wrestling with race: the implications of integrative antiracism education for immigrant esl youth

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Wrestling With Race: The Implications of Integrative Antiracism Education for Immigrant ESL Youth LISA TAYLOR Bishop’s University Lennoxville, Québec, Canada

This article presents selected fi ndings from a qualitative practitioner study into the learning experiences of 30 immigrant ESL high school students in a 3-day innovative, Freirean-styled, antidiscrimination leader-ship program. This case study is grounded in a social identity theoretical framework which assumes that linguistic interactions are not neutral nor is the right to be listened to universally accorded, but that these are linked to identity and structured through social power relations (includ-ing racism). In this article I fi rst ask how students came to understand race and racism as they used the integrative antiracism analytical frame-work of the program to examine examples of discrimination from their personal experience. Second, I ask what implications their analysis had for their identity claims as immigrant ESL learners. The research argues for an understanding of racialized power dynamics as integral to social identity construction through English language learning, especially as they intersect with discourses of national identity and cultural citizen-ship in the case of immigrant ESL learners. The study suggests that integrative antiracism education can support immigrant language learn-ers’ intersectional and multilevel understandings of discrimination. These expanded understandings of discrimination can also facilitate broader possibilities for social identity claims and ethical visions of Canadianness.

A growing body of TESOL scholarship has begun to grapple with the complexities of racialization in the historical development and

contemporary practice of English language teaching and learning. This literature explores the ways that, as a discipline intimately linked to the imperial expansion of English as well as national politics of immigration and integration, TESOL is permeated by racialized power relations that create hierarchies of speaker identities and resilient images of linguistic impurity and Otherness. There is as yet little

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research, however, into the ways explicitly antiracist pedagogies might support English language learners (ELLs) in understanding and chal-lenging processes of racialization and discrimination in their own lives.

This article presents selected fi ndings from a qualitative practitioner study into the learning experiences of 30 high school ESL students in an innovative, Freirean-styled, antidiscrimination leadership camp in Canada ( Taylor, 2003 ). In this 3-day extracurricular program, public school students of 15 national origins were introduced to critical con-cepts of sociological analysis to enable them to collectively explore the myriad forms of social difference and discrimination at play in the multiple spheres of their lives.

In this article I ask how students came to reconceptualize race and racism as they used the integrative antiracism analytical framework of the camp to examine examples of discrimination from personal expe-rience. I then ask what implications their analysis had for their iden-tity claims as immigrant ESL learners. This research question is grounded in the study’s social identity theoretical framework, which posits a particular relation between language, identity, and power. I assume that linguistic interactions are not neutral nor is the right to be listened to universally accorded, but that these are structured through social power relations (including racism). Within this frame-work, it is through language that learners construct complex, chang-ing identities that can conform to or challenge and transform these social power relations through their claims to speaker authority (what they know things to mean, how their knowledge is valued) and affi li-ation or belonging (who they can be in relation to the world around them, how they identify and are associated with different groups) ( Norton, 1997 ).

I review relevant concepts from critical race theory (CRT) that frame the camp’s integrative antiracism pedagogy and highlight racialized power relations structuring the teaching and learning of English in global and, specifi cally, Canadian contexts. I describe the camp participants and curriculum in detail, including an activity apprenticing students in analyzing different forms of discrimination.

In relation to my research questions, I present overall fi ndings with detailed analyses of two participants, focusing on their changing understandings of racism and their strategic identity claims. These portraits illustrate themes that emerged across the data set; they are contextualized and supplemented by less detailed references to other participants. My conclusion argues for a practice of TESOL as a critical liminal site of student apprenticeship, investigation, and intervention in the racializing processes of English language learning.

THE IMPLICATIONS OF INTEGRATIVE ANTIRACISM EDUCATION 521521

UNDERSTANDING RACE IN TESOL THROUGH CRITICAL RACE THEORY

Although the study drew from postcolonial, critical multicultural, and critical race theory, I focus in this article on the latter, which explicitly informed the camp pedagogy ( McCaskell, 2005 ). Undergirding the camp curriculum were CRT’s complex understandings of race as a contextually specifi c, socially constructed relation of unequal power (rather than an empirical difference between discrete groups of peo-ple) and racism as a deeply ingrained, hegemonic array of structural and institutional practices systematically advantaging certain groups over others (rather than as isolated incidences of individual bigotry). 1

Within the European imperial project, the rise of the modern nation state and world system, highly fl exible and resilient discourses of race have emerged that recruit a range of arbitrary, shifting, and often contradictory markers (e.g., physical features, ethnicity, or nation of birth) to defi ne and naturalize racial groups or categories 2 ( Goldberg, 1993 , 2002 ; Hall, 1991 , 1997 ; Parker & Villenas, 1999 ; van Dijk, 1993 ). This analysis is vital to understanding the ways racism persists after the demise of eugenics, for example, in discourses of cultural racism or new racism ( Balibar, 1991 ; Barker, 1981 ), which are grounded in logics of cultural (rather than biological) determinism. Cultural racism homog-enizes nondominant ethnic groups as so empirically different from a presumed us , so inescapably defi ned by defi cient, less civilized, pre-modern, utterly antagonistic (to paraphrase Australian prime minister John Howard) or irreconcilably “foreign” cultural values, worldviews, and ways of life, that it’s only natural that confl icts should arise from intercultural contact. This discourse is not simply cultural essentialism, however, because cultural practices are being defi ned in racist ways (i.e., as empirical indicators of a heritable collective essence) that jus-tify and reinforce continuing Eurocentric segregation and inequality. For example, when low academic achievement of racialized ethnic groups is explained with reference to “cultural differences” from Euro-Canadian values and parenting practices rather than conditions of

