Critical Race Pedagogy for More Effective and Inclusive World Language Teaching

Critical Race Pedagogy for More Effective and Inclusive World Language Teaching

*UJU ANYA

Department of Modern Languages, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh,

PA 15213, USA *E-mail: [email protected]

To address racial inequity and the exclusion of African Americans in applied lin-

guistics, second-language acquisition, and world language (WL) education, our

field must reckon with social justice problems of racism and anti-Blackness.

Theoretical frameworks of critical race theory (CRT) and critical race pedagogy

(CRP) elucidate how such injustices are perpetuated, plus, propose solutions for

them. This article discusses racism and anti-Blackness in WL curriculum, materi-

als, and instructional practices. It presents a post-hoc CRT analysis of findings

from two studies: (i) an ethnographic study examining Spanish curriculum and

instructional practices at two minority serving postsecondary institutions and (ii)

a participatory action research collaboration with Spanish instructors examining

curriculum at a predominantly white institution—both studies linked by how

they reveal endemic racism and anti-Blackness in WL programmes. Ultimately,

this article addresses how African Americans can more authentically and suc-

cessfully participate in WL programmes. It introduces to the field a proposal of

CRP for more effective WL teaching to promote practices in antiracism, equity-

mindedness, and inclusivity for greater retention and success of Black students.

INTRODUCTION

Racialized inequity fundamentally impacts experiences, institutions, and prac-

tices in world language1 (WL) education in the USA. Such is the case of

African Americans,2 who are underrepresented and marginalized in WL pro-

grammes and understudied in broader areas of applied linguistics and second-

language acquisition research (Anya 2020). To raise awareness and help rem-

edy this unjust exclusion, one must reckon with race and address social justice

problems of racism and anti-Blackness in WL learning, teaching, and research.

Yet, little inquiry in this field has been conducted undergirded by the theoret-

ical frameworks of critical race theory (CRT) and critical race pedagogy (CRP),

which seek to systematically examine and elucidate how such injustices are

perpetuated, plus, propose solutions to address them.

CRT and CRP posit that racism is deeply woven into all our educational

institutions, practices, and interactions. Racism manifests in language educa-

tion, for example, through raciolinguistic ideologies that lionize the bilingual-

ism of White elite WL learners and problematize that of poor and racially

minoritized English learners (Flores and Rosa 2019); through curricular

VC The Author(s) (2021). Published by Oxford University Press.

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-

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Applied Linguistics 2021: 42/6: 1055–1069

https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amab068 Advance Access published on 13 July 2021

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erasure of non-dominant groups (Ferreira and Camargo 2014; Guerrettaz and

Zahler 2017); and presentation of White, upper class images and experiences

as primarily representative of speaker populations (Taylor-Mendes 2009; Lee

2015). This article describes anti-Blackness in WL curriculum, materials, in-

structional practices, and contributes to the field by using CRT and CRP to

show new ways of understanding, theorizing, investigating, and addressing ra-

cism and anti-Blackness.

The article presents a CRT-based post-hoc qualitative analysis of findings

from a year-long ethnographic needs analysis study examining the Spanish

language curriculum and instructional practices at two minority serving post-

secondary institutions. The analysis compares them with findings from a par-

ticipatory action research collaboration with Spanish language instructors

examining curriculum and instruction at a predominantly white institution

(PWI) to show how WL programmes exhibit the anti-Blackness found in

broader society and often do not provide a meaningful learning experience for

Black students. Goals of the article are to address how African Americans can

authentically and successfully participate in WL learning and to propose a

CRP for WL teaching (CRPWLT) that promotes meaningful inclusion, reten-

tion, and success of Black students in WL programmes.

LITERATURE REVIEW

CRT is an analytical framework originating in legal studies to examine how ra-

cism and systemic bias disenfranchise individuals of colour in the USA

(Crenshaw et al. 1995; Brown and Jackson 2013) with particular relevance to

racial inequity in education (Ladson-Billings 1998). The six main tenets of

CRT (Ledesma and Calderón 2015) and Lynn (1999) and Jennings and Lynn

(2005) four principles of CRP form the framework upon which the post hoc

analysis and proposal for CRPWLT presented in this article are based.

