“What Do They Think of Us?”: The Pedagogical Practices of Cross-Cultural Communication, Misrecognition, and Hope

Abstract

This article addresses the pedagogical aspects of cross-cultural communication, dialogue and democratic pluralism. Analysis of a classroom conversation about unrepaired levees in New Orleans and the media demonstrates the complexities that can arise when addressing race. Intercultural communication research has offered useful attention to these complexities, which have a direct link to the objectives of dialogue and pluralism. The article asserts that pluralism requires affective and cognitive recognition of that which offends and is beyond one's imagination, and that acts of racialized misrecognition often hold within them the practices of justice and hope.

Keywords:

• Race
• Pedagogy
• Dialogue
• Democracy
• Pluralism

Acknowledgements

She would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful feedback.

Notes

1. Both Minow (2002) and Mouffe (2000) assert that such claims to pluralism do not “abandon an ethical commitment to identify[ing] conditions and actions that” have consequences that are more or less desirable in a democracy (Minow, 2002, p. 145). Likewise, Mouffe claims that there are “limits to pluralism” which have a direct relationship to “relations of power” (2000, p. 20).

2. I have changed students’ names in this article in ways that resemble the students’ actual names.

3. Throughout the semester, Megan identified herself as straight by referring often to “my husband and I.” At the time of writing this article, I could not remember if Megan's identification of her sexuality had occurred before the conversation this article analyzes or not.

4. My use of the word “students” in this article is uneasy in terms of who it includes. In relation to the conversation I address, no student offered verbal support for Lashona's answer to Megan at any time during that class meeting. In other class meetings during that semester, it was most often one or two white students who chose to offer support or engage directly with something Lashona had said. The Latino student and biracial student did opt to consistently complicate race and resist whiteness. The student born in Jamaica expressed what I read as a clear discomfort with and at times antagonism toward Lashona. He also openly and thoroughly critiqued the frequency and kinds of conversations we had in class about race, which I understood as a statement finding fault with my teaching and with other students, all of whom participated in these conversations. Thus “students” refers to most white students, and also generally to any student who in specific interactions resisted a critique of racism. See Rowe and Malhotra (2007) for an excellent discussion of the complexities of whiteness and racial identity.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jennifer S. Simpson

Jennifer S. Simpson is an Associate Professor in the Department of Drama and Speech Communication at the University of Waterloo