White Teacher Educators Navigating Race and Place: Ideating Paradoxically on African American Language

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 7
  In Roundtable Session: Language, Literacies, and Relational Curriculum

Abstract

In this paper, we engage in multiple readings of teaching and learning about African American Language (AAL) with/as white teacher educators. We begin with the radical intentions embedded within the fight to have AAL recognized as a legitimate language of students in U.S. schools. Drawing from the voiced experiences of black students in our program, we then consider how our teaching of AAL (particularly in a majority black city and school system) can function to essentialize and fetishize the speech practices of black students, all while recentering whiteness. Finally, we ideate on the paradoxical nature of AAL as simultaneously legitimizing and othering the linguistic practices of black students within the conditioning logics of white supremacy and capitalism.

Authors

• Zachary A. Casey, Rhodes College

• Laura A Taylor, Rhodes College