Theoretical framework

The first tenet of CRT is the preponderance of racism, so deeply and invisibly

enmeshed into thinking, interactions, systems, practices, and institutions, that

disparities between Whites and people of colour are assumed part of a natural

and inevitable order. The second is a critique of liberal myths, like objectivity,

meritocracy, and race neutrality. The third tenet of CRT posits Whiteness itself

as property that confers privileges of exclusivity, preference, and authority.

The fourth is the notion of interest convergence where gains in equity and up-

lift for people of colour are only made when they also benefit Whites. The fifth

CRT tenet elevates voice and experiential knowledge of African Americans

and others from racially minoritized identities as legitimate, authoritative

sources of direct evidence, and theory generation through their personal

stories—or counternarratives—that challenge the dominant paradigm of

White, upper class, male voices as standard knowledge. Counternarratives

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also shed light on the sixth CRT tenet, intersectionality, which posits that

minoritized people experience racism in ways inextricably linked with and

exacerbated by other forms of oppression such as sexism, classism, and

homophobia.

Lynn (1999) and Jennings and Lynn (2005) recognized CRT’s profound

relevance in education and the need for a framework for its pedagogical appli-

cation. They also sought to address the lack of meaningful consideration of

race and racism in critical theory and critical pedagogy traditions popularized

in the US academy since the 1980s (Lynn 2004). Thus, they developed a CRP

guided by four main principles rooted in CRT: (i) An understanding of the en-

demic nature of racism and how deeply interwoven it is in all areas of educa-

tion; (ii) the recognition of a ‘culture of power’ in schooling that reproduces

societal racial hierarchies, which need to be acknowledged, understood, and

negotiated; (iii) the importance of self-reflection or reflexivity for scholars and

practitioners who engage in CRP; and (iv) the practice of liberatory forms of

teaching and learning for equity and social justice. Principles of CRP do not

prescribe specific paths or lessons for CRT-based instruction, but instead, lend

to the elaboration of pedagogical techniques and strategies with an emancipa-

tory CRT focus like, for example, using counternarratives of minoritized stu-

dents as a tool for CRP in urban school curriculum (Taliaferro Baszile 2009)

and counternarratives of instructors of colour for bilingual teacher education

(Fránquiz et al. 2011).

CRT and CRP in applied linguistics research

A considerable gap in CRT and CRP is their lack of accounting for language,

given how linguistic identities are racialized (Rosa 2019) and linguistic stigma

stems from racism (Baker-Bell 2020). These considerations were made in

applied linguistics by Crump (2014), who proposed a critical race and lan-

guage theory, or ‘LangCrit’, and Rosa and Flores (2017), who introduced

‘raciolinguistics’, as frameworks for theorizing those inextricable links.

Additionally, some work in applied linguistics is based on original CRT princi-

ples. Anya’s (2017) monograph on African Americans in a study abroad

showed the predominance of racism and anti-Blackness in policies, pedagogy,

classrooms, and communities. Kubota (2004) and Chun (2016) in English as a

second language (ESL)/English as a foreign language (EFL) and Michael-Luna

(2009) in bilingual education critiqued liberal multiculturalism that reduces

complex identities and hierarchical relations to superficial banality like ‘cele-

brating diversity’ through ethnic foods and festivals. Scanlan and Palmer

(2009) and Palmer (2010) in dual language education also critiqued purported

race neutrality and ‘colourblind racism’ in policies and educator practices used

to justify excluding Black students from two-way immersion programmes. In

EFL, Jenks (2017) and Ferreira and Camargo (2014) highlighted Whiteness as

valuable property in English language teaching where White instructors get

more jobs and higher pay, and curriculum presents White people as normative

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representations of English speakers. Burns (2017) and Palmer (2010) showed

interest convergence in how Latinx students gained access to dual language

programmes that sustained Spanish language instruction only when also ben-

efiting White families seeking Spanish immersion. Students and teachers’ sto-

ries in Michael-Luna (2009), Ferreira (2015), and Fránquiz et al. (2011)

presented counternarratives of marginalized identities and intersectionality as

evidence against the dominant, racist paradigm that excludes them.

