black students, the mastery of which begins in or before high school:

…Despite the growing acceptance of ethnicity and strong ethnic

identification in the larger American Society, school officials appear to

disapprove of a strong ethnic identity among Black adolescents and these

contradictory messages produce conflict and ambivalence in the

adolescents, both toward developing strong racial and ethnic identities and

toward performing well in school. (55)

Samantha’s experience of racelessness reflects somewhat of a twist to the Fordham’s

theory: Unlike the students Fordham studies, Samantha appears raceless to her black and

white peers and her professors alike. Fordham’s theory is based on the anthropological

concept “fictive kinship” and its power to affect group behavior. She explains:

As used here, the term “fictive kinship” denotes a cultural symbol of

collective identity among Black Americans, and is based on more than just

skin color. The term also implies the particular mind-set or world view, of

those persons who are considered to be “Black,” and is used to denote the

moral judgment the group makes on its members (Brain, 1972).

Essentially, the concept suggests that merely possessing African features

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or being of African descent does not automatically make one a Black

person or a member in good standing of the group. One can be black in

color, but choose not to seek membership in the fictive-kinship system.

One can also be denied membership by the group because one’s behavior,

attitudes, and activities are perceived as being at variance with those

thought to be appropriate and group-specific, which are culturally

patterned and serve to delineate “us” from “them.” An example is the

tendency for Black Americans to emphasize group loyalty in situations

involving conflict or competition with Whites. (56)

Because Samantha easily discusses her experiences with and regarding race in both

conversation and on paper, it is clear that she honors blackness and respects the collective

ethos of a fictive-kinship with a larger black community. One wonders, then, whether or

not her physical separateness in the classroom from Odessa, Kari, and Coco reflects

something other than her decision to sit away from them; perhaps her discourses—her

clothes, her mannerisms, her light-skinned appearance—effectively exclude her from

membership in the fictive-kinship group established by Odessa, Kari, and Coco. The

irony, though, is that Samantha benefits from “racelessness” as Fordham defines it

without experiencing the inner-conflicts Fordham’s students endure. For Samantha, a

physical experience of “racelessness” effectively subsumes the step Fordham’s students

must take, i.e., to separate themselves psychologically or emotionally from blackness in

order to achieve acceptance and thus success in school.

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Kari

Whereas Samantha rarely, if ever, addresses the group, Kari speaks multiple times

a day, especially during the first four weeks of the term. Attempts to talk to her before or

after class were usually deflected politely, so it was surprising to have her share openly

during the interview. To be more precise, Kari directs her interview, reading aloud for

herself the first few interview questions, and beginning the conversation without my

prompting:

Let me tell you something, I can’t stand writing. But, if it’s a topic that

I’m interested in, I can really write. Sometimes, I like to be humorous

when I’m writing for fun, or, you know, just do it straight from the book

like the teacher wants it done. But if I don’t care about the writing, I just

go ahead and do it.

Researcher: What do you like to read?

Kari: [I enjoy reading] things that I feel can help make myself better,

things like Essence magazine and things that give you more self-

confidence in being a black woman. Things that help you learn how to

carry yourself in society, you know, try to be that unique person. Just carry

yourself more womanly, things like that. I like to read things about

shopping, fashion, music, the regular magazines, but mostly, I like things

like Essence and Ebony magazine.

Kari seems to imply that confidence in being black is something she has to work on or

fortify periodically. Such implication may suggest the presence of factors that challenge

or critique her expressions of blackness. The conversation continues:

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Researcher: What is the most important part of the class for you?

Kari: The most important part of our class for me is discussion. The

discussions help me become more open minded—I become aware of other

perspectives.

Researcher: How did we as class do with the discussions? Was everyone

able to express their minds?

Kari: Even though we’re different, I feel like everyone in our class is

equal. I think people get past trying to act white and not trying to act

black.

Researcher: Do you have other classes where this is happening?

Kari: No. My other classes are large and we don’t talk like we do in this

one. This English class is my only small class. I feel more comfortable

here than anywhere else. You can give ideas and get feedback. No one

tries to put anyone on a pedestal, no one on a stool. In other classes,

student groups can get that way. Teachers, too. When you ask for help

they’re like, “Here, look at this packet” or go to this place. Or they say,

‘What did the teacher say?’ No, you don’t do that in other classes. I could

see it if you asked everyday but that seems to be a smart-people thing, not

a race thing. But I know a lot of black people are like, “It’s racism.” I

think you have to know how to play your cards too, don’t hold grudges.

In this discussion of what other classes are like for her, Kari notes the importance of

teacher and peer support in assisting her learning experiences. She observes that Jane,

unlike other instructors at the university, does not simply refer her to outside sources for

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help, and that her composition class peers do not blow off her questions with such

chiding remarks as “What did the teacher say?” She implies that black students at this

university should not even expect in other courses the things that occur in this writing

course. More subtly, Kari implies that some black students believe their asking questions

is interpreted by some teachers and peers as a stereotypical characteristic of blackness,

for she notes that asking questions when you need help is “a smart-people thing, not a

race thing.” And while some black students might, as Kari observes, call this gesture out

as “racism,” Kari chooses to stay focused on her goal of finishing college. Notice that she

does not disavow others’ cries of racism among their teachers and peers. She simply

acknowledges the political savvy of not doing so publicly for the sake of the degree,

noting “I think you have to know how to play your cards too, don’t hold grudges.”

Like Sherry, Kari knows how to play her cards, regardless of the hand dealt her.

Graduate of an all-girls Catholic school in Cleveland, Kari was involved in

extracurricular activities and sports there and participated in numerous group and

community-service projects. She summarizes her high school experiences this way:

Our class left a mark, because we weren’t the most intelligent class—and

our teachers said this!—but we really came together. We all hung

together—half black, half white. You know how white people usually

stick with white people and black people just stick by themselves? Well,

we didn’t. We were on Channel 5 and 8’s “Harvest for Hunger.” We

worked together as a whole. By 12th grade year, we had won every award

for collecting and giving out community goods because we really stuck

together!

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Kari admits that she loves the service learning component of her educational experiences,

noting that she especially loves “taking care of children and my grandparents, shopping,

and my boyfriend!” By the time of the interview, she is a member of the university choir

and a part-time employee at the University Medical Center. She says:

I work 20 to 25 hours a week in Medical Continuing Education doing

basic clerical work. I also organize and input doctors’ evaluations and

grade their tests and quizzes. You know they have to continue taking

courses after they become doctors to stay up in their field, and with some

of these doctors, I’m thinking, ‘Boy, I don’t know how you got your

medical degree!’ (Smiling) But that’s all right. We just want ours, too!

The nursing degree Kari seeks is very important for reasons beyond the obvious; she

anticipates being her grandparents’ principal caregiver in a few years. She explains:

Let me tell you my situation real quick. I stay with my grandparents, so

my grandmother is like my mother, and my dad is like my brother-dad. I

have another sister who lives with her father. My mother is deceased. She

died in 1993 in her sleep when I was 12 of kidney failure. That’s all I

know about that. She was 31….Even though it happened a long time ago,

it’s just starting to get to me now. I could hide things, but now…

[Trails off, changes subject, and brightens] But I love my grandparents!

They’re 70, but they act like they’re 35!!

Kari finds much of the support she needs for dealing with the emergent emotions about

her mother’s death from her home church in Cleveland, a local church in Cincinnati, the

university gospel choir, and black inspirational writers. She also takes solace in going out

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and having fun with friends, black and white, male and female, and “hanging with” other

members of the English 102 writing class, about whom she says:

We got comfortable around each other. Jane will just give you that funny

look in class! Outside of class, I remember hanging with Rambo, Coco,

Odessa, the one with the pretty eyes, and this other boy—not the one who

wears the hat [Jim]. No…Oh! It’s Holden. Across from where I’d sit, there

was Jim on one side and Holden on the other. Both of them talked in class.

When we’re out on campus, we actually speak to each other.

Indeed, by midterm, Holden begins crossing the circle on peer review days to exchange

papers with Kari. This gesture can be interpreted from myriad perspectives. Perhaps

Holden is impressed, after Jim and Odessa’s numerous fights, to “cross over” for reasons

of diplomacy; after all, Jane’s perception of him is threatened by his participation in the

discourse wars. Perhaps he does it so that Odessa, Kari, and their peers recognize him for

the liberal, tolerant genuinely nice guy he appears to be. Maybe he is still trying to help

Kari, a person who clearly, his early experiences with her suggest, needs help. Whatever

the case, Holden begins interacting with Kari, Coco, Rambo, and Odessa both inside and

outside the classroom. Also by midterm, Kari’s relationships with the four nursing

students, Teresa, Kate, Brooke, and Rain, takes on a more social dimension:

Those girls! They’re always trying to get me to go out to clubs with

them—dancing clubs like Vertigo’s and this one bar that has a dance floor.

A lot of their friends I know because we have the same classes. They talk

about me dancing and say, “I bet I can dance better than you!” Sometimes

if you get there before 11:00, for women it’s free.

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It is interesting that during the interview, Kari feels it necessary to qualify Odessa

as “the one with the pretty eyes,” as though I might not remember her. Perhaps she does

this because race relations among her peers are different from those I experienced down

South—less tense, more accommodating, less group-affiliated—so much so that she

imagines I might not know every black student by name. Theirs is a different generation,

for at the end of the course, Kari and Samantha still do not even know each other’s name.

Kari concludes her discussion of the class environment by recalling how warmly the class

welcomed Samantha’s friend, Adrienne, a student from Dayton who visited class one

afternoon:

Our class as a whole is a comfortable environment. You remember when

the light-skinned girl with the curly hair brought one of her friends around,

she felt very comfortable. And Jane, she has respect for us and we have

respect for her, and we still joke around sometimes about our ideas and

different points of views on certain issues.

Kari refers to Samantha as “the light-skinned girl with the curly hair,” almost as though

the two are not both black. Perhaps theirs is a pluralist culture, with uniquely situated

individuals from culturally-distinct groups living among each other—sometimes

harmoniously, sometimes discordantly— in dynamic and insular social sub-groups.

Kari gives me only two writing samples—her third, in-class essay and her final

research paper, neither of which bear insightful teacher comments. Her failure to do is

disappointing since most of her drafts are heavily marked and annotated. For instance,

after Jane returns the first unit essays, Kari, Odessa, and four other students including

Arthur, the only black male in the class, approach her. Jane makes appointments with

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each one and each one leaves except Kari, who insists on discussing her paper at that

moment:

Kari: I know you’re talking about my verb tense. I start off one way then

go another. I have problems with my diction.

Jane: Diction refers to word choice, not this.

Kari: Sometimes it is carelessness, sometimes it is not. Sometimes how I

write and how I talk is different…

Jane: Read the paper aloud. If you still have problems, I have worksheets

on some of this. It’s a pretty significant error in a good paper. You earned

a B+ on it despite the significant verb error.

Kari: I want to revise because I really need an A.

Jane: Maybe I’ll consider this in our student-teacher conference.

Although Kari neither allows me to see copies of her original drafts nor discussed Jane’s

comments in detail during our interview, she summarizes her 102 grades briefly during

an excited and eclectic discussion of her writing class experiences:

I can’t wait to do the research paper. I’m really going to put a lot of

research into this. I’m working ahead on it—this one is going to be the

paper. I got B’s on my first papers. I remember her saying you shouldn’t

want to re-write a B paper, and I was talking about [the other nursing

students in the class] too, saying, they shouldn’t want to re-write a B

paper, but when I got a B, I wanted to re-write! I wanted to get an A! I

wasn’t satisfied, then I was satisfied! First paper B+, second paper B, and

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the third paper is still out. I don’t think I made the 600 to 900 words. I

know I didn’t have that many, but I feel I got my point across.

When I asked again about the kinds of comments Jane wrote on her paper, Kari says,

“The revised essays were the best so far,” end of conversation.

As noted above, Arthur was one of the four students who approached Jane with

his graded unit essay. Arthur stays in the class for most of the term, still attended

regularly one week before finals, but submits neither papers nor reading responses

beyond this first essay. He writes on his Student Information form that a delay in

receiving his financial aid award resulted in his late registration. Later, in the interview,

Arthur admits that he forgot to submit the add slip Jane signed for him before the end of

the drop and add period.

He participates in class dialogue only once, slightly so, and only because he is

compelled to do so. No one is forthcoming with comments on the readings, and Jane uses

the opportunity to elicit contributions from students who do not typically comment:

Jane: Think about this (reading from the text): “The impoverished are

surrounded by a surround of force which basically keeps them poor.

Politically active people share ideas at every level.” How will interaction

with the humanities, this “moral alternative to downtown,” free people

from the force of poverty?

[Jane looks around the circle and her eyes rest on Arthur. She does not call

him by name or point to him. She just looks at him.]

Arthur: I didn’t read the article.

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Kari informs me that Arthur is one of Coco’s friends, and Coco provides in her interview

additional information about him.

Thus, Kari’s instrumentalist goal of simply passing the course appears to be more

important to her than the gesture of critical reflection. Her attempts to maintain a

both/and relationship with her black and white peer groups become rhetorical acts, and

her success in maintaining this balance to her. For as she notes above, her English class is

the only one on campus in which she feels comfortable.

Coco

Coco, along with Odessa and Kari, sit closest to Jane throughout the quarter and,

like Odessa and Kari, deflects my attempts to build rapport until the end of the term and

avoids discussing her home contexts for literacy. Unlike Odessa and Kari, Coco moves

about the circle in search of different peer partners for each unit peer assignment. For this

reason, Coco’s response to the question, “What was student interaction like in the

classroom?” is not surprising:

I think student interaction was good, because people that I didn’t know

before, I kind of know them now. We talk on the phone about things we

get stuck on with a paper, or we just talked about what we were having

problems with in general—Kari, sometimes Odessa, and sometimes

Arthur.

Researcher: “You and Arthur talk as well?

Yes. He was in my 101 class. But the nursing student in our class, she sees

him more than I do because they run track together, I think.

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The nursing student to whom she refers is Kate, and Arthur sits near her for most of the

quarter.

Coco drafts her essays in one of the computer labs on campus and is sometimes

assisted by Odessa and Kari. Jane also helps her with papers as well:

I could go to Jane if I was having a problem with my work or if I saw

something on my paper that she had wrote about and I really didn’t

understand. I wanted her to point out where it was that I made that

mistake, and she really pointed it out and told me, gave me advice on how

to go about improving it. I went by the office and I talked to her about it

whenever I needed to.

Coco visits Jane’s office so much that she begins to experience their relationship a close,

personal friendship. In her interview, Jane explains how she patiently yet awkwardly

endures Coco’s gushy shows of affection, commenting incredulously, “I can’t believe

it—Coco actually hugs me!” Jane continues:

She is a very insightful person and I have great affection for her, I’m

really crazy about her, but when I would write about we need to clear this

up or whatever, she’d be like, “Jane, my paper’s bad!” and just start with

her fake crying, so I knew that she was a bit hyperbolic. At the same time,

there was something going on there and she really wanted to be more

articulate. She really wanted to become more confident as a writer. I think

she became more confident over the course of the quarter though still not

to the degree that I’d like her to be.

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Coco graduated from a science and technological high school, and she has always done

well math and science courses. She now wants to develop her writing and communication

skills because she says they were underdeveloped in high school and has a goal for them

both. She explains:

I have wanted to be a lawyer since I was little, and with the law I am going

into, I’ll be working with chemistry, math, and stuff. I plan to work for

Procter and Gamble, and they deal with a lot of chemicals and things like

that and some people are allergic to. If people want to sue the company,

they have to deal with lawyers who know both fields. And now, during

the summer, I’m going to be going to Procter and Gamble and working

with some of the lawyers who had to go back to school and learn

chemistry and math all over again because they didn’t know it.

Coco’s high school guidance counselor contacted her a few weeks before our interview to

inform her of the summer opportunity she discusses here. She continues with a discussion

of the upcoming summer program at Procter and Gamble:

Well, it’s like an internship. Well, more like a co-op. I’ll go and I’ll work

hands-on with the lawyers, and I’ll take notes and just observe what’s

going on and what they do. That’s about it.

This opportunity is one Coco eagerly anticipates because it makes her plans of becoming

a corporate lawyer more real. She uses her research paper to explore the possibilities of a

dual career in law and science.

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Rambo

Born in Italy and raised in Macon, Georgia, Rambo bears a striking resemblance

to Sylvester Stallone, a fact he realizes is lost on no one. When he selects the

pseudonym “Rambo,” I ask whether or not he would be more comfortable with a less

recognizable name. “Oh, no!” he says. “People have told me almost all my life that I

look like Rambo, sound like Rambo, and I’m built like Rambo. That’s because I’ve

played sports all my life. It’s like I’m part Rambo, you know?” He smiles shyly,

blushing. I say, “Rambo it is, then.”

A statement that represents his contexts for literacy emerges authentically in his

response to Suzanne Britt’s article, “Generation A+.” His response explores how

universities seem to demand less of students these days, and he decides that “her

argument reflects why it’s harder and harder for U.S. businesses to find experienced

workers presently.” He continues:

There are many ways in which standards are lowered for students these

days. Britt explains how deans and counselors are bad for colleges

because students use them as scapegoats. They go complain to deans

about how particular teacher’s classes are harder than others are so those

deans will ask those teachers to lower their requirements. Some will also

pretend to have learning disabilities such as attention deficit disorder in

order to get special treatment that is given by counselors which makes

school for them a lot easier. If methods like this continue, the school

system in America will become one of the most uneducated ones in the

world. The U.S. economy, known as the powerhouse economy presently,

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will drop significantly because there will be a lot of ignorant employees

being hired. All of this will happen because we are not demanding

enough from college kids presently.

This position might reflect more than a theoretical appreciation of the article’s

argument. It may respond to challenges his father and brother face in finding qualified

workers for their family businesses. Their business holdings include roofing and

remodeling supply companies in Georgia, Texas, and Mexico; a real estate company, a

successful restaurant in the Houston area; and a farm in Italy. Rambo is majoring in

Business Finance and would like a Master’s degree in International Business. He says

he decided on this field through conversations with his father and three brothers, each of

whom manages at least one of the aforementioned businesses. His parents live in the

Macon, Georgia area and in central Italy, with the father spending much of his time in

the states and the mother spending much more of her time abroad. He says:

My mom is like most women in Italy; she is a housewife and she’s in

Italy right now visiting relatives. She likes to ride horses now that we got

the farm a few years back. She wasn’t planning to return to Italy until we

got out of school, but then my dad started buying horses. Now she’s

gotten used to the country life and she enjoys it.

The youngest of four boys (he has no sisters), Rambo is preparing to join his brothers in

one of the family businesses, the training for which will include a year of study abroad:

I’ll probably study in Barcelona my junior year. After graduating, I’ll

probably work in Houston maybe four or five years. My dad is 60 and

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ready to retire, and he’s ready for us to do it ourselves. I’m the first one

to go to college, so we’ll see from there what happens.

Rambo, unlike Jim and even Holden, interacts comfortably and closely with Odessa and

Kari, and nearly everyone else in the class. In fact, Jane comments in her interview that

Rambo and Odessa’s in-class relationship appears to deepen as the semester progresses.

He had taken a UC English class with Kari, but did not meet Odessa until the English

102 course. Perhaps he comfortably interacts with Kari and Odessa because he has

interacted with people of color much of his life. Rambo does, however, share something

not obvious with the three black girls: He, Odessa, Kari and Coco are first-generation

college students; Sherry, Samantha, Jim, Holden, and Andy are not.

Holden

Holden is a young man of marked contradictions. He is articulate and attentive in

class discussions during which he often joins Jim in critiquing non-dominant college

discourses, but he exemplifies in his out-of-class habits a disregard for the very practices

he purports to instill in Kari—proper perspectives on study and classroom decorum. A

public intellectual with private imprudence, Holden describes himself as a student as

follows:

Well, I’m not a very good one. I never thought of myself as a very good

student. I’ve always thought of myself as fairly intelligent, but I don’t do

all my homework. I don’t know. It’s just that I could do a lot more as a

student than I am right now. I’ve said this to myself all my life, you

know, but I’ve never really thought I reached my potential as a student. So

I would consider myself a fairly poor student, you know, not necessarily

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stupid because I can grasp things when I want to, you know. But

sometimes, I just don’t want to.

