Diversity, Metaphorical Constructions, and Enacting Deliberative Democracy in Teaching, Scholarship, and Service

Introductory Bio

Michelle Hall Kells is an associate professor and director of rhetoric and writing in the English department at the University of New Mexico. She teaches graduate and undergraduate classes in 20th Century Civil Rights Rhetoric; Contemporary and Classical Rhetoric; Writing and Cultural Studies, and Language Diversity. Dr. Kells’s research interests include civil rights rhetorics, sociolinguistics, and composition/literacy studies. She served as the Program Chair for the 2007 UNM Civil Rights Symposium, “40 years of Community Activism, 1967-2007: Civil Rights Reform Then and Now.” This symposium was a notable success and part of Kells’s vision for UNM and the discussion of civil rights and rhetoric in the Southwest and beyond. Dr. Kells is currently the Program Chair for the fall 2008 University of New Mexico Civil Rights Symposium: “Civic Literacy Across Communities: A Public Forum." The symposium seeks to generate cross-cultural dialogue that engages diverse voices and that promotes inclusion. Kells also developed a variation on the WAC model entitled Writing Across Communities. The WACommunities project, a visionary one, is designed to help University faculty, graduate teaching instructors, administrators, and staff understand the many contexts in which students need to read and write effectively, and to provide instruction to meet those needs. This program is unique both in the diverse student population it serves and in its focus on “educat[ing] students for global lives…in which the ability to communicate fluently across boundaries is essential.” Professor Kells is coeditor of Attending to the Margins: Writing, Researching, and Teaching on the Front Lines, and Latino/a Discourses: On Language, Identity, and Literacy Education (1999). She is author of Hector P. Garcia: Everyday Rhetoric and Mexican American Civil Rights (2006). Her current book project is Vicente Ximenes and LBJ’s “Great Society”: The Rhetoric of Mexican American Civil Rights Reform.

Editor's Note: Find information about the UNM Civil Rights Symposium on Michelle's webpage: http://www.unm.edu/~english/Faculty/Kells/Index.htm.



Blog Entry

The metaphorical construction of “diversity” has functioned as a first principal in my scholarship, teaching, and service since the beginning of my professional career. Conditioned by my own place and position, the notion of diversity has been prominent in the ways I have framed my research, shaped my teaching, and structured my service projects for over the past 10 years. My own migratory experience living, moving, and identifying with communities in the Southwest certainly has formed my conceptionalization of diversity. I cannot extricate myself from the people and place in which my own intellectual life has been cultivated. So I must begin with the ecology of my own experience. The inter-relatedness of space, landscape, living processes constitute change-over-time, the wellspring of diversity. Let me develop this concept further through metaphor.

I see bio-diversity as an enviro-physiological problem-solving response and process shaped by ever-shifting conditions. To extend the metaphor further, I see cultural (or ethno/sociolinguistic) diversity as an enviro-sociological problem-solving response and process shaped by ever-shifting conditions. Variation and innovation are intrinsic survival strategies. We, and this dynamic environment we inhabit, are works-in-progress. Like language itself we are a mixed collective, a constellation, an aggregate, un mestizaje. Purity is a myth. We are all mestizos. My own research again and again reveals that we are more successful negotiating this complex universe with a rich and varied communicative repertoire. If we are truly interested in helping our students thrive, we as educators will help them articulate their multiple spheres of belonging (constituted through the discourses they bring with them and those they acquire in the highly specialized discursive world of the university). Where and how do our students claim citizenship? How do we coordinate our changing lives, changing conditions?

These questions have challenged me to triangulate constructs of diversity with deliberative democracy (as context) and rhetoric (as practice). As a concept, “diversity” began for me as a recognition (and reconciliation) with notions of “difference” (racial, linguistic, class, cultural, sexual, generational, religious, regional, national, physiological, social, intellectual, perceptual, political etc.). Closely aligned, however, with this recognition of difference is the realization of disparity. Not all variations (linguistic, cultural, racial, sexual, etc.) have equal social value. Systems of hereditary privilege ascribe privilege to selected groups over others. That reality has always troubled me. As such, my preoccupation with constructions of diversity has fused with concerns about disparity (issues of social justice), and has evolved into a prevailing question about how diversity constitutes and is constituted within a nation of heterogeneous communities.

Diversity invigorates a deliberative democracy. Diversity perpetually complicates deliberative democratic institutions, including our colleges and universities. Difference challenges us to adapt, change, grow, respond. If we live in an exponentially diverse social world, how do we construct our relationships to one another? How do we distribute our cultural, political, and material resources equitably? Rhetoric then becomes the means by which we (as teachers, scholars, and citizens) constitute and protect the presence and participation of the diverse groups within a deliberative democracy. Reflecting on the practices of activists in civil rights, labor, human rights, women’s rights, indigenous sovereignty, I am impressed that all exercised a rhetoric of presence through discursive identification with a people, a place, a moment, and a vision of social justice. These should be our models as educators of an endangered generation.

When I joined the faculty at the University of New Mexico, the chair of the department asked me to launch a conversation about WAC. I aligned notions of social diversity and deliberative democratic practice with a model of WAC I call “Writing Across Communities.” This project has evolved over the past four years into growing conversations about literacy education, social justice, and cultural diversity. Programmatically, we have reconceptualized the First Year Writing program with these issues in mind. We have initiated interdepartmental and cross-community discussions on civil rights, civic literacy, place-based learning, ethnolinguistic identity, and academic access. I recently reflected on this project in an article for the Journal of Reflections: Writing, Service-Learning, and Community Literacy (see the Spring 2007 issue):

The challenge for the Writing Across Communities initiative at UNM is enhancing
opportunities to build identification with the cultures of the academy as well
as cultivate appreciation across the university for the cultures and
epistemologies our students bring with them. By taking an advocacy role in
the university for ethnolinguistically-diverse students, WAC can help to mediate
and educate faculty and administrators about the constraints and concerns facing
college writers. Communicative competence depends upon complex strategies of
shuttling between ideas and audiences, a challenging, culturally-dependent
process. What might WAC look like if we open the conceptual umbrella to include
engagement with a broad range of cultural, civic, and professional
discourses? What would WAC look like if we concerned ourselves with not
only the discourses our students acquire in the classroom, but the rhetorical
resources they bring to the university? Under the rubric of Writing Across
Communities, the scope of WAC enlarges to engage not only ideas across the
disciplines, but the dissonance and dissent concomitant to the democratization
of academic discourse. Engaging dissonance is precisely the work of civic
and academic discourse, of taking on the role of citizen and scholar, of
belonging to a human community. Writing is the act of negotiating
difference through language.