This article is situated within WL teaching where, with some notable excep-

tions like those featured in Kubota and Lin (2009) and Von Esch et al. (2020),

there is little CRT-based inquiry. Promising inroads have been made with calls

from Wesely et al. (2016) and Randolph and Johnson (2017) for critical and

social justice pedagogy as an integral part of WL, which entails explicit consid-

erations of race and racism. However, a CRT-based pedagogy has yet to be pro-

posed for WL teaching in the USA. Hence, I will make recommendations for

conducting more WL research guided by CRT and propose a CRPWLT to pro-

mote more effective and inclusive practice.

METHODS

Insights and pedagogical recommendations presented in this article are based

on a post hoc analysis of findings from two studies (Table 1). The analysis asked

the question: How do these findings illustrate CRT tenets of practicing racial

realism (not harbouring illusions of racial equality), critiquing liberal myths,

and prioritizing knowledge from counternarratives? Study 1 was a year-long

ethnographic needs analysis (Long 2005) study that investigated the Spanish

language and instructor training programmes (reported in Anya et al. 2020) at

a Hispanic serving institution (HSI) and a historically Black university

(HBCU). The study was a collaboration between the universities in an ongoing

relationship where White Hispanic instructors, trained as MA and PhD level

language TAs at the former, taught all-Black groups of undergraduate students

at the latter. My role in Study 1 was co-investigator and training programme

expert.

I conducted Study 2 at a beginner-level Spanish language programme in a

large public PWI where, as the principal investigator, I facilitated, collaborated

in, and examined a participatory action research (McIntyre 2008) project

(reported in Anya and Fernández Castro 2019) that entailed critical engage-

ment with instructors in collaborative inquiry and self-assessment using a lan-

guage programme materials analysis protocol I developed (see Supplementary

materials). In my role as both teacher trainer and researcher, I contributed to

and observed workshop sessions of collaborative inquiry and self-assessment

to conduct critical discourse analysis (Elissondo 2001; Wodak and Meyer

2009) examining the extent instructional materials (e.g. textbooks, learning

websites, syllabi, lesson plans) demonstrated anti-racist, equity-minded, and

inclusive practices that help Black students succeed in language study.

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Table 1: Descriptions of the two studies

Study 1 Study 2

Goals Examine decline in African American student enrolment, why none continue in pro- gramme past requirement, and most instructors from HSI hired to teach at HBCU quit before contract ends

Determine extent programme utilizes equity-minded, anti-racist, and inclusive practices that help Black students succeed in lan- guage study

Investigate Black students’ inter- ests in cultural connection with Spanish language com- munities, assess their real-life needs for communication to design curriculum and target tasks meaningful to their lives, contexts, and actual needs

Plan action for how pro- gramme policies and practi- ces could be modified to become more equity- minded, anti-racist, and inclusive

Study site HSI PWI (large urban public university) (Large rural public university

beginner Spanish programme)

HBCU (small urban private Christian

university)

Participants Fifty Black students (African American, Caribbean, African), self-identified

One White Anglo, four White Hispanic, one Black Hispanic instructor, self- identifiedNine White Hispanic instructors,

one Black Hispanic instructor, self-identified

Design Year-long ethnographic learning and teaching needs analysis study conducted in 2018

Six-month participatory ac- tion research project con- ducted in 2018

Data Interviews, class observations, questionnaires, journals, lan- guage use audit, community visits, local job descriptions

