Teaching Antiracist Reading

ABSTRACT

In this article, Inoue offers an antiracist reading practice for students in literacy classrooms of all kinds. This practice draws on a number of disciplines in order to help students read in ways that help them see the structural and personal in the judgments they make with and in language as they read. Central to an antiracist reading practice is understanding White language supremacy and how all readers and texts participate in it, even as some struggle against it.

KEYWORDS:

• Antiracism
• judgment
• reading
• White language supremacy
• whiteness

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. For the Christian tradition of lectio divina, or “divine reading,” see Paintner (2011); for Buddhist versions of contemplative practices that read or listen to the world and others, see Hanh (1991, 1987); for a range of contemplative practices applied to a range of disciplines in higher education, see Barbezat and Bush (2014); for a theoretical look at mediation and contemplative inquiry, see chapter seven of Zajonc (2009); for another version of a similar kind of deep attentive practice that is meant to address racial microaggressions in everyday life, see Oluo (2019, pp. 175–176).

2. A version of these six habits of White language and judgment are in Inoue (2019a, pp. 399–400). I offer a deeper discussion of habits of Whiteness (or White racial habitus) as they relate to classroom writing assessment in Inoue (2015, pp. 47–51). I also discuss Whiteness and White language supremacy in grading in classrooms in Chapter 1 of Inoue (2019c). In each of these places, I offer other literature and research on Whiteness that informs the six habits of White language and judgment. A few that may be initially helpful are Ahmed (2007); Barnett (2000); Brookhiser (1997); Fanon (1986); Frye (1992); Kennedy et al. (2017); Myser (2003).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Asao B. Inoue

Asao B. Inoue is Professor and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs, Equity, and Inclusion for the College of Integrative Sciences and Arts at Arizona State University. He is a past member of the Executive Board of CWPA and the CCCC Executive Committee, and the 2019 Chair of CCCC. He has published many articles and chapters on writing assessment and race and racism, as well as two edited collections and two books on writing assessment and race. He has won the CWPA’s 2014 Outstanding Scholarship Award, their 2015 Outstanding Book Award, and the NCTE/CCCC Outstanding Book Award in 2014 and 2016.