While WAC and writing centers are
uniquely structured to serve the university community as cultural mediators,
there has been little guidance in WAC scholarship addressing the needs and
interests of ethnolinguistically-diverse student populations. The challenge for
writing program, writing center, and WAC administrators is finding productive
ways to foreground the social, cultural, and environmental dimensions of the
communicative context in the teaching of writing. (Kells)

Framing conversations on “diversity” and enacting advocacy initiatives within the institution is my primary role in the university. As a newly tenured professor and recently appointed director of Rhetoric and Writing, mediating communities and resources represents my principal duty. How do I address the topic of diversity in my scholarship, teaching, and service? I am creating new courses (e.g. Rhetorics of Place and Belonging, Language and Diversity, Writing and Cultural Studies, etc.), coordinating the Writing Across Communities Colloquia Series, chairing the Civil Rights Symposia, building liaisons and partnerships within and beyond the university, opening a community writing center, cultivating new research in civil rights rhetoric, establishing educational scholarships in Language and Literacy Studies, and mentoring students as new leaders. Diversity represents abundance—opportunity, vision, and generativity.

Diversity and Language Differences

Introductory Bio

Paul Kei Matsuda is perhaps the most recognizable scholar addressing second language writing issues today. He is Associate Professor of English at Arizona State University, where he also serves as Director of Writing Programs. He is founding chair of the CCCC Committee on Second Language Writing and of the Symposium on Second Language Writing, which began as a biennial gathering of second language writing scholars, but which has grown into an annual international event. He is editor of the Parlor Press Series on Second Language Writing, and he has edited or co-edited numerous collections and special issues. A prolific and award-winning author as well, Paul's widely cited work has appeared in College Composition and Communication, College English, Composition Studies, Computers and Composition, English for Specific Purposes, International Journal of Applied Linguistics, Journal of Basic Writing, Journal of Second Language Writing, and Written Communication. He is consistently invited to give talks, lead workshops, and teach courses in the US and abroad. In 2007, Paul was a visiting scholar at Nagoya University in Japan and at the University of Hong Kong.

Editor's note: Please check out Paul's list of publications on his beautiful webpage at: http://matsuda.jslw.org/research.html


Blog Entry

How do you address the topic of “diversity” in your scholarship, teaching, and service?

When people hear the word “diversity,” they may think of categories that are now highly conventionalized—race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexual orientation, religion, political views, etc. The term has been appropriated widely and its meaning has become somewhat diluted, but many of the original issues and concerns that prompted people to recognize, celebrate and covet diversity still remain relevant today. At the same time, many of the same issues that were invisible in the early discussion of diversity continue to be overshadowed by visible categories of diversity. I’m thinking particularly of language issues, of course.

Over the years, the effort to increase the visible diversity on campus has also intensified the issue of language diversity, although institutions for some reason don’t often recognize them as closely-related issues. For decades, U.S. institutions of higher education have been finding ways to compete for visible diversity by experimenting with admission procedures, by creating financial incentives, and by recruiting more aggressively in certain communities to increase visible diversity on campus. Many of these students come from diverse language backgrounds that are distinct from traditional students. At home, they may speak a variety of African American Vernacular English; a contact variety of English commonly referred to as Tex Mex or Spanglish; Appalachian English; or another language altogether—be it native American languages or languages, like English, that came from other continents as people migrated into this country.

U.S. colleges and universities have also been competing for international students who benefit institutions tremendously. Many of those students represent the best and brightest from all over the world. Many of them contribute to the visible diversity and enhance the international flavor of the campus. They would bring foreign capital—they are required to demonstrate that they have sufficient financial means to fund their entire course of study and cover the cost of living. They pay full tuition because they don’t qualify for many scholarships and financial aids. At state institutions, they usually pay the out-of-state rate because they are not considered residents even when they pay full taxes in the state. They also maintain full-time status because their visa status requires it. They also bring cheap (and legal) labor to campus because they are not allowed to work off campus due to visa regulations.

At school, these students may speak English with a distinct accent that is commonly (though sometimes erroneously) associated with their race and ethnicity. They may also speak their “own” varieties of English or languages among students from similar linguistic backgrounds. Or they may code-switch to a variety of spoken English that is familiar to the dominant language group in an effort to fit in, which can mask the level of linguistic diversity on campus as well as the struggle they go through as they try to write in the dominant variety of English they are not familiar with. Some of them—especially if they are Caucasian (a term some White students have never heard of)—may be able to pass as a native speaker of the dominant language; others may actually be native speakers of the dominant variety and people still perceive an accent—just because they look Asian.

How do I address these issues in my scholarship, teaching and service?

In my scholarship, I have been pointing out the lack of attention to language issues in U.S. higher education and particularly in rhetoric and composition studies, and suggesting ways to expand the field. To this end, I’ve written historical articles showing the ways in which the field has been responding to the presence of language differences in the contexts of first-year composition ( “Composition”; “Myth”; “Situating”), basic writing (“Basic”), and Writing across the curriculum (Matsuda and Jablonski, “Beyond”). I have also suggested specific ways in which the field as a whole and writing programs might think about and respond to the presence of language differences productively (“Alternative”; Matsuda and Silva, “Cross”). I’ve also edited books and special journal issues to provide resources and to further the conversation about language differences and their implications (Politics; Second Language Writing in the Composition Classroom; Second Language Writing Research).