Interviews, three-session workshop series with critic- al discourse analysis, pro- gramme instructional, promotional materials (textbooks, digital labs, on- line learning sites, syllabi, lessons, PowerPoints, bro- chures, website)

Analysis Content analysis, discourse ana- lysis, document analysis, task- based analysis

Participants conduct themat- ic, content and document critical discourse analysis using language programme materials analysis protocol

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Studies 1 and 2 share a common focus on examining WL programmes and

enacting change to improve experiences for Black students. The studies prom-

inently feature collaboration in research and practice between institutions,

researchers and instructors, and among instructors, exemplifying the central

role of collaboration in applied linguistics for social justice and the importance

of collective action that engages stakeholders who recognize their responsibil-

ity to promote change. Most importantly, both studies are linked by how their

findings reveal endemic racism and anti-Blackness in WL programmes and

provide powerful illustrations of the CRT tenets.

The researcher–teacher trainer

I am a Black American woman of West African and Caribbean heritage, work-

ing as a WL learning researcher and language teacher educator at a PWI. I

studied and taught Portuguese and Spanish at three major US universities

where I was the only Black student in my classes, and as an instructor, never

had a Black colleague. My applied linguistics doctoral programme did not have

Black students or faculty, and now, as a scholar in applied linguistics and WL

education, I often attend professional gatherings with no or few Black faces

among thousands. My eagerness to remedy the underrepresentation of Black

people in this field comes from experiencing our marginalization firsthand.

RESULTS OF POST HOC CRT ANALYSIS OF FINDINGS FROM STUDIES 1 AND 2

CRT-based examination of Studies 1 and 2 demonstrated racial realism (con-

trary to illusions of racial equity) showing endemic racism impacting participa-

tion of Black students and instructors. Counternarratives highlighted Black

experiences—and participants’ critical interpretation of these episodes—chal-

lenging liberal myths of race neutrality, objectivity, and equitable, harmoni-

ous multiculturalism. CRT analysis provided key insights on anti-Blackness in

WL, which is a social justice problem that may not be readable through differ-

ent theoretical lens and cannot be addressed if not first identified.

Study 1: racial realism

In Study 1, Black student enrolment in beginner Spanish decreased significantly

over eight years at both the HSI and HBCU. At intermediate level, it reduced

from few to zero. Attrition was also noted among teaching staff, because 80 per

cent of mostly White Hispanic Spanish instructors trained at the HSI and hired

at the HBCU quit before their contracts ended. The instructors reported feeling

unprepared to teach at a Black university, citing culture shock, distress, inad-

equate student preparation, and institutional capacity as reasons for leaving.

This finding illustrated a tenet of CRT, which is how racism is so normalized in

our thinking, that structural inequities seem natural. White instructors said

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openly they could not work in an all-Black environment due to duress of being

a minority—something Black people do almost everywhere in society while

expected to be grateful for being integrated into ‘mainstream’ environments. In

questionnaires and interviews, White instructors did not discuss if they consid-

ered remedying their lack of knowledge and preparation to work in this envir-

onment or altering instructional practices for specific needs of Black students.

Instead, they focused on how Black students’ deficits made them difficult to

teach. White instructors also did not express efforts to understand inequitable

funding, institutional marginalization, and other systemic causes of precarious

resources at HBCUs choosing, instead, more facile and racist explanations of

Black students and Black schools not being good enough.

Study 1: liberal myths

From the perspective of many Black students in Study 1, the programme did

neither interest them nor adequately serve their needs. All reported negative

classroom experiences due to poor instructional environments, and many

expressed a common sentiment that Spanish class, in the exact words of one

first year undergraduate, ‘had nothing to do with me’ or people like him, since

teachers and materials did not present Black populations as important social

and cultural agents. During current events activities, instructors did not dis-

cuss news about Black people or discrimination against them, and there were

many such stories of local and national interest. Some students noted they

would have wanted this, since topical presentations were about real life, and

considerations of such issues were a fundamental part of being Black in the

USA. The White instructors, however, did not know how to manage discom-

fort discussing racism in class, and they felt those matters did not belong in

language courses based on liberal myths of race neutrality or ‘we don’t see col-

our’ in multilingual and multicultural exchanges. However, no aspect of the

Black students’ lives was devoid of consideration of race, including their

Spanish classes, which they did not view as race neutral, just simply another

area of life and academic study that ignored their racial identities while high-

lighting other people’s.

