[Linganth] Language & Culture Course / Covid syllabi and Race

Fri Jun 19 18:40:32 UTC 2020

Dear Colleagues, while this doesn't address directly issues raised by
Teruko's important post, on this Juneteenth I would like to share with you
a really good resource for teaching about language and race from Renee
Blake: *Talking Black in America (2017); (Renee Blake) Associate Producer
and Contributor*
*Visit:https://www.talkingblackinamerica.org
<https://www.talkingblackinamerica.org/>*

janina

On Thu, Jun 18, 2020 at 10:56 AM Jacqueline Messing <jmessing at umd.edu>
wrote:

> Dear Teruko, Shannon and colleagues,
>
> Thank you Teruko for your helpful email pointing to the dearth of BIPOC in
> our field. I want to respond specifically to your comment that this is "a
> good opportunity to bring up in this community the topic of racism and
> teaching about race and racism in linguistic anthropology" I have been
> thinking the same thing. I have been teaching a "Language and Racism"
> seminar for 14 years and before teaching it again this summer I wanted to
> crowdsource  my syllabus overhaul. I posed the following question to
> Twitter 2 days ago: Colleagues, what 2-3 readings would be on *your*
> must-read list in a Language, Identity and Racism class in summer 2020?
> Many colleagues have responded to my Tweet producing wonderful references.
> I can post these to this listserv when it's completed.
>
> In solidarity,
> Jacqueline M.
>
>
> --
> Jacqueline Messing, Ph.D.
> Lecturer, Department of Anthropology
> University of Maryland-College Park
> https://umcp.academia.edu/JacquelineMessing
> Twitter @jacqmessing <https://twitter.com/>
>
> On Wed, Jun 17, 2020 at 7:15 PM Teruko Vida Mitsuhara <tmitsuhara at ucla.edu>
> wrote:
>
>> Dear Shannon and colleagues,
>>
>>
>> I wrote my online Spring 2020 class of Language in Culture as one
>> dedicated to Covid-19. I only had a few days to design it before the UCLA
>> quarter started, so pardon any omissions. The idea was to frame the class
>> as a therapeutic process to shift into analyst mode and chronicle the
>> changes as they were/are happening. Students kept fieldnotes throughout
>> their quarter and online (and some in-person) ethnographic projects, and my
>> hope was that it would be helpful in their own healing to journal
>> throughout the quarter. My syllabus is attached. Overall it was an
>> incredibly fruitful class. And the online modality opened up so many
>> opportunities for teacher-student engagement.
>>
>>
>> *About the class:*
>>
>> I spent one week teaching a handful of chapters from Lisa Capps and
>> Elinor Ochs' *Constructing Panic*, as the home was being reimagined and
>> experienced for all of us at the onset of stay-at-home orders. Students
>> really liked that text. Moral panics and the role of the media in creating
>> such swirls was a focus as well, which I then used to transition into moral
>> panics about race and language. That was in the middle of the quarter and
>> acted as my segue into more explicit conversations about race.
>>
>>
>> I had designed a final where students could do an in-person or online
>> ethnographic project that was somehow related to Covid-19. In the end, I
>> decided to make it optional. However, many students did submit or met with
>> me to share their findings on topics such as online dating during Covid,
>> Zoom classes, Trump’s press briefings, an analysis of late-night talk show
>> monologues and switched comedy formats during this time, conversations with
>> family members who are essential workers, conspiracy theory, debates about
>> Black lives on The Shade Room, and more. I had integrated online
>> ethnographies into the entire class since those works would mirror their
>> own research process best. And then finally I sent the class resources on
>> how to publish their work beyond the academy whether in op-ed form or in
>> platforms such as this one <https://anthrocovid.com/1-2/> that’s
>> collecting anthropologists’ accounts of what’s going on.
>>
>>
>> *About race issues*:
>>
>> I understand where the request for resources about the “race issues we
>> are experiencing” is coming from, but the wording of that request hints at
>> a sense that race issues we experience are new in the US and abroad, which
>> is a problematic basis from which to teach the topic at this time, or
>> anytime. I’m confident you do not mean it this way, but I think this is a
>> good opportunity to bring up in this community the topic of racism and
>> teaching about race and racism in linguistic anthropology.
>>
>>
>> As I’ve followed recent online discussions on race, I have noticed that
>> they tend to center on two issues: 1) The potential of our analytical tools
>> for activism and structural change and 2) Diversity within academia. There
>> is overlap between these points, but they are different.  #1 does not
>> address the problems regarding #2. Both need to be addressed in my opinion
>> when teaching about racism in linguistic anthropology courses.
>>
>>
>> 1) We know that the tools in linguistic anthropology can be used to
>> understand and analyze what is going on, and that there are numerous
>> readings and research that attend to race and racism, like the ones Rachel
>> and others have generously shared already. In my syllabi, I also make sure
>> to talk about the creation of whiteness and racial socialization of that
>> racial identity, indeed many students think “race issues” are about Black
>> people and do not have to do with White people as racialized subjects,
>> though perhaps there is an opening for change there now… In any case, I
>> make a nod to Toni Morrison’s recorded interview
>> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6S7zGgL6Suw> about racism as White
>> people’s problem to fix in class. I supplement that video with readings
>> from *White Kids* (2011) by Mary Bucholtz. Students have also really
>> enjoyed reading articles and excerpts by sociologist Margaret Hagerman.
>> This spring I taught one chapter ‘Shaking Those Ghetto Booties*’*:
>> Family Race Talk from her 2018 book *Growing Up With Privilege in a
>> Racially Divided America*, and students were shocked to read about