1 The paradox of race within CRT (as a necessary analytic term designating a social construct with very “real” consequences) highlights one of the important distinctions between CRT and critical multiculturalism, which rejects a central analytic focus on this problematic con-cept ( May, 1999 ). Many critical multiculturalists (e.g., Gilroy, 2000 ) would argue that it’s possible to analyze racialization and its effects without reproducing the ontological category of race.

2 This premise does not preclude forms of racist discourse arising from imperial histories of China, Japan, or other empires, nor the complex ways racist discourse is taken up between differently racialized groups (see e.g., Dikötter, 1997 ).

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social and economic marginalization associated with racialization and immigration, ahistorical cultural stereotypes are acting to shore up White privilege in Canada in ways congruent with a history of racism ( Razack, 1995 ).

Representations of the cultural backwardness stigmatized particular-ity of differently racialized ethnicities (i.e., Them) also work through binary logics to contrastively infer a fl exible, normalized identity of Whiteness (Us): Enlightenment discourses of modernity and Western Civilization have combined with colonial discourses of racial purity, moral authority, and legal entitlement in imperial and state-formation projects to secure universal status for European knowledge traditions and naturalize White ethnicity as a neutral, unmarked norm ( Fine, Weis, Powell, & Mun Wong, 1997 ; Frankenberg, 1993 ; Levine-Rasky, 2002 ; Roediger, 1991 ). I use the term White not as an absolute identity (when did the Irish become White, after all?) but as a socially con-structed, contextually specifi c position of power and status in relation to other groups: Thus a working class Italian-Canadian immigrant may be positioned as non-White by a 10th-generation British-Canadian employer, yet might position himself as White (read European ) when celebrating Columbus or questioning how an Ethiopian Canadian should speak Italian.

This example speaks to the particular matrix of competing dis-courses of race, culture, and language striating the Canadian verti-cal mosaic ( Hamilton, 2005 ; Porter, 1965 ). Canadian critical race and postcolonial scholars ( Bannerji, 2000 ; Gunew, 2005 ; Haque, 2005 ; Razack, 2002 ; Walcott, 2003 ) argue that hegemonic discourses of multiculturalism within a bilingual framework refl ect processes of dual state formation: that discourses of a White settler colony of “two founding races” (Offi cial Languages Act, 1969, cited in Haque, 2005 , p. 22) circumscribe offi cial discourses of a culturally pluralist liberal democracy through the inauguration of a dual economy of “asymmetrical collective rights” ( Haque, 2005 , p. 289). In this two-tiered economy, the economic, political, and institutional rights of the two offi cial language groups (a term that sutures Whiteness to English/French to national cultural foundations and proprietorial primacy) are enshrined as prior to the concessionary rights to cul-tural celebration and nostalgia extended to racialized “migrant eth-nicities” ( Spivak, 1993 , p. 273) to cultural celebration and nostalgia. As White Anglophone and Francophone ethnicities are unmarked as tolerant hosts, multicultural becomes an increasingly racialized term that positions all Canadians of colour as perpetual new arrivals indelibly marked by and expected to perform their origins from “elsewhere” ( Walcott, 2003 , p. 126). 3 Bannerji and Walcott distin-guish this multiculturalism from above from popular multiculturalism


which pries open the silences and forgettings of White Anglo-/Franco-centred pluralism by demanding full economic and political rights, by asserting heterogeneous, hybrid, diasporic affi liations and multiracial visions of the national project. 4 The antiracism camp can be understood as just such an initiative, strategically operating within the interstices of competing discourses of multiculturalism ( McCaskell, 2005 ).

EXPLORING THE CONTOURS OF RACISM IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING

A growing body of TESOL scholarship draws from CRT to explore the ways historical processes of imperialism and racism are not inci-dental to our fi eld, but rather, central to its discursive and material practices. Pennycook (1994 , 1998) documents TESOL’s role in British imperialism as it promoted English as a language of global economic and cultural power, of Whiteness and epistemological authority ( Amin, 2000 ; Brutt-Griffl er & Samimy, 1999 ; Canagarajah, 2002 ; Kubota, 2004 ). This language-based racism or linguicism continues to reinforce cul-tural and economic Eurocentrism within the postcolonial world system ( Phillipson, 1992 ). Kubota (2001) examines the colonialist heritage and racial hierarchies underpinning the cultural racism — that is, the essentialized images of ESL students’ so-called cultural differences and monolithic cultural Otherness — prevalent in ESL curricula and TESOL literature. Other authors trace the unexamined Eurocentrism and rac-ist effects of ESL curricula that prepare immigrants solely for blue-col-lar employment ( Auerbach, 1995 ; Giltrow & Colhoun, 1992 ). Cultural and linguistic determinism also ground the increasingly problematic native/nonnative speaker dichotomy ( Leung, Harris, & Rampton, 1997 ; Canagarajah, 1999a ): Because English is characterized as White, nonnative speaker functions as an essentialising marker of cultural

3 First Nations Peoples contend with distinct processes of racialization not treated in this discussion of the particular discursive nexus of race, language, and cultural citizenship negotiated by ESL youth. Haque (2005) reminds us that First Nations Peoples were excluded from state development of and consultation on multiculturalism policy and have consistently refused confl ation of their claims with those of Quebec or so-called multicul-tural minorities. For critical analyses, see Anderson (2000) , Gunew (2005) , Kalant (2004) .

