ANTI-RACIST ACTIVISM: TEACHING RHETORIC AND WRITING
One theme that has appeared over and over in our writings and discussions in this project is the naming of techniques to use when confronting racism. Throughout our writing center consultant practicums and the process of developing this article, we have struggled with pinning down particular nomenclature for framing what we have encountered. It is very telling of our multiplicity (and very needed!) that we have not settled on any one set of terms to discuss the same ideas. As writing center people invested in both ideas about language use and ideas of social justice, we know how important choices of vocabulary are when talking about systems, people, actions, and ideas. Language choices can affect the way complex ideas are received and implemented by outside viewers—or not implemented at all.
For emphasis, here is a list of these choice terms, which often take the form of binary or multiple choices in a given scenario where you are actively confronted with racism:
Professionalism vs. Unprofessionalism
Professional approach vs. Personal approach
Teaching vs. Preaching
Appeaser vs. Nuker (Hope, 2009)
Accommodation vs. Confrontation vs. Subversion (Denny, 2010)
Saul Alinsky vs. Frantz Fanon vs. Malcolm X vs. Martin Luther King (Henderson, 2010)
Please notice that some of the categories imply a simple morality, where you will seem immoral or ineffective if you choose one over the other. Some of them have a more complex morality, with less of a clear judgment over what is right and what is wrong. Some of the binary choices mean the same things as the first two choices in a three-choice vocabulary, meaning that they have either overlooked or deliberately left out the third option as a non-choice. Some of the three-part choices split up into two what was one whole choice in a previous binary. Some of the choices exist on a spectrum, or even a mix-and-match, and some of the choices are each necessarily exclusive of the others. Some of them make up an elusive choice which will not be accessible to you in certain situations, but which you will be judged afterward for not taking, despite its inaccessibility. Some of them might seem best to you if you can get both/all going simultaneously, somehow.
This list is not a statement of equal support for all these binaries and trinaries, or even of the adequacy of each in the lives of different people. In fact, to activists, some of these terms present false dichotomies designed specifically to manipulate those who adopt the terms to judge themselves more harshly and police others who make choices more directly opposed to the status quo.
The complexities that become apparent when you view all these ideas organized onto a list show that confronting racism, in yourself and others, is never going to be easy. That's why Race and the University, by George Henderson (2010), describes a four-part civil rights philosophy background made of the entire philosophies of thinkers and writers, specifically designed to point out the complexity of referencing and supporting multiple activists' values within the same set of terms.
But these are only terms, and terms are not action. Here is your takeaway from this list: find your own set of terms that will support you as you take more risks and seek more possibilities for antiracist action in your writing center, in your classroom, in your institution, and in your world.
Sometimes academic conversations can get caught up in endlessly debating terminology, and while we want you to come away from this piece rethinking the terms that enable use and abuse of cultural norms to perpetuate racism—we certainly did a fair share of discussing terms in more than one meeting—as an extension of this activity, we want you to begin deep interrogation of the meaning behind these terms. Consider whom the language being used can empower and whom it suppresses, whom it gives the right to act and whom it silences or makes motionless.
To put a finer point on it, how is your writing center or writing program situated in your institution and your institution situated in a location? And in these locations how are cultural norms and discourses shaping the available means of speech? What do all of these things mean about the way the space in which you write and work with writers is shaped?In what ways is your writing center or program uniquely positioned to enact an antiracist pedagogy, and in what ways is it limited?
One more question: What can you do, immediately, in your location, to ease the abuses of overt and covert racism while you do your thinking?
Like the paratactic format that we have chosen, answers will not come neatly or without conflicts. They are interrelated, a-hierarchical, and sometimes dissident. We find ourselves negotiating a shifting field of power and risk that changes based on our space, and our identity, and the identity of those with whom we are interacting. The trick, then, is to also find openness to listening to others who have experienced racism, as well as to find ways of using whatever resources and tools we have at our disposal to best address race in the moment in a way that allows the consultant, writer, or speaker to keep hir safety, well-being, and dignity.
Zhang, Phil, St. Amand, Jessie, Quaynor, J, Haltiwanger, Talisha, Chambers, Evan, Canino, Geneva, & Ozias, Moira. (2013, August 6). "Going there": Peer writing consultants' perspectives on the new racism and peer writing pedagogies. Across the Disciplines, 10(3). Retrieved from http://wac.colostate.edu/atd/race/oziasetal/index.htm
Copyright on the materials on this site are held by the authors and editors who have contributed content to it (© 1997-2017).