Double Entry Journal 1
EDUC 800: Ways of Knowing
Dialogic Journal Part 2
Faye Huie
Critical Race Theory Day 1What exactly is Critical Race Theory and what is it doing in a nice field like education?
Quote / Reflections
“We were unsure of how this new line of inquiry (CRT) would be received both within our university and throughout the educational research/scholarly community” / CRT is a fascinating area that I may really immerse myself in. However, as I explained these concepts to my boyfriend, my parents, and my friends I felt uncomfortable and rejected. CRT confronts very sensitive topics that need to be approached with extreme caution. Therefore, I need to think of different ways to examine how racial factors influences education and what can be done to overcome these issues—or at least mitigate some of the consequences.
“…as an African American female academic, I can be and am sometimes positioned as conceptually White in relation to, perhaps, a Latino, Spanish-speaking gardener. In that instance, my class and social position override my racial identification and for that moment I become “White.” / I think Asians are in a unique category. The Asian stereotype is that they are the model minority, who are hard working, intelligent, and typically resides in the middle class. Although this is also similar to the view of whites, Asians are seen as very different. I feel that Asians do not become “White” even when they are well educated, or living a successful life, but they do become white when they “act White.”
“CRT scholars assert that the United States is a nation conceived and built on property rights… The significance of property ownership as a prerequisite to citizenship was tied to the British notion that only people who owned the country, not merely those who lived in it, were eligible to make decisions about it.” / This country is run by people who have money and property—this statement hit home by revealing how true it is. Money is power, truly understanding this and being aware of how prevalent and pervasive it is, I think, is the first step in addressing the unintended consequences that comes with property rights.
Critical Race Theory Day 2
Banks, Two life stories: Reflections of One Black Woman Law Professor
“The term “role model” seems soft, unlike the word “mentor.” / I never thoughtthat words that have seemingly synonymous definitions could be so different in terms of the implicit meanings associated with it. In fact, I think most people are unaffected by the implicit meanings and uses of language. What emerges from this overall lack of awareness are implicit biases. We are not only unaware of how language (even a simple word) can have such consequences, but we are also unaware of our own actions and thought processes to be biased. What I mean is that CRT has personally opened up a whole new reality for me and I must admit that my new reality also comes with a more negative view of the world.
“We are misfits, not fully accepted by the Black or White community, and as women, we still are not full members of the feminist community…Thus my struggle as an academic is tot each and write truthfully and accurately dispute the feeling that I fit into no world.” / Although I know that Tanya Banks is a Black woman who is speaking from the Black perspective, I, as an Asian American woman, felt like I could somewhat identify with what she was saying.I feel that I feel that I do not fit into the Asian community. Despite the fact that I do kind of fit into the stereotype of Asians as the ambitious and hard working model minority, I am in the field of Educational research—which is a “quasi” career to many traditional Asians.
“Instead it (traditional legal dialogue) favors the notion that bland, so-called “objectively reasoned” arguments, often devoid of any humanistic concern, are the only way to convey important legal ideas” / This is the same with traditional education research. In fact, research that is valued does not contain any “biases.” I used to think that this “unbiased” and neutral approach is the most appropriatemethod of conducting research, but when examining issues such as race and culture, biases are everywhere. Therefore, if researchers try to be neutral in research, are they taking away an element that makes their own biases even more implicit? This would have serious consequences since their implicit biases would influence they way they approach their research questions and analyze their findings.
Overall Comments:I am so glad that I chose to focus on Critical Race Theory. After reading and studying about it for months now, I see CRT everywhere and applyit to everything. Although CRT has opened up a new reality for me, I must admit that this new reality has made me feel that my road to being a successful and well-respected educational psychologist will be a difficult task. The more I know about the civil inequalities that minorities endure in this country, the more anxious I feel about my future battles—especially in the field of educational psychology, where mainstream research is very much ethnocentric and the frontrunners are white men. However, at the same time, this new knowledge angers me and makes me more passionate than ever to defeat the odds. The question I have now is: How do I apply CRT to my field and more importantly, how do I do it in a way where people will listen and accept my rather uncomfortable and racial approach to educational research?