4 These strategies arguably demand the more complex analysis afforded by critical multicul-tural and postcolonial or postnational frameworks that avoid CRT’s reinscription of the binary logic and domestic national focus of “majority/minority” discourses ( Anderson, 2000 ). See my analysis of the ways participants’ strategies of postcolonial translation exceed and expand the camp’s situated conceptions of racism ( Taylor, in press ).

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Otherness and distance that constructs the racialized nonnative speaker as less authentic, knowledgeable, or legitimate ( Braine, 1999 ; Thomas, 1999 ). Cultural racism and linguicism underpin the defi cit models in educational theory and practice that naturalize the academic struggles of bilingual students as a product, not of systemic discrimination or curricular marginalization, but of the presumed foreignness or inade-quacy of their essentialized culture: Students are described as culturally deprived and “language handicapped” (Schlossman in Cummins, 2001 , p. 36). 5

Critical understandings of racism also ground recent research on English language learners contesting narrow, racialized images as they construct resistant, hybrid social identities through language practice ( Canagarajah, 1999b ; Ibrahim, 1999 ; McKay & Wong, 1996 ).

STUDY SITE, PROGRAM, AND POPULATION

The ESL anti-discrimination leadership program was run within the Toronto District School Board (TDSB), one of the most diverse public school districts in North America: almost half of the students are non-native speakers of English, representing over 160 language groups; however, visible minority students are over-represented in families of lower socio-economic status ( Toronto District School Board, 2001 ).

Over the past 30 years, the school board has developed a multi-pronged approach to building equity-promoting learning environ-ments, including staff and curriculum development and extracurricular programming ( McCaskell, 2005 ). Among these, “Equity Leadership Retreats” were offered during their peak period in the 1990s to stu-dents from more than 16 secondary schools: These retreats included the ESL camps.

Drawing from distinct British, U.S., and Anglo-Canadian practices of antiracism, critical multiculturalism, feminist and critical pedago-gies, the ESL Equity Leadership Camps (also known as ESL Antiracism Camps) examined in this case study were developed as an action- oriented program for personal, institutional, and societal change. Taking racism as a salient entry point, the integrative antiracism (IAR ) pedagogy builds students’ capacities to analyze and act on the ways all forms of discrimination/privilege (e.g., hetero/sexism, classism,

5 See, e.g., Cummins (1986 , 2001 ); Rockhill & Tomic (1994 ); Nieto (2000); see also Razack (1995) on the cultural defi cit model in education.


Islamophobia) interlock in everyday interactions ( Dei, 1996 ; McCaskell, 2005 ). 6

This mixed pedigree means that the camps have grappled with ten-sions within and between different pedagogical traditions: the cultural essentialism, individualism, and power blindness of liberal multicultur-alism; and the racial essentialism of early antiracism ( May, 1999 ). Tensions have also been opened up by postmodern understandings of social identities as complex, multiple, and integrative, constructed through shifting, contextually specifi c relations of power and per-formed and claimed through competing desires ( McCaskell, 2005 ). These tensions emerged in student discussions and interviews as they used the camp’s IAR framework to analyze different forms of discrimi-nation in their lives.

Central to the camp curriculum are students’ personal experiences as the basis of shared insights, analysis, embodied knowledge construc-tion, positive identity building, and leadership development. Understanding leadership as the capacity to analyze and collectively act on the architectures of power shaping the social and material con-ditions of learners’ immediate worlds, activities aim to build active alliances around shared values and visions.

In the 3-day program, mixed-school Family Groups engaged in

1. Ice-breakers and team building activities; pair interviews.

2. Viewing a video dramatizing the ways linguicism, racism, and xeno-phobia can marginalize, isolate, and disadvantage ESL students; debriefi ng personal responses and experiences.

3. Learning to analyze racism and other forms of discrimination at the individual and institutional levels based on examples from personal or immediate experience.

4. Analyzing in school groups how antidiscriminatory and welcoming their own school is; developing and presenting an action plan (a timeline of specifi c collective steps to improve different aspects of their school with the support of attending teachers).

5. Making confi dential written commitments to individual action plans or resolutions.

6. A reunion of all participants a month after camp to present progress reports, problem-solve, reconnect and renew momentum.

6 Here I echo Gunew’s (2005) caution to attend to the situatedness of theoretical and peda-gogical movements: Though May (1999) describes a clear dichotomization of early British antiracism and multicultural education debates, in Ontario integrative antiracism has drawn from British, U.S., and local movements to develop an analysis of the ways racism intersects with gender, culture, class, language, and so on ( Dei, 1996 ; McCaskell, 2005 ).