Language issues also figure prominently in my teaching. In first-year writing courses, I try to raise the awareness of the positionality of the variety students are often expected to use and learn in U.S. higher education. I have also taught a theme-based first-year writing class where the focus was language issues of various kinds, such as different views on grammars, second language acquisition, language policy, and language teaching. In linguistics courses, I also invite students to think of not just the linguistic structures and changes but also of the historical and political aspects of language development and their symbolic functions.

At the graduate level, I have been incorporating language issues into core courses—such as composition theory, the history of composition, and research methods. I have regularly assigned readings on language issues, inviting students to try on a new theoretical lens and to reexamine the business as usual point of view. I have also been teaching a graduate course on second language writing on a regular basis to provide an opportunity to dig deeper into those issues.

In all of these cases, I try to avoid the in-your-face approach to diversity, which, in my opinion, only threatens students and puts them on the defensive; this does not lead to productive conversations or intellectual developments. Instead, I introduce those issues gradually—exposing students to new and intriguing issues, inviting them to explore the new territory, challenging them to think critically about their own assumptions, and providing additional resources to them for further exploration.

As teachers, we often recognize the need to be patient and to give students some space in order for them to grow. But we also know that, when it comes to issues that are near and dear to us, it’s difficult to be patient—to overlook a slight hint of apathy or resistance. I try to think of it this way: It’s all about treating students with the respect they deserve while facilitating their learning and personal growth. It’s easier said than done, I know. But the result is definitely worth the effort.

I also believe in service. (It’s a dangerous thing to admit, I know.) But in order to influence the field and to bring important issues to light, it’s not enough to be publishing or teaching.

I started by serving as a secretary for the CCCC SIG on Second Language Writing, which Tony Silva created in 1995. I took over the SIG and chaired it for a few years. In the late 1990s, I also started a series of workshops at CCCC, starting in 1998, and I continued to be involved in it until just a few years ago. But all of these efforts seemed rather temporary and uncoordinated; to remedy the situation, I spoke with Victor Villanueva, who was the CCCC chair at the time, about creating a committee on second language writing, which happened in 1998. The committee developed a Statement on Second Language Writing and Writers for CCCC, and coordinated various activities at CCCC, including workshops, SIG meetings, and an open meeting, where people discussed the status of second language writing at CCCC and developed plans for the following year.

At TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc.), I served as the chair of the Nonnative English Speakers in TESOL (NNEST) Caucus. Although people are increasingly uncomfortable with the dichotomy between native and nonnative English speakers (or users, as I would prefer to call them), the perception of the difference remains, and what some people call the native speaker myth—the undue privileging of the native speaker in language studies—still persists. In North American higher education, there are many English writing teachers who are themselves multilingual users of English; in the world, there probably are more English teachers who are nonative English users than those who are native English uses (though this is ultimately a false binary). It is important to raise the awareness, and sometimes the best way to do that is to create a movement rather than to talk about it in publications (although that also helps, too).

I am also active at the American Association for Applied Linguistics, where I have been engaging in conversations on writing, among other issues, to emphasize the importance of interdisciplinary understanding and cooperation. In this context, my job is to raise the awareness of the vast amount of knowledge that has been developed in rhetoric and composition, to enhance the study of writing in applied linguistics as well as to help applied linguists provide their insights more effectively to rhetoric and composition specialists.

My involvements are not limited to these national and international organizations. In the late 1990s, I felt the need to create a space for people who specialize in second language writing (because neither CCCC nor TESOL provided a space for highly specialized discussion of second language writing issues), and with Tony Silva, created the Symposium on Second Language Writing. The first meeting in 1998 was successful, and we decided to make it a biennial event. In 2007, we had our first symposium outside North America, and we also made it an annual event. This year, it is being held in June 2008 at Purdue University, and in November 2009, it will be taking place at Arizona State University.

I also edit a book series on second language writing, published by Parlor Press. This series also addresses the same issue I was trying to address when Tony and I created the Symposium—to create a space where second language writing specialists could speak to other specialists in the field.

My service efforts are not just limited to second language writing. Because I define myself broadly as a bona fide rhetoric and composition specialist as well as an applied linguistics and TESOL specialist, I get invited to work in many different capacities for various organizations and publishers—in evaluating manuscripts, serving on various committees, and participating in special initiatives like this blog. These activities are not as highly valued as research and teaching are, but I still take them seriously. As I have explained in one of the book chapters (“Coming”), I do what I do not because they count toward tenure and promotion but because I want to make a difference in the field—or in the world. Being involved also helps me better understand my fields as well as people in them; it also creates more opportunities to participate in meaningful conversations about issues that matter. I hope this piece will also generate a lot of interesting discussion and, more importantly, action.

Rhetorics of Survivance: "Recovery" Work for American Indian Writing

Introductory Bio

Malea Powell is a mixed-blood of Indiana Miami, Eastern Shawnee, and Euroamerican ancestry. She is an Associate Professor of Writing, Rhetoric and American Culture at Michigan State University where she directs the Rhetoric & Writing program and serves as a faculty member in the American Indian Studies program. Her research on examining the rhetorics of survivance used by 19th century American Indian intellectuals has been published widely. Her current scholarly project focuses on American Indian material rhetorics and the degree to which such everyday arts tie tradition and innovation in the cultural practices of contemporary Native women. She is at work on a book manuscript, Rhetorical Powwows, that ties her historical and material scholarship together. Powell was, for seven years, editor of SAIL: Studies in American Indian Literatures (a quarterly journal devoted to the study of American Indian writing), for which she twice won the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers “Writer of the Year” award for scholarly editing, and she was just appointed the Associate National Director of the Wordcraft Circle. She is also the lead editor for a textbook, Of Color: Teaching Literatures of Color Rhetorically (Prentice Hall/Pearson). In her spare time, she serves on the Advisory Board of the National Center for Great Lakes Native American Cultures, Inc. in Portland, Indiana and writes romance novels.