Critical Race Theory Day 2Mari Matsuda, Voices of America: Accent, Antidiscrimination Law, and a Jurisprudence for the LastReconstruction
Quote / Reflections
“A language is a fragile thing. It can change and disappear within one person’s lifetime if there are pressures to end its use” / A language certainly is a fragile thing and it can end if a certain society does not value the language or if the person does not feel a need to speak the language. I am bilingual. I speak both English and Chinese—however, my brothers and cousins speak English fluently with very broken traces of Mandarin. I certainly understand that if the language is not spoken often, it will naturally fade away as we develop. However, this is not the case for my brothers and cousins. My parents and my uncles and aunts all speak Mandarin more fluently than English. I feel that they have lost their ability to speak their native language because it is not valued in society. In fact, the Chinese language is made fun of and mocked by their friends who ask them “how do you say X in Chinese” then continually try to annunciate the phrase in Mandarin while at the same time laughing and mocking the language. Sadly, my brothers go along with it and laugh. I do not mind if people are curious to see how X is said in Chinese, but I get very offended when they try to continually repeat it with a giggle.
“Listening to these and other stories, I have found that accent discrimination is commonplace, natural, and socially acceptable.” / Accent discrimination, to me, is no different from racism and implicit bias. In fact, I feel that accent discrimination is probably more pervasive than implicit bias and institutionalized racism. I, myself, have to acknowledge my own implicit tendencies to discriminate against foreign, specifically, non-European accents. When I was a college student, I remember taking a class with a professor who had a heavy foreign accent. I remember complaining about his accent and how it made it hard to understand the material. I felt that my complaints were legitimate and in no way did I connect my remarks to discrimination. I regret the comments that I made, but now that I am not completely ignorant about linguistic racism, I feel a responsibility to spread the word and educate people on this highly pervasive and destructive phenomenon.
“The problem of unconscious bias is more difficult to discern. Speech, the sociolinguists tell us, serves an important function in addition to communication of ideas, In many societies, certain dialects and accents are associated with wealth and power. Others are low status, with negative associations (and vice versa). In a society with a hierarchy of this kind, it is quite common that speakers of the low-status speech variety, by necessity, are able to understand speakers of the high-status variety. Speakers of the high status variety, on the other hand, frequently report that they cannot understand speakers below them on the speech-status scale.” / Matsuda says in this article that European accents are associated with upper status stereotypes while all other accents are indicative of lower social status. However, it is also safe to assume that within the United States, there is accent discrimination between white Northerners and Southerners as well. People with a southern accent are generally perceived to be less educated than people without an accent. I think this hierarchy is present in many countries.
Colonialism
Introduction to Orientalism
Quote / Reflections
“The Orient was almost a European invention, and had been since antiquity a place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, remarkable experiences.” / It is interesting that Said describes the Orient as a European invention. In retrospect, the history lessons have always described the orient through the point of view of European explorers. This perspective distorts the reality of Oriental nations and therefore makes everyone think of the Orients and its culture as mystical and exotic.
“To speak of Orientalism therefore is to speak mainly, although not exclusively, of a British and French cultural enterprise, a project whose dimensions take in such disparate realms as the imagination itself, the whole of India and the Levant, the Biblical texts and the Biblical lands, the spice trade, colonial armies and a long tradition of colonial administrators, a formidable scholarly corpus, innumerable Oriental “experts” and “hands,”… many European sects, philosophies, and wisdoms domesticated for local European use—the list can be extended more or less indefinitely.” / The term “Cultural Enterprise” makes me realize how accepted colonialism was and still is. Culture is so beautiful and important to preserve. It is so amazing to me how people can easily take an entire culture and turn it into an enterprise to force and change it to whatever the “dominate” culture sees fit. This is all so pervasive because of the implicit ways that It is being described—a set of “experts” who “explores” the native peoples’ way of life to “bring back” goods and “trade” to “benefit” both parties. Most people are ignorant to the ideas of colonialism (including me) and I think that education is a powerful tool to help expose the repercussions of colonialism and expose the implicit ways people deal with colonialism.
“What I am interested in doing now is suggesting how the general liberal consensus that “true” knowledge is fundamentally nonpolitical (and conversely, that overtly political knowledge is not “true” knowledge) obscures the highly if obscurely organized political circumstances obtaining when knowledge is produced. / We all must realize that there is no such thing as “unbiased” knowledge or opinions. To think that knowledge is unbiased is truly ignorant. People are socially shaped by the limited (e.g., biased) views and resources that they are exposed to. It is our responsibility to seek out other viewpoints and perspectives to be able to develop our own perspective and viewpoint. If we do not do so, we are limited by our own ignorance, which will result in uninformedand even inappropriate actions. I am able to understand this because of this specific class that I am taking as a doctoral student. I am confident that the vast majority of people are unaware of the biases that they are exposedto on a daily basis as well as their own personal political, sexist, and racial biases. There needs to be a conscious effort to educate our students about the nature of knowledge and make them critical of the information that they may be exposed to as well as make them aware of their own implicit biases. Therefore, how do we spread the word and tackle this problem in a way where it will make sense to the general public and where they will listen?