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The third activity highlights the integrative nature of the camp’s antiracism pedagogy: Facilitators ask participants for any and all examples of discrimination, prejudice, or stereotyping they could remember, not strictly examples of racism or linguicism, opening a space for participants to identify according to religion, gender, lan-guage, ethnicity, class, ability, or sexual orientation, and allowing less powerfully located students’ complex examples of multiple mar-ginalization to be heard and examined. Student examples are organ-ized in three categories (stereotypes, prejudice, discrimination) which form the Power Triangle (defi ned in Appendix A ). Stereotypes are beliefs or images (“ESL students are dumb”); prejudice involves feelings inspired by stereotypes (resentment at having to work coop-eratively with ESL students); discrimination refers to actions from a position of power that reduce an individual or group’s freedom, opportunities, sense of value or hope (ignoring ESL students in group work). The Power Triangle is a key analytic framework par-ticipants learn to use to identify the ways discriminatory actions cre-ate, sustain, or exacerbate conditions that then naturalize stereotypes: In the cited example, the ignored ESL student has fewer social and linguistic resources to complete the work and thus may appear natu-rally weaker academically. A second triangle (interpersonal, societal, and institutional discrimination) analyzes the inequitable effects of systemic discrimination (for details, see McCaskell, 2005 ; Taylor, 2003 , 2004 ).

STUDY DESIGN

The study combined qualitative approaches with discourse analysis from a facilitator/researcher’s perspective. This situated perspective is grounded in my subject location and experience as a facilitator in previous camps and a White, Canadian-born antiracist ESL teacher of 10 years. In my role as university liaison/researcher, I initiated and coordinated the 2000 camp as a fi eld partnership between the University of Toronto Bachelors in Education program and the Equity Department of the Toronto District School Board. This partnership involved recruiting and cotraining University of Toronto preservice teachers to work with Equity Department youth educators as camp facilitators.

My previous facilitator experience and coordinator/trainer role in the 2000 camp gave me insight into the pedagogical design, objectives, and context of the program. As coordinator, I could conduct partici-pant observation of a range of discussions and small group activities during the camp (fi eld notes were vital because it was inappropriate


to audiotape sensitive discussions). I presented my own observation notes to facilitators at the end of each camp day for elaboration, con-textualization, second opinions, and for insights from home-school teachers. Over the following months, I visited and received reports from student teachers working with camp participants in schools on follow-up activities.

The 47 participants in the Year 2000 ESL Equity Leadership Camp were aged 15 – 19 from 15 countries and two highly multiracial schools (described in Taylor, 2004 ). Over a 3-month period subsequent to the camp, I visited the two schools regularly to conduct one-hour audio-taped individual semistructured interviews with 30 of the 47 camp par-ticipants. Interviewees (aged 15 – 20) were selected for ethnic diversity (15 ethnolinguistic groups) and gender balance refl ective of the camp (13 male, 17 female). It is signifi cant that they were selected in rela-tion to participant observation and feedback from teachers/facilitators identifying these specifi c individuals as having engaged the camp peda-gogy in particularly intense, complex, contradictory, or remarkable ways.

These data were supplemented by one-hour individual interviews with four adult graduates of past camps (from 1990 – 1999) that had been conducted prior to the 30 interviews. Interviewing adult camp graduates helped refi ne interview questions and provided mature, retrospective insights into the short- and mid-term learning experi-ences associated with camp participation. Overall fi ndings are reported below with a specifi c focus on detailed portraits of two participants (all personal and school names are pseudonyms). Table 1 summarizes information on the 14 participants cited in this article.

This research design allowed triangulation among individual postprogram interviews; fi eld observations from school visits and the 3-day camp program; teacher and facilitator observations from their interactions with students prior to, during, and subsequent to the camp; and adult camp graduate insights. This triangulation allowed for the formation, testing, and negation of hypotheses, the identifi cation and testing of recurrent themes, and the search for negative cases across data sources. Data coding and aggregation were done through use of NUDIST software ( QSR International, 2005 ). Themes were illustrated through portraits of camp partici-pants that incorporated their own, their facilitators’, their teachers’, and my own interpretive analyses. Retrospective accounts from adult camp graduates provided valuable glimpses into the longer term understandings, friendships, activism, and career choices that might only emerge for current participants with time and particular circumstances.

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FINDINGS: TRANSFORMING PARTICIPANT CONCEPTIONS OF RACE, RACISM, AND IDENTITY

Developing Nonessentialist, Intersecting Analyses of Racism

Although participating schools are distinctive in their institutional cultures of antiracism, only 10 of the 30 interviewees claimed to have heard of discrimination before the camp, a term all but two had equated with White-on-Black “color racism” ( May, 1999 , p. 2).

