Building Racial Literacy Through Language Teaching

• In Event: Interrupting the Status Quo in Teacher Education: Critical Conversations About Race and Racism

Abstract

In his seminal work How to be Antiracist, Ibrahm Kendi writes, ‘We are surrounded by racial inequity, as visible as the law, as hidden as our private thoughts' (Kendi, 2019, p.22). When asked to participate in a summer critical reading group focused on racial literacy, I felt strongly compelled to join not just as an emerging scholar of health literacy and health disparities in immigrants, but also as a relatively privileged white language teacher to emergent multilingual adolescents from all over the world. While I have always had the best of intentions, it has taken the last several years as a doctoral student to experience my own racial reckoning and to become more acutely aware of the racial inequities that surround us. In my research, I focus on the preventable differences in the burden of disease, violence or opportunities to achieve optimal health experienced by socially disadvantaged populations (Center for Disease Control, CDC, 2023); I seek to apply what I learn to the curriculum I develop for my language learners in hopes that by establishing trust and rapport, we can all hold one another accountable for developing a racially and socially just health literacy with positive outcomes. However, through our reading group discussions on racial literacy, I have come to realize that developing any true awareness of others-their culture, their backgrounds, their lived experiences and traumas-is only as useful as understanding my own. It merits enlightened examination, for it is far from a neutral background against which other cultures are measured.” (Fox, 2005, p. 1316). Our discussions on racial literacy are a reminder that everything we do starts from understanding and respecting ourselves and confronting those aspects we may wish to hide or avoid. Until we examine and appreciate ourselves for it, with a supportive forum in which to unpack our truths, others may suffer the consequences. In striving to become racially literate, I have come face to face with my own biases and endeavor to continue this journey of self discovery as a researcher and educator.

Author

• Ashleigh Daher, University of Massachusetts - Amherst