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Given the current political climate in the U.S.—the civil unrest regarding the recognition of the Black Lives Matter movement, the calls to abolish prisons and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention, and the workers’ rights movements—projects investigating moments of inter-ethnic solidarity and conflict remain essential. Because i...
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... the entire data set (with videos and comments), there was a total of 933 excerpts, which yielded 925 tokens of the focal raciolinguistic ideologies identified. Table 3 provides an overall summary of the number of times each raciolinguistic ideology appeared. DNA ideology was the most prevalent with 535 appearances. ...Citations
... Ideological exclusivity enters policies and practices through assumptions that imperial language standards hold more value than the African and Indigenous languages that predate them, or the local Black varieties that resulted from colonization. Recreating WLs includes redressing the harms of program designs that currently reflect market demands (Clemons, 2020) rather than community-centered impetuses for language study (Davis et al., 2023). World Languages for Black Linguistic Reparations directly challenges the notion that a disembodied language teaching practice is neutral and calls for a re-creation of the field in ways that increase participation by breaking down the ideological walls that keep the majority of eligible participants on the margins. ...
This conceptual work highlights the history of Black erasure throughout the existence of world languages (WLs) as a field of study in the United States. It outlines the unique challenges faced by African descended learners who have and continue to pursue WL study in US classrooms. These include but are not limited to reduced local funding and programmatic expectations due to the remnants of anti-Black educational policies, monolingual and imperial language ideologies prevalent in texts and pedagogical approaches, and generations of segregation in and outside of schools. Finally, this work proposes WLs serve as a site of Black Linguistic Reparations through, (1) the redistribution of resources in the field, (2) the repair of enacted WL teaching to meet the calls of ACTFL's standards for preparing students for communication in a pluralistic society, and (3) a recreation of the "world" as narrated through a global, rather than a white Western lens.
... As this paper specifically focuses on how notions of capital, culture and Blackness intersect within language teacher education, it is important to acknowledge that race as a socially constructed category does not reside within one sole ethnic or national group. For example, other racially minoritized communities-inclusive of Latinx students-are categorically treated as a singular linguistic and racial group despite their intra-categorical diversity (Clemons 2021). ...
Black youth as ‘struggling students’ is a persistent narrative in the contemporary U.S. psyche, both preceded by and markedly displayed through the 1983 report, A Nation at Risk, which reflected coded language encouraging a return to the pre-Civil Rights United States. This framing positioned Black students as culprits for the ills of U.S. schooling – a continuation of a history of educational policy that discursively enforces the need to defend society against ‘subhuman’ populations. Placing the 1983 policy report in conversation with Zwiers’ Building Academic Language: Meeting Common Core Standards Across Disciplines (2013) via raciolinguistic genealogy, I problematize the ways in which texts like these reinforce discourses of Black cultures and languages as subhuman, deviant threats to U.S. society.
... Second, Raciolinguistics theorizes the intersection of race, ethnicity and language [10] by moving toward a deeper examination of the impact of race in conceptualizing language, and vice versa [11]. Raciolinguistics also presents language as an ideological tool used to channel support or disapproval of linguistic and cultural identities through its rules, thus giving dominant social actors the authority to negate disapproved linguistic backgrounds, based on racist and "linguicist" philosophies [12,13]. This perspective allows us to denounce the "vicious physical, verbal, and epistemological abuse; in our media, our streets, in neighborhoods, and even in our schools" [5] that Translinguals endure routinely. ...
... The wide use of the term "Translanguaging" in most areas of academic discourse related to diverse multilingual and multimodal practices has surfaced questions Second, Raciolinguistics theorizes the intersection of race, ethnicity and language [10] by moving toward a deeper examination of the impact of race in conceptualizing language, and vice versa [11]. Raciolinguistics also presents language as an ideological tool used to channel support or disapproval of linguistic and cultural identities through its rules, thus giving dominant social actors the authority to negate disapproved linguistic backgrounds, based on racist and "linguicist" philosophies [12,13]. This perspective allows us to denounce the "vicious physical, verbal, and epistemological abuse; in our media, our streets, in neighborhoods, and even in our schools" [5] that Translinguals endure routinely. ...