As all and any personal examples of discrimination were sought from participants, the complexity of their lives enriched the camp curriculum. The integrative framework facilitated their analysis of racism intersecting with and infl ected by xenophobia, classism, sex-ism, and other forms of discrimination based on contextually spe-cifi c markers of fi rst language, nation of birth or immigrant status, gender, and poverty. For example, 19 of the interviewees recounted feeling or being treated as less intelligent, credible, valued, or even visible as immigrant ESL speakers. For Peter and Tim, speaking

TABLE 1

Camp Participants Cited in This Study

Participants in April 2000 Camp

Name

Gender

Age (at time of interview)

Age (at time of camp)

Country of birth School

Cory F 20 20 Philippines Bonneview Johnny M 16 15 China Sunnyfi eld Khatra F 16 16 Somalia Bonneview Luiza F 16 16 Albania Bonneview Mei F 16 16 China Sunnyfi eld Mohamed M 16 16 Ethiopia Bonneview Natasha F 16 16 Russia Bonneview Nadia F 16 16 Russia Bonneview Nelofer F 15 15 Afghanistan Bonneview Tim M 16 16 China Sunnyfi eld

Adult Graduates From Previous Camps

Nico M 16 21 Serbia (former Yugoslavia)

Meadowlight

Nenad M 15 24 Serbia (former Yugoslavia)

Adanac

Peter M 18 20 Ghana Valleylight

Note. To maintain participant anonymity, schools have not been identifi ed as high schools, technical institutes, or collegiate institutes.


accented English or their fi rst language drew pejorative attention to their ethnicity (as Ghanaian or Chinese). In another example, Hue and Khatra analyzed the ways racialized, gendered stereotypes of beauty inspired discrimination against them, even by peers of the same “color” (see Taylor, 2004 ). In Nico’s analysis, it is in hegemonic stereotypes of both native English speakers and authentic, nonhy-phenated Canadians as White that linguicism and xenophobia are racialized (Nico’s analysis is discussed in more detail later).

As they developed more sophisticated understandings of discrimi-nation, many participants used the camp’s analytic framework to identify and interrogate complex examples of racially infl ected lin-guicism in their lives that they had previously accepted as normal or as simply a stage all language learners pass through equally (e.g., anxiety or self-censorship because of one’s accent or imperfect fl uency).

Understanding Discrimination at the Collective Level

Of the 10 interviewees who claimed to have heard of discrimination before the camp, 8 had defi ned it in terms of individual overt bigotry. This is coherent with liberal multiculturalism and North American ide-ologies of individualism.

When asked in postprogram interviews for examples of discrimi-nation, though all interviewees cited individual acts, 13 examined examples of systemic discrimination (including Cory, discussed later). As I have reported elsewhere ( Taylor, 2004 , in press), Hue linked student experiences of racism to the lack of antiracism education in schools, whereas Luiza analyzed the systemic gendered risks posed to young women by war, civil insecurity and by inadequate sex edu-cation. Both Johnny and Mei analyzed the effects of racist stereo-types of Blacks in the media. Nelofer analyzed myriad institutional restrictions placed on women in Afghanistan where “men have more value”; she also analyzed the ways classist stereotyping gave a neigh-boring school an advantage over her own in lobbying to avoid clo-sure by the board (“They think that school is academic, it has uniforms”).

Institutional discrimination is certainly a more challenging con-cept than individual discrimination: Those who analyzed collective discrimination were either older or more mature in political analysis (Luiza, Johnny, Mei, and Nelofer all claimed an interest in politics dating back to their families’ experiences under Communism or the Taliban).

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Analyzing and Claiming Multidimensional, Relational Identity

The camp focus on multiple, intersecting forms of discrimination encouraged participants to see their identities not as absolute so much as constructed in relation to different contexts and relation-ships. Although Nico identifi ed with the strategic collective ESL iden-tity claimed by camp participants as they analyzed common experiences of language-based marginalization, particular students’ accounts of racism prodded him to recognize the ways his distinct positioning as a comparatively Whitened, European immigrant mitigated the effects of linguicism. As he described the antiracist values he has developed, he disidentifi ed with racist friends with whom he shares language and ethnicity. 7 Although Johnny and Tim gave examples in their interviews of racism they had experienced as Chinese immigrant lan-guage learners, they also both disidentifi ed with the anti-Black racism they remembered in the Peoples’ Republic of China ( Taylor, in press ). Mohamed analyzed his being stereotyped as a “Black thief” by suspicious shopkeepers in Canada, while recognizing that in Ethiopia his ethnolinguistic affi liation overshadowed other identity markers (“Because of the war between Eritrea and Ethiopia … They’d be like, ‘Oh, he’s Ethiopian, oh my god! They’re so mean!’”). When he analyzed the classist exclusionary consequences of high school fees in Ethiopia, he positioned himself as middle class. He identifi ed uncomfortably as male when he analyzed (as an example of sexism) the ways he recalled girls being judged in Ethiopia: “They’re like, ‘She needs to cover up more.’”

In all of these examples, the shifting focus of analysis in camp discussions — from linguicism to xenophobia to gendered racism to classism — asks students to analyze their multiple positions within con-textually specifi c relations of power. At the same time, the camp pro-gram provides a model of nonessentialist collective identity. Though participants share neither fi rst language nor ethnicity, the fi nal stage of creating and implementing their school antidiscrimination action plan demands that they build a community of difference (theo-rized in Taylor, 2004 ) based on shared values and a common com-mitment to minoritarian perspectives (perspectives that strategically adopt the critical insights and interests of the minority in any power relation).