Blog Entry

How do you address the topic of "diversity" in your scholarship, teaching, and service?

For me, diversity isn’t a “topic” at all. The behaviors that our discipline frequently categorizes as “attention to diversity” are part of every classroom already, are part of every scholarly audience already, are part of every university and every community we enter already. So the way I know to respond to questions like this is to say that my main goal as a scholar, teacher, mentor, and colleague is to change the way that knowledge by, about, and for American Indians is produced, distributed, taught, and received. In order to do that, I know that I have to make Universities safe and productive spaces for all folks who have not traditionally been advantaged by American academies – folks of color, women, queer folks, otherly-abled folks – because our scholarly fortunes are deeply connected.

While most of my scholarly work has been firmly centered in Rhetoric Studies, my commitment to American Indian intellectual production requires that I also substantially in the American Indian Studies community, both local and national. As editor of Studies in American Indian Literatures for 7 years (SAIL is the only journal in the United States that focuses specifically on writings produced by Native peoples, and as a well-known scholar in the discipline of Rhetoric & Composition), and now as the Associate National Director of the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers, I have both the responsibility and the opportunity to mentor dozens of Native scholars (and non-Native scholars of Native writing) across a wide array of disciplinary and institutional arrangements. Both of these are positions that might be conventionally seen as “service” but that, done well, also require substantial intellectual investment and innovation. Deciding to take these positions wasn’t about elevating my own scholarly profile – it was about elevating the profile of entire fields of study and practice. It’s important to me that my work in academia always point to something larger than myself – to wider communities and practices who need to be noticed.

In terms of my own scholarship (and that phrase always seems awkward and more than a little selfish to me), much of my published work is rooted in a large, wide-ranging archival project called Rhetorical Powwows: American Indians Writing/Making Survivance. The project is focused on two things: first, a critical understanding of the way in which mainstream scholars have theorized “the Indian” for the past 150 years, and on the rhetorically sophisticated ways in which Native writers, intellectuals, activists and artists have responded to those constructions. This is the archival, textual piece of the project where I read the writings of the Native intellectuals rhetorically, listening for their use of popular nineteenth century notions about “the Indian,” and listening for the ways in which they reimagine what it means to be Native after centuries of colonization, genocide, and assimilation. It is that reimagining that I mark as “survivance,” and the tactics through which they enact that reimagining as “rhetorics of survivance.” This piece of the project is the most conventional in that it fits well with the current way that scholars in Rhetoric Studies have traditionally conceived of what it means to “do” rhetorical history. The second piece of the project radically challenges those traditional notions by investigating parallel rhetorical practices engaged in my Native “makers” – basketmakers, beadworkers, quillworkers, etc. – and understanding those practices as part of the same rhetorical and intellectual traditions begin enacted in print.

There are two significant things about this scholarly project in relation to the prompt for this blog:

First, it provides important “recovery” work for American Indian writing in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century and important critical intellectual work to situate that writing. It also provides important new ways to think about American Indian material production as a rhetorical act. So it complies with scholarly traditions in the discipline then challenges those traditions and provides innovative interventions into conventional practices.

Second, while I have worked consistently on this critical project over the past decade, my decision to postpone the seemingly logical outcome of such research – a single-authored critical book – was purposeful, the result of a series of decisions I made to be a different kind of scholar, one who studied and participated in the project of American Indian survivance by creating a space where American Indian Studies and Rhetoric Studies can both grow.

I believe the accumulated result of my intellectual and “service” contributions to date has been, ultimately, larger than the contribution I might have made had I published even an important single-authored monograph in one of my chosen disciplines – Rhetoric Studies or American Indian Studies. In fact, I’d say that the kind of book I’m writing now wouldn’t have been possible without the past 10 years of working otherwise.

Additionally, I believe that a serious commitment to engaged and innovative teaching is an integral component of my responsibilities as a scholar of color. I’ve taught a wide range of courses – from first year writing to graduate courses in Rhetoric, American Studies & American Indian Studies. I take each course assignment seriously as a rhetorical and scholarly challenge. One of the ways in which I structure all of the courses that I teach is to focus on critical engagement with texts through historically informed and culturally situated rhetorical reading strategies. I think it’s deeply important that students in all of my classrooms understand that history and culture matter so I use a variety of strategies to gently insist that students attend to the connections between past and present, and that they extend their rhetorical investigations significantly beyond the edges of the text – to go beyond “what happened in this text and what does it mean?” to considerations of how the text makes meaning and what consequences that meaning has in the lives of people who live a multitude of realities. It’s true, I tend to have a lot of students of color enrolled in my classes, but I have a lot of “white” students as well. One thing I know from a long career of teaching is that the kinds of supports, strategies, and interventions that work especially well for students of color almost always work especially well for all students.

An extension of my commitment to classroom teaching is the amount of time I spend recruiting, supporting and mentoring graduate student. Because I already cast my role in the graduate classroom as that of a rhetorically experienced colleague, and because those classrooms are informed by my understanding that learning is a process of constant negotiation and resituating, my mentoring work necessarily extends that understanding to foster graduate student engagement with their discipline/field and their institution as cultural texts that can be situated, negotiated, revised and analyzed. And because I have high expectations for the level at which graduate students engage with these varied texts, I also take a good deal of time to simply know, support, and socialize with the students I work with. The academy can be a difficult place for many graduate students, especially for women and students of color. I ended up in the academy because of the support and encouragement of my family, my teachers, and my elders; I see it as my responsibility to them to extend the same level of support and encouragement to others.

In fact, if there’s one constant in that way I approach my scholarship, teaching and service, it’s the understanding that none of us gets “here” (no matter how that “here” is defined) by ourselves. Meritocracy is a myth – we all stand on the shoulders of others. The key is realizing where we’ve been helped, where we may have unfairly taken advantage, and how to be responsible for those who made our lives “here” possible. For me that means extending support (sometimes more support than I actually received) to the folks around me – both students and colleagues – in a generous way. It may sound corny, but I try to live as a scholar/teacher by treating folks in the way I’d like to be treated. I don’t always live up to that ideal but I do try, and I do judge my actions by it. And I do try to arrange my life as an intellectual in a way that both honors my elders and enables a better future for Native peoples.

