Contesting Language Proficiency Among the Proficient: The Everyday Production of the Triracial System

• In Event: Roundtable Session 23
  In Roundtable Session: Race and Racialized Experiences in the Context of Multiple Languages and Literacies

Abstract

Considering that contests over language proficiency occur in “English proficient” classrooms suggests that proficiency is loosely coupled with the ability to communicate. Rather, the contestation over proficiency is a site of power struggle where status is attained and defended. The separation of an ESOL academy for Asian immigrant students and a mainstream academy comprised primarily of African American students at one high school promoted a strict binary between English proficiency and non-proficiency that seemed to obscure the ways in which language proficiency was contested even within mainstream classrooms. The defense of a clear English proficiency/non-proficiency binary through the school’s academy system creates and upholds a racial hierarchy that places African Americans below Asian immigrants and whites above them all.

Author

• Rachel Garver, New York University