7 It may be signifi cant that Nico later described his birth nation as having been “destroyed by racism.”


Acting for Social Change

The potential for participants’ more complex analysis of race, iden-tity, and discrimination to inspire transformative action depends on myriad factors. Interviews with camp graduates attest to the kinds of leadership and collective activism the camp can directly inspire in schools with committed support from participating teachers, other school staffs, or administration and/or a history of student activism (often camp inspired), particularly for participants with strong social and language skills. Examples of projects initiated by past ESL camp graduates include developing multilingual resources for new ESL stu-dents; school international or antidiscrimination clubs sponsoring events to raise awareness; equity audits of student and community experiences of discrimination presented to school and board administration; and designated ESL positions in student government and school newspapers. Leadership and collective actions often emerged in response to particu-lar crises: driving out White supremacist groups recruiting at school (Hue) or fi ghting the board’s proposed closure of the school (Bonneview students including Nelofer, Luiza, Cory, Nadia, and Natasha).

Adams, Bell, and Griffi n (1997) remind us that much of the per-sonal change inspired by social justice and antidiscrimination educa-tion is subterranean. Though interviewees did not always link these explicitly to their camp experiences, they described changed relation-ships with friends, family, peers, and coworkers (e.g., see Nico’s discus-sion) as well as new ambitions for postsecondary study and career pursuit (Khatra, Johnny, Mei, Hue, Nenad, and Peter).

PORTRAIT OF CORY: ANALYZING SYSTEMIC AND INDIVIDUAL CLASSED, GENDERED, LINGUISTIC RACISM

Cory had arrived with her younger brother from the Philippines 2 years prior.

When I came here I had never seen my mom for 10 years. Like, before she was in Canada, she was in Hong Kong, so I grew up with my grandpar-ents … . So she brought us here for a good future. Because it’s really hard to get a job in my country, even if you have a diploma. And I know she sac-rifi ced a lot, she really did all her best just to bring us here. She’s worked looking after other people’s kids. Even now, we only ever see her on week-ends. But she was really sad before, especially on special times, like Christmas.

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The irony of her mother sacrifi cing the joy of raising her own chil-dren as the price of their “future” is not lost on Cory as she names the gap between North and South as a form of discrimination:

Researcher: Can you name some different examples of discrimination?

Cory: Well, in the camp we talked about discrimination between countries.

Researcher: Can you explain that?

Cory: Like you have to leave your country because you can’t fi nd a job or that the rich countries don’t help the poor countries, they just say “you can’t immigrate,” but there aren’t jobs in the poorer country!

Researcher: So rich countries are discriminating?

Cory: Yeah, you should help them, instead of, like, not accepting them to come to Canada. Like Philippines, we’re not a poor country, but you can’t compare with Canada because here there are more opportunities. But we don’t say “you can’t come to our country because you’re poor or something.”

Researcher: If this is discrimination, what are the stereotypes?

Cory: Well, like you think — well, not you, but politicians — think people in poor countries are lazy, so it’s our fault there aren’t jobs.

Researcher: In your experience are immigrants or Filipinos lazy?

Cory: What? Like, just look at my mom — how many moms in Canada miss their kids for 10 years for work?

As Cory names global economic disparities, the inequitable global labour economy, and First World immigration restrictions as forms of discrimination, she links these through the Power Triangle to racist stereotypes of the natural laziness of the peoples of former colonies like the Philippines. What is of note here is the way the camp’s inte-grative antiracism framework encouraged Cory to think about discrimi-nation in new ways:

Researcher: Did you know about these different kinds of discrimination before?

Cory: Well, no, not like that it could happen between countries: like I know it, but not really specifi c. Like, yeah, I know if one person discriminates somebody else’s race, the color, something like that.

The narrow understanding of color racism Cory claims to have held before the camp may refl ect essentialist discourses of antiracism circu-lating in her school or hegemonic discourses of race in North American popular culture. “One person discriminates somebody else’s race” echoes


liberal multicultural discourses that reduce discrimination to interper-sonal expressions of irrational feelings ( May, 1999 ). Grounded in her own family’s experience of prolonged separation and hardship, Cory extends her prior conception to include systemic discrimination through the institutions of globalised trade and investment and national immigration policy.

This expanded, intersecting notion of discrimination is vital to Cory’s analysis of other examples in her life:

Researcher: Do you remember examples of discrimination you discussed at camp?

Cory: Well, my example was, when I am at work, the woman I work with is really mean to me — like she didn’t tell me to go to the back and stay there, but she always told me I say too much the word like and I can’t with customers.

Researcher: Do other young people say like ?

Cory: Yeah, even young people born here say like ! … So I kind of feel like, you know, she’s discriminating me, and I really get kind of upset, because … like you might come from a different country but we’re all humans, and people can make mistakes.

Cory defi nes more precisely her coworker’s double standard: Language practices that might be treated as minor mistakes of a native speaker are interpreted as a refl ection of her incompetence in serving customers.

Researcher: How is this discriminating against you?

Cory: Well, so I won’t talk, or now I’m really self-conscious when I say like . Like I said like at camp and everybody laughed at me [ laughing ].

Cory traces her older, native-speaking coworker’s power to silence and limit her opportunities to improve her English (“so I won’t talk”). The Triangle thus helps her map the way discrimination can reinforce conditions that exacerbate and naturalize the very stereotypes that inspire it.