Translingual students’ identities transcend multiple languages and cultural allegiances. Sociolinguistics widely discusses the linguistic and racial oppressions these students face in schools due to epistemic racism, which is often observed in the tension between their multilingual and multimodal communicative styles and language perspectives rooted in monolingual and monocultural ideologies. This paper expands on the literature that denounces epistemic racism, uses Raciolinguistics and New Literacy Studies as theoretical frameworks, and reports on the following inquiries: What are the characteristics of delegitimizing school stakeholders who become agents of epistemic racism in their interactions with translingual students? How do translingual students reject these agents’ marginalization? Critical focus groups, semi-structured and arts-based interviews, and emplaced observations were used to collect data, centering the identities and voices of participants. Two key findings emerged. First, school stakeholders with various roles, social power, and degree of impact epitomize epistemic racism through ideological discourses. Second, “Translinguals” resist through novel concepts for which I have coined the terms "Covert and Overt Transresistance,” enacted by the means of resisting transliteracies. The theoretical, research, and practical implications of these findings, along with recommendations for future research, are discussed.
... We again acknowledge that social categories in and of themselves are multiple and mutable, and thus any model used to interrogate these categories must be able to engage multiple strategies toward sustainable social justice. 20 Additionally, we reject the standard assumption of white cisgender heteropatriarchal capitalism as being the center of social formation. As such, we highlight the work of scholars who have consistently dismantled raciolinguistic ideologies as inextricably tied to the body. ...
In this essay, we highlight the colonial invention of oppositional and binary categories as a dominant form of social sorting and meaning-making in our society. We understand language as a tool for the construction, maintenance, and analysis of these categories. Through language, these categorizations often render those who sit at the margins illegible. We center the Black woman as the prototypical “other,” her condition being interpreted neither by conventions of race nor gender, and take Black womanhood as the point of departure for a description of the necessary intersecting and variable analyses of social life. We call for an exploration of social life that considers the raciolinguistic intersections of gender, sexuality, and social class as part and parcel of overarching social formations. In this way, we can advocate for a shift in linguistics and in all social sciences that accounts for the mutability of category. We argue that a raciolinguistic perspective allows for a more nuanced investigation of the compounding intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and social status that often function to erase Black womanhood.
... I therefore included additional representations outside of the specific term capital including investment, resource, disarmament among others. As this paper is specifically focuses on how notions of capital, culture and Blackness intersect within language teacher education, it is important to acknowledge that race as a socially constructed category does not reside within one sole ethnic or national group, and that other non-Black communities, inclusive of Latinx students, are categorically treated as a singular linguistic and racial group despite the intra-categorical diversity (Clemons, 2021). While it is not the central concern of this paper, I propose continued vigorous research to explore the complexities of the precarious access (Bonilla-Silva, 2004) Black and/or indigenous Latinx populations have regarding their portrayal as lacking language and culture. ...
The current racial homogeny in the United States K-12 public school teacher workforce
can be traced to the dismissal of Black teachers and administrators in the name of
desegregation following the 1950s supreme court Brown vs. Board of Education ruling.
The resulting raciodemographic mismatch persists today, and determinations about the performance of a largely minoritized student population are filtered through texts,
policies and instruction centered on the white middle-class monolingual women who
predominate both K-12 and teacher preparation spaces. In recognition of the challenges this presents, the teacher preparation program at Franklin University, like many across the U.S., has recently shifted its mission and vision to center racial equity and social justice. Through two qualitative studies and a critical essay, this dissertation addresses the research question, how does an urban social justice teacher preparation program shape racial ideologies?
