ANTI-RACIST ACTIVISM: TEACHING RHETORIC AND WRITING
In story after story we have told each other over the course of writing this article, we have circled back and forth in re-imagining the potentials and possibilities for these situations.
We could often see two immediate options—assimilation or separation—but we sometimes struggled to imagine third ways to break open situations for change.
Harry Denny (2010) in Facing the Center helped some of us find a language for imagining past the "false choices of assimilation and separation" (p. 15). He insists that there are often, if not always, other ways of standing against systems of oppression within the moment. He draws on critical and queer theories to point toward ways of subverting, queering, or negotiating positions that undermine systems of oppression, often naming this third way subversion.
As J points out in "Power and Cultural Capital in Writing Center Consulting," Denny (2010) describes a scenario — a real situation, in fact — in which Allia, an African American graduate student who tutors in his writing center, "pushes a student to think about her argumentation" in a current issues paper that includes racist rhetoric. The student responds by saying "she thought her tutor was going to be one of the white tutors and questions her tutor's qualifications," and Allia is left with the dilemma of responding (p. 31). As Denny describes the potentials of this situation, he considers an oppositional response: "directly protesting the student's action and demanding, understandably, and institutional response to her racism. Student life codes of conduct, particularly those that require a sort of decorum or common criteria for behavior, likely would have given cover." He also describes that Allia could have "gone off" on the student, "speaking out vociferously, even driving the student out of the space," or she could have sought out someone to have taken over the session, withdrawing herself from the situation entirely (p. 53).
Denny (2010) wonders, however, if a position rooted in subversion is more tenable. Allia's response may be ultimately that. She, after all, decides to "[diffuse] the situation by speaking to her qualifications and life history," specifically her many years as a corporate trainer (p. 31). As Denny argues, a subversive position might seem on the surface to be assimilationist, a tacit acceptance of institutional protocols and priorities, but it actually involves "manipulating discourse and populations in ways that advance individual needs while undermining the status quo" (p. 53). Here Allia seems to capitulate to the institution by leaning on her expertise, but in doing so she also calls into question the racist assumptions that the student sitting next to her has espoused.
Such positions can be difficult to negotiate for those who don't have the qualifications, life experience, or expertise to lean on within a session. For some in this group this scenario is troubling exactly because the position Allia took is not available to them. What then?
As a group, we take some courage in knowing that "rhetorical readiness and disguise are intrinsic to the learning and mentoring practices of writing centers" (p. 54). We recognize that the text itself, and the rhetorical situation surrounding it, can sometimes provide a way into subversive conversations, a way into talking with other writers about our own readings of their texts, about other potential readers, about the rhetorical effects of their racist arguments. Even then, however, the options open to us and the risks they create differ based on our own raced positions within the consulting sessions. As Denny (2010) notes, oppositional positions "would likely be an untenable enterprise for people of color who are students or tutors" (p. 52).
These conversations that lean on talk of rhetorical situation, genre, and audience can appear to be assimilationist – in fact, they can BE assimilationist if they do not also work to "undercut and challenge" the same systems of power they draw from (Denny, 2010, p. 54). The moves we make to undercut and challenge will be different based on the identity positions available to us in the moment, and we may find that talk of rhetorical situations is insufficient to subvert the power at play. In these moments, as a group we have wondered also about the subversive potential of stories. We have played with the potentials of telling stories within sessions—stories about ourselves, about friends, about history—in order to undermine the lock-step of racist logics and languages.
As we've struggled toward potentials, and toward supporting each other in the work, we recognize what is at stake. It may be different for each of us, based on our own racial identities, but we know that what Denny (2010) writes is true: "when tutors mentor student writing, they help hone a writer's identity and simultaneously shape themselves as writers and consultants" (p. 19). The stakes are high, and we need to be in it together.
Zhang, Phil, St. Amand, Jessie, Quaynor, J, Haltiwanger, Talisha, Chambers, Evan, Canino, Geneva, & Ozias, Moira. (2013, August 7). "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
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