When the camp facilitator asked Cory’s Family Group if this exam-ple of silencing her is a form of discrimination, another student com-pared it to his disengagement in response to a White teacher he claimed consistently ignored or reprimanded Black students in class. The group had decided that this must therefore also constitute dis-crimination since “It’s a free country and everyone can talk” (fi eld notes, April 11, 2000). Asked what might be the particular basis of this discrimination, the group agreed on immigrant ESL status rather than race, on which the facilitator introduced the words xenophobia and

TESOL QUARTERLY534

linguicism as forms of discrimination based on birthplace or citizenship status and fi rst language or English profi ciency. This discussion may well inform Cory’s analysis of the stereotypes inspiring her coworker’s actions:

Researcher: Where do you think this discrimination comes from?

Cory: Hmm. Like, because I’m just some ESL kid, so she’s prejudice that immigrants can’t speak English.

Researcher: Is it true immigrants who speak English as their second or third language speak it badly?

Cory: No, like, not for sure — because my other teacher was born in India, and like, she’s a teacher, so …

I’ve traced an important shift from Cory’s initial understanding of her coworker as “really mean” to her analysis of the racialized power relation between them. This shift allows Cory to ask not only how she is speaking but how her coworker is listening and to what effect. Re-examining her feeling of self-consciousness through the lens of the Power Triangle allows Cory to denaturalize it as socially constructed through racist and linguicist images of incompetent immigrant nonna-tive English speakers. Drawing from the camp discourse of integrative racism, Cory powerfully repositions herself as a legitimate speaker wor-thy of her listeners’ attention ( Norton, 1997 ) and a leader with privi-leged insight into discrimination and equity’(“And I thought, ‘Wow! I could be a leader.’”). The camp’s systemic analysis and leadership man-date also opened avenues of collective action: Though not conclusive, there is clear evidence in this study of the increased participation and profi le of ESL camp participants, including Cory, in the student cam-paign to reverse the board decision to close their school (Cory pre-sented one of many testimonial deputations to the board).

PORTRAIT OF NICO: UNDERSTANDING THE DYNAMICS OF WHITENESS WITHIN LINGUISTIC RACISM

Nico recounts and analyzes a very distinct experience of language difference. An adult camp graduate, Nico had arrived in Canada with his family from Belgrade the year prior to attending camp, having developed English profi ciency at what he describes as a “fast” pace. Nico’s trade-oriented high school was located in a western suburb with mixed housing, extensive parkland, and a high concentration of Eastern Europeans from successive post – World War II waves. His school was also characterized by signifi cant antiracism leadership among staff


and a vibrant English as a second dialect (ESD) program, which drew largely Afro-Caribbean students from across the city. Thus, although the student demographics refl ected a White majority with Eastern Europeans highly represented among the ESL population, students of color from more than 15 ethnoracial affi liations were represented among the ESL and ESD groups. 8

Prominent in Nico’s memory of the camp is the surprise he felt lis-tening to stories of discrimination experienced by other ESL students:

Researcher: Do you remember things that surprised you at camp?

Nico: Well, [ pause ] kind of surprised … yeah, I think I was surprised a cou-ple of times at the severity of the discrimination. But I knew it happens sometimes … I mean, it didn’t happen to me exactly. Because I think the neighborhood of the school is pretty good. But I’d heard stories from friends of mine in other places or on the media … lots of examples of, um, of how different uh nationalities or cultures would be, treated.

Researcher: Why do you think you experienced less discrimination than friends?

Nico: I guess, well, my conversational English was pretty good. And I guess it seems the accent is less of a problem for Serbian speakers than other fi rst languages. So that way people that might have been racist towards non-Canadians or whatever, they couldn’t really see that I was an immi-grant unless I told them I was. And I guess that’s why I didn’t encounter as many racial problems. But, I don’t know, I guess other people from ESL that had a thick accent, I think that they could have had a little more of a problem, as far as fi tting into the Canadian concepts, and on the other side I guess more racial problems.

At fi rst, then, Nico presents a linguistic determinist view (akin to cultural racism): “Thick accents” refl ect natural differences between languages and can lead to “racial problems” because these speakers experience greater diffi culty “fi tting in” and thus can become targets for the occasional bigotry of “people that might have been racist toward non-Canadians or whatever.” For Serbian speakers, accent and therefore xenophobia are “less of a problem.”

Researcher: So do you think the discrimination was because of language or race?

Nico: Hm. Um, both. Because I look like the stereotype of a Canadian, still, even though this is changing. So it was easier for people to accept me speaking English.

8 Though exact ethnoracial demographic data are not available for Nico’s school during this period, this overview is based on personal communication with a veteran teacher (October 2, 2000).

TESOL QUARTERLY536

In naming this discrimination as both linguicism and racism, Nico suggests that his Whiteness helped him “fi t” the “stereotype of a Canadian,” unmarking him and making it “easier for people to accept [him] speaking English.”