Study 1: Black Hispanic instructor counternarrative

The only Black Spanish language instructor at the HSI and HBCU—a doctoral

candidate from Latin America—was open to discussing race, racism, and

Blackness among Spanish-speaking populations but was still conscripted into

delivering limited, standardized content. In his counternarrative, he tearfully

and regretfully described an episode where he believed his strict adherence to

course material contributed to harm against an African American student:

We were doing the task to practice dates when I ask [African American student] to say what is Independence Day, like the an- swer was 4th of July, but in Spanish. But he said nothing, and I ask

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again, and he said nothing. And I think, maybe he doesn’t know, and I try to help him. Then he say, no, it’s not my day. I don’t really understand what he means, and not so sure he understand me, but I say, repeat the date, and after I insist so much, he finally says Independence day is 4th of July. And he look real upset, but I don’t know why, and I think maybe he’s frustrated he didn’t know the answer. Later I find out about this Juneteenth, and I never knew about it before, and I realize that he didn’t wanna say the 4th of July was Independence Day because it was not the day of freedom for his African American people, you know, because Juneteenth is that day. And I feel so bad about this, it still get me so upset, I’m still so emotional about it, because I didn’t know and I didn’t realize, and I feel like I participated in the oppression of another Black man. I forced him to say something he hated, something he did not believe, just for Spanish class.

The Black instructor’s story, which counters colour-evasive dominant nar-

ratives of race neutrality in WL, and his interpretation of the episode are valu-

able resources in a CRT analysis. His powerful counternarrative illustrates

how racism is so embedded in instructional practices that one need not be

aware or intentionally racist to perpetuate it. The counternarrative reveals key

insights into Black students’ reports of negative WL classroom experiences

that a non-CRT analysis may not identify as rooted in racism, and racism can-

not be addressed without first being recognized. As the instructor delivered

planned course material, he did not ponder why a student resisted making the

expected response, which was, for the student, an inaccurate, racially charged

statement denying his people’s heritage and struggle for liberation. The

Spanish language curriculum posed a purportedly race neutral question ask-

ing people in the USA to name the day of their country’s independence.

However, what is considered race neutral, standard, or mainstream in a White

supremacist country typically relates to the dominant White population.

Hence, a question to a descendant of enslaved Blacks about the day his people

gained liberty will not yield the answer corresponding to the day when White

enslavers gained theirs.

Study 1: African American student counternarrative

In Study 1, Black students described how curriculum and materials failed to

connect their identities with Afro-descendant Spanish-speaking populations.

Such exclusion was hard to justify, since both universities were located in an

area with a large Latinx population deeply tied to South American and

Caribbean nations with considerable Black populations and cultural influence.

However, the exclusion was easily situated within racism and anti-Blackness

Hispanics also perpetuated, evidenced in experiences of a female African

American student who recounted typical rejection Black students reported

trying to speak Spanish in the community:

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I worked at an assisted living facility, and I experienced um, a little hardship in that setting. A resident, an older Hispanic lady was kinda going off. And I was like, >tú necesitas ayuda? [Do you need help?] And, like, I tried to help her. I noticed she was cussing, but I was still being nice. And she like, turned her head, she was like, she asked me in Spanish, was I Dominican? And I said, no, I’m Black. In Spanish, I don’t say negra [black], I say, yo soy Black [I am Black]. And she got back in her wheelchair, and she left. Went back up the elevator. I was like, what? And the worker was like, what? And the thing is, I knew the lady, and I knew she could speak English, understanding Black and all. She was understanding what they said, but decided not to Speak English. It was an experi- ence where I felt like because I could not culturally identify with her as a Hispanic woman, she chose not to communicate with me. I feel like in this area in this region, Spanish is a language that identi- fies a group of people, and by me being Black, not even being a part of that community, it excluded me from having the benefit to, like, engage with her, like in her eyes.

