Lenora Inez Brown, AATE Board Member and Scholarship & Research Co-Chair
2020 has been full of change and bold conversations in the United States and around the globe. One change that we at the American Association of Theatre and Education and Youth Theatre Journal specifically committed to, involves how we acknowledge, promote, and include the diversity of scholars, artists, educators, and the richness of ways of doing, thinking about and sharing approaches we produce by, for, and with youth.
To make this change my co-chair Dr. Gustave J. Weltsek and I, continue to explore how to best focus YTJ’s efforts. Chief among them is the consideration of the complexity and power of all words and how they are received and perceived to effect and influence. For example; during a YTJ board meeting, I heard the English language described as White Supremacist and that promoting English language writing makes any individual a White Supremacist.
This term isn’t to be used lightly. And I can say that I, a Black female, was immediately taken aback. I imagine that you, too (regardless of your ethnicity), responded with horror and strong emotions of shock and denial when confronted with the idea that writing well and encouraging others to emulate this practice earns you the reviled title of: White Supremacist.
There is no question that any language that usurps the language of native peoples or imposes a language upon a people is, at the very least, problematic. But, it is what we do with the any language, how we use it to expose wrongs, disenfranchise people or their voices that is truly damaging. We at YTJ and AATE are looking to create a new culture that welcomes scholars and works to support each unique, creative voice. AATE continues to commit to an anti-racist, anti-biased examination of the ways in which our infrastructures and systems may feed into and support exclusionary, biased and oppressive systems, actions—words.
In the next editions of YTJ you will receive updates on how we on the Editorial Board and the Scholarship & Research Committee are working to ensure that all voices are welcome. We will share our efforts to make both the submission and review processes more transparent and supportive. The articles will use language that is clear, cogent, and persuasive while embracing individual voice and writing styles. In short, if bell hooks can be published forgoing capitalization, YTJ can support new forms of presenting research. We can even redefine research.
That’s right. We can define research to be externally sourced writings replete with footnotes as well as rigorously recorded production work and anything in between. We can do this because we know that Youth Theatre Journal is, at its heart, a publication that supports innovative thinking.
Transformative ideas cannot always conform to traditional structures or language just as distilling language always excludes and calls attentions to the ‘other’. We, at YTJ are working to do better and become a place where everyone is not only welcome but heard.