Currently undeclared, Holden has thought about majoring in architecture but does not

believe his ACT scores are high enough for him to be accepted into the program. As a

result, he is adrift academically. He says:

I want to be successful. My scores were like a twenty-one or something

like that and you had to get like a twenty-nine or a thirty to even be

considered. So I just, I kind of threw that out the window, the whole

architecture thing. I could have gone to a different school, but I didn’t

want to. My sisters are here, so I wanted to come here, but I don’t know.

I thought about all of our majors, you know, and I’m really not sure what I

want to do.

I remind him of a comment Jane shares with the class—that students at many Ivy League

schools are actually encouraged to develop a liberal, general education before formally

declaring an academic major. But this approach does not appeal to Holden, probably

because it is not part of a valued narrative in the classroom. Odessa supports it, Jim does

not, the nursing students do not. Thus, Holden seems stuck in an image of the end

without any notion of what means might secure it for him:

I want to be secure with my family because I want to have a family and

stuff like that, you know. That’s now my goal, you know. I just want to be

able do have something that can give me—I don’t want to say money

because I hate that, you know? I don’t want to say money, but, yeah

money.

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Thus, although his classmates experience him as confident, focused, hard-working and

knowledgeable about the issues being discussed, Holden relies principally on larger

narratives operating in the classroom from which he selects information, structurally and

thematically packaging elements from them for maximum rhetorical effect, and uses

them to persuade his peers and teacher of critical experiences that he hardly realizes.

Andy

Having graduated early from high school and third in his class with what he calls

“a pathetic 3.75,” and having scored 31 on the ACT after being home-schooled until tenth

grade (“I’ve always done well on standardized tests,” he says), Andy spent much of his

last two high school years in post-secondary early enrollment programs at a University of

Cincinnati branch campus. As a result, he was technically a university sophomore when

he arrived on the main campus.

Andy speaks evenly about the disappointment of not finding interesting

challenges in his winter quarter courses, the quarter during which he failed English 102,

and about the consuming challenges he found instead in the worlds of campus life and

computer gaming:

I happen to live on probably the best floor in the dorms on campus and we

play bridge a lot. Still, I did well in Sociology. It was interesting.

Researcher: How so?

Andy: Well, there were a couple of ladies in there who… [smiles and

pauses for a moment] Ah yes, that was an important class. Otherwise, I

quit going to my classes last quarter, and even got an F in Calculus [his

favorite subject]. I just quit and gave in to Everquest.

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Researcher: What is it?

Andy: Everquest is graphics-based Dungeons and Dragons. It’s really

addictive. The fantasy part of it, just playing yourself as part of this large

fantasy, is addictive. You learn about other people and learn how to work

together with other people. And there are so many characters. You work

together with your team to kill stuff, gain experience, money, whatever

you want. To what end? There is no end, and that’s what makes it so

addictive. When you get to the top, you not only have whatever you want

and do whatever you want—kill the dragons, kill the gods even—you do

more of whatever you want….Finally, I decided to just quit that as well.

Researcher: How did you quit something you say was so addictive?

Andy: I realized it was taking up too much of my life. I cancelled my

account, deleted all my characters, deleted the game off my computer, and

quit.

Researcher: And how are you doing with your school work this quarter?

Andy: This quarter, I’m doing fairly well. English is going very well. I

think it’s because everyone—there’s the few exceptions, the real jerks—

tries to be involved with each other and that’s what makes for me actually

talking in the class and writing as well as I am. We really have interesting

readings and discussions. That involvement, I think, is what makes this

class work.

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The involvement Andy appreciates is built into the pedagogy, and although it is often

accompanied by undesirable elements, interactive involvement defines what is best for

him about the class.

Viewed together, students’ literacy contexts and their interactive, classroom

experiences of each other and themselves construct rich experiences of race in the

classroom community. These experiences of race manifest themselves as dominant and

non-dominant discursive practices that reflect power relationships and ingrained

ideologies. The composition classroom space is both public and private, with multiple

narratives operating simultaneously to inform students’ beliefs and behaviors, some of

which are more salient than others.

Some of the differences in students’ experiences, particularly ones that appear to

be irreconcilable, may reflect conflicting larger discourses, or worldviews, according to

Dorothy Perry Thompson. For Coco, Kari, and Odessa, literacy learning is a communal

event; they work together and they seek out others in the class with whom they can work,

especially Jane. Their experiences are consistent with those Thompson and others

associate with typically African American social discourses. For Jim and Holden,

learning is an individual endeavor—the individual is responsible for it and it gets

accomplished without the explicit help of others. Their experiences are consistent with

those associated with typically European American discourses (Thompson 221). The

clashes that result from the collision of ideologies in this classroom community are

distracting, noisy, and appear to push the course off track in terms of its true objective:

critical engagement with issues relevant to their academic and pre-professional

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experiences. However, they are evidence of the dynamic engagement the course hopes to

inspire toward the goal of critical literacy. Durst explains:

The composition curriculum at the University of Cincinnati emphasizes

what has come to be known as “critical literacy.” While there is obviously

a good deal of variation in the way this term is understood and the kinds of

curricula that have been set up in its name, primary features of a critical

writing pedagogy are generally agreed upon. As Sullivan and Qalley

describe this approach in the introduction to their book, Pedagogy in the

Age of Politics, “teachers who once invited students to master or to

transcend the strictures of written discourse now call upon students to

participate critically in the discourses that shape their lives. Pedagogies

that once aimed at self-actualization now aim at social transformation

(1994, p. ix). A critical approach to literacy thus emphasizes certain broad

dispositions of mind, including reflectiveness of self, about one’s wider

society, and about one’s role in that society. (37)

The goal of helping students achieve critical literacy is ambitious enough, but having to

do it amidst escalating student resistance is exhausting. Jane’s commitment to enduring

the clamorous engagement of ideas and ideologies is unwavering:

I think that part of the agenda for 102 is to make students responsible for

putting their own lives in some form of inquiry rather than just jumping

through hoops. We’re trying to empower students with the idea that these

are life-making decisions. It’s something very important for me to get

across and I’ve said that in the last day of class and I know I sounded,

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probably, very cliché and I say that to all my classes: No matter where

you are in your program, your life will never be as real as it is right now,

you know, or any more real than it is right now.

The nine case study students’ interactions in the classroom community reveal

multiple sets of discourses operating among culturally-distinct groups, some of which

compete and others of which assist dominant themes and beliefs. Still, within the

community, white and black students’ responses to these discourses vary, as do their

relations to each other, in ways not bound by binary notions of blackness or whiteness.

An analysis of their written discourses might expose whether and how race operates as

discursive practices to affect literacy learning in this English composition classroom.

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CHAPTER FIVE

REFLECTIONS OF RACE AND LITERACY IN STUDENT WRITING

The previous chapter characterizes how students perform race in their classroom

interactions as social, conversational discourses that reflect their understanding of

themselves and each other as “raced” individuals. They also experience race as social

discourses reflecting others’ understandings of them as raced, and they respond to these

discourses in unique, sometimes volatile ways. The present chapter presents findings that

suggest these discursive clashes inspire rhetorically ambitious, ideologically-dense

compositions. Course writing assignments are designed to evoke critical, reflective

responses on issues related to higher education, including a consideration of whether

education should be grounded in the traditional liberal arts or geared toward pre-

professional training; how cultural factors such as gender and race affect learning; and

the role of education in establishing democracy. As such, the assignments inspire writing

samples brimming with expressed ideologies, individual insights on contemporary issues

in higher education, and coming-of-age struggle typical in young adults’ prose.

Generated in an environment charged with race, gender, and class dynamism, student

writing becomes a rich source of data reflecting how students experience these issues. A

sifting through and analysis of student discourses for data implicating race as subject,

object, or complement suggest that critical engagement with discursive practices of race

can enhance students’ development of what might be called racial literacy.

Discourse analysis is based on the concepts of textual enactment and recognition

work developed by James Gee and presented in the online article, “The New Literacy

Studies and the Social Turn.” The analysis assumes that texts can be examined for ways

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language is “recruited” to establish and respond to socially-situated contexts by locating

instances of “enactment and recognition work,” interweaving actions in discourse that

create, sustain, negotiate, and transform textual contexts. As discursive practices, race

reflects accepted and institutionalized enactments of whiteness and blackness, along with

attendant and equally accepted recognitions of what constitutes blackness and whiteness.

As discursive practice, race might reveal itself for closer observation as social instances

of discursive enactment and recognition. If so, then analysis of how discourse elements

create, sustain, reflect, and negotiate race should yield insights on how race as a socially-

situated text might be transformed. Gee defines the concepts as follows:

What do I mean by enactive work and recognition work? Think about the

matter this way: Out in the world exist materials out of which we

continually make and remake our social worlds. The social arises when we

humans relate (organize, coordinate) these materials together in a way that

is recognizable to others. We attempt to get other people to recognize

people and things as having certain meanings and values within certain

configurations or relationships. Our attempts are what I mean by “enactive

work,” and others’ active efforts to accept or reject our attempts—to see or

fail to see things “our way”—are what I mean by “recognition work.”

(“New Literacy Studies and the Social Turn”)

Inspired by the concepts of enactive and recognition work, this study’s research question,

i.e., How might race be implicated in this English composition class, can now be distilled

into the following specific questions that guide discourse analysis:

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• What regarding race might be inferred from what students ordain,

establish, authorize, portray, depict, or otherwise try to get recognized in

their discourses? What textual or contextual data support enactment as a

principal discursive goal? What terms are used to get this done? This is

enactment work.

• What regarding race might be inferred from what students recognize,

accept, ignore, refute, challenge, or otherwise respond to in their

discourses? What textual or contextual data support recognition as a

principal discursive goal? What terms are used to get this done? This is

recognition work.

In this classroom community, non-dominant discourses challenge the social status-quo

whereas dominant discourses support it. The following grid for interpreting race as

discursive practice emerges:

• Instances of socially non-dominant discourses operating in enactment

mode may reflect secondary social narratives authorizing themselves

alongside dominant narratives.

• Instances of socially non-dominant discourses operating in recognition

mode may reflect secondary social narratives actively accepting,

ignoring, or challenging primary social narratives.

• Instances of socially dominant discourses operating in enactment mode

may reflect primary social narratives re-inscribing their authority.

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• Instances of socially dominant discourses operating in recognition mode

may reflect primary social narratives actively accepting, ignoring, or

challenging secondary social narratives.

• Enactment or recognition work that results in engaged, critical

considerations of the self and other as socially “raced”, and is expressed

in new, situated social narratives, suggests the development of

transformative discursive practices.

Discourse analysis findings are summarized briefly and then presented in detail for each

of the nine students featured in Chapter Four. Interpretation of findings suggests that

some students want to preserve established large social narratives, but often in ways that

reflect uncritical acceptance of their underlying ideologies. Others seek to un-do

established authoritative discourses or primary narratives on race and re-write social

scripts of what constitutes blackness and/or whiteness within the context of their

classroom. Still others attempt to synthesize authoritative and “ideologically becoming”

discourses on race towards the articulation of new, multi-perspective knowledge.

Moreover, black and white students constitute all groups.

Odessa

In classroom discussions, Odessa presents black issues and culture in the form of

movies, popular college pastimes, etc. for consideration and juxtaposition amidst

conversations dominated by white cultural elements. She thus engages in enactment work

that affirms black experiences alongside popular yet predominantly white ones. In her

texts, Odessa critiques her own literacy experiences and conditions that may have

contributed to them. But she seems less interested in trying to get her experiences as a

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black young woman recognized by others as socially valuable, than she is in affirming

her experiences for herself. She extends this enactive work in her texts but also performs

recognition work with regards to race, interpreting her experiences within larger social

contexts and seemingly coming to terms with her higher education journey.

Odessa’s first essay responds to Victoria Purcell-Gates’ article, “Sociocultural

Theory of Learning,” a critical qualitative portrayal of how elements of one student’s

Appalachian cultural context confound his emergent literacy experiences. In her first

essay, which she also titles “Sociocultural Theory of Learning,” Odessa argues that since

“everyone has different learning abilities….the sociocultural theory of learning is a

theory that all educational institutions should consider.” This first reading is consistent

with her in class resistance to the primary narratives operating in the classroom that

assign blame to the victim. She continues by arguing for the fairness of making sure

black students learn as well as white students. She does not identify this as similar to her

situation—for nothing in the pedagogy requires her to—although our conversation about

her parents and her educational experiences discussed in the previous chapter suggests

parallels.

She supports her argument with references from Victoria Purcell-Gates’ article.

She quotes the following statement from the Gates article as she builds her argument:

….”The Sociocultural Theory of Learning suggests that educators must

shift their perspectives to realize that all communities have appropriate

cognitive abilities, albeit different to fit various life situations” (Purcell-

Gates 56). Basically this means that due to the fact that we have

sociocultural differences, it may cause us to learn differently. For

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example, someone living in the inner city projects with a low income and

poorly educated parents, may not necessarily benefit from the same

curriculum being used in a suburban school where the students come from

college educated families with upper middle class incomes. The difference

income alone gives the suburban students an advantage. His or her parent

is able to provide better learning materials such computer and high priced

tutors. The difference in the amount of education the parents received

makes a big difference in the way their children learn. It is likely that the

child with college educated parents had the importance of education

stressed early in life. Also, the communities that they live in can make a

difference, the everyday stress and hardships of living in the inner city

projects verse (sic) the suburbs can hinder one/s abilities to learn.

Odessa’s acknowledgment of the affect sociocultural elements can have on educational

outcomes directly opposes the primary narrative on this subject, i.e. that individuals are

personally responsible for their successes. Although she does not use personal examples

readily, Odessa’s rigid expressions and defensiveness when discussing the position in

class may suggest a personal knowledge of how income, inner city projects, and/or

poorly educated parents might affect a student’s learning opportunities, especially if “the

child with college educated parents had the importance of education stressed early in

life.” Her discussion of the advantages suburban students have over inner city students

notes “better learning materials” such as “computers and high price tutors” among them.

While she refuses to discuss how reading and writing are used in her home or pre-

college educational experiences with me, Odessa’s written thoughts on how to help

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students affected by external social and economic factors seem to suggest options she

would have welcomed. She refers to an article from a local newspaper entitled “Charter

School Debate” and proposes a solution to such needs:

A possible solution to the different needs of these children would be

charted schools Much like the program that Ruth Coon was trying to

implement in her East End neighborhood….”The school would aim to

offer students a personal and familial environment and stress a sense of

community. The school would emphasize peer learning and offer

‘grandparent corps’ to tutor and mentor struggling students” (Difilippo

B6). Schools like this would make the students feel at home. They would

not have to deal with the isolation, which comes from being bused to other

neighborhoods. The students would not have to be ashamed of the

difference in educational abilities. They would be with students that come

from the same neighborhood that they do. Their peers would likely have to

deal with some of the same issues and would understand that it is not easy

for everyone. When you are in a positive environment with people much

like yourself, I think it promotes learning, which is the schools primary

goal.

Particularly interesting here is Odessa’s observation that community-situated charter

schools would keep students from being “ashamed” of their educational ability or skill

levels. It seems to suggest that racially segregated schools—since a nationally-known

characteristic of this city, her hometown, is its paucity of racially-integrated

neighborhoods—might better serve students than racially integrated ones, especially if

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the cost for integration includes “isolation,” and the absence of “a sense of community.”

What’s more, Odessa appears to suggest that a sense of solidarity would enhance the

learning experience since students “would be with students that come from the same

neighborhood that they do” and “would likely have to deal with some of the same issues

and…”—this next statement is particularly telling—“…would understand that it is not

easy for everyone” (emphasis added). An especially frustrating element of Odessa’s

observed experience in the class is an ongoing dispute with Jim over accountability and

responsibility for student learning, with Odessa stressing the role of instruction and

instructor in the equation, and Jim stressing the role of the individual. Her assertion that,

“when you are in a positive environment with people much like yourself, I think it

promotes learning,” might suggest similarities other than race, e.g., socioeconomic,

cultural, or class status, since she later notes the relative benefits of diverse classrooms on

learning:

From my own person experiences, I feel that schools that base their

curricula on the needs of its students produce higher achievers. Like many

of the students who participated in the Bowser and Perkins study, I am a

minority. I attended an inner city magnet school….My school was very

diverse in ethnicity, in cultures, and in economic status. There were a

number of curricula in place to meet the needs of all the students. The

programs ranged form (sic) special education to college prep courses.

Each student was placed in the program that suited his or her personal

educational needs.

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The placing of students in sub-groups within the larger community of similar individuals

seems to appeal to her more than the idea of placing students in broadly integrated

classroom contexts. This, as well as her former observation, seems to respond to and

extend the classroom debate regarding how best to educate culturally diverse students. To

this end, her counterargument is cogent:

Some may argue that programs such as charter schools are not fair or

necessary. I would beg to differ. Our school’s primary objective is to

educate the children which it serves to the best of its ability. In order to

meet this objective it must have programs and curriculum in place, which

best meets the needs of the students in its community. This would be no

different from the accommodations that are made for “special ed”

students. Our society makes accommodation for different populations

everyday; handicap access is one example.

By reminding her audience of the on-going accommodations society makes for people in

need, Odessa seems to imply that students whose educational experiences have been

challenged or impaired by social, economic, or perhaps even racial injustices should be

accommodated in ways that maximize their comfort and learning opportunities. Perhaps

for the critical reflection her essay demonstrates, Odessa receives an A-.

Odessa’s insights emphasize the importance of making curricula responsive to

student needs, experiences, and cultural situations. Here, the class readings facilitate her

articulation of her personal literacy narrative. Her narrative is further developed in

another essay, a response to “On the Uses of a Liberal Education, Part One” by Mark

Edmundson and “On the Uses of a Liberal Education, Part Two” by Earl Shorris. In

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response to these articles, Odessa engages in deeper, more personal reflections on her

educational experiences. She engages in reflection as a tool to critique not only her

writing but her education in the liberal arts and her life as well, for what becomes

markedly evident when comparing Odessa’s first to her second essay is that by the

second, she is proofreading and editing her papers with more attention to detail, as

evidenced by the excerpts below. It is interesting that in several ways, Odessa’s social

experiences as expressed in our interview and in her papers parallels Viniece Walker’s in

the Shorris piece, and Odessa herself points this out. The section of source text Odessa

treats features the power of reflection as a central theme. In the source text, Shorris asks

Viniece, “Why do you think people are poor?” Viniece answered, “You’ve got to teach

the moral life of downtown to the children. And the way you do that, Earl, is by taking

them downtown to plays, museums, concerts, lectures, where they can learn the moral

life of downtown.” Shorris continues:

Although she did not say so, I was sure that when she spoke of the “moral

life of downtown” she meant something that had happened to her. With no

job and no money, a prisoner, she had undergone a radical transformation.

She had followed the same path that led to the invention of politics in

ancient Greece. She had learned to reflect. In further conversation it

became clear that when she spoke of “the moral life of downtown” she

meant the humanities, the study of human constructs and concerns, which

have been the source of reflection for the secular world since the Greeks

first stepped back from nature to experience wonder at what they beheld.

If the political life was the way out of poverty, the humanities provided an

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entrance to reflection and the political life. The poor did not need anyone

to release them; an escape route existed. But to open this avenue to

reflection and politics a major distinction between the preparation for the

life of the rich and the life of the poor had to be eliminated (Shorris 143).

Reflecting on this section of the reading, focusing especially on Viniece’s insights,

Odessa writes the following:

[Shorris’] students are poor and face many hardships. If I were to place

myself in this class setting, I would expect the professors to take that into

consideration. They need a teacher that shows he really cares that his

students are learning the information.