The story of how a White Hispanic local community member treated this

African American student was not unique in Study 1. Others also reported

they found it difficult to use the language outside class as instructors encour-

aged them to do, because Hispanics in the local community whom they heard

speaking Spanish and tried to engage in the language would scoff or laugh at

them, or just respond in English. Visions of equitable, harmonious multicul-

turalism promoted in the programme, which assumed mere proximity to the

target language community guaranteed access, were thwarted by realities of

racism and intergroup hostility. Black student heritage Spanish speakers also

reported difficulty accessing Spanish-speaking communities in the area. Many

reported feeling they did not fit into the region’s image of ‘Hispanic/Latinx’,

which is the general US image of a White or European/indigenous ‘mestizo’

Hispanic.

Study 2: liberal myths and anti-Black erasure

Study 2 was participatory action research with beginner-level Spanish

language instructors examining programme materials. I encouraged the

instructors—all White (Anglo and Hispanic) except one Black Hispanic—to

think about race, racism, their own racial identities and how their back-

grounds, beliefs, and ideologies may influence their perception of the curricu-

lum. First, when guided to identify references to race and to Blackness in the

affirmative sense, they found notable colour-evasiveness in the 2017 edition

of a commercial textbook and digital learning suite used by students and the

programme-produced lesson slides. For example, vocabulary for students to

describe themselves in Spanish did not give adequate possibilities for Afro-

descendants, especially how Black people in Spanish-speaking countries typic-

ally describe themselves. The activity where a Black person would learn how

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to identify themselves racially showed a Black woman and the word morena,

which means ‘dark’. Although Afro-Latinx people call themselves, moreno/

morena, they also commonly use more racially unambiguous words negro/negra

and afrodescendiente, meaning Black and Afro-descendant. A CRT analysis of

this Study 2 finding of colour-evasiveness shows it did not result in equity it

sought to represent. Instead, the supposed race neutrality of the materials

demonstrated a racist, exclusionist White hegemony, because, perhaps, in a

bid not to court controversy from people who view the terms negro/negra and

afrodescendiente negatively, the materials avoided them, and in doing so, erased

Black identity. The materials also did not provide the most precise way for

someone learning Spanish to describe racial diversity, because, on the same

list with pictures of representative individuals, a White man with dark hair

was also called moreno.

Secondly, throughout the programme materials, instructors found pictures

meant to represent US students learning Spanish included Black people and

cartoon figures depicting them in a variety of activities and professions.

However, as Elissondo (2001) observed 20 years ago in her analysis of Spanish

textbooks, the vast amount of cultural and geographic information about dif-

ferent Spanish-speaking populations showed nearly zero representation of

Black Hispanics. The cast of the videos and reality show storyline about Latin

Americans for conversation exercises was entirely White. One White Anglo

instructor mentioned that, before conducting the analysis, she had never

noticed the only Black people in all the images accompanying cultural pas-

sages were two pictures of scantily clad women in carnival parades and one

male sports star—both depicting racist tropes of hypersexualized and athleti-

cized Black bodies.

Thirdly, when considering representation of Afro-descendants in Spanish-

speaking populations, the instructors observed cultural texts and listening

exercises did not mention or specifically highlight them. This exclusion was

not due to their absence or insignificance, because a third of Spanish speakers

worldwide are Afro-descendants. The instructors noted many missed opportu-

nities to include Afro-descendants in both imagery and text, since passages

describing regions in Cuba, Mexico, Peru, and Dominican Republic with large

or majority Black populations and notable Afro-diasporic cultural influence

were presented with no mention of such and only pictures of architecture and

natural scenery.

