Raciolinguistics Post

Raciolinguistics and Transracialization 

We live in an American society that Alim (2016) describes as "hyperracial" and "hyperracializing" (p. 3). With each passing semester, each doctoral course and subsequent new media coverage, I am becoming increasingly aware of this phenomenon. Recently, this was made even more apparent to me by an international student from Ghana (in a different course) who described experiencing racism in the U.S. for the first time.

At first, "I didn't know what was happening to me," he shared with the class. "I had never experienced racism before, so I didn't know what it looked like. It wasn't until later on and through my future readings in my courses that I came to realize what I had actually experienced." This vignette and deeply personal experienced highlighted for me the uniqueness of the hyperracializing atmosphere interwoven throughout the fabric of the United States.

Raciolinguistics has added a critically important layer to this hyperracializing as Alim (2016) also writes that "language is often overlooked as one of the most important cultural means that we have for distinguishing ourselves from others" (p. 4-5). It is through the use of language and listening to one another's language that we come to racialize people. In the first chapter of the book, Alim (2016) goes on to specifically name this phenomenon as transracialization, which he describes as an alternative to the explanation of America as postracial. Instead, transracialization is defined as the ways in which race is fluid. Transracialization is not only about the ways in which we position our own selves but also the ways in which we are interpreted and positioned by those around us. In this way, identities continue to be co-constructed and negotiated, as has been much of the theme of this course. This theme of transracialization stuck out to me as I read across the various research projects in my section of the text.

The most jarring statement that Alim (2016) made for me was this idea that transracialization is about "doing" and "undoing" race at the same time (p. 47). I'm still trying to wrap my head around the idea as I think about what this might look like in classrooms. It seems I'm not alone in my uneasiness as Alim (2016) also goes on to state that everyone should be afraid of what this might mean for the future, but, he adds…not too afraid.

There is a specific quote I am pulling on, surprisingly in the same chapter, as I consider how raciolinguistics might look in classrooms, or perhaps, more specifically, transracialization. Alim (2016) writes,

"How can we destabilize restrictive and regressive notions of race when the struggle for racial equality requires racializing oneself in order to be treated justly; to be 'counted' and to 'count' and to receive resources, aid, legislation, educational reform, and so on?" (p. 46)

This quote reminds me of the ways that we were grappling with what Flores & Rosa (2015) described as a critical heteroglossic approach where they describe Estela, a doctoral student often targeted and misunderstood by her professors. They write, "What if the problem is not Estela's limited communicative repertoire but the racialization of her language use and the inability of the white listening subject to hear her racialized body speaking appropriately?" (p. 161). I'm grappling with these ideas of a heteroglossic approach and how they tie in with transracialization as we move in and out of the doing and the undoing of race and language or language and race and of languaging race (specifically my section of the text).

Last class, we watched the video NEA put out for culture, equity and education (NEA: Culture, Equity and Education). We discussed the multicultural orientation of the video (specifically Sarah's point) and its reification of whiteness and white ways of knowing and being in classroom spaces. This video seems to suggest a need to jockey for acknowledgement in classroom spaces, to "count" as Alim (2016) puts it. As I sit and try to respond to "how might this look in classrooms," I'm stumped. What is the balance, tension and pedagogical approach for doing/undoing race, using a critical heteroglossic approach and also recognizing that there are a multitude of students who have yet to be counted?