There seems to be much more genuine motivation and engagement

in the class that Shorris offers. It might be easy to suggest that only their

desperation to escape poverty led them to engage so deeply with the

philosophy, literature, and art they studied in his program. The way that

Shorris presented the information to his students played a valuable part in

the way that they engaged in it. He wanted them to realize that they had

been deprived of information for so long and he was giving it to them. He

wanted his students to understand that learning the humanities would

make them rich and political (Shorris 145). Given this type of information,

his students really wanted to learn the humanities. (Odessa’s emphasis)

This consideration of the power of students’ desire in successful educational experiences

represents Odessa’s first discursive move in her writing toward an appreciation of the

individual’s role in successful education. Thus, close, critical engagement with the issues

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allows her to move beyond her initial unilateral articulation of one non-dominant

narrative to see some value in one of the class’s primary narratives. The results is a

blurring of ideological boundaries as Odessa explores both narratives’ ideologies. The

role she assumes in her own education is expressed in pragmatic terms, inspired by a

consideration of the indulged, affluent students who experience the liberal arts as “lite

entertainment,” as not at all like her more “consumer education”. Observing that she too

has had the idea of being a consumer of education, but with an eye toward economy,

maximizing purchase power, and thrift, Odessa writes:

Edmundson argues that “students are casual consumers, committed

to a laid-back norm and that they worry about taking too many chances”

(Edmundson 130-131). This quality can be both positive and negative for

students, depending on how they “consume” education. For example,

looking at a university from an active consumer perspective, the ideal

objective would be to get your money’s worth. Getting my money’s worth

is one of the attitudes that I have about college. In the four to five years

that I plan on being here, the wise thing to do would be to double major.

That way I can get two degrees for the price of one. On the other hand,

following a laid-back consumer approach and not being willing to take

chances may be a students’ downfall. In today’s society, you cannot be a

success without taking chances and you have to be able to speak up for

yourself and what you believe in.

In her essay, Odessa agrees that access to knowledge of “human constructs and concerns”

is key to understanding not only the world but one’s station in life. Her own story, which

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she guardedly protects during our interview and casual conversations, begins to take

shape around the pieces of text she identifies as important and personally meaningful.

The following insight attests to the state of “ideological becoming” in which Odessa finds

herself:

I think Nuesner is right: “The scholarly mind is marked by self-criticism

and thirsty search; it is guided by an awareness of its own limitations and

those of knowledge. The scholar-teacher, of whatever subject or

discipline, teaches one thing: Knowledge is not sure but uncertain,

scholarship is search, and to teach is to impart the lessons of doubt. What

is taught is what we do not know” (Neusner 169).

These insights are important here, for they suggest that Odessa is open to experiencing

new and different perspectives, including racially dominant ones. Inspired by this quote,

Odessa prepares her in-class essay is in response to the following essay prompt: The

primary focus and purpose of the college curriculum should be to provide students with a

liberal arts education. (You will of course need to discuss what you and the authors

we’ve read mean by “liberal arts”). She writes the following:

From the very beginning of our educational experience, we are

taught from a basic liberal arts framework. We are often told that a liberal

education is the best education. This leaves us with a question: What is a

liberal arts education and why is it so important? To simply put it, a liberal

education is an education mainly in the liberal arts, providing students

with a broad cultural background rather than with training in any specific

profession. The primary focus and purpose of the college curriculum

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should be to provide the student with a liberal education because it

produces well-rounded citizens, allows us to live rich lives, and become

critical thinkers.

Well-rounded citizenship is something we all should strive for, and

a liberal education gives us this well-roundedness. It provides general

knowledge of a wide array of subjects valued in our society. A liberal

education helps people go out to the polls ad make educated decisions

about issues and officials (Cahn 180). James Duke, founder of Duke

University, argues that the purpose of college is to train students to make

the world a better place (Willimon and Naylor 118). Given a liberal

education at the college level, students are able to satisfy this purpose as

well.

Living a rich life is a goal that is not obtainable to most people in

terms of material goods. According to Earl Shorris in the essay “Uses of a

Liberal Education,” rich people learn the humanities and the humanities

are “a foundation for getting along in the world, for thinking, and for

learning to reflect on the world instead of just reacting to whatever force is

turned against you.” He believes that in this sense, the humanities can

make you rich. I agree with him. Like the students in Shorris’s class,

students of the humanities can broaden their horizons and think on a more

intellectual level when faced with confrontation (Shorris 151).

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Her essay unfolds quickly with sharp points for her first two supporting paragraphs and

citations from Cahn and Shorris respectively. Her third supporting paragraph nails her

final point so well that one hardly misses the refutation she omits:

The most crucial advantage in obtaining a liberal education is that it

allows us to be critical thinkers. In this day and age the ability to question

hypothesis and theories is a valuable characteristic. We must not take

everything to be so concrete. Steven Cahn also stresses the importance of

critical thinkers when he says “To think critically is to think in accord with

the canons of logic and scientific methods, and such thinking provides

needed protection against the lure of simplistic dogmas that appear

attractive, yet threaten to cut the lifeline of reason and stifle intellect

(Cahn 183).

She does bow toward a refutation in her concluding paragraph:

In short, a liberal education should be the basis of education. It will

produce better citizens and make the world a better place to live in.

College is the place that gets us ready for the real world. It also serves to

train our professionals for their long-term careers. Having a liberal

education at the core will not only produce better citizens but better

professionals as well.

But it is her research paper that demonstrates her mastery of reflection as a personal

heuristic and tool for critiquing her experiences in higher education. The final research

paper for English 102 is described as follows:

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The research paper is an investigation of a topic of interest and

importance to you. Part of your challenge in writing the research paper is

to make the material you write about interesting to your readers as well.

An important part of the research project involves incorporating the ideas

and inquiry of other people. You will read what others have written on the

topic and will also talk to a specialist on the subject. However, your essay

should definitely not be a mere collection of ideas of others strung

together into an essay. Rather, the paper should be a discussion of your

overall research question (which will involve some subquestions), why and

how you chose to investigate it, what you were able to find, and what

further ideas and conclusions you came to as a result.

For this paper, you will investigate in some depth a major in which

you are interested. You have some flexibility as to what aspects of the

major you choose to investigate. However, there are several areas that

you should be sure to examine. You will carry out this investigation using

library research and possibly with other field research as well, as

observation and analysis of a work site.

Odessa titles her research paper on her academic major, “My Dilemma” and opens it this

way:

Preparing for this research paper has been the most difficult

assignment for me this whole quarter. The subject of the paper was to be

based on your major or some aspect of it. Well, I don’t have a major. I am

currently “undecided.” At this point in my educational journey I have

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experimented with a total of four different majors: early childhood

education, social work, nursing, and dance. At 18 years old, fresh out of

high school, deciding what you want to do for the rest of your life is a very

hard decision. Here at the University of Cincinnati, we are pressured to

determine a major as an incoming freshman. I don’t think this is fair.

Students should be given more time to make such an important decision.

Since arriving at the university, Odessa has had four majors—dance, nursing, social

work, and early childhood education—and is now taking coursework in her fifth,

communication. Her essay continues:

From my own experience I know that changing majors can

certainly set you back. The fields that I was interested in had very specific

courses to be taken the freshman year. Had I kept the same major, this

would be my year to graduate. When I decided not to continue in nursing,

I ended up losing practically a whole year’s worth of classes. This

happened almost every time I changed my major. I felt as if I was being

penalized for not knowing exactly what I wanted to do for the rest of my

life.

Instead of reflecting on how pre-college guidance may have helped her identify her

interests and strengths, and assisted her selection of a major more suitable to her interests;

instead of contemplating her status as a first-generation college student with few if any

immediate role models in her indecisiveness; and instead of perhaps considering how her

personal decisions to simply stay with one course of academic action over others might

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have affected her experiences to date, Odessa effectively assigns responsibility to the

larger university, as noted in her next paragraph:

The University of Cincinnati needs to restructure the course load for

incoming freshmen. It does not matter what the student plans to major in

because all freshmen should have the same basic classes. All students

should be required to have their first year of studies in the liberal

education courses. By liberal education I mean, an education mainly in the

liberal arts, providing students with a broad cultural background rather

than training in a specific profession. This gives them a little more time to

make that all-important decision on a major.

Armed with qualitative data from her study of Shorris, Cahn, Neusner, Edmundson,

Victoria Purcell-Gates and others, Odessa is persuaded (and persuasive in her prose) that

less focus on specialization and more focus on a liberal, and thus liberating, education

needs to be the business of colleges and universities during most students’ the first two

years. Instead of interviewing a specialist in her major, Odessa interviews a student at

Wright State University (WSU) about the student’s experiences in WSU’s general

education program with its liberal arts focus, and includes an explanatory citation from

the WSU student handbook:

I recently spoke to a friend of mine, Tiffany Anderson. Tiffany is a

student at Wright State University. She knows of all the difficulty I have

had at school. I asked her to explain the her first year at Wright State, and

I compared it to my first year at UC, Tiffany says,

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‘Well, choosing what classes was not hard at all. We have to take a

general set of courses no matter what our major is. I didn’t have

the pressure of having to decide on a major like you said you felt.’

I was curious to find out whether having more time to determine her major

was beneficial and also to find out what type of “general courses” she was

required to take:

‘I personally knew right out of high school that I wanted to become

a psychologist, but a number of my friends, you, for example, were

not so sure. Having your freshman year open, I believe, can be

very beneficial for those who need more time to decide. It allows

you to meet upperclassmen in all different majors to help you

make up your mind. As far as the classes we take, they are English,

history, math, and science, much like what we did in high school,

only at a college level.’

Although Tiffany did not label it as such, it sounds like the freshmen are

required to take only liberal arts classes. According to Wright State’s new

student handbook, that is exactly the case:

“A university education should be broadly based in order to

promote intellectual growth, cultivate informed understanding,

encourage breadth and flexibility of perspective, and foster a

critical examination of social, cultural, and scientific realities.”

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Odessa moves in her research paper to a brief discussion of the importance of a liberal

arts background to employers, before examining Brown University’s undergraduate

program and its core of liberal arts studies. She writes:

The students are not required to declare a major until the first quarter of

their junior year. Some [may say] that this is a very controversial type of

program. My answer to them would be to simply take a look at the

graduation rate and success of these Brown University graduates.

Odessa does not consider any actual numbers, but her well-shaped assertion that actual

statistics might reflect different outcomes, and in Brown’s favor no less, is enough to

satisfy her that she has been shortchanged by a collusion of external forces.

Ultimately, Odessa’s learning experiences, revealed as the stories of inner city

youth embedded in her essays, her observed interactions, and her willingness to speak out

when others are silent seem to reflect the development of what Lu calls “the literate

self”—the idealized self that uses reading and writing for goals larger than those

established by a curriculum:

This ideal literate self uses reading and writing for the following goals: (1)

To end oppression rather than to empower a particular form of self, group,

or culture; (2) To grapple with one’s privileges as well as one’s experience

of exclusion; (3) To approach more respectfully and responsibly those

histories and experiences which appear different from what one calls one’s

own; and (4) To affirm a yearning for individual agency shared by

individuals across social divisions without losing sight of the different

circumstances against which each of us must struggle when enacting such

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a yearning. This is a form of literacy which, following Cornel West, I want

to call “critical affirmation.” (“Redefining” 171)

One might argue that the act of critically affirming the starts, stops, and detours of her

educational journey is a hallmark of Odessa’s experiences in the class. She uses her

reading and writing assignments to build a comprehensive and competing argument

validating an “experience of exclusion,” while yearning for the personal agency to

discover and then reach her goals. In the end, Odessa establishes competing and

persistent new narratives in the classroom, ones that highlights and validates black

experiences and perspectives without invalidating traditionally white, middle-class ones.

Jim

As observed in the previous chapter, Jim appears in many instances to be

affronted by challenges to white cultural images and especially by Odessa’s insistent

placement of black culture alongside white culture for even consideration in classroom

conversations. Similarly, he generates essays that perform recognition work in his

attempts to re-marginalize narratives on blackness in the classroom and minimize the

effect of their interlocutors, employing such code words in his writing and interview as

“other people,” and “those people” when referring to blacks and other people of color.

Moreover, Jim resists Jane’s prompting to critique his experiences of whiteness and the

discursive gestures that would protect their monolithic invisibility—to view them, and

himself, as equally culturally-constructed. Jim thus expresses race as a set of discursive

practices that re-inscribe stereotypical ideologies, particularly the notion that people of

color “want everything handed to them,” that they “do not strive for the ‘American

Dream’,” that they are “slackers.”

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A confident writer who appears to relish confrontation, Jim strongly critiques

colored social issues while denying their human antecedents both name and voice. Jim

performs a critique of black and Hispanic students’ experiences as discussed in Mike

Rose’s essay, “I Just Wanna Be Average” and the Bowser and Perkins piece that

immediately excoriates Hispanic and black experiences and briskly establishes his own:

While reading “I Just Wanna Be Average” by Mike Rose, I could

not really relate to the situation that he was in. Growing up in a

predominantly white, rich community, I could not relate to the South Los

Angeles life. I could however, understand some of the things he was

saying. I like the stories about how he and his father would go to the

bowling alley and eat chili dogs. My father and I used to come to

Cincinnati a lot to go to Reds games and he would always buy me a hot

dog, pop corn, etc…

As [Rose] moved through school, it was easy to see a pattern of academic

indifference developing. This never plagued me. I always enjoyed school

and it came very easy and naturally to me. I do not remember ever having

to study very much throughout high school. Yet, I still maintained a grade

point average above 3.75. It seemed that Mr. Rose did not study much, but

he didn’t really care, therefore he did not excel in school. I think one of

the best things that I did in high school was to participate in inter-

scholastic athletics. This was crucial in learning many skills that you need

in the “Real World.” You learn to work well with others, i.e., in a team.

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Jim’s language when writing about Rose and their different contexts borders on elitist,

and he appears hard pressed to keep judgment out of his response. Moreover, much of

what he offers in response to the assignment’s call for reflective, critical engagement

comes off as opinionated criticism. It is possible that Jim puts forth such criticism in

response to what he perceives to be an attack on individual responsibility and

accountability in learning environments. It is also possible that he criticizes diverse

students’ “needs” as a defense of his more privileged sociocultural contexts.

Perhaps because Jim believe the course espouses liberal politics, he resists being

cast as having an unfair advantage not to denigrate the experiences of less fortunate

students but to protect his sense of self. Still, note Jim’s self-established position of

superiority from which he validates Rose’s decision to excel:

[Rose’s] quote about who wants to be average was very intriguing.

I am glad to see that he made that decision. Too many people fall into the

trap of being average. Then they just spin their wheels for their entire life,

most of the time without any opportunity for advancement in life. I could

not live my life that way, and it is good to see that Mr. Rose made a

success out of his life. He was able to overcome adversity, and make

something out of himself. I don’t feel that it is an excuse for anyone who

is raised in the “ghetto” has any right to use that as an excuse (sic). There

are numerous cases such as Mike Rose that go to prove the “slackers”

wrong.

Because Rose chooses to embrace a discourse Jim might label “white” (if he could see

whiteness as a racial identity), Jim paternalistically endorses Roses’ success. Moreover,

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he touts Roses’ achievement as an example for “slackers.” The larger context of Jim’s

final comment is an extended classroom discussion on accountability for educational

success among students whose cultures potentially threaten their successes. His use of

quotation marks as mechanical separations of the words “ghetto” and “slackers” from the

rest of his text symbolically parallel their antecedents’ excision from his discursive

repertoire of tolerable subjects.

He carefully avoids including the Victoria Purcell-Gates article as well as the

Bowser and Perkins articles in his responses, yet the subjects of his remarks here are the

Appalachian and black students discussed in these articles respectively, not the actual

experiences Rose relates. Indeed, Jim avoids the terms blacks or African Americans here

and throughout his writing. Instead, he uses the terms “people” and “slackers,” and

allows them no reasonable excuses for not succeeding despite historically-significant

social and economic circumstances.

That he is comfortable validating Rose’s “decision” to be more may reflect a

subconscious sense of entitlement; the confidence and verve implicated in his ability to

decide what good decisions are for Rose may reflect an uncritical articulation from his

subject position of white, affluent male. By the time Jim integrates his reading responses

into a unit essay, little in his outlook or prose content has changed since the initial

reading response, with the exception of a nod to the existence of other people’s different

realities. He writes:

I think that ever since I came home from my first day of

kindergarten, my parents have had high expectations for me. In my mind,

this is the best motivation for me to do well in everything that I do. My

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parents always told me not to settle for a B, when I knew that I could get

an A. I would have to accredit (sic) my success through out school, and

life, for that matter, to my parents. Having good role models at home has

been the key to my success. I am aware that many young people in the

United States do not have these parental figures to look up to. This creates

a significant problem for many youths nationwide.

I was in the eighth grade and it was the middle of April. I was

ready for school to be over, so that I could just play baseball and hang out

with my friends. I had just gotten my report card for the fifth grading

period, and I had gotten a B- in my favorite class, science. I had gotten all

A’s until that point, and my parents wondered why I didn’t this time. I was

ok with the grade, because I was still above average. Now my parents had

never been real sticklers for grades. Then again, I really hadn’t given them

much of a reason. Now they didn’t ground me or anything; they just told

me they knew I could do better, and they expected the best out of me. I

had to be honest with myself; I knew that I had screwed around, and that I

could have gotten an A. This incident was a major factor in shaping the

way I handled high school. I knew not to set my standards based on what

other people were doing. I realized that it was good enough just to be

above average, I had to do better than my best. I worked hard in high

school; I was in as many honors classes as I could. I was never satisfied

with a C. (Once I got to high school, I decided that there was nothing

wrong with an occasional B). By going about school this way, I was able

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to excel and graduate in the top five percent. Without my parents’

guidance, I am not sure where I would be.

I guess I was fortunate to be in the situation that I was in, and am

still in. I didn’t have any gender, race, or socioeconomic issues looming

over my head as I was passing through all of the levels of education. Since

I lived in a high class, rich, predominately white community, I never ran

into any racial or economical problems. Like many children throughout

the United States, Mike Rose had many negative experiences growing up.

He didn’t have great support from his parents. “…My father swore Italian.

The second time I tried it, I got something milder—in English. And by my

third near miss with death, my parents were calling my behavior cute.

Cute! Who wanted cute?” (Rose, 7). Mr. Rose was crying out for attention

from his parents. He was telling his parents that he needed them to be

there for him. They did not give him the attention that he needed. My

parents were always involved in my life and my school life. Everyday

when I got home and we were eating dinner, they always asked about my

day. They checked to make sure that I was keeping up with my work.

Mike Rose did not have many of the benefits that I did. He was destined

for failure, without a good parental role model. Without John MacFarland

stepping into his life, Mike would have been caught in the world of

mediocrity. As a result of Mr. MacFarland helping him out, he went to

college and went on to be a successful writer. This is a problem that many

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young people encounter, but many of them do not have a “John

MacFarland.”

None of the expectations that have been set for me have ever

crossed racial lines. Coming from a predominantly white community, the

expectations that were set for me by the school were district wide.

Obviously, I set my goals and expectations higher than the standard. I

know that expectations are drawn across racial lines, but I think that too

many people use that as a crutch. “Without a sense of history and where

your family came from, it’s harder for you to strive to do a little bit better

or make a few more gains” (DiFilippo, 24). While good parental role

models facilitate people in their education, it is not the only ingredient to

being a good student. If people truly want to do well, and make something

of themselves, they can do it with or without positive parental influence.

[Here Jane reminds him to keep focus; keep in mind the thesis about the

role of expectations]. In this article, Ms. DiFilippo feels that alternate

schools for high school dropouts are necessary in certain neighborhoods.

The supporters of this school feel that kids will be more willing to learn if

they are in this new learning environment. However, I disagree with this

philosophy. It is my belief that a change of scenery will not be enough to

rehabilitate these students. If these students really wanted to succeed, they

would have done it in their initial school.

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This final statement and the following paragraph refer to the Bowser and Perkins article

on young men of color, but Jim mentions neither the article nor the young men in his

critique. He continues:

There are many factors that can shape the lives of young people in

the American educational system. Positive role models setting goals and

expectations are very important for young people, but they are not the only

things that determine the way children should live their lives. I am really

tired of people making excuses as to why they had to drop out of school

and become a drug addict. The issue of temptation is trumped up. I faced a

lot of temptation during my high school career, but I was able to resist

these temptations. Granted I came from a good family, but still I could

have succumbed to these temptations, but I didn’t.” Anyway, people are

just looking for someone else to blame, when the problem is within that

person. I don’t think that it is possible for anyone to have too high

expectations. Not to be cliché, but people can do whatever they want [Jane

writes in left margin, “I think these are too idealistic.”] The problem is that

people don’t want to do anything. They want everything handed to them.