The first study, via raciolinguistic genealogy, traces racialized discourses of cultural and linguistic capital across policy and academic texts published approximately 30 years apart. Results suggest these texts, which undergird the teacher licensure exam both at Franklin and more broadly, brand Black cultures and languages as a subhuman deviant threat to U.S. society. In the second paper, I conduct a critical analysis of a canonical teacher preparation text, and through counterstorytelling as method, reveal flattened class-centric representations of Black communities as devoid of culture rather than as drawing from community-knowledge both to affirm their humanity and to navigate white institutions. The final paper is a critical case study investigating the understandings of and practical approaches towards teaching about culture and identity on behalf of three language educators at Franklin. Results suggest implicitly racialized understandings of culture and a largely theoretical understanding of race and power which fails to translate to the preparation of language educators in a practical sense.
As explored through the conceptual framework of culturelessness, the findings from these studies suggest that antiBlackness is maintained rather than disrupted at Franklin largely through the euphemization of race principally as capital, class or culture. Implications for race-visibility and critical race-reflexivity are offered.
... Historical and contemporary conditions of structural and interpersonal racism shape access to and benefits of research participation for Black older adults. 5 Racialized determinants of health like transportation access, time constraints, and experiences of discrimination (EOD) in health care may influence racialized individual's decisions to participate in biomedical research. Prior studies assessing Black individuals' participation in AD research highlights the critical role community-based events and longstanding relationships play in bolstering recruitment and retention of Black individuals. ...
Introduction:
We examined factors related to willingness to enroll in hypothetical Alzheimer disease (AD) biomarker studies.
Methods:
Using linear regression, we assessed the relationship among enrollment willingness and demographics, family dementia history, research attitudes, concern about AD, experiences of discrimination, and belief in AD risk modifiability. Inductive coding was used to assess qualitative data.
Results:
In middle-aged and older adult AD research participants (n=334), willingness to enroll in biomarker studies was driven by biomarker collection method, research attitudes, and disclosure of personal results. Predictors of willingness were similar for Black and White participants. Themes associated with increased willingness included a desire to learn biomarker results and support research.
Discussion:
Research attitudes were an important predictor of biomarker study willingness regardless of race. As seen elsewhere, Black participants were more hesitant to participate in biomarker research. Disclosure of biomarker results/risk can bolster willingness to enroll in biomarker studies, particularly for Black participants.
winners of the International Association for Task-Based Language Teaching's Distinguished Practitioner Award (2023) for their groundbreaking work developing MI-BRIDGE, a fully open-access task-based Spanish language curriculum that centers Blackness in Latin America and Black language learners (Baralt et al., 2022). In the interview, the team overviews the rationale for the project, the iterative design process, and the many connections between TBLT and scholarship on inclusive pedagogies, multilingualism, and antiracism which, through this team's expertise, were brought together to design this TBLT curriculum. Importantly, though this curriculum was built with the U.S. context (specifically Spanish in Miami, Florida) in mind-localization, which is critical for successful TBLT (Long, 2015)-the example set by this project demonstrating TBLT's capacity to interface with other research and pedagogical frameworks to combat injustice and provide human-centered language learning programs is applicable and replicable for other educational contexts and learner populations globally. The current curricular resources are for beginner Spanish. The next level of materials is now under development, thanks to a grant from the U.S. Department of Education. Readers interested in receiving updates on further updates to materials, including the level two curriculum, can register for updates here.
Black Americans are disproportionately affected by dementia. To expand our understanding of mechanisms of this disparity, we look to Alzheimer's disease (AD) biomarkers. In this review, we summarize current data, comparing the few studies presenting these findings. Further, we contextualize the data using two influential frameworks: the National Institute on Aging–Alzheimer's Association (NIA‐AA) Research Framework and NIA's Health Disparities Research Framework. The NIA‐AA Research Framework provides a biological definition of AD that can be measured in vivo. However, current cut‐points for determining pathological versus non‐pathological status were developed using predominantly White cohorts—a serious limitation. The NIA's Health Disparities Research Framework is used to contextualize findings from studies identifying racial differences in biomarker levels, because studying biomakers in isolation cannot explain or reduce inequities. We offer recommendations to expand study beyond initial reports of racial differences. Specifically, life course experiences associated with racialization and commonly used study enrollment practices may better account for observations than exclusively biological explanations.