A post hoc CRT analysis of the Study 2 findings reveals, not only Black eras-

ure in the materials, but also a contrasting emphasis on Whiteness through-

out, such as, multiple features of Spain’s royal family, a focus on Spain

disproportionate to how many Spanish language speakers worldwide reside

there, numerous mentions and images of European art, cultural expressions,

and architecture. Most illustrative of the absence of race neutrality and tar-

geted focus on Whiteness were ubiquitous images of White families and Latin

Americans appearing of primarily European ancestry in every topic and social

context. In stark contrast to the exclusion of Afro-Latinx, White people were

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presented as the most typical or ‘normal’ representation of Hispanics in the

USA and Spanish-speaking world.

Study 2: Black Hispanic instructor counternarrative

The counternarrative provided by the only Black instructor in Study 2—a doc-

toral candidate from Latin America—describes the exclusion of Blackness in

the Spanish language curriculum as an invisibility, which, in her analysis and

interpretation, she says, also mirrors how African American students are

ignored inside the classroom:

Because, in class, Black students all sit in the back, since they don’t think you want them, so you don’t call, and they just sit there, and they are invisible. This invisibility that still exists, and this stereotype that Black kids can’t do anything, that they’re not the best, it’s pre- venting us from really finding out how we can help them like Spanish class. And we’re ignoring them in class and also in the cur- riculum and materials, it’s a total invisibility. For example, if we had put something about Black Lives Matter, some kind of reading, just something, anything, but we have nothing. And the people here in the program, they don’t understand how this invisibility in the cur- riculum is contributing to the Black students’ their attitude or their feeling of like, they’re not connected in class. But then we see this lack of connection, or interest, or motivation, or whatever you wanna call it, and interpret it as lack of ability. And that’s not true.

In her counternarrative, this Black Spanish language instructor sharply

rejects dominant ideas of WL language programmes being a place of equitable

and harmonious multiculturalism. She rejects the liberal myth of race neutral-

ity by recognizing unjust exclusion of Black people from the curriculum and

classrooms, connecting this with racist assumptions of Black students’ aca-

demic unfitness. Instead of the tired insistence upon Black students’ deficits

and lack of motivation, the instructor suggests how the programme could

more meaningfully engage them.

A CRITICAL RACE PEDAGOGY FOR WORLD LANGUAGE TEACHING: PROPOSALS FOR PRACTICE

To address racism and anti-Blackness in our field, I propose a CRPWLT based

on previously discussed principles elaborated by Lynn (1999) and Jennings

and Lynn (2005). Step one in CRPWLT is to conduct inquiry and self-

assessment of language programme policies, stakeholders, practices, and mate-

rials through the lens of CRT to determine if and to what extent they promote

Black students’ meaningful, equitable participation and success in WL. This

entails race-consciousness in an affirmative sense (e.g. collecting data on pro-

gramme participation by race; examining programme materials for how they

represent different racial groups). Such sober, systematic assessment requires

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language educators to adopt racial realism and recognize the endemic nature

of racism in their instructional practice, because race neutrality does not exist,

and colour-evasiveness promotes a racist status quo where what we actually

ignore are inequity, White privilege, and injustice, not skin colour. Key in this

self-assessment is understanding Whites constitute a racial group and are not

devoid of racial identity. Therefore, a Spanish language curriculum that

presents Whiteness as normative and images of White people as representative

of Spanish language speakers when, in reality, there are large numbers from

other groups, is not race neutral. It is White supremacist.