This is a problem that is seen in America, more than any other country.

Most people do not strive for the “American Dream;” they just wait for it

to come to them. I didn’t mean to go off on a tangent, but this is the way I

feel. I guess I could be totally off base, and most of what I have closed

with is merely opinion, there is some truth backing it up. Basically, I think

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our country has gotten too soft on people, and people use the excuse of not

having role models as reasons for them not to succeed.

Jim’s repetitious discussion of his economic and social privilege erupts in his readings

and essays in ways and rhetorical patterns that seem to suggest a preponderance of

insolent pride and scarcely veiled disgust. Moreover, Jim’s gesture of boasting about his

own experiences before patronizingly acknowledging that others are indeed less fortunate

than he does not reflect critical consideration of how privilege, like poverty, functions as

a powerful sociocultural variable that, like poverty, is conflated with race in Western

society.

Thus, much of what he attributes to his personal strength and fortitude—the

ability to “just say no” when faced with “temptations,” for instance, belies the protection

afforded him by a position of privilege, or as Jane notes in her commets,“There were a lot

fewer cracks for you to fall through than say the students in Bowser and Perkins article.”

Their article, “Success Against the Odds: Young Black Men Tell What It Takes,” looks at

factors that contribute to success for a group of African American male students. Jane

writes the following end note on Jim’s unit essay, paraphrasing a comment made earlier

in response to the one of Jim and Odessa’s in-class verbal fights:

Jim, you are right about the lack of accountability in today’s world, but

there are other factors that determine success beyond a “can-do” attitude. I

think your paper should address the Bowser and Perkins article and the

issue of lowered expectations. When Mike Rose says “students will float

to the mark you set,” he’s talking about limiting students based on poor

expectations. Also, you do get a bit preachy toward the end. It loses focus,

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and given the information you divulge about your own background, it

sounds a little narrow. Use the text to complicate your world view. Try on

the world from another perspective. Perhaps people from your

neighborhood can “do whatever they want” but Jenny and Donny [from

the Purcell-Gates study] can’t. Be careful when making these blanket

statements.

Jim receives a B- and opts to revise the paper. The revised version which follows differs

from the original in its overall tone because he softens it somewhat. For instance, he

opens the new essay by addressing what Jane’s comment indicates to be the most

offensive, least critical part of his essay, his treatment of racially-different others.

Whereas he opens his first draft with a laudatory ode to himself (“I guess I was fortunate

to be in the situation that I was in, and am still in. I didn’t have any gender, race, or

socioeconomic issues looming over my head as I was passing through all of the levels of

education”) and refers to struggling learners as “slackers,” he opens the second by

addressing the issue at hand and omits the slur. Also, Jim cops to a less offensive

rationale for his position on others’ achievement failures: personal fortitude. The revised

version is as follows:

None of the expectations that have been set for me have ever

crossed racial lines. Coming from a predominately white community, the

expectations that were set for me by the school were district wide.

Obviously, I set my own goals and expectations higher than the standard.

Unfortunately, not everyone can come from such a good situation. Many

students are raised in very difficult circumstances. Luckily, there is a

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proposed school that could help people that are raised in less than ideal

situations. In Dana DiFilippo’s article, ‘Charter School Debated,’ she feels

that alternate schools for high school dropouts are necessary in certain

neighborhoods. The supporters of this school feel that kids will be more

willing to learn if they are in this new learning environment. Originally, I

thought that these students would succeed their first [time] around. After

re-reading this article and assessing the whole story, I came to the

conclusion that maybe these students to need more opportunities or more

chances. I came from a good family and good environment, which many

students do not. While there were temptations for me, there were far less.

There are many factors that can shape the lives of young people in

the American educational system. Positive role models setting goals and

expectations are very important for young people, but they are not the only

things that determine the way children should live their lives. There still

are people that want everything handed to them. This is a problem that is

seen in America more than any other country. A lot of people do not strive

for the “American Dream;” they just wait for it to come to them. Possibly

with more guidance and support there can be less of this type of behavior

(as opposed to addressing it as a social problem it is the individual’s

problem and just that—deviance). I take for granted the lifestyle that I was

raised in. Sometimes I find myself very narrow-minded. By keeping an

open mind when dissecting this subject, I am able to see where other

people are coming from. A good home life is very important in becoming

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an educated person. Without this type of situation, it has to be difficult for

these students to focus on school and resist temptation.

While the sincerity of Jim’s new-found sensitivity is dubious, the value of Jane’s re-

focusing initial comments cannot be overstated. The discursive reconciling one’s

personal perspective to its situatedness, and allowing ideological space for the existence

of alternative perspectives, instantiate rhetorical awareness regardless of whether the

sentiment behind it is genuine or not. Jim receives an A- and the written comment,

“Much better, Jim.”

One of the elements of culture not addressed explicitly in this study is gender and

how gender issues manifest themselves among the students, in their classroom

discourses, and in their writing. Suffice it to say they are legion in the research data and

warrant their own study. However, Jim’s experiences of gender warrant closer discussion

here, for they appear to run parallel to his experiences of race. Moreover, they highlight

the interrelated, co-constructing nature of race, gender, and class in society and in this

classroom.

In an informal written response to Peggy Orenstein’s “Learning Silence: Scenes

from the Class Struggle,” an article in which the author argues that schools’ curricula and

teaching approaches tend to support male academic successes to the detriment of female

students’ successes, Jim’s writes the following:

As far as the gender issue is concerned, I feel that I was treated

differently because I was a male. Another big factor for me was that I

played varsity baseball, and so did my best friend. We could walk around

the halls without a pass and nobody would say anything to us. If they did,

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the athletic director, the baseball coach, or even the football coach would

make an excuse for us. I watched many female students get in trouble for

things that people looked the other way for us. I am not sure whether it is

because we were males or the fact that we were athletes. Either way, we

received preferential treatment.

….As far as the discussion about ADD, I really shouldn’t go there. I am

not a big believer in these types of ailments. I really shouldn’t discuss this

issue because I might say something that would not be considered “PC.”

But I guess I am not a person that cares what other people think. I am not

an alternative person, but I just don’t feel that I need to conform to what

everyone else thinks is right. I owe this to the way my high school

was….The school I went to was over two thousand people (sic), but it was

not culturally diverse. I am not saying that race has is a reason to be

different (sic). I am just saying that the style of life there is much different.

This reading response was written at the beginning of the term, before the clashes with

Odessa over race and culture beccome vitriolic. Jim affirms the existence of his own

social advantages and acknowledges the cachet associated with it. At the same time, he

deliberately denies the valid reality of social disadvantages and rejects manifestations of

them in schools and society.

This particular passage is also interesting because it shows Jim struggling to

maintain an image of himself (and perhaps of whiteness) as irreproachable. The tortured

syntax of his sentences, dashed off quickly and what would later become a near obsession

with verbally assaulting, and being assaulted by, Odessa suggest this observation. Note

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that while his sentiments leap off the page as in-your-face emotion-filled brashness, a

disconnection with his words, the brief almost streams-of-consciousness, authentic

treatment of four important cultural variables—gender, privilege, race, and ability— and

the suggestion that at the beginning of the course, he is grappling for rhetorical footing,

makes it seem as though he might be considering what things might have been like for

him had he been otherwise culturally disposed. However, by the end of the course, he still

appears to be firmly against any authentic consideration of cultural difference as a valid

form of personal or academic inquiry.

In summary, Jim’s experiences as a confident, brash, unapologetic writer and

thinker as observed here and as supported in his writings cast important shadows on the

consideration of how race affects students experiences, and evoke a question AnnLouise

Keating asks: How do we separate “whiteness” from masculinity and other forms of

privilege? (909) As suggested, Jim’s self-assertiveness and confidence probably comes

from a sense of racial superiority and a sense of entitlement as well. In his revision, Jim

regards people who struggle against social and economic obstacles to achieve success

with thinly-veiled disdain; he does not want to appear offensive, for his paper grade will

be affected, he believes. While the requirements of a reflective instrumentalist pedagogy

do not push students to adopt liberal (or any other) ideology, they do invite students to

consider how social and cultural issues affect access to, performance in, and the content

of higher education. Such invitation necessarily allows room for students to grapple with

inconsistencies in their beliefs and experiences within the space they share with others

who are doing likewise. And while benefits of such critical inquiry are typically viewed

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as advantageous, the psychological affects on students like Jim who are unaccustomed to

viewing themselves as raced should also be considered. AnnLouise Keating explains:

Instructors must be aware of the impact interrogations of “whiteness” can

have on our students. Although self-identified students of color find it

satisfying to see the “white” gaze which has marked them as “Other”

turned back on itself, I question the long-term effect of this

reversal….Such reversals trigger a variety of unwelcome reactions in self-

identified “white” students, reactions ranging from guilt to anger to

withdrawal and despair. Instructors must be prepared to deal with these

responses. The point is not to encourage feelings of personal responsibility

for the slavery, decimation of indigenous people, land theft, and so on that

occurred in the past. It is, rather, to enable students of all colors more fully

to comprehend how these oppressive systems that began in the historical

past continue misshaping contemporary conditions. (915)

Although Jim does not appear to struggle with guilt, withdrawal, or despair, an

underlying anger at having his personal sense of agency challenged might be at the heart

of the fights with Odessa. She seeks to reconcile her inner city experiences with her

disappointment at having been somehow cheated out of more socially-valued educational

experiences. Jim seeks, perhaps, a different sort of reconciliation: relief from a pervasive

and apparently “politically correct” classroom atmosphere of tolerance, and

rapprochement for affluence and the educational advantages it confers. In a way, perhaps

he too is trying to do what Odessa is trying to do: enact and thus validate his personal

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literacy experiences within the larger context of post-secondary literacy experiences and

expectations in the classroom and within the university at-large.

Sherry

Sherry performs race as discursive practices that embrace established narratives

and dominant discourses. Her writing reflects nearly equal measures of enactment work

and recognition work, as she both authorizes personal narratives and accepts prevailing

notions on race. For instance, because Sherry embraces the resilience and strength of her

people, she resists the stark, desperate images of Appalachians reflected in the Purcell-

Gates piece, “Sociocultural Theory of Learning.” She retaliates against what she

experiences not as stereotypical images, but as images that reveal too much. Consider the

following essay and its notably defensive title, “Who’s to Blame?”:

There seems to be some controversy about grade schools and high

schools about who succeeds and who does not and why. There are a

handful of people who agree that the school board, the teachers, parents,

and society are to blame. No one, however, seems to reinforce a belief that

the child or adolescent is responsible for his/her own success or failure and

should be held just as accountable as someone might hold the parents of

the school system. Any child who knows the difference between right and

wrong has the common sense enough to make their own decisions about

their future.

Sherry’s strong, defensive opening and final sentence suggest that she is so caught up in

the emotions of her response that she fails to see her argument’s poor logic: second-

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graders cannot be expected to “make their own decisions” about their futures. She

continues in her second paragraph:

In the essay by Purcell-Gates, she states that Donny, the son of an

illiterate urban Appalachian woman, was neglected by the school in the

way that even though he could barley even read his name he was

promoted to the second grade (55). This seems like a rare case, because

even though there are a few students who cannot read very well, most

schools have programs for students who are learning disabled or are

having trouble. The schools that don’t need to take the initiative to seek

out funding to help pay for these programs that their students either need

now, will need in the very near future, or have needed for a long time.

There are tutoring services available in most educational settings. Even

though there are some schools that are overcrowded and it may seem as if

the teacher has no time to focus on the individual I have rarely run across

a teacher who was not willing to help one of his/her students succeed or

excel academically. The help is almost always available; sometimes it just

has to be asked for.

In this paragraph, Sherry backs off of an indictment of the student, cursorily considering

the plausibility of whether a student could actually make it to second grade unable to

read, before, seemingly in exasperation, copping to the school’s responsibility of

providing support for students to then take responsibility for their own learning. She

continues in the next paragraph:

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Some may argue that the teachers are not paying close enough

attention to these students or else they would have noticed this difficulty

and nipped it in the bud. However, this is not at all the case. A good

teacher, which from my experience most of them are, notices these

difficulties amongst his/her students and notifies the parent of the

problem. Most of the time, the teacher will also suggest different courses

of action to take with the student. However, if the parent or the student is

not willing to take advantage of the help available to them then it is not the

fault of the school or the teachers. The decision is left in the hands of the

parent, or the student (depending on the age).

Sherry’s essay then turns to a treatment of the Bowser and Perkins article, “Success

Against the Odds: Young Black Men Tell What it Takes.” The turn represents a shift in

her argument that opens her fourth paragraph as follows:

Bowser and Perkins conclude that if a student has supportive

parents, and older siblings to look to and say, “Oh, I don’t want to turn out

like them,” or a teacher that pays them special attention, [then he or she is]

more likely to succeed than those from an opposite background. They also

believe that most children in bad neighborhoods rise up against the odds,

but if that were entirely accurate then these types of neighborhoods would

be diminishing instead of expanding (75-80).

Like Jim, Sherry attributes social problems to individual actions or inactions, yet the

subject of her first sentence is unclear. She seems to use Bowser and Perkins to continue

her discussion of Appalachian student success begun in the first three paragraphs, but the

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final phrase, “more likely to succeed than those from an opposite background,” has an

unclear series of referents. Who is more likely to succeed? Any student, Appalachian

students? Black students? And who are “those from an opposite background”? White

students? Black students? She follows with her story:

Based on my personal experience and the experiences that I have

witnessed, I can say that it doesn’t really matter one way or the other. I did

not have supportive parents, or any older siblings at all, I didn’t have any

teachers to take me under their wing, [and] no, I don’t live in the best

neighborhood either. Yet here I am in college with, again, no one to take

me under their wing and no one to pat me on the back and tell me that I

did a good job. Though these factors do help to mold an individual’s

attitude, and no gratification for a job well done and failure blossoming all

around you all your life will definitely make it hard to excel and be

someone in the end, but the decision is ultimately up to the individual.

A proud young woman, Sherry is “succeeding against the odds” at the time of this study.

She is an unwed mother, a full-time student, and a full-time employee whose infant

daughter is seriously ill. Thus, her critique of students who allow circumstances to deter

them—unlike Jim’s—comes from actual knowledge and authentic personal validation. Its

appearance in the unit essay reflects a revision of an earlier sentiment expressed in a

written reading response:

The first reading on race vs. success academically had a very

difficult time keeping my interest. I thought it was ridiculous. The author

is taking the typical approach to this subject by blaming society and the

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parents. The children make their own choices for their own futures.

Whether they’re white, black, Hispanic, or otherwise, and need to be

accountable for those choices. A child is either motivated to do well or

they’re not. One cannot take the blame off of the child and put it

elsewhere. That just let’s them see that they can do poorly, blame it on

their parents and society, and everyone sympathizes with that poor

underprivileged and neglected child. When it was their own laziness that

was blame. They simply substituted their homework for the art of making

excuses.

In this reading response, and in the remainder of her essay, Sherry rejects categorically

the influence of sociocultural elements on choices, outcomes, perceived options, and

ideologies, vigorously demonstrating the strength of her convictions:

Everyone is responsible for his/her own actions and the choices

that they make whether they only affect themselves or someone else. God

gave man the freedom to choose, and choose we do, everyday of our lives.

Every morning we choose what we are going to eat for breakfast and

every afternoon what to have for lunch. If the food we want makes us sick,

then it has nothing to do with our community, or our race, or even what

kind of family we have.

There are some that believe that race has a significant impact on

the success and failures of students, yet I have witnessed something quite

to the contrary. I have seen a lot of African Americans, females mostly,

here at the university. The population of African American professionals

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is growing day by day. A student being interviewed in the Bowser and

Perkins study remarked, “It seems like they are just laying for you and

looking for an excuse to mark you down. It is hard to go all semester and

make no mistakes (‘Success Against the Odds: Young Black Men Tells

What It Takes’ 81). There will always be teachers who are prejudiced

against some group of people, be it black, white, male, or female, and that

doesn’t make it okay, but it does make it inevitable. No, it isn’t right to

have prejudice imbedded into the very thread that weaves our future, but

there isn’t a whole lot that can be done about it. Sure, they can be reported

to the proper authorities, but you’d better be able to prove it. There’s no

way to weed out every prejudiced person that comes into the education

system….The fact is, everyone on this earth has to deal with some sort of

prejudice everyday, so if a teacher happens to not like black kids then all

one can really do is deal with it. The teacher only has to be tolerated

temporarily, and you can be sure that there’s another teacher just down the

hall that doesn’t particularly care for white kids either.

Unlike Jim, Sherry sees race and names race. She argues in the response that everyone is

stereotyped and victimized by someone, and in doing so refutes the argument that only

blacks face social challenges. She acknowledges the presence of black females on

campus, but does not question the absence of black males. Jane makes the following end

notes:

You should be proud of your success. However, in the reading responses,

you need to respond, not react. Try to avoid rejecting an argument

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immediately – play what you could call the “believing” game. Address

certain points specifically. Yours is one life and does not invalidate the

studies. You are welcome to include your experience, but sometimes your

experiences, though contradictory, and the case studies/research presented

in the readings can co-exist.

Despite Jane’s prompting, Sherry’s unit essay departs little from its original sentiments.

She does, however, rhetorically manipulate the essay’s tone and omits a direct indication

of race. This might be unfortunate, for it suggests a misreading of Jane’s comments as an

admonishment on naming race in formal discourse.

From Sherry’s perspective, nothing—not prejudice, injustice, or socio-cultural

variables—should be able to form weapons of deterrence capable of derailing the aspiring

student. At the same time, she does support establishing programs, academic or

community-based, that help students help themselves, noting that, “With the incredibly

high drop-out rate nowadays, something to get these people in gear is bound to be

positive.” (Emphasis added.) The ideology underlying Sherry’s perspective is one she

brings into the classroom from home. When asked to identify the article she found most

provocative, Sherry says,

The one on struggling black men and the educational system or whatever.

I just read it, remembering everything that my Dad used to complain

about—how they all blame society for everything. He says it’s their fault.

He mostly talks about court systems and these kids go into court, and

they’re like, “These poor unfortunate children,” and “It’s society’s fault,”

“It’s their parents’ fault.” It’s an individual thing. They have the option to

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do whatever it is they’re going to do. They might get influenced one way

or another, but if they have strong personality traits, then they can go far in

life.

This focus on the individual as responsible for and accountable to others for her success

is one Sherry shares with Jim. Still, Sherry’s own strong personality is displayed only in

her writings and in one-on-one conversations, not in class discussions. For although she

comments often in class about the readings, usually in ways that support developing

threads of conversation, Sherry’s oral comments lack the articulated force that constitutes

her writing.

This seems to suggest that while she uses conversational discourses in ways that

accommodate and respect multiple perspectives and their expressions, Sherry uses

written discourse to re-inscribe ingrained ideologies in ways that make them unavailable

for group critique. It is as though she concludes all thought on an issue without engaging

in earnest other, opposing views. Jane also notices Sherry’s discursive stubbornness:

My one real, and it’s not a regret—it was my biggest challenge that I feel

like I didn’t quite rise to—was Sherry. She is a very tough lady. I think

she has had to be tough, and for that reason is very attached to her

personal beliefs to such a degree that she is unwilling to let a text affect

her. And, you know, that’s perfectly fine. But it’s hard in a class like this

when somebody is so opinionated already that they won’t interact with the

text at all. Even during her revisions, after I would make a case engaging

the work, she would come in and see me and say, ‘What it basically says

here is that I got this grade because I don’t agree with you.’ And I’m like,

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‘No. It’s not about agreeing with me. It’s about interacting enough with

the text that you respond to the arguments that they put forth, instead of

just saying, ‘Up theirs! I’m not listening to this crap anymore!’ And I

think that she never got over that ‘I’m-not-going-to-listen-to-this-crap-

anymore.’ She’s very sure of herself because of the life that she’s made for

herself and the decisions that she made, and I have a great amount of

respect for that. I think that in order to allow her to pursue her educational

goals while she’s trying to raise her child, it involves having that sort of

tough, you know, that “I know what I want, I got here, why can’t you pull

yourself up by your bootstraps” kind of thing. And unfortunately, rather

than seeing my feedback to her as a plea for her to interact with this text

more, she saw it as me trying to push my liberal, hippy bullshit on her.

