Black and Latina/o Youths' Utterances as Evidence for What?

• In Event: 54.031 - Ethnographic Evidence and Erasure: What Is Knowable and What Counts as Knowledge

Abstract

Objectives.
This paper is informed by research with Black and Latina/o youth in hyper-segregated urban secondary classrooms in Southern and Northern California. The question guiding this overarching work is, what counts as language for learning in urban classrooms for students of color? While this question has garnered a significant corpus of data within my own research, this paper interrogates how the evidential use of audio and video recorded utterances of Black and Brown youth might have consequences on these youths’ lives. Through the use of language ideological inquiry, discourse analytical methods, and a shared reading of Anna Stoler’s (2013) edited volume Imperial Debris, this work, I will consider my own role in handling, preserving and presenting these youths’ utterances as evidence.

Perspectives.
Previous ethnographic research in an urban Southern California school found that Black and Latina/o youth were creative, sophisticated and nuanced in their language practices, despite teachers who marked youth utterances. While this ethnographic work seeks to promote the untapped linguistic resources of these youth, I am cognizant of the ways in which these youths’ utterances may signal for some, strong examples of their lack of linguistic sophistication. Given this, methodological reflections have ensued on my own positionality (Author, 2016) and now, the uptake of my data for varied audiences. Stoler (2015) argues that the papers curated in her edited volume speak not of the ruins, “…as memorialized monumental ‘leftovers’ or relics…but rather to what people are left with: to what remains blocking livelihoods and health, to the aftershocks of imperial assault, to the social afterlife of structures, sensibilities, and things” (p. 9). In this work I interrogate what my participants and audiences may be “left with” as youth utterances are amplified by my research.

Methods.
This paper draws on data from ethnographic research on Black and Latina/o youth communication in urban English Language Arts classrooms in Southern and Northern California, inspired by educational researchers use of the ethnography of communication. Additionally, thoughtful


Data Sources.
While this work is inspired by audio and video-recorded data of classroom discourse and ethnographic fieldnotes, here I will draw on a my own reflections on ethnographic research across two contexts, and a shared reading of Stoler’s edited volume.

Significance.
While it is critical to report on the language and literacy practices of Black and Latina/o youth for pedagogical purposes, this paper seeks to contribute to an understanding of what happens to Black and Brown bodies whose utterances we share in our research. This paper furthers conversations about the harm we do, even in the most well intentioned humanizing research (Erickson, 2016).

Author

• Danny C. Martinez, University of California - Davis