#SayHerName: Addressing Anti‐Blackness and Patriarchy in Language and Literacy Curricula

Abstract

Black women have been and continue to be objectified, mistrusted to voice their own realities, and pushed to the margins even among other people of color, yet expected to lead and contribute their lives and labor. In this piece, we focus on curricular and epistemic violence evidenced through omission and distortions of Black women in English Language Arts and World Languages and advocate for a centering of Black women’s voices and perspectives in ways that affirm their humanity across both contexts. We come together as literacy educators to offer strategies to support the inclusion and integration of Black women’s voices and experiences throughout secondary language and literacy learning spaces.

Linguistic imperialism: countering anti Black racism in world language teacher preparation

“…Creating awareness among PSTs about antiBlack language instruction and curricula (Austin and Hsieh, 2021) is a necessary means to disrupt linguistic and racial stratification in language teaching and learning and findings in this study suggest that centering Blackness in WL methods initiates this consciousness in ways that can impact WL PST clinical practice. Participants in this study became more attentive to the absence of Black has written and multimodal texts by considering their own socialization and racial and ethnic backgrounds (Anya, 2021) and upbringing, compelling them to resolve that erasure in concert with their peers.…”

“…Norton (2001, p. 166) reminds us of the value of creating pathways for students to the imagined community because "when language learners speak, they are not only exchanging information with TL users, but they are constantly organizing and reorganizing a sense of who they are and how they relate to the social world". While Black people are not a monolith, the more representations of diverse Black peoples (Austin and Hsieh, 2021) are used to meaningfully ground language instruction, and the more likely students will construct an imagined community in which they might become invested.…”

“…She shared, “From what I’ve observed and studied, there is great linguistic, cultural, and racial diversity among those who speak Spanish in Spain, North America, Central America, and South America.” George’s comment on her post deepened her understanding as he shared, “Black students often don’t even have the opportunity to learn a second language because of institutional gatekeeping.” Norton (2001, p. 166) reminds us of the value of creating pathways for students to the imagined community because “when language learners speak, they are not only exchanging information with TL users, but they are constantly organizing and reorganizing a sense of who they are and how they relate to the social world”. While Black people are not a monolith, the more representations of diverse Black peoples (Austin and Hsieh, 2021) are used to meaningfully ground language instruction, and the more likely students will construct an imagined community in which they might become invested.…”

“…Although WL teacher preparation potentially generates professionals who demonstrate asset-based instruction through the curriculum (Senyshyn and Martinelli, 2021) and planning that accurately represent Blackness across the diaspora, Blackness is often omitted from WL instruction (Anya and Randolph, 2019) and curricula (Austin and Hsieh, 2021). This omission is a form of dehumanization (Bishop, 1990) and both causal and symptomatic of the absence (Kubota et al , 2003) of Black WL teachers themselves.…”

The Interplay of Language and Gender in Dominant Discourses: Examining the Masculine Bias in Language

“…The symbiotic relationship a language has with culture makesit intertextual asits signifiers reflect the nature ofculture.Thus, the ideology of a culture is encoded in language through which its beliefs, attitudes, and notions of morality come to be fixed (Klemens, 2007).English language is often identified as patriarchal (Hellinger, 1980;Niner et.al., 2013;Austin & Hsieh, 2021;Yu, 2021) not only due to its favoring of masculine nouns as genericbut also because of its canonical literaturewhichseldomaffords a woman's name. Literature is a dominant discourse through which language receives popularity and circulation.…”