You know, I’m very comfortable with other people having opposing

viewpoints to mine and I, in no way, want to indoctrinate my class. So,

it’s difficult for me to have people have that kind of reaction to me.

Indeed, nearly all of Sherry’s written submissions resist textual engagement and replace it

with responses to their themes that effectively shut out discourses that compete with her

inflexible opinions, rendering much of her prose unflinching, impenitent, and all the more

authentic. Consider the excerpt from one of her final reading responses:

[In the article] “Generation A+” by Suzanne Britt, the reader can

capture the feelings of anger, annoyance, and disappointment that the

author is attempting to portray about the education system and how it’s

been dummified. Every one should do what they’re qualified to do. Some

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people are simply supposed to be auto mechanics while others were

blessed with the ability to learn how to be doctors. I don’t know about

you, but I don’t think I want an auto mechanic, by fate, doing my heart

surgery just because the system has been so dummified that grade school

kids could earn the title of MD so that everyone can have an equal, fair

chance. Come on, it’s silly to want everyone to be doctor’s and lawyers.

Who’s going to take our garbage out? Who’s going to make our food at

fast food restaurants? Who’s going to take our money at the gas pump or

serve us a beer after a long day’s work? We need these other people with

less lucrative jobs. Even if their jobs don’t give them a company car and

have health insurance or tuition reimbursement, they are still necessary to

everyday life.

Although Sherry’s position in this passage assumes a social stratification that echoes of

Social Darwinism, her writings, like Odessa’s and Jim’s reflect a sense of the personal

stakes associated with literacy; she is critically awareness that the outcomes of what is

read and written matters.

From this perspective, Sherry, Jim, and Odessa’s passionate and biased

contributions emerge not so much as evidence of antagonism but as evidence that the

reflective instrumentalist pedagogy assists critical engagement of cultural issues for those

brave, confident, or gutsy enough to dive into the conversations. Moreover, their

experiences suggest that students struggle to appropriate interpersonal politics with

varying degrees of success. Sherry’s appropriation appears to be highly influenced by her

father’s ideology as expressed earlier. Undoubtedly the racism embedded in her father’s

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conversations influence her thinking; consider how easily she embraces and defends his

narrow constructions of others’ experiences, and how difficult it is for her to move

beyond the narrow confines of their now-mutual views on “those people.” Keith Gilyard

summarizes the potential problem thusly:

It is entirely possible that racist verbal constructs are responsible for racist

actions, but it is also possible for one to act humanely even while

operating inside a certain language of inhumanity. What one cannot do,

however, when locked inside the discourse of “race” is to show the way

out of that position. Thus, one is implicated to the degree that that

discourse is delimiting. (51)

Similarly, Sherry “acts humanely” in the writing classroom but “operates inside a certain

language of inhumanity” in her written discourses. Sherry participates in the mechanics

of critical engagement by generating critical responses to the readings and issues at hand,

yet disregards a primary assumption of critical reflection, i.e., a willingness to allow for

the possible validity of culturally-different ways of knowing and getting by in society. In

this way, Sherry re-authorizes dominant social discourses on race.

Samantha

Samantha performs race primarily as enactment work in her discourses,

portraying with examples and personal stories a confident narrative of blackness that runs

parallel to Odessa’s, but omits the blame-and-shame component expressed in her peer’s

narratives. Samantha does not take immediately strong positions in her essays or move

far beyond the basic five-paragraph theme, but she does manage to make important

comments about the nature of her subjects.

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Perhaps one of the most distinguishing features of Samantha’s writing is this

faithful adherence to a dominant literacy practice in higher education—the discursive

practice employed by students in the pilot study who successfully completed the English

composition program—what Lillis describes as “essayist literacy” according to how it is

defined by Scollon and Scollon and Gee (qtd. in Lillis 39). From the writer’s perspective,

essayist literacy looks like this:

[Essayist literacy] is linear, it values a particular type of explicitness, it has

one central point, theme, character of event at any one time, it is in the

standard version of a language. It is a type of writing which aims to inform

rather than to entertain. Important relationships are those between sentence

and sentence, not between speakers, nor between sentence and speaker.

(Lillis 38)

Using academically sanctioned forms, Samantha constructs an image of blackness

unrepresented in the classroom—one of hard-working middle-class blacks, politically

moderate, and conservative in discourses and personal comportment. Samantha talks

about race more openly than any other student in the study. She is also the only student to

write openly about a personal negative racial experience.

Samantha acknowledges the reality of race-related sociocultural experiences as

socially valid and the importance of self-determination toward larger social advancement.

Thus, her discourses function as conciliatory in that they seek to established elements of

disparate narratives in the class by affirming and refuting elements of both. Consider her

treatment of the Bowser and Perkins, Rose, and Koerner articles in an essay she titles,

“Negative Expectations”:

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Many students’ family, peers, community, and school form

negative expectations based upon a student’s gender, race, or

socioeconomic status. In ‘Success Against the Odds: Young Black Men

Tell What it Takes’ by Bowser and Perkins, they find that race was an

issue when people formed expectations for the black male students. In

Koerner’s article ‘Where the Boy’s Aren’t’ the author finds that negative

expectations or assumptions are created based upon gender. And in Mike

Rose’s essay, ‘I Just Wanna Be Average’ he explains that socioeconomic

status is a factor that helps to create a student’s expectations. When

negative expectations are formed it is up to the student to create positive

goals and expectations for themselves.

In the essay’s next paragraph, Samantha provides an interesting glimpse into her

experiences with race, and becomes the only student to do so intimately in her writing:

Race is a strong issue when those from your family, community,

peers, and school form negative expectations. One example of this is

displayed in, “Success Against the Odds: Young Black Men Tell What It

Takes” by Bowser and Perkins. In this study, the authors examine the

many issues that contribute to the academic success of black and Latino

men. One student said,

When the White students in my classes found out that I was getting

A’s, they stopped talking to me. At first they thought I was there

for their entertainment—to talk about sports. Several said to me

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that Blacks aren’t suppose to get A’s especially those from my

community (80).

Another student stated, “When I answer questions correctly in

class, the White students turn and look at me in amazement.” (80) These

are two great examples of how expectations formed by peers are

influenced by race. I have experienced racial expectations from my peers.

While in 7th grade, I had a white classmate who approached me about my

acceptance into an accelerated art program. He had replied by saying,

“Black girls don’t know how to draw.” It really upset me to think that

someone from my class would use my race to create negative assumptions.

That is why it is important that students take negative expectations and

create positive goals for themselves. Bowser and Perkins suggest the

students stay focused in order to achieve academic success.

Samantha neither dwells on nor bemoans her experiences, and after stressing what

becomes a primary narrative in the course, the importance of assuming personal

responsibility for one’s success, she moves on to continue her comprehensive essay on

the effects of socio-cultural variables on experiences, this time, with a focus on gender.

A student’s gender is an issue associated with negative

expectations. The issue described in Brendan L. Koerner’s article “Where

the Boys Aren’t” informs the audience about the decline of American

male college graduates and applicants. In this article, Nancy Perry,

executive director of the American School Counselor Association says,

“When I was a high school counselor 20 years ago, I had many parents

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say, ‘I want my daughter to take home economics because she’s just going

to get married.” (30) This is a perfect example of how parents create

negative expectations based upon their child’s gender. Schools today still

form expectations based upon a student’s gender. Judith Kleinfield, a

professor of psychology at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, concluded:

“Males are more apt that females to believe that the school climate is

hostile to them, that teachers do not expect as much from them and give

them less encouragement to do their best.” (30) Kleinfield explains that

most teachers do not encourage male students because they don’t expect

as much as they expect from the female students. This article displays

many examples of how people use gender to build negative expectations.

Samantha’s final observations on the subject address socio-economics and their potential

affect on students’ successes. But unlike Odessa who addresses head-on the problem of

some students’ access to good educational opportunities using theme-driven rhetorical

constructs, and unlike Jim who addresses head-on the advantages of other students’

opportunities using authentic language and images, Samantha’s considerations are forced

into formulaic paragraphs employing passive and often impersonal rhetorical constructs:

A person’s socioeconomic status is a factor when negative

expectations are created. A major issue in a child’s life is expectations,

whether the child is raised in a rich or poor environment is an issue when

people form assumptions. Because a child is from a lower income family

does not mean that anyone should lower or limit their expectations. In “I

Just Wanna Be Average” by Mike Rose, the author shares his life story

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about this ups and downs with school. As a young poor boy from Chicago

who moves to a ghetto in California, he finds a friend/mentor in one of his

high school teachers. In this essay, Mike Rose expresses how

socioeconomic status is used to create certain expectations. The author

states:

If you’re a working-class kid in the vocational track, the options

you’ll have to deal with will be constrained in certain ways: you’re

defined by the school as “slow”; you’re placed in a curriculum that

isn’t designed to liberate you but to occupy you, or, if you’re

lucky, train you, though the training is for work society does not

esteem; other students are picking up the cues from your school,

your curriculum, and interacting with you in particular ways (10).

The author tries to stress the fact that those who are from working class

families are considered to be “slow”, and that their classes are designed to

prepare you for the working class. Instead of motivating the students to

reach higher goals, they create a curriculum that limits their education

given them an “average” education. In Mr. Rose’s essay, he acknowledges

that socioeconomic status helps people form negative expectations for

students.

Though gender, race, and socioeconomic status are considered by

people who create negative expectations, you also must consider that

schools, peers, families, and communities may create positive expectations

for a student. For example, in “I Just Wanna Be Average,” Mike Rose

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writes about how Mr. MacFarland his teacher/mentor creates positive

expectations for him. By helping Mike with his school work and self-

esteem he was able to accomplish the positive goals that Mr. MacFarland

had set for him. This proves that though various people in a student’s life

make negative expectations based upon everything but their capabilities

there are some who do create positive expectations and goals.

Schools, peers, family, and communities form negative expectations based

upon gender, race, and socioeconomic status. In each article mentioned,

the authors expressed the major factors that contribute to the assumptions

or expectations that are created for students. Since many students are

expected to do bad based upon irrelevant issues, it is up to them to turn

any negative expectations into positive ones. They can do this by keeping

focused and to create goals for themselves to meet. If they fail to do this

then the student is liable to fall short and live up to the negative

expectations that were set out for them.

Samantha’s rhetoric of reconciliation at the end of her essay may reflect a deliberate

solution to the on-going argument between Odessa and Jim. Her insights on how students

may avoid negative expectations by deciding personally to “create goals for themselves”

might even reflect her strategy for succeeding in mixed educational environments as

much as they reflect her observations on the readings. Samantha’s construction of her

essays in academically-valued forms mirrors the construction of her presence in the

classroom—dutiful, reconciliatory, and irreproachable. She enters the classroom stream

of competing class narratives on educational responsibility by both conceding the

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importance of the bootstrap philosophy and confirming that social and cultural realities

make it difficult for some people to “pull themselves up.” Her textual example of the

former white classmate who views her placement in an advanced math course as a sort of

aberration because she is black interpreted alongside the distance between herself and the

other black students in the class may suggest a familiarity with negative expectations

from both dominant classroom cultures and the culture of fictive-kinship with blacks who

exclude her because of her light skin color and Caucasoid features.

Viewed from this perspective, Samantha’s discursive use of the passive—in her

writing and also in her silent comportment of self in the classroom—might be part of her

strategy for personal and academic success. Her physical appearance coupled with

socially accepted personal discourses provide a measure of invisibility the classroom. She

does not have to forfeit “strong allegiance to the Black community and connection to the

fictive-kinship system,” the strategy Signithia Fordham observes in her study of

successful black students; the black female students in her in this classroom never

acknowledge her as one of their own. Conversely, she is readily adopted into the white

fictive-kinship of the classroom because she looks like its members, shares middle-class

status with most of them and so dresses and behaves in ways their culture values, and has

probably done so for most of her schooling years.

Kari

While the majority of enactment and recognition work observed in students’

discourses aims toward enactment or recognition of ideas or information, Kari’s written

discourses seem geared toward the establishment of acceptable discourse forms. To this

end, her essays are ideologically thin and her essay structures fragile and predictable. At

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the same time, the essays’ preoccupation with form parallels Kari’s first experiences with

discourse in the classroom—the experience of having her ideas about college grades re-

shaped by her classmates.

A nursing major, Kari’s literacy goals are traditional ones; she appears to want

access to those forms—and presumably writing substances— that are valued in the larger

academy and seems willing to accept their attendant middle-class values. However,

closer observation suggests that Kari wants what traditional literacy can provide her, not

the traditional ends of literacy themselves. She does not overtly attempt to undo

established classroom narratives that implicate race in or with her writing although her

earlier classroom conversations openly challenged them. Unlike Odessa, Kari

demonstrates no discernible investment in classroom politics or in the outcomes of the

Odessa-Jim skirmishes, so much so that before the end of the course, she appears to

abandon Odessa and sits with the rest of the nursing majors.

Her overt instrumentalism and the absence of attachment to little more in the

course than passing it are interpreted by her peers as stereotypically black Discourses. At

the same time, Kari views them as honest personal expressions, devoid of any larger

implication within or outside the classroom space. Thus, while she may avoid overtly

enacting or recognizing elements of race in her written discourses in any appreciable

manner, she unconsciously performs enactment work and recognition work that

reinforces for her peers dominant cultural stereotypes.

Kari submits only two writing samples, the in-class essay and her final exam

essay. In her in-class writing, Kari responds to the prompt, “The primary focus and

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purpose of the college curriculum should be to provide students with a liberal arts

education,” and she writes the following:

Liberal Arts should be a primary focus and purpose of the college

curriculum. First, Liberal Arts need to be defined. Second, how is it

valuable to a students thinking development. Last, what benefit can come

about from a liberal arts education.

Liberal Arts has different definitions for different people. Cahn

defines it as the understanding of public issues, natural sciences, the

knowledge of national and world history, foreign language, and the

knowledge of human values (182-83). All of these help an individual think

intelligently in a democracy. Mark Jackson defines it as an education in

ideas (188). Myself, I define liberal arts as the essentials necessary to

survive in an intellectual world. They enable a person to think rationally

and logically.

Liberal Arts are very valuable to a students thinking process. They

help develop writing and analytical thinking skills as Jackson points out

(188). For instance, By taking a communications class, you would learn

how to interpret and respond intelligently. It also teaches you how to give

positive and negative feedback so that you can have descent

conversations. Also, by taking critical thinking classes you learn the

concepts for decision making. This helps a person to “deal with

abstractions or complexities, or to feel comfortable with subtleties of

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thought or language,” as Jackson puts it (188). If a student has liberal arts

they become very successful in the real world.

There are many benefits that come when a student has education in

liberal arts. First, most students are able to think on their feet. When faced

with complex problems our situations they don’t run from them. They are

more likely to get promotions and advance to better positions (189). As

Jackson says, one must be able to think creatively and deal with events

that no text book can ever teach you (189). Another benefit is that our

democracy would be better. We need intelligent, creative, and critical

thinkers to help determine the way our nation turns out. For instance, in

order to gain the greatest possible benefits from the democratic process in

an election, we need the voter who has analyzed the candidate’s offer not

the voter who votes for the traditional party. By having a voter that doesn’t

obtain good decision-making, critical thinking or other skills that comes

from liberal arts education, is a threat to them, their society, and our

democracy.

In conclusion, as pointed out Liberal arts is needed in order to

provide a successful democracy. Even if one doesn’t care about our

democracy, it helps a person achieve that “well roundedness” needed to

become a successful person. If colleges place as much emphasis on the

Arts as they do the other subject, individuals would be better off because

now they can think abstractly and logically.

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Although the essay contributes few insights not discussed in the class, it receives a B+.

This high grade might reflect improvement over previous writings, for Kari was

encouraged to revise almost all of her writings. As mentioned earlier, the only additional

writing Kari submits is her research paper, despite her promises to submit the others.

Most of her classmates brought their essays to the interview, allowing me to make copies

and return their originals to them immediately. Kari may avoid sharing her graded essays

because they contain Jane’s extensive mark-up of grammatical and/or mechanical errors.

Kari’s cautious approach to the readings, writings, and to me, suggest the

valuation and practice of discursive practices not directly espoused by a reflective

instrumentalist pedagogy, and yet not entirely disallowed by it either. Among these for

Kari is the gesture of getting close and staying close to the professor, a strategy for

success observed among some African American students in predominantly white

institutions (Hurtado et al. qtd. in Tuitt 3), and adhering to such basic, “proven” modes of

discourse as the expository, five-paragraph theme. These particular strategies are noted

by successful students in the pilot study as “the way” to pass English classes in the Arts

and Science (as opposed to University College English) program. Her experiences best

typify what Green and Ackerman call “rhetorical literacy,” for they involve not only

assuming a position or discursive voice, but situating it—in her case by fiat—within the

context of others. They explain:

In this sense, rhetorical refers to those instances when a composer must

consider factors beyond the content and organization of a passage.

Composing becomes rhetorical when someone chooses to consider other

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participants in an act of composing, or chooses to consider elaborated and

structured information that leads to a context for understanding. (390)

Viewed from this perspective, Kari’s discursive gestures can be read as rhetorical, for

even her preoccupation with essay form responds probably to years of having formal

issues pointed out to her. Her enactment work entails repetition of themes discussed and

verified in class. Kari not only aspires to dominant ideologies and discourses, she co-

maintains primary narratives in the classroom, as observed in the end-of-term dialogue

appearing at the end of this chapter.

Coco

Friendly but not overly so, Coco is one of the best “team players” in the

classroom. Like several of her classmates who are not featured in this chapter, Coco

seems genuinely delighted with class assignments, and approaches her writing tasks with

purpose and commitment. While she sits with Odessa and Kari early in the term, Coco

moves around and develops relationships with male and female students alike as the

quarter progresses. Likewise, her prose is socially diplomatic; it succeeds in

communicating nearly nothing about her experiences of race as either subject or object.

She employs safe discursive practices, avoids contentious in-class conversations, and

expresses little non-verbal support for positions argued in the classroom.

Coco’s first essay is a response to two articles on education and gender. She

agrees with the contention that teachers often form expectations along gender lines,

expecting one set of skills to be dominant in female learning, and a different set to

dominate male learning. Coco supports her argument with a personal narrative, and relies

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heavily on her readers’ knowledge of both essays, constructing her argument against the

over-accommodation of male learning styles as follows:

Today teachers have different expectations for boys and girls. Teachers

expect boys to do better in math and science so they push them harder than

girls. Teachers expect girls to have great writing skills so they push them

harder than boys. Pollack suggests in his article that the educational

system is not designed for the male gender. How is this so? Males have it

easier than females do. Males are practically getting away with murder.

Teachers are not just teaching educational curriculum as Pollack suggests

that it’s a hidden curriculum. There is no hidden curriculum; society needs

to start treating each gender equally.

Throughout my educational process I have learned my weaknesses

and my strengths. As I took my education further, I felt that I was just as

equal as any male. I even felt that I was on a higher level than most of the

young males in my class. In knowing both my weaknesses and my

strengths it has made me strive to do better because there is always room

for improvement.

Coco’s actual experiences both reflect and refract her argument. Graduate of a science

and technology-based high school, Coco is an excellent mathematician. Nevertheless, she

chooses to major in communication, an area that does not build on her strengths. Thus,

Coco forsakes an academic field in which women are traditionally underrepresented, and

embraces one into which women are traditionally trapped. She receives a B- on this

paper.

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Coco provides two drafts of her second essay on the unit, “Being in College,”

both of which attest to her committed efforts to write well. The first, rough draft bears the

mark-ups from her peer reader, Jill. It is two and one-fourth pages long. The final draft is

two and one-third pages long. She takes Jill’s advice to re-word the first sentence of the

second paragraph and correct a double-negative construction. She goes beyond Jill’s

suggestion to formally quote and or otherwise cite a passage she includes from the

Neusner article, choosing instead to italicize and enclose it in quotation marks.

