The Raciolinguistic Embodiment of Black Teachers and Hearing Black Language as Correct

• In Event: Friday Roundtable Session 7:45 am
  In Roundtable Session: Interrogating Language Ideologies: Critical Perspectives on Racial Equity for Multilinguals (Table 21)

Abstract

Perspectives
The majority white teacher demographic has historically heard Black Language as incorrect, and the educational consequences of such arbitration are numerous and devastating (Baker-Bell, 2020; Author, 2020; Smitherman, 1977). Black Language, however, has been a linguistic resource in Black communities for centuries, and their literacies have educated Black children through eras of colonialism to modern Jim Crow (Richardson, 2003). This single-case study traces a Black early childhood teacher and the ways she leverages her linguistic assets to hear, understand, and utilize Black Language for learning. I situate this work within linguistic and sociolinguistic literature which documents how Black communities innovated new forms of survivance and communication in spite of the malevolence of slavery (Baugh, 1999; Smitherman, 1977). This work also exists within the reality of language and race being interchangeably used to police Black bodies in schools, policies, and society at large (Alim & Smitherman, 2012; Boutte et al., 2021).

Objectives, Methods, and Data Sources
Employing ethnographic case study methodology, my inquiry was guided by the following question: “How does hearing Black Language as linguistically legitimate play a role in a teacher’s writing instruction?” This case study focused on Raniya (pseudonym), a Black female teacher, who had taught early childhood for 13 years. Data was collected in the U.S. Midwest region within a Spanish dual language early childhood school with a combination of Spanish and English-speaking classrooms. Raniya’s preK classroom was officially considered an English-speaking classroom, but consisted of majority Black and Latine students that were bilingual in Spanish, Black Language, and English. Over the period of several months, I garnered the following data sources: two semi-structured interviews, follow-up interviews, 18 classroom observations, field notes from interviews and observations, audio and video recordings of lessons, and pictures of artifacts related to Raniya’s instruction and student work. Notions of raciolinguistic ideologies (Flores & Rosa 2015; Rosa & Flores, 2017) and Teacher Embodiment as Lived Pedagogy (Author, 2021) functioned as my analytic tools as I interpreted data.

Results and Significance
Findings focused on learning what this case offers in understanding the roles of teacher race and language in early childhood writing instruction. The notion of raciolinguistic ideologies helped me identify the majority of white teachers and their practices as white listening subjects. This framing also attuned me to the ways white listening subjects hear people of color, and to consider the disparate hearing abilities between listening subjects from varied racial backgrounds. Teacher Embodiment as Lived Pedagogy offered an explicit connection between a Black teacher’s racial and linguistic experiences and the pedagogy that she offered her Black Language speaking students. In particular, within a context of “sounding right” being analogous to White Mainstream English, notions of a teacher’s raciolinguistic embodiment illuminated how a Black teacher’s linguistic experiences in life are integrally connected to the pedagogy she offers her students. The significance of this work illuminates the linguistic assets Black teachers can offer when seeking pro-Black language instruction and interrogates everyday early childhood practices that are anti-Black and steeped in colonial traditions.

Author

• Alice Y. Lee, University of California - Riverside