So I guess my answer to the prompt is that there’s no “trick” for “adding” diversity to any part of our lives as scholars & teachers – honoring diversity is a way of life.

Definition Matters: Teaching the Materiality of the Trope Race, Using Barack Obama's, "A More Perfect Union" Speech

Introductory Bio

Professor and Department Chair of English at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Krista Ratcliffe contributes to the CCCC Conversations on Diversity her well-established and award-winning research on the cultural presence and/or absence of women’s voices and on the intersections of gender, race, and whiteness. In Rhetorical Listening: Identification, Gender, Whiteness, which won the 2007 CCCC Outstanding Book Award, Ratcliffe troubles identifications of gender and whiteness to examine how whiteness functions as an “invisible” racial category. She examines the displacement and neglect of a literacy of listening and identifies the potential of rhetorical listening—a stance of openness—for inviting a more complicated notion of identification. In addition to her contributions through research and teaching, Ratcliffe serves as past president of the Coalition of Women Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition, as a current member of MLA’s Division on Teaching Writing, and of CCCC’s Task Force on Databases.

Blog Entry

I. Race as a Trope
In philosophical and rhetorical studies, Plato tells us that definition matters. Definition is, after all, a crucial step in his dialectic. In critical race studies, Cornel West tells us that race matters. Race Matters is, after all, the title of one of his books. Two key phrases from the previous sentences—definition matters and race matters—each signify in different ways. The slippage (between matters signifying as a noun and verb, between definition and race signifying as adjectives and subjects) demonstrates the communicative facility of language (in all senses of the word facility). Whatever the author’s intent, the possibilities for audience receptions are always multiple. This possibility and dilemma is at the heart of rhetorical studies. Given this multiplicity, it is fair to say that all words function as tropes, i.e., signifying differently to different people in different times and in different places even as cultural logics do offer possibilities for common interpretations.

By that logic, race is a trope.
But that claim sets some people’s teeth on edge.
Why?

There is a fear that, if race is discussed as a trope, then the discussion of race will focus only on language and discourse; by extension, there is a fear that bodies and cultures will be erased, both metaphorically and literally.

Is that fear legitimate?
Yes … sometimes.
But not always.

Does discussing race as the trope race always succeed? Of course not. No rhetorical tactic always succeeds, and success is always measured in terms of degree. Yet given this caveat, I want to relay how I used the tactic of discussing race as race in an undergraduate rhetorical theory course this past spring when we studied Senator Barack Obama’s “A More Perfect Union.”

My purpose here is to invite a discussion of the pro’s and con’s of discussing how the study of tropes, particularly the study of race as race, may be used as an antiracist pedagogical project.

II. The Class and In-Class Activity
First, a bit of context. Last semester in my undergraduate rhetorical theory course, composed mostly of juniors and seniors, the students and I began our study of rhetoric by reading excerpts from Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, the purpose being to identify definitions and tactics of rhetoric. Then we studied five different units: political rhetorics, cultural rhetorics, literary rhetorics, visual rhetorics, and pedagogical rhetorics.[1] On the last day of class, I asked students to practice listening rhetorically to an excerpt from Senator Obama’s “A More Perfect Union” speech, which we first watched on the web and then read from a printed handout.

The in-class assignment was for students to get into pairs to discuss the first of the following questions:

(1) What are the assumed definitions of race in this speech?
(2) What importance is ascribed to race in this speech (for people/cultures)?
(3) How does whiteness function in this speech?
(4) How useful is this speech for spurring a conversation about race?

My plan was that we could then pull back together as a class to discuss the pairs’ findings on question one and then discuss the other three questions.

The excerpt from Senator Obama’s speech, which we watched and read, is as follows:

This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign--to
continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just,
more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to
run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that
we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together –unless
we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we
hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from
the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction—towards a better
future for of children and our grandchildren. This belief comes from my
unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But
it also comes from my own American story.

I am the son of a black
man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a
white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton's Army during
World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at
Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I've gone to some of the best schools in
America and lived in one of the world's poorest nations. I am married to a black
American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners—an
inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers,
sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue,
scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never
forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even
possible.

It's a story that hasn't made me the most conventional
candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea
that this nation is more than the sum of its parts-- that out of many, we are
truly one.

Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all
predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this
message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a
purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the
whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the
Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans
and white Americans.

This is not to say that race has not been an
issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have
deemed me either “too black” or “not black enough.” We saw racial tensions
bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The
press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial
polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as
well.

And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that
the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive
turn.

As sometimes happens in my teaching, my plan was scrapped because the students and I spent most of the time allotted to this activity discussing just one question: “What are the assumed definitions of race in this speech?” That fact got me to thinking again about the importance of definition.

III. The Class Discussion
Once the pairs had finished their work, I asked students, first, to share passages they had identified where definitions of race were stated or implied and, second, to share what they thought were the assumed definitions of those passages. Students were asked to avoid jumping to conclusions about whether or not they agreed with the definitions; they were simply to define and classify. Here are some of their—and my—responses.