Unfortunately, she seems to focus so much on the minute corrections suggested by her

peer editor that she does not make a point in her paper; her purpose is unclear in the first

draft and it is still unclear in the final draft. Coco generates the following essay:

While going to school I have experienced different methods of

teaching. Some methods were effective and some not very effective.

Learning has a great deal to with how a person is being taught. Teachers

play a very large role in whether their students get anything from the class

or obtain knowledge from the class.

Neusner’s list of average and exceptional teaching was closely

based on how I grade professors to be bad or exceptionally good teachers.

Neusner say, “the only teacher who taught me something to guide my life,

was the only teacher who read my work carefully and criticized it in

detail.” When I have a professor who teaches, challenges me, and is

willing to work with that makes me want to learn about the subject. When

I have a professor that could care less if I passed or failed I have no

intentions of listening to anything the professor has to say.

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In high school there were all kinds of different teaching styles.

There were teachers who taught straight from the book and explained that

this is what college is going to be like. Teachers who would stay after

school to clear up any misconceptions and answer questions that any

student had. Teachers should be willing to go the extra mile if students

are going to grasp or learn what is being taught Neusner says, “ It is to the

professor who demands ultimate seriousness for his or her subject because

the subject must be known, who not only teaches but professes, stands for,

represents, the thing taught. The grade A professor lives for the subject,

needs to tall you about it, wants to share it”. Those were the kinds of

teachers that had the greatest impact on my life.

In Kelly’s article he is very critical of his students. Students

actions towards class might have had something to do with the way they

were being taught. Kelly can’t blame this all on the students. There has to

be some other things that are contributing to the nonchalant attitude that

students have about education. It could be TV, parents, or the school

faculty. If students aren’t focused then you have to do something to make

them focus or get their minds off if other things. In my school experience

if I was not learning in class I would simply come late or go to sleep

during the whole classroom period. Students respond to the way the class

is functioning. If we have teachers who don’t care then how can you

expect them to want to learn the subject?

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Luckily, I have had a majority of teachers who care about the

learning and the success of their students. Others haven’t been so lucky

and have given up on receiving an education. Many students have

dropped out of school due to the lack of an A professor. This problem

with professors has been going on for quite a while. As the new

generation makes its way in, this is the perfect opportunity to solve this

problem.

Here, Coco articulates a non-dominant narrative established in the classroom by Odessa

and supported by Kari, i.e., that teachers are measurably co-responsible with students for

successful learning experiences. Three of the four black students in the class assume this

position, whereas none of the white students do. This finding might imply styles conflicts

that are implicated in black students’ success in writing programs as discussed in Chapter

Two. Coco receives a C/IP on this draft, and Jane tells her to revise it immediately.

Through efforts most noticeable in her work with Coco, Jane’s dedication to

student success is commendable. Jane herself, as mentioned above, is working with Coco

on her writing as opposed to sending her to the writing center. By the middle of the term,

their work on Coco’s prose is obvious. She delivers her ideas with more confidence,

although mechanical and structural errors persist, and her approach is decidedly more

reflective.

In the third, in-class essay, Coco argues for higher education as pre-professional

training over higher education as an education in the liberal arts. In it, she joins nearly all

of her white male peers and white female nursing students. This choice might reflect an

influence of math and technology discourses that feature logic and practicality over

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artistic and humanistic development, suggesting a correlative relationship between

discursive shaping and cognition. Her essay opens and develops as follows:

Today students view general education as an irritating interruption

– an annoying detour on their way to their degree (Boyer). Many students

feel that all of the time spent on liberal arts or anything besides their major

is uncalled for. General Education is a stumbling block to those who want

to be successful in specialized careers. Students want to be as specialized

in their major as possible to be the best at what they can do. People

against specialization say that there is too much narrow specialization and

not enough intellectual inquiry. Is there too much specialization and not

enough breath and intellectual inquiry? Specialization is a good thing for

students to have to advance in today’s society.

Specialization helps students to explore their field of study.

Students need to go into depth about their major. Students will be very

much successful if they learn the foundation of their major. Through

specialized majors you can gain general education Ernest Boyer says “We

are confident that the goals of general education, when properly defined,

can be accomplished through the major. Most students will be very

satisfied to learn the history of their major. History meaning how it got

started, who started it, how successful have people been and how not

success they have been in this field of study.

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In the following paragraph, Coco asserts a position absolutely antithetical to the one

prevailing among most female discourse on the subject, a majority of whom expresses

views affirming the ultimate purpose of college in more comprehensive terms:

The whole idea that the purpose of college is to make you a better

person is not true in my eyes. College is supposed to get you ready for the

field of study that you are intending to make a living off of. Specialization

can make you the best at what you want to be in life. People against

specialization see it as making you good at one thing and sort of “dumb”

to the other things that exist in the world. To survive in society without a

masters degree (specialization) is practically impossible. It is hard to get a

good job without specialization even in liberal arts. “A liberal arts degree

without specialization or intended future specialization (such as a Master’s

degree in a specific field) is useless unless one wants to be a professional

game show contestant (Jackson).

Today employers aren’t looking for the most liberal individual to

manage or receive a job from their company. Employers are looking for

individuals who know about the subject and know the subject or work

well. “For years, “specialization” has been the watch word for employers

too” (Boyer). In spite of impressive speeches by corporate leaders when it

is recruitment time on campus, business and engineering majors are often

chosen first (Boyer). Employers want individuals who have training and

skills in their field of study.

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Ernest Boyer speaks on the “enriched” major. Ernest Boyer says

that “by an enriched major we mean encouraging students not only to

explore a field in depth, but also to help them put their field of study in

perspective. This type of specialized education will help individuals

discover the significance of work. All of this “well rounded” individual

stuff will come through your work experience. Being “well rounded” is

not something that can be forced upon you. It is something achieved

through the things an individual experiences through life. Universities

cannot try to force students into believing that you have to be “well

rounded: to be successful in life. Specialization can provide you with vital

information that could enhance your career. I feel that it is better to have a

doctor who specializes in one illness than to have one who knows a little

about every illness. There is going to come a time when a professional

must know “what,” “how” and “why.” “Professionals in almost every

field – once they begin to practice their craft, must respond to questions

that relate not just to “what” and “how” of the field, but to the “why” as

well.

At the bottom of the final page in her blue book, Coco writes, “’Didn’t get a chance to

finish.☺” This essay, with its critical turns and re-turns, is arguably Coco’s best

submission. Jane’s end comments on it are as follows:

This [final point] indicates to me that you do support Boyer’s idea of an

enriched major. This was unclear since you offer up the notion that well-

roundedness comes from “real life” experiences. You do a fair job, but

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using Jackson as anti-liberal arts support doesn’t work. He defends a

liberal arts education with specialization; he objects to the valorization of

being well-rounded for the sake of being well-rounded. I think you

might’ve started off too strongly, then waivered. That’s fine. I know it’s

hard to write in a timed setting.

Coco receives a B on the paper.

This particular essay, considered alongside her others, reflects a progression of

growth in Coco’s confidence and critical reflection. Her acts of negotiating with her peer

reviewer, teacher, and texts constitute the kind of activity valued by in a critical literacy

pedagogy. Moreover, her ability to do so both effectively with both her black-female peer

group and her peer group at-large, suggests flexible social discourses that transcend

discursive boundaries of race, gender, and class.

Perhaps Coco more than any of the other eight students experiences the kind of

community and discourse “border crossing” Joseph Harris imagines. Her recursive moves

from seemingly having little to say, through simply repeating in her essays what was

discussed in class, to defining and defending positions not necessarily aligned with

others’ views suggests a dynamism unobserved in other students (Sherry least of all) in

her base ways of reading and writing texts. Harris explains:

…The borders of most discourses are hazily marked and often traveled,

and that the communities they define are thus often indistinct and

overlapping. As [Raymond] Williams again has suggested, one does not

step cleanly and wholly from one community to another, but is caught

instead in an always changing mix of dominant, residual, and emerging

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discourses (Marxism 121-127). Rather than framing our work in terms of

helping students move from one community of discourse into another,

then, it might prove more useful (and accurate) to view our task as adding

to or complicating their use of language. (103)

From this perspective, Coco’s balance of enactment and recognition experiences are both

critically and rhetorically successful, even though her prose style does not yet reflect the

level of conventional sophistication typically aimed for in post-secondary writing classes,

for they demonstrate a willingness to have her language uses extended and complicated

by challenging reading and writing tasks.

Rambo

In Rambo’s writing, race is dynamic discourse informed by conservative ideology

that affects the tone of his written texts, but not the amicableness of his peer interactions.

His experience of the some of the course’s politically liberal readings and discussions

persuade him that white male dominated society and the status-quo are in danger of being

eradicated. Thus, he employs discursive recognition work to respond to what he perceives

as an organized, personal threat.

Rambo’s research paper features an interview with who he calls his

“enormously wealthy” brother, Davide, who did not graduate from college, and

discusses how he plans to follow in the Davide’s footsteps. The most striking element

of his paper’s opening is its crudely pragmatic thesis: “Having to pick between these

two majors, I chose to pursue a financial analyst major over an industrial engineer

major because based on my research it seems as if a financial analyst lives a more

successful life.” He continues:

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In making my decision to pursue a finance analyst major I turned to my

brother, Davide, who is a financial analyst for General Industrial

Polymers, a small roofing company in Houston, Texas for insight. By

interviewing him, he told me all I wanted to know about being a

financial analyst just by explaining what a normal day at work is like for

him. My brother wakes up every week day at six forty-five. His first

priority…is to turn on the television and watch the seven o’clock news.

The whole purpose of viewing the news is to watch for financial

information that could be important to the company. For instance, if the

Mexican peso went up and the dollar went down it is important for him

to know this. Currency is important financial information to him when he

is talking on the phone with clients in Mexico. A Mexican client could

offer him a deal in pesos and the company could end up losing money if

my brother is not aware of the current currency rate….While he is

negotiating with clients on product prices and quantities, he is also

writing reports about what it is each client wants and the financial

information that goes with the deal. This information could be the

average revenue the company will get out of the deal, the average profit,

the marginal profit; it could be a number of different financial statistics.

However understand that the whole purpose of calculating the

information is so that the executives of the company will know exactly

where their money is going too.

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Having been exposed to political and business-related discourses since childhood,

Rambo has an almost intuitive bent towards political and economic issues in his reading

responses. Each is a detailed and lengthy critique of the article’s claim, the author’s

effectiveness in defending or establishing the article’s position, and his personal

response to the piece, complete with a brief summary of the article. The following is an

example from his response to Steven Cahn’s “The Democratic Framework,” an article

exploring the value of college study for society at-large and providing a rationale for

liberal arts and science curricula:

After arguing against a Democratic form of government, [Cahn]

changes his point of view and argues against why we should not have an

oligarchy. Cahn explains the weaknesses of an oligarchy in one phrase.

“Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” [This]

means that in the end giving all power to a group of people will

negatively affect the people as a whole. With all that power the group

becomes greedy and the public’s views will not be tolerated.

Cahn uses these arguments to get to his main point. He mentions

that his arguments about a democratic form of government and

oligarchic merely were raised to show that citizens should be educated

about their government no matter which one their nation is currently

using. He goes on to show the content of an education that citizens must

learn in order for a democracy to run smoothly. Some of the criteria for

this purposed education are as follows: All members of a democracy

should be able to read, write, and speak effectively, and understand

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public issues. Citizens should also have an appreciation and

understanding of the literature, art, and music of various cultures and

knowledge of human values. Cahn also believes that obtaining a

vocational education is not enough, for citizens should have a broad

sense of most if not all subjects. This way, citizens have a better

understanding about various public policy issues.

Rambo’s detailed treatment of the Cahn article is as consistent with most of the male

students’ treatment of the Cahn article—engaged, reflective, and rhetorically effective,

regardless of the objective points being argues.

This logical treatment, however, breaks down when applied to issues decidedly

more subjective. One essay in particular seems to reflect a self- and other consciousness

that undermines his careful, even handling of issues covered. The essay, “Gender and

Socioeconomic Factors in Present Day Society,” responds to the Rose and

Bowser/Perkins articles, proposing an alternative perspective on privilege, elitism, and

perhaps even race:

Males and wealthy kids have historically been known to have the

supreme role in American society. From the first time humans existed

the male has always been known as the caretaker of his family and has

always had the final word in any family problems that arose. The

females have always been known as the housewives of the family and

stayed at home to take care of the children. Wealthy kids have in the past

also been known to have more success in life than poor kids because of

all the extra commodities they have access to when dealing with their

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education. Nowadays the opportunities that they never had before they

have the same rights as males and are able to do many things that were

strictly for men in the past. The poor kids, who traditionally have been

known to follow their poor families’ successes, are getting better

opportunities presently than they ever had before. Poor kids are going to

college because teachers are pushing them to do better. Are males and

wealthy kids being challenged for success in society by females and poor

kids now that they have opportunities for success? (Italics added)

Here, Rambo engages enactive work—a discourse gesture associated with establishing

and authorizing discourse, often from a position of non-dominance—toward the

preservation of white-male social and educational dominance. Having done so, he turns

his attention to a consideration of America’s poor:

There are not many expectations for poor people. The poor have

always been “poor” and their inferior role in society has not changed. A

big reason for their inferior role is because of their expectations. A

common example of how expectations in poor people are lacking is

shown through Mike Rose’s childhood. Mike grew up in a gangly

neighborhood, which is typically of a poor person, in Los Angeles. Both

his parents could not read or write and did not care much for his

education. They believed that since they were not successful in life why

should Mike be and that was the main reason why Mike got so far behind

in school. There was no one there to push him to do well through most of

his childhood education unlike many of the wealthy kids. This was

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Mike’s tactic of learning math. “For whatever reasons, I didn’t learn

math very well, so when it came time for more complicated operations, I

couldn’t keep up and started day dreaming to avoid my inadequacy. This

was a strategy I would rely on as I grew older” (Rose 6). Mike’s

childhood is composed of the same characteristics of the rest of the poor

people, except for the fact that he was able to succeed in life because he

was fortunate enough to have a teacher that finally motivated him and

pushed him to excel in school. However, success like Mike’s is a rare

happening for a poor person. Succeed in life for many poor people in not

an option. Surviving in life is the means in which poor people go by.

Wealthy kids will always be more successful than poor kids for

the simple reason being that they have more commodities and wealthy

parents are always a few steps ahead of the others. “You’ll see a handful

of students far excel you in the courses that sound exotic and that are

only in the curriculum of the elite: French, physics, trigonometry” (Rose

10).

Rambo again engages enactment work to re-ordain and re-establish the dominant

standing of wealthy white male students over poor students with a matter-of-factness

that belies a concern for his own success. Perhaps this underlying concern, more so than

an overt racism, lies at the core of his flagrant disregard of social and economic history

with regards to race and gender, for while he appears genuinely sincere in his re-

enactment of male dominance as threatened by liberal ideology, he also believes that he

has enough time to achieve success before “they” take over:

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In the end, though it seems that these inferior roles in the past are

getting a better chance at success, males and wealthy kids will always

have the upper end because it is tradition. They have been successful for

so many years that it will take the inferior roles many years to get to their

level of success.

The conflations of race, gender, and class echoing in Rambo’s writing echo

throughout scholarly literature, this study, and the experiences of these nine students,

attesting to how the collusion of cultural elements complicate critical examinations of

any particular one. As noted in the discussion of Jim’s writings and experiences, while

gender issues are not the focus of this investigation, they are prominent and everywhere.

Rambo, like most of the other male students in the class, focuses his reading

responses on articles about power, politics, and social-economic influences more

frequently than do female students, who responded predominantly to the social-cultural

and personal aspects of the articles. For this reason, it would be incorrect to draw some

sort of connection between the white male students and the black females in terms of

what is addressed in writings, or how issues are addressed. To do so would effectively

misinterpret possible gender issues as racial ones. Still, it seems significant that nearly

none of the female students address issues of politics while nearly all the male students

do, race notwithstanding.

In summary, race appears to conflate with gender and class to infuse Rambo’s

writing with an enhanced sense of tortured personal agency. His narratives of personal

privilege exclude, like Jim’s, any appreciable critical consideration of what Lu calls

“the political motives and authority of ‘privileged’ writers,” although the assignment

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invites considerations of this nature (176). Indeed, he often casts himself in the role of

victim, as evident when he writes, “Are males and wealthy kids being challenged for

success in society by females and poor kids now that they have opportunities for

success?” If one reads the word “challenged” as meaning “threatened,” then the anxiety

he expresses here might be seen to be authentic if disingenuous. It might also reflect an

observation made by Rita Hardiman in her article, “Reflections on White Identity

Development,” that “Whites often react to the ‘identity movement’ of others and the

struggle and gains made for racial justice by people of color, by adopting a victim

stance” (125). But if it is read as more rhetorical than critical, then the expression, like

much of his written discourse might be seen to be insensitive at best, callous at worst.

Holden

Although Holden performs enactment work with his classroom discourses to

establish for his classmates politically correct behaviors, he engages recognition work in

his written discourses aimed ostensibly at recognizing the legitimacy of non-dominant

perspectives. His efforts to do so, however, are complicated by an over-arching

paternalism, complete with its own sense of entitlement and privilege.

Holden responds to the Cahn piece from a self-articulated position of

sociocultural privilege. At the same time, unlike Rambo and Jim’s writing, Holden’s

essays appear to reflect middle-class liberal values. Holden sits next to Jim until near the

end of the term, yet his role in the class is a diplomatic one; he wants to function as a

non-judgmental, fair, open-to-change moderator of class conversations. That he appoints

himself to the position suggests much about gender roles in the classroom.

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Graduate of an all-male academy and product of a middle-class upbringing,

Holden prides himself on staying critical yet moderate in his views on people and society.

At the same time, he does not challenge stereotypical images of blacks and urban

Appalachians in his essays, even though he acknowledges such stereotypes as damaging:

Victoria Purcell-Gates’ study Literacy, Schools, and Society

attempts to illustrate how culture, social class, the community one comes

from, and even the background can all greatly affect how people are able

to cope with the demands of schooling. Purcell-Gates uses a lot of very

depressing and extremely in-depth descriptions of the two subjects Jenny

and Donny’s culture, social class, community, and background of the

Urban Appalachians to get her point across. It almost sounds like a

descriptive essay of Urban Appalachians, but Purcell-Gates uses some

good examples for her point, one being that Donny never had a chance to

learn to read at younger ages the way that most young children do,

through a process called emergent literacy. Also Purcell-Gates goes on to

say that Jenny and Donny have a disadvantage in learning due to the fact

that they are the last minority that it is socially acceptable to ridicule. As

sad as it is to say, I believe this to be true because in our culture it is very

easy to call someone a hick, white trash, or a red neck.

In the world of stereotypes we live in, black Americans are

unfortunately type caste as not doing well in school. Benjamin P. Bowser

and Herbert Perkins in their article “Success Against the Odds: Young

Black Men Tell What It Takes” answer that question and tell what it

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takes to be successful as an African American. Bowser and Perkins in a

way agree with Purcell-Gates for one of their arguments, for the success

of Black Children in school is due in part to their parents. Of course,

Bowser and Perkins are looking at the positive affects of parents and not

the negative as in Purcell-Gate’s theory of lack of emergent learning.

Bowser and Perkins also talk about how a lot of the children also learn

on what not to do from their older brothers and sisters, so they don’t end

up as their older siblings did. I can speak from experience that I have

done the same thing with my family members. Although none of my

relatives made such life altering mistakes, I have learned from some of

their less severe mistakes. Bowser and Perkins talk a lot about the

relationships that the children have in their lives, relationships with their

community, peers, and school of course. Bowser and Perkins’ main point

with relationships is that people in their lives care for them and the

extraordinary efforts to work with these children, and to me this is

completely true. In my experience when a teacher reaches out to me I

reach back and this results in better achievement of my goals.

While the tone of this piece is sympathetic, Holden carefully distances his life and

experiences from those of the young black men and Donny in this response. Moreover,

he misreads the subjects of the Bowser and Perkins piece as children, not young men.

