‘Race had never been an issue’: examining white supremacy in English language teaching

Abstract

This paper explores the ways in which white monolingual and monocultural English teachers articulate racial issues and conceptualise the racial identities of multiply-marginalised students in the classroom context. Drawing on the work of Charles Mills, this contribution aligns with an understanding of white supremacy as a means to historically dispossess, assimilate, and eliminate negatively racialized and language-minoritized communities, through mechanisms of Western settler-colonial hegemony and English language teaching. The authors present a qualitative case study of discursive practices of white English language educators who, despite their intentions to be inclusive, often (re)produce white supremacist values, language, and knowledges. Finally, this paper supports a more critical approach to the field of English language teaching, which recognizes and contends with whiteness and white supremacy in the co-construction of negatively-­racialized and language-minoritized identities.

Keywords:

• English language teaching
• critical whiteness
• refugee and migrant education
• colour-evasiveness

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 We use the term ‘language-minoritized’ rather than ‘English language learner’ or ‘non-English-speaking’ throughout this paper. Although the analysis focuses on English within the context of whiteness and language teaching, we aim to disrupt the deficit-based perspective of children and families who speak minoritized languages other than English which is enshrined in terms such as ‘English language learner’ (Cioé Peña 2018), ‘limited English proficient,’ or ‘non-English-speaking’ by foregrounding the minorizing of a multitude of other languages by ELT policy and practice.

2 Throughout this article, the authors capitalise ‘B’ in ‘Black’ and ‘I’ in ‘Indigenous,’ but do not capitalise ‘w’ in ‘white.’ ‘Black’ reflects a shared identity and sense of community for people of the African diaspora across geographic and political borders (DuBois 1899; Tharps 2014). Furthermore, like the capital ‘I’ in ‘Indigenous,’ the capital ‘B’ in ‘Black’ indicates respect and acknowledgement of the language widely chosen and/or accepted by the people of that group to identify themselves and each other (McCue 2016). Following statements put forth by organisations such as the Columbia Journalism Review (Laws 2020) and the Associated Press (Bauder 2020), the authors do not capitalize ‘white’ due to the social and political context of this study, which takes place in the U.S. during a time of widespread social and political reckoning with race, white supremacy, and xenophobia. In the U.S., the use of ‘white’ with a capital letter carries different meanings and is commonly associated with white supremacist groups. Although some Black authors and scholars argue for the capitalisation of all racial identifiers (e.g., Painter 2020; Tharps 2014), the authors of this article intentionally use the lower-case ‘w’ in acknowledgement of the tensions and context-specific associations of using a capital ‘W’ at the time of this study.

3 We use parentheses to affix ‘im’ to the word ‘migrant’ to signify the floating significance of labels for individuals who move between and across different political and social borders.

4 In the U.S., the term ‘colour-blind,’ originally intended to mean ‘regardless of race,’ has been co-opted as a commitment to ignore race (Murray 2012). Following Annamma, Jackson, and Morrison (2017), we do not use the term ‘colour-blind’ in this analysis because it exercises ableist metaphor which limits our own possibilities to dismantle oppressive discourse and structures because it positions another social identity group (disability) as undesirable.

5 English language learners (ELLs) is an educational label used in New York and other states across the U.S. to describe language-minoritized students who are not yet considered proficient in English. This label is based on students’ scores on an English-only language proficiency assessment administered upon enrolment in school, and another annual assessment administered each year of enrolment in public school thereafter. ‘English language learner’ students are entitled to specialized services and supports related to acquiring English until they receive a scaled score within the ‘Commanding’ range on the annual English proficiency assessment in New York State. Among these is specialized English language instruction which necessitates collaboration and co-teaching among their teachers across the school day (NYSED 2015, 2018).

6 In New York State, English as a New Language (ENL) is an educational program term used as a replacement for English as a Second Language (ESL) or English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL). ENL is taught by teachers with special certifications who are called ‘ENL teachers.’ In this study, we refer to ENL teachers and general education teachers who work in classrooms for students labelled as ‘ELLs’ as ‘English language teachers’ because they both provide specialised English language instruction, supports, and assessment and receive ELT-specific professional development (NYSED 2015, 2018)

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Fulbright-Schuman Program.