In Senator Obama’s speech, definitions of race are either stated or implied in terms of:

(1) color (“black man,”“white woman” … family “of every race and hue”)
(2) geographic location (“Kenya,” “Kansas” … “three continents”)
(3) historical location (WWII … today)
(4) economic location (Depression, factory … fundraising presidential race)
(5) ancestry (African Americans descended from “slaves and slaveowners,” whites with
no acknowledged African ancestry …Americans of African and white ancestry)
(6) biology (“genetic makeup”)
(7) a story (“in no other country on Earth is my story even possible”)
(8) the only facet of identity (“too black” or “not black enough”)
(9) only one facet of identity (“Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a
purely racial lens”)
(10) inflections in national symbols (Confederate Flag)
(11) cultural tension (“the press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial
polarization” … “it has only been in the last couple of weeks the discussion of race in this
campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn”)
(12) more than a black/white binary opposition (“not just in terms of white and black,
but black and brown as well”)
(13) subordinate to idea-based coalitions (“we built a powerful coalition of African Americans
and white Americans”)
(14) hope (“I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve
them together”)

Once the students and I identified some of the above definitions, we discussed some implications. We concluded that if six paragraphs can generate so many different definitions of race, then that partly explained why it is so hard to talk about race in the U.S. For example, if Cornel West says “race matters,” assuming #13, and then reader person says, “yes,” assuming #11, then they have just honestly and unknowingly “agreed” on two different things. Disagreements can, likewise, cross definitions.

IV. Pedagogical Implications

This multiplicity of definitions evidences a U.S. racial discourse that (conveniently for the power structure of the status quo) obfuscates communication about race—about how it is inflected by history, economics, ancestry, biology, gender, etc.; about how it is a constructed category (a trope) originally perpetuated in the U.S. via myopic religion and false science to bolster a mostly non-white labor force as well as a mostly white ownership class; and about how it has subsequently had material consequences—both positive and negative—for the bodies and souls of real people, whether marked as “black,”“brown,”“yellow,”“red,”“white” or some combinations thereof. Throughout U.S. history, material bodies have been racially troped and, consequently, racial tropes have been embodied. In this way, tropes work not only so that they have material consequences for real people’s bodies but also so that, in the process of embodiment, they are made material (in common and different ways). And over time and place, this chicken-and-egg cycle continues.

So with this claim, I arrive back where I began. A discussion of race via the trope race begs a discussion not simply of language but of bodies and cultures as well as how all three are implicated in one another in particular ways in particular times and places. And extending this discussion of race to a discussion of whiteness-as-a-racial-category, then the trope of whiteness also begs a discussion not simply of language but of bodies and cultures as well as how all three are implicated in one another in particular ways in particular times and places. Whiteness is not the same thing as a body coded as white. Whiteness is a trope that signifies actions, attitudes, and (yes) certain bodies (that are coded as white). But bodies coded as white may or may not perpetuate actions and attitudes coded as white; likewise, bodies coded as non-white may or may not perpetuate actions and attitudes coded as white. Whiteness is a trope that may be performed by language, bodies, and cultures, either ignorantly or knowingly; and depending on the definitions associated with whiteness at a particular time or place, a performance of whiteness may be racist or anti-racist. The same is true of many other tropes.

Such discussions, I believe, serve pedagogical antiracist projects because they distance students from immediately jumping to personal claims/accusations of blame, guilt, denial, and/or defensiveness that often shut down discussions of race in the U.S. because we too often tend either to be silent or to argue past (not with) one another. Such distance, I believe, slows students down and asks them to listen to how race and whiteness signify structurally within the U.S. Once these structural significations are established as existing (the first level of stasis), then students can move to discussions of naming, valuing, and taking action (the second through fourth levels of stasis), only then coming (without the possibility of denial) to a reflection on race and whiteness in terms of how the structural affects the personal … and how the personal affects the structural.



[1] For a copy of my syllabus, cf. http://www.marquette.edu/english/faculty/ratcliffe.shtml.

Rhetorics of Racism

Introductory Bio
Victor Villaneuva, the Edward R. Meyer Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts at Washington State University, is our first Guest writer for the CCCC Conversations on Diversity series. Victor's reputation is well known among most of the readers of this blog entry, I'm sure--most notably his award-winning publication, Bootstraps: from an American Academic of Color. A popular writer, speaker, and recipient of numerous awards, he is the former chair of the Conference on College Composition and Communication. He has authored or edited five books and nearly forty articles or chapters in books, and he has delivered over ninety public speeches throughout the country. His concern is with the connections between language and racism. We look forward both to his stimulating and provocative conversation with us on the subject of diversity and, importantly, our CCCC/NCTE readers responses, comments, and posts.


Blog Entry
First time I heard of a blog, a weblog, was from the late John Lovas, former chair of CCCC. I figured I’d leave that to others, that I’d just claim to be “old school” (meaning the dog that isn’t going to learn the new tricks). But I was asked to contribute here, and I agreed. Still not doing a blog, though, really, just a short essay. I was told to make it short, between 1200 and 2000 words, and in those four or so pages, to answer the following prompt:

How do you address the topic of “diversity” in your scholarship, teaching, and service?

Freeze. I reckon I don’t address much else in a little over twenty years of published scholarship (or in the scholarship that led up to those pubs). I reckon I don’t address much else in my service or in my teaching either. Or maybe, I don’t.

I don’t really work with “diversity,” that all-inclusive and non-inclusive institutional term. I’m old school. I don’t care for that word diversity any more than I cared for its predecessor, multiculturalism. I’m glad those who make institutional decisions about bureaucratic titles realized that there are problems that extend beyond “culture” (replete with scare quotes, since “culture” really means racism, and multiculturalism was a term for non-hostile-anti-racism).

Diversity just tries to be all-inclusive—the entire range of differences. That’s what the word means, after all—a range of differences. So—if you’re not part of the “same,” you’re among the range of differences. The French distinguished the Same from the Other. Diversity is the American version of l’autre. But who are the Same?

What’s the norm here? The temptation is to say white men. But that isn’t fair. Most are different from that norm, I’d bet, though they have enough power not to notice, more often than not. The norm is predicated on power. And the words used to describe some of those different ones, the diverse ones, tells of power, an insight provided by Rosemary Hennessy in her references to heteronormativity, the function of which is to make homosexuality a deviance from the normed hetero. It may well be that wif-man, the root of “woman,” was not a derivative of the male as man, but that sure has become the connotation. Or what to make of “differently abled”? Or “minority”? Differential power relations are carried in the language.