The second step in CRPWLT calls for a careful examination of power and in-

equity in language teaching. This requires educators’ awareness of their racial

identities and positionality in racial hierarchies, which influence their percep-

tion of materials, how they teach, and their attitude towards and treatment of

their students. In an example from Study 2, a White instructor remarked how,

although she taught with those materials for years, she never noticed there

were only three images of Black people in hundreds of visual representations

of Spanish-speaking populations. She had never felt anybody was missing,

nor would it have occurred to her others may be disfavoured by a status quo

favouring her, or may notice and benefit from her supplementing with more

inclusive materials. In admitting this, the educator demonstrated self-

reflexivity that encourages consideration of how privilege and advantaged

positionality conferred by one’s identities, knowledge, beliefs, practices—even

if intended to be race neutral—can reflect and contribute to racism. Language

educator self-reflexivity calls for the interrogation of their roles in gatekeeping

that excludes African Americans from beneficial programmes, along with rec-

ognizing and rejecting myths and deficit mindsets about Black students’ abil-

ities in language learning. Most importantly, it requires active strategizing to

recognize and work against the culture of power and structures of inequity in

which language educators and students are positioned, as well as, assuming

responsibility for change (see Liggett 2009; Picower 2009; Maddamsetti 2020

for examples of White teachers’ critical self-reflexivity).

The final, most important step in CRPWLT is translating understandings

from inquiry and self-reflexivity into a liberatory practice for antiracism and

social justice. To begin, language programmes can seek out ideas on diversify-

ing learners and educators as recommended in Anya and Randolph (2019).

Programmes can reject the practice of not explicitly mentioning or considering

race and racism in policies, materials, and instruction, because, as was shown

in Study 1, Black students understand clearly the racist message sent by lan-

guage programmes that ignore these considerations and do not address what

is meaningful to them. Instructors can examine and diversify personal, profes-

sional, and online networks, since we do not stop being who we are or being

influenced by outside circles of interaction just because we enter a classroom.

Spanish language programmes, specifically, can counter the racist exclusion

of Afro-descendants as principal cultural agents of target language speaking

communities, incorporating tasks that make explicit mention of race and

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Blackness, and take into active consideration the cultural identities and social

justice concerns of African Americans, following examples suggested in Abreu

(2016), Elissondo (2001), Dahl (2000), Moeller and Ashcraft (1997), Ruggiero

(2015), Watson (2013), and Anya et al. (2020). CRPWLT embraces antiracism

work as a core component of language instruction and can, for example, in-

corporate references to and discussion on sociopolitical issues involving stu-

dents in the WL classroom and members of target language speaking

communities (e.g. current events related to immigration and xenophobia). To

this end, programmes should orient instructors on facilitating safe, supportive

spaces in classrooms for racism to be discussed, along with providing linguistic

and cultural support for new learners to understand and describe their ideas

and experiences. Guidelines for how to provide such support and hold these

discussions are beyond the scope and space allowed in this present article and

will be presented in future publications.

CONCLUSION

Applied linguistics is currently navigating a ‘social justice turn’ with scholars and

language educators paying greater attention to how we can promote social just-

ice and equity in sharing social resources, benefits, and power (Osborn 2006;

Randolph and Johnson 2017). Proposals to address the racism and anti-

Blackness that marginalize African Americans in WL study should be integral to

the work currently being done to solve problems of social equity in research and

practice. Such social justice approaches and action plans encourage WL educa-

tion to do what Flores and Rosa (2019) argued is way overdue and meaningfully

reckon with race and racial inequity in our field. My model of how to conduct

CRT-based analysis of WL research and instruction through systematic examin-

ation of programmes and materials, along with my proposal of CRPWLT, move

the field forward. They show new ways of understanding, theorizing, investigat-

ing, and addressing problems that have persisted for far too long.

SUPPLEMENTARY DATA

Supplementary material is available at Applied Linguistics online.

Conflict of interest statement. None declared.

ENDNOTES

1 WL refers to what was traditionally

called foreign languages, because our

field is moving past the idea that a lan-

guage, like Spanish, which has been in

what is now the USA for longer than

English, is ‘foreign’.

2 Black people in USA are African,

Caribbean, Latin American, European,

and from other ethnicities. In this article,

I focus on those who ethnically identify

as (US) American Afro-descendants,

using ‘African American’ and ‘Black’

interchangeably for this population.

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