Colonialism
Edward Said, Islam as News
Quote / Reflections
“Such divisions (the Occident (West) and the Orient (East)) always come about when one society or culture thinks about another one, different from it; but it is interesting that even when the Orient has uniformly been considered an inferior part of the world, it has always been endowed both with greater size and with greater potential for power (usually destructive) than the west.” / Why is that so? Why is it that the West has always been considered as more superior than the East? Even when, as Said states, that the Orient is larger in size with more potential for power? I still do not understand why this phenomenon exists and still continues to exist. Why is it that in almost all other countries, English is considered to be one of the most important languages to learn (and sometimes proficiency is required for graduation) while western countries could care less about emphasizing a foreign language curriculum?
“The academic experts whose specialty is Islam have generally treated the religion and its various cultures within an invented or culturally determined ideological framework filled with passion defensive prejudice, and sometimes even revulsion; because of this framework, understanding of Islam has been a very difficult thing to achieve.” / I think that it is safe to assume that Westerners consider Islam a destructive and evil religion. I have to admit that my father and mother have that mindset. But can I really blame them? The media has portrayed the religion of Islam as well as other predominately middle eastern religions to be evil and dangerous. Although I do not know much about Islam, I know that the media presents a very lopsided view of the nature ofIslam—and to convince the public otherwise will be a daunting if not impossible task.
“while it is true that one could not name an American “Orientalist” with a reputation outside Orientalism, as compared with Berque or Rodsinson in France, it is also true that the study of Islam is neither truly encouraged in the American university nor sustained in the culture at large by personalities whose fame and intrinsic merit might make their experiences if Islam important of their own.” / When I tell people that I am interested in religions, especially middle eastern religions such as Islam, I get weird and suspicious looks. I get such an odd response by just mentioning that it is interesting—it makes me wonder how people of the Islamic and Muslim faith deal with the everyday pressures of the American public?
Colonialism
The Language of African Literature
Quote / Reflections
“See the paradox: the possibility of using mother-tongues provokes a tone of levity in phrases like “a dreadful betrayal” and a “guilty feeling”; but that of foreign language produces a categorical positive embrace, what Achebe himself, ten years later, was to describe this as fatalistic logic of the unassailable position of English in our literature.” / This phenomenon is true in the Chinese culture as well. Students as well as adults are praised when their English skills are at a proficient level. However, even in my family today, it is not a priority for the younger generation to be fluent in Mandarin. In fact, when my cousins attempt to speak Mandarin, they are made fun of in a loving and doting way, suggesting how wonderful it is that they cannot speak Mandarin and how smart they are for being so fluent in English.
“Language was not a mere string or words. It had a suggestive power well beyond the immediate and lexical meaning. Our appreciation of this suggestive magical power of language was reinforced by the games we played with words through riddles, proverbs, transpositions of syllables, or through nonsensical but musically arranged words. So we learnt the music of our language on top of the content. The language, through images and symbols, gave us a view of the world, but it had a beauty of its own… And then I went to school, a colonial school, and this harmony was broken. The language of my education was no longer the language of my culture.” / The readings in this class really make me appreciate the power of narrative and storytelling. I felt sad when reading this passage. Mainly because I feel as though a part of my culture has been stripped from me because I was educated in the United States. I wonder what it must be like to be fully immersed in a culture and then have it stripped away from you because of colonialism. If a colonialist education had this strong of an effect on a young student, how do adults deal with foreigners who are forcefully changing their culture?
“In Kenya, English became more than a language: it was the language, and all the others had to bow before it in deference… to be caught speaking Gikuyu in the vicinity of the school, the culprit was given corporal punishment… or was made to carry a metal plate around the neck with inscriptions such as I AM STUPID or I AM A DONKEY… The attitude to English was the exact opposite: any achievement in spoken or written English was highly rewarded: prizes, prestige, applause; the ticket to higher realms.” / I wonder how the natives felt about this way of educating their children—whether they thought it was appropriate or if they just had to watch helplessly as it was being inflicted upon them. Since foreigners value learning the English language, would they feel that this way of forcefully erasing the childrens’ knowledge of their native language wrong? Or would they believe that if their child could speak English more fluently they would have a “better life”? Either way, this very intrusive way of trying to erase one’s value of their native language and to adopt the “better” language is probably one of the reasons why many foreign nations value the English language and see it as a higher sign of status than other languages.