Where I work, there is an Office of Equity and Diversity. That’s an interesting title—Fairness and Difference. I wish that the “and” were replaced with “despite” or “within.” But right now, the Office betrays the precise problem, diversity detached from equity, two different subjects: fairness (what we all want) and difference (with the different maybe or maybe not being treated fairly). Separate out the two and all there is the acknowledgement of power differences, of a sorting mechanism that decides who is most likely to get parceled out, separated, othered.

CCCC and its parent organization, for example, have any number of committees and resolutions and initiatives on diversity, yet in the case of CCCC there have been women who have headed the organization; there have been African Americans who have headed the organization; and there has been one Latino (one, male, Latino, in sixty years). In sixty years, with all its committees and resolutions and initiatives, like this one, there has been no disabled chair, no out gay chair (assuming some of those many chairs would have been gay—just not placing their sexuality on the forefront of their expressed identity), no Asian American, no Pacific Islander, no American Indian, Asian, South Asian, or Middle Eastern chair—labels I’ve chosen based on CCCC members I know who self-identify along these lines. Acknowledging difference is not the same as acting on those differences—substantively.

Diversity as something other than Equity.

Whatever the euphemism, the language betrays the ways that the othering remains. Yet we are clear that there has been progress: access ramps, signers, GLBT organizations, initiatives to attract students of color to schools and organizations like ours, classes that focus on racism or disabilities or queer theory or gender.

Students always tell me at the beginning of classes that have as their focus racism, the particular diversity subset that I am most concerned with, that they believe there still is racism; “of course,” they say, “but it isn’t what it used to be.” The same can be said for all of the Others.

But all that has really changed—and it is a significant change, all in all—is the social sanctions againstracism. The social sanction against gender discrimination has altered, not as significantly as it has of racism (if the prevalence of the word “bitch” has any significance). Yet the social sanction of heterosexism remains as strong as ever, as public debate takes place about whether or not gay couples should be treated fairly. And social safety nets for the poor have become threadbare. Beneath the sanctions, the affects of bigotry and exclusion remain.

“You can’t drive a knife into a man’s back nine inches, pull it out six inches, and call it progress." --Malcolm X

That bigotries are not what it used to be isn’t to say that everything is okay, that we can toss the word diversity into initiatives of various sorts and have those initiatives address the underlying, structural problems. These problems take effect in real, political economic terms, and they’re ideologically transmitted, maintained, and obscured through language—our business.

We are all of us rhetoricians. All of us—linguists, compositionists, literary critics, writers. We look at how language affects us aesthetically, socially, politically.

Recall Donald Bryant’s definition of rhetoric as “adjusting ideas to people and people to ideas” and Kenneth Burke’s “symbolic means of inducing cooperation in beings that by nature respond to symbols." Not all persuasion is argument. How we come to believe certain ideas also happens through language, is rhetorical. And what the rhetoric seems more intent on carrying is less how we should go about putting an end to racism and to other forms of hurtful discrimination than how to believe that things are better than they used to be, a Platonic notion, Yeats’s gyres. We’d do better to remember Burke.

Hey, Victor--
I know that sometimes you feel like you aren't reaching people, so I wanted to tell you about this great paper I read. It was talking about "subtle" racism—which is color-blind racism. The student argues that racism was believed to have disappeared after the Civil Rights Movement, but it didn't--instead the language changed. I left the topic open, so that students could write about anything dealing with the history of rhetoric--and so, she decided on her own to do this. The student is white, and she was one of your students.
--Rose

For me, what works pedagogically as well as philosophically, is looking at the tropes that are contained in the discourse of not-as-bad-as-it-was (why, we even have a VP for Equity and Diversity, a CDO). Burke makes much about the epistemological weight carried by what he terms four master tropes: metaphor, synecdoche, metonymy, and irony. But I’m more interested in—and having students think about—tropes more broadly, less about identifying some trope out of the rhetorical canon than recognizing how the language carries common ideas, how being colorblind is a trope and what it does to blind folks to the harm caused by continuing racism, how diversity, no less than multiculturalism, has us celebrating when it’s too soon to pat ourselves on the back.

I have students look at the tropes developed by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva. Students take issue with him—always. His rhetoric is strident, readily open to charges of “reverse discrimination,” of bad-faith empiricism. And I agree: he’s not good at winning over readers. But before we’re very far distant from his book, his four “frames” of “racetalk,” the discourse we use to hide or deny ongoing racism, and could easily be extended to embrace all those who are the targets of diversity, finds its way into our conversations and into the students’ papers. It doesn’t take long for them to recognize that what he terms “frames” are tropes.

Although Bonilla-Silva tweaks the labels to his frames from publication to publication, they amount to four: abstract liberalism, naturalization, cultural racism (or the biologization of culture), and the minimization of racism:

• abstract liberalism: every man for himself, and may the best man win; fair competition without regard (or mention) of race or ethnicity; lack of qualified candidates of color without regard to the causes for those lack of qualifications.
• naturalization: it’s only natural that they would hang out with their own kind; it’s only natural that students of color would not attend a rural university; it’s just the way things are.
• cultural racism/biologization of racism: they’re culturally predisposed to athletics; they’re culturally predisposed to partying rather than hard work (written about Puerto Ricans in a book titled Latinos); they’re culturally predisposed to having a lot of babies.
• minimization: of course there is still racism, but it isn’t as bad as it once was.

I never call the students on their own uses of these tropes. I always assure them the class isn’t about them; just like I have built a career with faith in readers’ good faith; it’s about us all; about the language we are presented with and use. And so I ask them to read newspapers, extend beyond CNN and the Discovery Channel, keep their ears open.