>> liberal upper class family conversations on race. These works encapsulate
>> how close attention to language and the tools of linguistic anthropology
>> can be mobilized to dissect racism and I place them and others on my
>> syllabus whenever possible. But of course, reading and teaching is one
>> thing and structural change in the discipline’s hiring practices is
>> another, which is what leads me to #2:
>>
>>
>> 2) This second issue is one where I have felt the great hypocrisy of my
>> subfield. There’s now again heightened awareness among the white majority
>> of racism and black representation in institutions. So now is a good time
>> to ask:  Where are the black linguistic anthropologists in tenured
>> positions? Where are the black female linguistic anthropologists on
>> syllabi? Why are there more black scholars in sociolinguistics as opposed
>> to in linguistic anthropology? What is going on in our subfield? Let’s talk
>> about representation on syllabi, in the subfield, and why our field is
>> great at dissecting racism but clearly not in creating inclusive
>> anti-racist spaces where Black people want to be or are welcomed to thrive.
>>
>>
>> I am Japanese-American and Afrolatina. In this country I am often read as
>> an ethnically ambiguous Latina and/or Asian-American unless my hair is
>> braided or is natural, and in such cases my treatment is markedly
>> different, and I have found it takes more energy to move in academia as a
>> Black woman than as an Asian or an ambiguously non-white one. When read and
>> treated as Black I am petted in hallways and gatherings with some
>> colleagues, stared down, told that my placement in my graduate program was
>> because of affirmative action, and generally I feel so much more
>> vulnerable. Of course I can say more, but my point is that there is
>> something askew with how Blackness and Black people (esp. women) are
>> treated in academia, in anthropology, and in linguistic anthropology. My
>> vantage point as a “transracial subject” (Alim 2016) has allowed me to see
>> and experience this very specific issue with Blackness in our discipline.
>>
>>
>> The problem therefore of race issues and racism cannot be only about the
>> points in #1 and remedying it by making sure we have a token Black person
>> citation on a syllabus or present at a conference. I of course do not think
>> that was the spirit of Shannon’s inquiry at all, but I’m using this as an
>> opportunity to voice my concern that the syllabi that come for summer and
>> onwards do not simply make a nod to the “race issues we are currently
>> facing.” These are long-standing issues and my stance is that the catch-22
>> of it all must be addressed. Readings by the very few black linguistic
>> anthropologists need to be assigned consciously since without that effort
>> it is not consistently done across the field, and at the same time “race
>> and racism” cannot be relegated to one day in class, it must be integrated
>> throughout the course. I affirm that students need to *see *and *read *that
>> there are black linguistic anthropologists, especially with mention of the
>> history and presence (and lack thereof) of Black people in this field.
>>
>>
>> Why is there such a dearth of Black people in our subfield community? I
>> started a list below, and I would absolutely love to see that list grow,
>> I’m hopeful that there are more faculty than I am aware of and I trust
>> there are more newly minted Phds like myself on this list. (And of course
>> we must also be aware that the graduation rates for BIPOC in grad school is
>> a very related issue as well. Racial and class diversity in the beginning
>> cohort of a grad program is one thing, conferred Phds is another.)
>>
>>
>> Below is the list of Black linguistic anthropology tenured or
>> tenure-track professors I know of and whose work I cite in my syllabi
>> and/or lectures, please add more, I would like to learn their names and
>> read their work:
>>
>>
>> Lanita Jacobs
>> <https://dornsife.usc.edu/cf/faculty-and-staff/faculty.cfm?pid=1003379>, Associate
>> Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity and Anthropology at USC. She
>> received her PhD in Linguistic anthropology at UCLA about twenty years ago.
>>
>> Marcyliena Morgan <https://aaas.fas.harvard.edu/people/marcyliena-morgan>,
>> Ernest E. Monrad Professor of the Social Sciences, Professor of African and
>> African American Studies, and Executive Director of the HipHop Archive and
>> Research Institute at Harvard University.
>>
>> Claudia Mitchell-Kernan
>> <https://aas.princeton.edu/people/claudia-mitchell-kernan>, Professor
>> Emerita of Anthropology, Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at
>> Princeton. Her early work formed the basis of linganth centering focus on
>> Black women's speech.
>>
>> Krystal Small
>> <https://linguistics.illinois.edu/directory/profile/ksmalls>s, Assistant
>> Professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
>>
>> Samy Alim <https://www.anthro.ucla.edu/faculty/h-samy-alim>, Professor
>> and David O. Sears Presidential Endowed Chair in the Division of Social
>> Sciences at UCLA.
>>
>> Django Paris <https://education.uw.edu/people/dparis>, Associate
>> Professor and James A. & Cherry A. Banks Professor of Multicultural
>> Education at the University of Washington.
>>
>> Jim Baugh <https://sites.wustl.edu/baugh/>, Professor of Psychology,
>> Anthropology, Education, English, Linguistics, and African and
>> African-American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis.
>>
>>
>> All the best,
>>
>>
>> Teru
>>
>>
>>
>> Alim, H. Samy. 2016. “Who's Afraid of the Transracial Subject?
>> Raciolinguistics an the Political Project of Transracialization.” In *Raciolinguistics:
>> How Language Shapes Our Ideas About Race, *First edition, edited by H.
>> Samy Alim, John R. Rickford, and Arnetha F. Ball, 33–50. New York: Oxford
>> University Press.
>>
>>
>> Teruko Vida Mitsuhara, Ph.D.
>>
>> Lecturer, UCLA Anthropology
>>
>> https://terukomitsuhara.com
>>
>>
>> Preferred pronouns: she/her/hers
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>
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