The act of infantilizing the article’s young black male subjects, even though it may be a

natural error extending from the earlier discussion of the elementary-aged Donny, bears

the unfortunate mark of disconnected-ness with the reading, a gesture he does not repeat

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in or with other readings. He also generalizes the subject of the reading from young

black males to African Americans in general.

Holden admits that he did not take full advantage of literacy learning

opportunities in high school. He shares the following about his high school English

class experiences during our interview:

The high school I went to was a really good high school. It’s a private

Catholic high school, all male. But the English program wasn’t that

good, you know. We were more focused on math and science. I never

really had a teacher to focus on issues that I enjoy thinking about like I

have here, so I always would do my papers really half ass, you know. I

really didn’t put all I could into it or even put any thought into it.

Holden goes on to state that he placed into University College English, the university’s

developmental English program, probably because his high school teachers did not

expose him to readings as interesting or writing assignments as provocative as the ones

he experiences in English 102. As a result of what he perceives as his high school

teachers’ failures, Holden says he did not put much effort into developing his writing

skills. What is striking here is that he assigns blame for his own literacy failures to the

teachers and high school pedagogy, yet echoes the prevailing narrative on the issue in

class discussions and his writings, i.e., the individual is the originator and perpetuator of

success or failure, not external forces.

A clearer summary of his ideology regarding the ways and means of success is

found in his response to articles on gender issues in higher education, particularly his

response to the Orenstein article:

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My psychology teacher in high school said something very true

about schooling. “I will put in my 50% and it’s up to you to put in your

50%.” This saying holds true for all, no matter what your gender is. One

has to contribute his 50% in class to get a good grade; the school and

teachers can’t do that for you. In this life we live, there are plenty of

choices that we can make to get to where we want to go and to fulfill the

dreams we want to fulfill. And we shouldn’t make any excuses that will

get in the way of that, especially our gender. Exceeding in school has

nothing to do with what sex you are; exceeding in school is a choice not

a chance.

The directness of belief expressed here in his writing, and its consistency with the

themes of the class’s primary narratives, suggest that any element of culture might be

substituted for the term “gender.” Jane’s end-of-essay comments invite Holden to

consider the article more reflectively. She notes,

“You seem to be arguing that gender does affect one’s education

but that it’s up to the student to adapt. You say gender has nothing to do

with it, but then you acknowledge Orenstein is right about the difference

between boys and girls. Keep your mind open to the possibility that these

things were going on in your own experience—it certainly sounds like

they were. Perhaps your argument should be that gender does play a part,

but we should deal with the consequences rather than blaming teachers.

Or maybe gender will always inform/affect our lives, and we should

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figure out how to deal with it rather than encouraging gender-specific

curricula.

Jane’s comments here function to stabilize and focus Holden’s ambiguous position, and

she manages—as she does with other students—to point him back to the issue at hand

without proselytizing and without judging.

Holden, Jim, Rambo, and Andy, who is discussed below, are the most

forthcoming of all the students in the class, offering me copies of their work as each one

is returned to them graded, and long before I requested information from them.

Moreover, they initiate conversations with me throughout the term. At the same time,

Odessa, Kari, and Coco are the least forthcoming with information and often avoided my

best efforts to engage them in conversation. These phenomena probably reflect

sociolinguistics instantiations of power (Scott Personal Interview). It is clear from

students’ comments that my presence in the classroom confounds Jane’s authority

(Chapter Three). Their ambivalence becomes more confused two weeks in the term when

my committee chair, who is also author of the primary course text, delivers a message to

me during the class. Several students turn to observe the exchange, including Jim and

Holden. Afterwards, Jim leans over and says, ’That’s Russel Durst, isn’t it?” I nod. He

glances at Holden, nodding, with his eyebrows raised, and says softly, “Well, well, well.”

Thus, to the three dominant black females in the class who literally align

themselves with Jane, my presence might have been perceived as antagonistic; Jane

possesses the power to assign grades and she must be protected. To the dominant white

males, my presence might also have been perceived as antagonistic. But because of its

relation to higher power structures outside the classroom, my presence may also be

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perceived is an antagonism that must be harnessed, captured, or otherwise yoked in

their subconscious enactments of male dominance.

White male authorizing of discourse takes on a new form by the end of the class.

During the final week of class, Holden assumes the unsolicited role of “researcher’s

agent” within the class, reminding his classmates without prompting, and to the

researcher’s awkward surprise, to remember to make copies of their writings, make

their interview appointments, and arrive on time for them. Moreover, on the first day of

interviews, Holden prompts and then leads his peers into the crescendo and chant,

“Help Tina help us, help Tina help us!”

Holden thus attempts to facilitate researcher entrée and co-manage researcher

activity within the classroom similar to the way he co-manages Kari’s acceptance into

the class community. Considered within the context of his co-opting Kari’s discourses,

his attempts to co-manage the researcher’s discourses suggest the need for an ancillary

and later study of what Patricia Bizzell calls “the way discourse confers authority on

knowledge and its possessors” (222), and how the conferring appropriates others’

agency and authority, effectively leaving them discursively dispossessed.

Holden’s administrative gestures might be interpreted as race-implicating if cast

as enactments of discursive colonization, with his assigning to me and his peers the role

of subject, and by assuming for himself the role of taskmaster. This fanciful reading

instantiates what David Lloyd identifies as a formal principle of racist discourse, that is,

the fall of “partial instances of representation to the larger narrative of representation

which absorbs it”:

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The persistence of racism is then to be understood…as an effect of

ideological interpellation: approximation to the position of the Subject,

theoretically available to all regardless of race or creed. (210)

An understanding of race and race relations as a function of spatial relationships

complicates Holden’s seemingly benign discourses and effectively twists the

kaleidoscope, recasting each of us—researcher and researched— as colored subjects in

new positions that implicate the persistence of dominant discursive practices and

hegemonic literacies.

Andy

Unlike any of the other students in the case studies, Andy experiences race as an

unfamiliar and troubling social discourse. Unwittingly, Andy becomes the wise sage of

the writing community. His soft spoken insights are perceived by his peers to be so

profound that they are often followed by a few seconds of absolute and reverential

silence. Like Samantha, Andy performs enactment and recognition work toward

transforming the classroom’s narratives on race.

Many of his writings reflect a growing awareness of cultural differences. Consider

his reading response on the issue of sociocultural influences on education:

In Literacy, Schools, and Society, Victoria Purcell-Gates argues that the

discrimination faced by urban Appalachians is not as obvious as the

discrimination faced by racial minorities, but the effects of this

discrimination is “just as insidious and as costly to society” (56). [She

writes that] discrimination against urban Appalachians is one of the last

socially acceptable forms of discrimination.

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….My concern is that this actually occurs in this country. I have never

been exposed to this kind of open discrimination against anyone. It doesn’t

really surprise me that this happens, it just angers me to hear of people that

are not given an equal opportunity to succeed. I find it depressing that so

many people in this world think themselves better than anyone else. But it

happens. Success, even in small portions, brings an ever growing ego.

People just can’t stand to live to be a true servant to everyone else. That

truly disappoints me. The only question in my mind after reading these

articles about discrimination is directed towards everyone in the world.

How can you (as well as me and everyone else) be so blind to [other]

fellow human beings of all races and genders, as to hate them because of

mere physical, mental, or ethnic differences?

His sensitivity to social conditions invisible to many because of their pervasiveness is

perhaps implicated in an observation he makes about the Bowser and Perkins article,

“Success Against the Odds: Young Black Men Tells What It Takes:”

The subtitle of the article brings to mind a question, why only

“Black Men?” Even though Black and Hispanic males and females took

part in the interview, the title only mentions the plurality of a subsection of

minorities.

His three-typed page response continues:

Bowser and Perkins interview these students in order to find

answers to the driving forces behind the students’ academic successes.

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Surprisingly, many of these students did not have positive role

models. Instead, they saw where their parents, siblings, friends, and other

family members were headed and decided to follow another path. Almost

all of the students had at least one teacher that was involved in their

struggle for academic success. A strong driving force for these students

was to not let that teacher see them as a failure. Another surprise to me is

that some of these students did not recognize their academic achievement

because they believed the stereotypes and other negative criticisms

regarding themselves. After public acknowledgement, however, these

students felt an urge to live up to their potential…I wish that all students

had the opportunity, the motivation, and the support to succeed.

In a unit essay, Andy articulates a thesis about student-teacher relationships that runs

counter to the prevailing one (that students are responsible for their learning, not

teachers) although he does not raise the point in class. This may reflect his gesture of

silently participating by paying attention and taking notes but withholding his comments

until contentious discussions necessitated new perspectives, and these he offered as

competing narratives, more so to re-establish peaceful co-existence than to put his

thoughts out for consideration. Consider the following dialogue during a heated

discussion of Jacob Neusner’s article, “Grading Your Professsors”:

Jane: Should teacher call and make sure work is being done?

Odessa: (Matter of factly) It shows she cares.

Jim: (Bitingly cool) That’s not the teacher’s job.

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Rambo: (Playfully, with a smile, as in an attempt to diffuse the mounting

tension) It’s baby sitting!

Odessa: (Firmly, spoken directly to Jim, with whom her eyes are locked)

That’s being a good teacher.

Jim (Snaps): The job’s to teach!

Odessa (Snaps back): You care if they learn, then care if they get

understanding!

Jill (Conciliatorily): If it happens over and over, then it’s on the students to

get it.

Holden: Yeah.

Kari (Gently, toward Odessa) Students need to learn responsibility.

Rambo (Also toward Odessa) Yes, students need to learn responsibility.

Jim (Evenly, high-brow, with his eyes still locked on Odessa’s): Yes, one

truly expects more personal accountability at the college level.

[Odessa leans forward in what the class recognizes as linguistic-strike

position. Kari quickly chimes in, but from her new position across the

room.)

Kari: I feel teachers shouldn’t have to call you at home to make sure

you’re doing your work or understanding the work. [She says this to the

class, but it “feels” offered to Odessa.] Students have to let her know what

they need to know. I feel that teachers think you’re lying if you make

excuses, though.

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Holden: Some majors are just cutthroat, like [the art and design school]

and the [music conservatory], and extra help might be needed.

Andy: Granted, it’s not the teacher’s job, but to be exceptional in any job

you have to go above and beyond the requirements.

With Andy’s calm, logical words, silence ensues. Odessa looks down and begins writing;

Jim removes his baseball cap, rubbing his face. Jane moves to another topic of discussion

and relaxation infuses us all. Andy turns his in-class comment into the thesis of his unit

essay and develops it thusly:

Excellent teachers must have the ability to communicate

effectively with their students, find enjoyment in their profession, and

retain a positive working relationship with their students. Excellent

students should be in search of knowledge and want to participate in the

courses they take. The burden of creating a successful classroom rests on

teachers and students alike. Each group has a responsibility and should

exercise their rights to optimize the learning experience.

He receives an A-/B+ on the paper, resumes his existence as the calm, quiet strength in

the classroom, and earns the enduring respect of his classmates throughout the term.

Perhaps because coming to university marks the beginning of his experiences

with people of color, Andy’s interactions may function as a baseline indicator of how

race affects students writing performances and general experiences in the class. His

discursive gestures of consistently reconciling dueling peer groups and raising the specter

of indignation at evidences of injustice in the readings speaks of a hope for humanity

somewhat inferred in Samantha’s writing but otherwise left unexpressed by their peers.

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Indeed, in the face of Sherry’s interminable pessimism regarding the future of race

relations, and Rambo’s advocacy for maintaining the prevailing economic and political

status quo, Andy’s abiding confidence in humanity’s capacity for change infuses his

discourses with a hope that is disarming and doomed. However, because his most

reflective thoughts are typically rhetorically-sound syntheses of the readings, discussions,

and verbal fights, Andy’s reflective writing is significantly enhanced by this enduring

hope. And while he, unlike Rambo, Jim, and Holden, seems unaffected by his subject

position in the class and in society as a white, middle-class male, his experience with race

suggests one nearly aligned with bell hooks’ observation:

…There are many individuals with race, gender, and class privilege who

are longing to see the kind of revolutionary change that will end

domination and oppression even though their lives would be completely

and utterly transformed. The shared space and feeling of “yearning” opens

up the possibility of common ground where all these differences might

meet and engage one another. It seemed appropriate then to speak this

yearning. (12-13)

Andy appears willing not only to witness the kind of racial, social, political, and

economic changes that “will end domination and oppression” but to facilitate, one

reflective thought at a time, their manifestation. Thus, his enactment and recognition

work are focused on re-writing social scripts regarding race and divisiveness as they

play out in the classroom.

In each of the cases presented above, enactment and recognition work not noted

occurs; only patterns most germane to the present focus are included here. The analysis

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finds that some students invest more energy trying to get ideas and thoughts implicating

race recognized in and with their discourses; others exert more energy responding to

race-related ideas as they appear in texts, classroom conversations, and established social

narratives; and still others seek to reconcile discursive practices towards the goal of

transformation.

In conclusion, the objective of this discourse analysis is not toward the evaluation

of students’ discursive gestures as relatively good or bad, valuable or detrimental with

regards to race. Its value consists in having exposed for critical observation students’

colored discourse gestures and how they operate in a writing community. Exposing what

happens at the level of discourse opens race as discursive practices for multiple and

situated interpretations, and this research makes no attempts to reduce observations to

clipped summary statements. A different outlay of data, or additional revelations of

enactment and recognition work in discourse, would recast the images of student

experiences displayed here in a different array, creating new kaleidoscopic images of

newly re-arranged colored discourse pieces. As a result, the interpretations offered here

are contextually bound and situated within the scope of one researcher’s perspective, and

are by their nature limited, subjective, and colored.

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CHAPTER SIX

DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS

“Plural societies are often born of tragedy and loss,

with people driven from the place inhabited by their own kind

and obliged to work out a modus vivendi with strangers…

--Michael Jackson, Minima Ethnographica

Through a conception of race as discursive practices and racism as a function of

spatial relationships, it can be argued that the collusion of discourses operating

dialogically in the Bakhtinian sense changes perceived relationships between sameness

and differences. These perceived relationships result in an authentic pluralism among

racially different students. They share space in a classroom community where they rely

on, resist, and reflect each other’s experiences as racialized subjects in the articulation of

their own subject positions. In this sense, the success of their interactions and writings

involves regulating and re-negotiating many elements of their classroom space—the

pedagogy, the teacher, notions of themselves and each other as speakers, listeners,

writers, and readers—as well as elements of discourses that reflect notions of themselves

and notions of each other as raced. In the end, their struggles, discomfort, and resultant

insights transformed their relations to each other. Before the end of the term, Kari is

sitting with the other nursing students. Rambo and Odessa work together almost

exclusively. Jim and Candice are developing what appears to be a very social

relationship.

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These three new relationships may have arisen by way of newer, problematized

understandings of self and other emerging from the collisions of discursive practices, i.e.

race. The kaleidoscopic metaphor works particularly well in this research, for most of the

people and elements in it shift and share power in ways that mock existing social and

cultural structures in society and in traditional classrooms. Segregation and fixed

perceptions, two of the most insidious perpetuators of racial misconceptions, are

suspended via an inclusive pedagogy that accommodates boundary transgressions, though

neither smoothly nor completely. Nevertheless, among the non-academic benefits of this

pedagogy are three new social relationships, alliances that inspire hope for continued

dialogue, but guardedly so: Ideologically separated discourse practices present much

more of a challenge than do “racially” different individuals discovering their

commonalities.

The college composition classroom is a microcosm of society. Within it, students

of different cultures and ideologies come together to have their post-secondary literacy

enhanced and certified. It thus provides a unique social palette for examining the

implications of race on the processes of literacy learning, especially on student

interactions and student writing.

Findings suggest that tacit and explicit rules for community membership guide

interactions, conversations, and expressed behaviors. Moreover, interactive activities are

complicated by individual ideologies that alternatingly assert, thwart, re-establish, and

undermine prevailing social narratives of individuals and groups as raced.

Findings also suggest that students write to and against these prevailing social

narratives, employing discursive enactment and recognition work towards the ends of

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authorizing new narratives, re-authorizing existing ones, or transforming authorizing

discourse to create space for new perspectives and developing ideologies on race.

Transformative gestures suggest the development of a critical understanding of the racial

self and racial other as discursive social constructions with historically economic and

political implications that might be called racial literacy.

The acquisition of racial literacy appears to proceed in large part by the temporary

elimination of physical distances and a transgression of social boundaries during which

dialogic interaction occurs. While the nature of such interactions is unpredictable, they

proceed in this study with explosive bursts of ideologically-dense discourse, as colored

shards of race-associated narratives that collide and collude to frustrate, enlighten, and

ultimately extend critical engagement.

Performances of race as discourse practices occur in classroom dialogue and in

students’ written discourse as enactment work—instantiations of race that students appear

to want established, authorized, or recognized as part of a dialogic exchange—and as

recognition work—instantiations of race students appear to accept, ignore, refute, or

otherwise respond to as part dialogic events. These discursive practices involve tacit and

embedded belief systems or internalized discourses, and come from observation,

experience, and values accepted within family, community, and peer groups.

Because culture is learned, individuals generate new cultural knowledge as they

accommodate and adapt to other people and situations. Racial literacy is cultural

knowledge. It is generated when individuals consciously and critically regard human

experiences and conditions—opportunities, materiality, politics, social

advantages/disadvantages and so on—along color lines. Racial literacy is also socio-

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political in nature. It reflects class differentials and other elements of culture co-operating

in its construction, expression, and interpretation. It does not essentialize or reduce raced

individuals to stereotyped groups. Instead, it recognizes individuals as uniquely-situated

persons, and sees “race” as an historical, socio-cultural overlay under which individuals

struggle within and against groups in order to identify themselves and each other.

This cultural overlay is constituted by tacit and explicit discursive practices

including beliefs, habits, emotions, and gestures—that drive social interactions between,

among, and within raced individuals and groups. At institutional levels, discursive social

practices direct policies, effect laws, and establish pedagogies. They are not, however,

inherently ethical: Students’ performance of race as discursive social practices can both

enhance and obscure literacy in the classroom, and often yields mixed results within an

individual’s experiences.

For example, Sherry accepts the permanence of racial prejudice and stereotypes of

blacks and whites, attributing less than ideal characteristics to both groups. “Hillbillies”

are constructed discursively as dim-witted, likeable people struggling in an oppressive

society. Simultaneously, people who struggle against historically-situated social,

political, economic, and educational obstacles are discursively constructed as

contemptible people struggling because they lack moral fiber. Moreover, she is

comfortable in her rigid dis-understandings and focuses her writing efforts on defending

them vehemently. Thus, Sherry’s nihilistic acceptance of large social narratives on race

occludes further critical engagement, effectively marking her exit from group dialogic

events. Still, the outcome for Sherry is mixed, for she does authorize and articulate a

251

valuable knowledge of her “self” as culturally-construed, even as knowledge of the

racially “other” is refracted, i.e. bent obliquely away from full development.

The observation of racial literacy occurring among students underscores a vital

role of the composition classroom within the context of the larger university: Its literacy-

verifying function. As it currently exists at most universities, the English composition

program brings diverse students together for an entire academic year to read, think, and

write culture collectively before they disperse across the academy into their majors. The

transgression of social borders and cultural boundaries achieved ideally within the often

contentious space of the composition class allows students from different socio-cultural

backgrounds to approach tolerance, if not appreciation, of their differences in physical

and ideological proximities not usually experienced beyond the first-year writing

program. For as seen here, the topics and timbre of students’ conversations and the

clashes along racial lines suggest discursive grappling with large cultural issues that

divide and unite them.

Students’ classroom interactions within the writing community reveal larger

issues of race operating in the sub-texts of their words and stories as expressed in

conversation or in observed behaviors. Students’ wonderfully hued array of enactments

around each others’ racialized identities in society, and the symbolic hand-to-hand

combats that result, challenge and extend their established sense of self and other as

racially-perceived persons.