Posted at a bus stop outside the local high school:

(Larger versions of this image are available at: http://www.ncte.org/library/files/CCCC/Victor-Image.JPG

And then there are the current events in a world in which racism is different from what it once was. No room here to tell what students find, but here’s a simple list from one section of one class during fall semester 2007:

• Celebrity Racism: Mel Gibson, Michael Richards, Don Imus, Dog the Bounty Hunter;• Jena 6: nooses around the country, including Columbia Univ;
• Charleston, West Virginia: the rape and torture of a young black woman in by six white people;
• The Fence: anti-brown immigration hysteria;
• The Fence: College Republicans (a sanctioned student organization) on our campus erect a fence; two faculty engage the students; the faculty show up on You Tube and Fox News;
• Dr. James Watson: Nobel Prize Winner, co-discoverer of DNA—back to Black inferiority;
• Supreme Court decisions on school integration;• Resistance Records andRaHoWa (ie, Racial Holy War);
• Prussian Blue: thirteen year old girls performing neo-Nazi music, and receiving national broadcast attention;
• The Knights Party: the new face of the Ku Klux Klan (literally);
• Lewiston, Idaho, outside the Nez Percé Reservation, 45 miles from our campus: a thirteen year old American Indian girl is beaten for asking four or five young men “What about Native pride?”
• Islamo Fascism Week on our campus

Students not only record these events, but they record how the events are presented—or not presented by the news media—the ways in which reporters or the police or local politicians are quick to dismiss each event as an aberration. One student drawn to looking at Los Angeles after reading The Necessary Hunger, an assigned novel I would recommend to all for the classroom (Black, Asian American, young gay love, athletics, class differences) found “The Homicide Report,” which claims over a thousand homicides a year in LA. To the degree that any gets press, the discussions turn toward “gang violence,” yet she found only one of 773 killings could be traced to a gang member. Now, I can’t vouch for her figures.

But I can vouch that the student could read a rhetoric that tries to minimize violence as cultural (two of Bonilla-Silva’s tropes). Our attitudes about racial difference and about gender difference are different (with only minimal changes in attitudes about sexuality or class), but we must be attuned to the rhetorics that convey the message that greater acceptance of difference is the same as greater fairness despite difference.

CCCC Conversations on Diversity

Welcome to the “CCCC Conversations on Diversity”


The CCCC Committee on Diversity is pleased to announce a new blogging series. For the next several months, we will host a forum for CCCC members to broaden our organization’s thinking, talking, and writing about diversity in our profession. Starting on Thursday, May 29, 2008 (in 2 weeks), we will feature blog posts by Guest writers from across the discipline of rhetoric and composition in higher education at http://cccc-blog.blogspot.com/.


We will begin the series with a Guest blog post by Victor Villaneuva, the Edward R. Meyer Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts at Washington State University. Guest postings will be open to anyone with internet access who wants to read it, and CCCC/NCTE members will be able to post comments. Everyone can find Victor Villaneuva’s blog post and each new Guest writer’s blog post on the CCCC blog site, bi-weekly (2 times per month), until Thursday, October 16, 2008.


At the risk of interrupting your summer plans, we’d like to ask for your attention over the next few months at a computer screen near you. We would like your help to generate a sustained conversation about the role of diversity in the work we do. Of course, the work of rhetoric and composition has addressed issues of diversity for decades, and each year brings new scholars and perspectives to CCCC. Ultimately, we’d like to think about our Guest writers’ statements, your responses, and the archived blog posts, when our Committee generates a CCCC Position Statement on Diversity this year. We believe that this statement should reflect the contributions of as broad a cross-section of members as possible (see our charge at: http://www.ncte.org/cccc/gov/committees/all/115435.htm).


Thanks for reading our first blog post on the CCCC Conversations on Diversity.

Enjoy your summer!

Become a Member of CCCC

Membership in CCCC includes an annual subscription to CCC, access to online resources, discounts on NCTE and CCCC publications, voting rights in NCTE and CCCC, eligibility for group insurance, and discounts on all conference and convention registration fees. NCTE membership is required for membership in CCCC. To become a member, simply click here and purchase a subscription to CCC or call NCTE's Customer Service Center toll free at (877) 369-6283.

Announcing the 2006-2007 CCCC Research Initiative Projects

In late spring, the Conference on College Composition and Communication put out a call for projects for a research initiative to support syntheses and new investigations by providing up to $25,000 for at least three proposals and an opportunity for the researchers to gather to share ideas and receive advice. This program aims to create an opportunity for researchers to bring together what the profession has already learned, through a variety of methodologies, regarding the teaching and study of composition, rhetoric, and literacy. Syntheses will bring together what the profession has already learned (but perhaps not yet published), through a variety of methodologies, with regard to the teaching and study of composition, rhetoric, and literacy. The purposes of synthesis projects are (1) to articulate what is known about the teaching of composition at this time, and (2) to provide a foundation for future research, for large grant proposals, and for public policy discussions. New investigations will initiate research studies that have widespread value or strategic implications for teaching composition; such studies may be pilot in nature and preambles to larger grant proposals.

Four grants were awarded for 2006-2007. The recipients of these grants, who are listed below, will meet this fall at the NCTE Annual Convention in Nasville to collaborate and discuss their research projects. Funded researchers will also provide detailed reports for publication on the CCCC Web site and in other appropriate CCCC venues. Researchers will grant CCCC first consideration for publication of articles or monographs.

CCCC Research Initiative Projects and Researchers

"An Expanded Validity Inquiry into Minority Students' Experiences with a Large-Scale Writing Portfolio Assessment"

Diane Kelly-Riley, Washington State University, Pullman

"Survey of Writing Instructors at For-Profit Colleges and Universities"

Luana Uluave, University of Illinois at Chicago
Patricia Harkin, University of Illinois at Chicago
Kristine Hansen, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah
J. Quin Monson, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah

"The forms and functions of instant messaging as literate practice"

Christina Haas, Kent State University, Ohio
Pamela Takayoshi, Kent State University, Ohio

“'The Things They Carried': A Synthesis of Research on Transfer in College Composition”

Kathleen Blake Yancey, Florida State University, Tallahassee
Emily Dowd, Florida State University, Tallahassee
Tamara Francis, Florida State University, Tallahassee