The study does not examine racism as social pathology. At the same time,

findings suggest potential insights to be gained through explorations of institutional

racism’s perpetuation as malignant discursive practices into a systemic socio-political

252

way of life. Institutional racism, “the process which produces and maintains systematic

inequality between racial groups,” is further defined as follows:

It is intended to encompass social processes on several levels, including

discrimination in income, education, occupation; segregation in housing;

psychological components, i.e., prejudice; cultural stereotypes. The

institutional nature implies that the practices have their roots in the

structure of society, not individual practices; it is therefore primarily a

reflection of objective social factors, and only secondarily a reflection of

personal attitudes. (Cooper and David 115)

While scholars have long theorized the role of discourse in structuring society, few

studies suggest ways and means by which discourse perpetuates dominant narratives on

race—or ways that revisionist discursive practices undermine established social

narratives on race. Students’ observed enactments and recognitions of race-based

ideologies and behaviors in their writing underscore the importance of pedagogies that

welcome conflict over consensus in learning communities.

This course’s reflective instrumentalist pedagogy anticipates and accommodates

colliding ideologies in both student-to-student and student-to-teacher interactions toward

the goals of improving students’ writing and “encouraging in students a reflective,

questioning intelligence and a willingness to use that intelligence as fully participating

members of a critical democracy” (Durst 37). However, race complicates black citizens’

participation in democracy in ways that parallel black students’ participation in this

composition class. Some of what appears to be individual choice and self-regulation in

253

discursive practice, especially in Kari’s early experiences, could reflect uncritical and/or

coerced internalization of externally-imposed governance. David Goldberg explains:

I have expressed democratic governance thus without reference to self-

governance (the imposition of governance upon oneself by oneself) not

simply because of the difficulties in formulating a coherent conception of

the self (Taylor 1992). Rather, it is because self-governance may be

mediated--informed, encouraged, imposed--by externalities internalized,

through the self on the self, so to speak, thus blurring the distinction

between self-regulation and imposed regulation (cf. Butler 1997b). (“Post-

Racial States”)

This sort of other-orienting self-regulation characterizes Kari’s experiences, but not

Odessa’s. The definition of democratic governance to which Goldberg refers views a

democratic state as one in which all “competing interests” share resources, power, and

media of representation in “renewable negotiation,” (Dolan 55 qtd in “Post-Racial

States”). Odessa’s insistent critique of dominant discourses, despite Jim’s opposition,

operates to alter for her classmates and herself the prevailing narratives on race. She thus

claims the power of self-representation and uses it to re-negotiate stereotypes and

prejudices with her classmates, and carves out for herself an experience of democracy.

The countervailing influence of her colored discourses—the verbal fights with Jim—co-

creates space with and for other socially non-dominant discourses. This achievement

allows for the collective critique of culturally dominant ones, thereby contributing to the

group’s literacy learning.

254

While the literacy benefits of diversity at institutional levels are being currently

documented (Chang et al 2003), the cognitive benefits of discourse and ideological

collisions are well documented. Patricia Gurin cites Piaget’s position that experiences of

dis-equilibrium, dissonance, and contradiction facilitate cognitive growth (qtd. in Chang

et al 134). Mikhal Bakhtin asserts that learning occurs most effectively via tension- and

conflict-filled social interactions (qtd. in Ball and Freedman 348). Arnetha Ball and

Sarah Warshauer explain one mechanism by which these cognitive benefits accrue:

The role of the other is critical to our development; in essence, the more

choice we have of words to assimilate, the more opportunity we have to

learn. In a Bakhtinian sense, with whom, in what ways, and in what

contexts we interact will determine what we stand to learn. (6)

In other words, student learning opportunities result from having an array of situated

words, ideas, discourses, and narratives through which to sift, and with which to arrange

and articulate individual perspectives.

Historically in the U.S., black students have had restricted access to this array.

Their experiences have traditionally been interpreted one-dimensionally in composition

research and scholarship. Moreover, white students have been allowed to experience it

as monochromatic, monolithic, and fixed. Each of the four black students and each of

the five white students featured experiences race in uniquely different ways, suggesting

that social notions of blackness and whiteness are themselves multicolored, shaded hues

of experiences as shaped by contexts, predispositions, personalities, interests, likes—the

list and possible combinations are brilliant and endless.

255

Thus, the kaleidoscopic nature of composition classroom space as construed by

students’ colliding belief systems, prejudices, and personalities suggests the need for

additional research and pedagogies that will more explicitly expose the co-constructing,

interweaving nature of culture, particularly discursive manifestations of race as

dominant, non-dominant, and transformative social discourses. New pedagogies are

needed since many traditional approaches afford little discursive space for voices and

experiences not reflected in the readings and/or assumptions about students’ literacy

contexts. This results in poor performances among those whose voices and experiences

are not accommodated, good performances for those whose voices and experiences are

accommodated, further perpetuating notions of difference.

Research on the issue tends to focus on black students’ processes and products

in isolation from the processes and products of their white peers, effectively re-

inscribing historical, shadowy images of difference and perpetuating segregation of

black students’ literacy products and processes in instructional methods. This study

demonstrates that black and white students’ ideological and discursive collisions give

rise to academically and culturally valued literacy expressions that might not have

occurred in racially segregated classes or in classes in which discourse differences are

not valued. In the end, it tries to offer brilliant colliding color images of black and white

writers composing dialogically.

256

Epilogue

“You’re black and you’re nearly last chair! Why did you get picked?” Perhaps

thirty years after its utterance, Hannah’s question warrants a response more reflective

than I have attempted to date. I will attempt to do so here since the event that precipitated

her outburst influenced my decision to study race.

The fact is that I and nearly every black person in our high school band that year,

was last chair or nearly last chair. Neither my junior high school nor our likewise

predominantly black rival received the high school tryout music until one month before

fall tryouts, despite our directors’ requests. At the same time, the predominantly white

junior high schools received the tryout music around the middle of the previous year—

nearly four months before we did. This practice was common and had gone uncontested

for years.

Indeed, most of the discriminatory practices in our city went uncontested until the

mid- 70’s. When the reported 1976 proficiency tests scores “placed” most of the black

students in traditional as opposed to college-preparatory classes, black community

leaders, parents, and friends of equality, race notwithstanding, responded en masse. With

protests and in the media, they demanded to have student test scores published. I

remember this acutely since it occurred later the same year of the Wallace event. When

the actual test results were published in the local paper, city and educational leaders alike

were embarrassed and their discriminatory practices revealed: test results were mixed, not

unilateral, as the “placements” suggested.

This successful stand against discrimination in our community marked a turning

point in my city’s race relations. What’s more, I made a successful stand of my own the

257

next school year, becoming second chair, first flute out of the twenty-five flautists my

sophomore year. The flute section leader graduated, and the girl who had been second

chair, first flute my freshman year scored highest in the spring tryouts and became the

new section leader. But the girl who had been third chair, first flute my freshman year

was again third chair my sophomore year, for I had outscored her, broken the color

barrier, and shocked even the band directors. I went on to win gold medals at three All-

State music competitions, and by my senior year, I was flute section leader, tutoring

many of the flutists with whom I had played with when I “sat” 23rd chair.

My senior year was an extremely busy one. During the summer between my

junior and senior years, I joined the Alabama Playhouse pit orchestra and was busy with

several performances in addition to my band duties as flute section leader and piccolo

soloist.

So, to answer your question, Hannah, I welcomed your former governor with the

other band big brasses because I was as good as they were all along! This might have

been an enormously satisfying response to her question. But ironies abound in life, in

tales, and in tellings.

And this story is not over.

In the spring of my last year in high school, the Central Methodist Church, very

Southern, very white, and very affluent, called the high school and requested that the first

flautist be available to practice and perform with its chorale for its celebrated Easter

cantata. The musician would be more than appropriately compensated for pre-

performance practice time, actual practices, and performances. The music would be

delivered by courier to the school. The principal flautist, our senior band director was

258

told, would not need to attend practices until one week before the first performance, but

would have to then attend daily. Because these practices would require leaving school

early that final week, the church asked that the flautist be excused from classes without

penalty. When the director explained the requirements and asked if I would be willing to

do so, I said, “Sure!” What did I have to lose this time? Folks could not call my presence

at the church “tokenism” as many had called my presence at the governor’s reception, I

reasoned. The Central United Methodist Church wanted me because I was a good

musician, not because I was a black person.

So when the music arrived, I arranged my schedule to accommodate the hours

needed to practice. I made arrangements with my teachers to take final examinations

early; nothing was going to interfere with my graduating with honors. But the business of

mastering the musical selections’ undulant runs, sustained trills, and complicated

movement passages required more time and more discipline than I anticipated, and I

often found myself too exhausted to do my best academic work. For weeks, though, I

worked with my director, mastering nuances, and executing each intonation—forsaking

friends, movies, and dates—until that music caressed the ear like warm, buttered love.

When I arrived at the church for the first of the final five practices, I was greeted

at the front door by a church caretaker. He smiled kindly and said, “Honey, the custodial

entrance is ‘round back.” I smiled proudly back, “Sir, I’m here to play flute for your

choir.” His smile fell. His face flushed. He stared disbelievingly at me. Then, he opened

the front door and led me slowly down an enormous aisle, past rows of ornately crafted

wooden pews.

259

The organ music wafting melodiously across the rafters waned by degrees as I

came into the choir’s view. The grounds keeper kept his head low, and for what seemed

like hours, we walked in silence toward the choir loft.

Finally, the choral director who was presently resting at the pipe organ looked

stonily at me and stated with a pronounced drawl, “May I help you.” Speechless and hot

with embarrassment, I awkwardly held up the flute in one hand, my piccolo in the other,

and stuttered, “I…I…I’m Tina…I…”

The rest is still a blur. Hot, tense silence gave way to red, forced grins.

Everywhere, eyes seemed to implore the ceilings, the heavens, God Himself, “Why the

hell didn’t they tell us she was black?” “Six days before the program, five practices with

today’s—What in the #!@* ‘do we do now?” And so commenced five days of the most

intensive and exhausting racial interactions I have ever experienced. Ever.

Despite the pressure, or because of it, the flute solos and piccolo accompaniments

were flawless. The music director of an Alabama university’s orchestra who was among

the audience for the final of three performances said so, along with two or three other

musicians visiting from other cities. This orchestral director approached my mother and

me after the performance, expressed his complete amazement with the performances, and

offered me a four-year music scholarship on the spot. We thanked him, and he and my

mother continued the conversation. But while they exchanged information, I looked

around the church hoping to see others approaching me with similar praises. They didn’t

come. The truth is that he and the two or three other visitors were among the few who

said anything at all to us that night, with still fewer speaking or even making eye contact

the previous two nights, decidedly more local groups, I’d told myself. I felt defeated.

260

Race had hit again, harder, and I was no more prepared for the blow this time than I was

after my reception with the governor three years earlier.

It is no surprise, then, that I avoided thinking about the Easter cantata— the

beautiful, difficult music I’d mastered, the church rafters, my awkwardness, the vacant

faces swirling about me those final three nights. I threw myself into preparing for my first

year in college and did not think about it at all.

But perhaps someone did.

Not one week after I played at the Central Methodist Church, it burned down. Fire

Department officials said the cause of the blaze was indeterminable, but the central

structure and surrounding gardens were devastated by fire and smoke. Was my playing at

the church and its fiery destruction merely coincidental? I think so.

Even so, the coincidence remains for me replete with implication of race’s

enduring influence on how black and white folks act and react, collocate and collide in

the world they share with each other.

261

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Professors and Other Unexpected Advice. Boston: Beacon Press, 1984. 95-104. Newman, Cardinal John. “Discourse V: Knowledge its Own End.” The Idea of a

University. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1853/1996, 76-91. Reich, Robert B. “Hire Education: The Secretary of Labor Tells You Where the Jobs Will

Be in the New Economy.” Rolling Stone, October 20, 1994. 119-25. Thomas, Lewis. “Humanities and Science.” Late Night Thoughts on Listening to

Mahler’s Ninth Symphony. New York: Penguin Books, 1984, 143-55. Ullman, Ellen. “Needed: Techies Who Know Shakespeare.” The New York Times.

Wednesday, July 8, 1998.

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Assignment One Education and Difference

Your first paper is an analysis of readings from Unit One of You Are Here. Choose one of the following options: Option One: Sociocultural Theory of Learning In Victoria Purcell-Gate’s essay she suggests that educators must shift their perspective to realize that “all communities have appropriate cognitive abilities, albeit different ones to fit varied life situations” (56). Redefining standards and norms is necessary to account for different learning abilities and environments. Discuss what she means by this. Consider then the Charter School proposal and literacy programs. Do you feel certain accommodations for different populations are necessary or fair? Do you feel that your own educational experience suited the learners it was attempting to educate? Why or why not? Draw on both your own experience and at least two of the readings. Option Two: Guy-ifying or Girl-ifying Education Reexamine the Orenstein and Pollack articles. What suggestions do they make? Are there similarities in their seemingly contradictory articles? Do you find it potentially helpful or dangerous to accommodate one gender’s “personal interests and competencies” (50)? Should the learning process be geared to challenge a student’s weaknesses or support his/her strengths? Examine, too, your own experience for times when you thought your classroom dynamic or curriculum was more suitable for one gender or another. If you remember such a time, why do you think that was? If not, how was it avoided? Or perhaps you disagree with Pollack or Orenstein’s characterizations about the difference between girl and boy learners. Why? Option Three: Not-so Great Expectations Many of our readings discuss the expectations of teachers, parents, and students themselves. How do expectations shape us as student achievers? Examine the different socioeconomic, racial, or gender factors outlined in at least two of the articles we’ve read—such as the Rose essay and the Koerner articles. How are these expectations formed? What expectations of others have you met/failed to exceed/dared to break out of? When have you felt limited or overwhelmed by others’ expectations of you? When were these expectations drawn across gender/racial/socioeconomic lines? (Perhaps there were other factors you’d like to discuss). Remember…

• It’s possible to lapse into restating your opinion over and over. Remember that assertions are not in and of themselves evidence, and be sure you can tell the difference between the two.

• Don’t forget to proofread for errors in logic, grammar, and punctuation. FORMAT/DEADLINES When completed, your essay should be 900-1200 words long (approximately three to four typed pages, double-spaced). Your typed draft is due April 13. Your final draft is due April 18.

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Assignment Two Being in College

1. In “On the Uses of a Liberal Education, Part One,” Edmundson critiques the idea that students should be casual “consumers” of the college experience. He argues instead that true higher learning demands a more serious kind of critical engagement on the part of students. He suggests that it also requires some unsettling, tough-minded, non-nonsense instruction from one’s professors. In part two, Shorris describes an educational program for low-income, college age students that is very rigorous and that he claims the students find not just interesting, but liberating and empowering, life-changing. For the purposes of this essay, try to place yourself in both educational contexts and consider what your experiences might be from each. From your own perspective, what are the advantages and disadvantages of the students’ approach to college that Edmundson examines? Why does there seem to be so much more genuine motivation and engagement in learning at the less prestigious, elite educational setting? Draw substantially on at least one other reading from the unit in writing your own essay. The Willimon and Naylor essay may be particularly relevant here for its discussion of the moral and ethical dimension of a college education. 2. In his essay from this unit, Neusner lists criteria for defining average, good, and exceptional teaching. Kelly, from his perspective as a teacher and graduate student, critiques what he views as his students’ lack of true engagement in their education. Write an essay in response to both readings from your own perspective as a student with many years of experience in school. Using what you have learned in class about the structure of argumentative writing, examine carefully the authors’ arguments. Draw upon some of the other readings in the unit, as well as your own background in developing an argument about the qualities necessary to be a “good” college student and/or professor. Also consider how culture, including the college environment, supports or does not support those qualities. FORMAT/DEADLINES When completed, your essay should be 900-1200 words long (approximately three to four typed pages, double-spaced). Your typed draft is due May 2. Your final draft is due May 4.

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Assignment Three: In-class Essay The Purposes of College

Your third assignment will be written in-class on Thursday, May 18. For the in-class essay, you will need to purchase a full-size blue book. Do not write in or on the blue book until you begin writing the timed essay. You may use your textbooks, a dictionary, your Hacker guide, and a one-page outline. You must include the one-page outline with your essay when you turn it in. This essay will focus on an analysis and defense of a specific position you take regarding one of the following statements. CHOOSE ONE:

• The primary focus and purpose of the college curriculum should be to provide students with a liberal arts education. (You will of course need to discuss what you and the authors we’ve read mean by “liberal arts.”)

• The primary focus and purpose of the college curriculum should be to provide students with pre-professional training.

• The primary focus of a college education should be to develop and encourage students to become thinkers who are more insightful, less dogmatic, and open to new and challenging ideas.

• As James Duke, founder of Duke University argued, the purpose of a college education should be to train students to help make the world a better place.

• The college major often requires too much narrow specialization and not enough breadth and intellectual inquiry.

Agree or disagree with the statement you’ve chosen. Support your well-developed argument point by point with the readings from Unit 3 or other readings. Some responses will also benefit from the inclusion of personal experience, but be sure to use at least two of the readings, either as support or points of contention. This will require you to select the quotes or paraphrase while you are outlining your argument at home. I strongly recommend that you do this in advance; do not was valuable writing time searching for salient quotes. Watch out for your own recurring error patterns. Save time to proofread thoroughly. This essay should be about 750-900 words. Please write it in permanent ink; don’t bother with white-out. Mistakes happen; just draw a line through it and go on.

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Assignment Four Research Paper Assignment

The research paper is an investigation of a topic of interest and importance to you. Part of your challenge in writing the research paper is to make the material you write about interesting to your readers as well. An important part of the research project involves incorporating the ideas and inquiry of other people. You will read what others have written on the topic and will also talk with a specialist on the subject. However, your essay should definitely not be a mere collection of the ideas of others strung together into an essay. Rather, the paper should be a discussion of your overall research question (which will involve some subquestions), why and how you chose to investigate it, what you were able to find, and what further ideas and conclusions you came to as a result. For this paper, you will investigate in some depth a major in which you are interested. You have some flexibility as to what aspects of the major you choose to investigate. However, there are several areas that you should be sure to examine. You will carry out this investigation using library research, web-based inquiry, an interview with a specialist in the area, and possibly with other field research as well, such as observation and analysis of a work site. Requirements

A. A major is not just a collection of disparate courses leading to a professional credential. It also comprises a way (or ways) of thinking, a set of strategies for problem solving, and a body of knowledge. As part of your paper, you should examine the conceptual und3rpinnings of your major.

B. A major field of study also exists in a social, political, and historical context. It

makes certain contributions to the larger society. Your paper should include a discussion placing the field into this larger context.

C. In addition, a major is intended to prepare students for particular types of careers.

You should investigate the relationship between the college course of study and the subsequent work people do in the field. Some questions to consider here include what aspects of the coursework seem to be most useful and in what ways, what sorts of careers people in this major typically go on to have, and what specifically their work involves.

D. Finally, you should draw some conclusions from your research that help you—

and that may help others—better understand the field of study. Above all else, use this assignment as an opportunity to learn more about your planned direction in college and in life.

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Semi-structured Interview Questions for College Writers in English Composition 102 Spring Quarter, 2000 Introduction Please describe yourself as a student. What are your interests and goals? Have you declared a major? What are you like as a writer? Have you taken other college English courses here at UC? Are your from the area? What kinds of things did you do with reading and writing before 102? English Composition 102 as an Individual Learning Environment What has 102 been like for you? How is 102 different from other college writing classes you’ve taken? What do you think about the kinds of writing you’re being asked to do? How do you begin, develop, and complete a writing assignment in general? How do you like the readings? How much time do you devote to the readings? What do you think about the research paper and research process in general? What do you think about the reader response group work? Tell me a little about each of the papers you’ve written so far. How did you like writing these papers? How did you go about getting information and ideas for these papers? What kind of remarks did your teacher make about your essays? What are your feelings about your teacher’s comments and written remarks? Has the kind of writing you’re doing here helped you in other ways? Has this writing class helped you in other classes? What words or concepts in 102 do you remember hearing most often? In general, have you changed as a writer in 102? What in 102 has been most beneficial to you as a writer? What has been least beneficial to you as a writer? English 102 as a Group Learning Environment What is your overall impression of the English classes you’ve taken in this university? What is it like to be a student in English 102? What are you expected to already know? What are you expected to do as a class? What are other students like in the class? What are discussions like? How did you typically feel at the end of a class session? What do you think matters most about composition to your class as a whole? What matters most about composition to you?