This represents a signifi cant shift in analysis: Whereas at fi rst Nico naturalized language difference and accent as empirical markers used by xenophobes to identify potential targets, he uses the Power Triangle to trace relational images of Whiteness within normative discourses of native English speakers and Canadianness. This analysis leads him to reconsider accent as a racialized social construct. Nico and Cory’s analyses posit a complex relationship between forms of social differ-ence based on language, race, and competing visions of national iden-tity. Although language difference can be a target of xenophobia, powerful discourses of Canadian dual state formation already construct certain subjects as racialized “multicultural” Others from elsewhere whose accent one listens for as much as one hears (cf. Rubin, 1992 ).

It is through listening to the stories of racist experiences of immigrant friends of color that Nico is able to “see” Whiteness as a relation. Being European cannot guarantee him White status; however, it does Whiten him in comparison with non-European immigrant language learners whose experiences of exclusion so shockingly diverge from his own. Within this analysis, discourses of racism and linguicism do not simply spark random acts of xenophobia; rather, they are central to the very processes, to the very terms of belonging and legitimacy by which ESL students struggle to construct their social identities as credible speakers of English and authentic, equally accepted and valued Canadians.

Nico is not the only White(ned) camp participant to describe an awareness of the effects of Whiteness on their experiences of language learning and social integration: of the seven students interviewed (from Serbia, Ukraine, Albania, Russia, and Kazakhstan) whose Caucasian appearance potentially Whitens them in relation to peers of Asian, African, or South American origin, four offered examples of racism heard from other camp participants while noting that they had not themselves experienced racism. Several explicitly constructed their identities within a framework of White antiracism:

Luiza: Personally, I haven’t experienced difference towards me, I mean like racism towards me or my family, but I think, there was a still a kind of racism, but towards more the races, mostly, the country. Because we are White people, so maybe we don’t feel it as much as Black or Chinese peo-ple do, because I have friends from all over the world, so, I know like when they tell me that “this happened to me” and it’s like some kind of discrimi-nation, but they’re not White and they’re Black or Chinese. So I think there’s a kind of discrimination but not from the countries between coun-tries, I think it’s between the race.


Although Luiza could be racialized on the basis of her Muslim faith or her immigration from a Second World country, she positions herself as White in recognition of the contrastive dynamics of Whiteness. In fact, she is more concerned by racism than xenophobia. For Luiza, taking up the integrative antiracism analysis of the camp has involved not only identifying the ways Whiteness shapes her social identity in English, but also explicitly identifying with a particular kind of Whiteness: a White antiracist social identity developed through the experience of a diverse camp community built on shared values of antidiscrimination.

Hearing the “severity” of racism against friends of color at camp and analyzing the unjust privileges associated with his comparative Whiteness seems to have shaped the ways Nico, too, takes up his social identity as White. He reports in the interview that his closest friends and girl-friend are racially diverse, something which has accelerated the grow-ing distance between himself and certain former Serbian friends:

The way [one Serbian friend] talked about Black people and Asian peo-ple, that really ticked me off a little and I just, I guess we grew apart … not because he’s racist, just, just because, the concepts he sees and he hates people he doesn’t even know.

Nico is at pains in this refl ection to avoid essentialisng; rather, he emphasizes the central role of shared values and worldviews in his shifting social affi liations.

As these students examine the role of Whiteness in their language learning experiences, the nonessentialist antidiscriminatory pedagogy encourages them to develop antiracist identities that claim national belonging based on common values rather than White privilege or ancestry.

Researcher: What does Canadian mean to you, who is and who is not?

Nico: Hm. Well, to me the real Canadians would be the Indians. That’s how I see, because at one point or another, no matter how many genera-tions they had to go, they had to come from somewhere. So, to me the real Canadians would be the Indians and the Eskimos. But I guess if you were second or third generation here, that’s pretty much all you know. No mat-ter if you were from Pakistan or England, no matter where from the world, I think by the time you hit third or even second generation I think you’re pretty much “Canadian-oriented.” Because I have a couple of friends who were just the fi rst generation, they were born here and, they don’t even speak their language. So I would make that a second kind, second cate-gory. Well, then the third group would be me or my folks: that came here less than birth time. I guess I would fi t them in a third group. But I don’t think any less of them.

Researcher: You mean they’re not different degrees of “real” Canadians?

TESOL QUARTERLY538

Nico: No, no, they’re just different ways of setting them, I mean organizing what people feel and know about this country but for me they’re all equal.

Nico’s identity claim challenges both colonialist and liberal multicul-tural discourses of citizenship with their Eurocentric hierarchies of col-lective rights and authenticity. He establishes a fundamental distinction between First Nations Peoples and settlers or immigrants based not in racial categories but in different modes of identifi cation with Canadian society (understood to reference different histories, memories, and affi liations within global fl ows). Within this nonessentialist framework, Canadianness is not a measure of inheritance, genealogy, or entitle-ment, nor a set of arbitrary indicators (e.g., ethnoracial features, fi rst language, accent) or legal status, but an act of identifi cation and com-mitment. To live your life “pretty much ‘Canadian-oriented’” is to live your life primarily in relation to this society and space; in contrast, those who “came here less than birth time” experience life here trian-gulated with life there ( Hoffman, 1990 , p. 170). Nico’s framework for organizing different modes of Canadianness based on “feelings” of commitment allows for discussion of societal practices (like xenophobic or racist discrimination) that can inhibit or enhance feelings of inclu-sion and collective identifi cation among differently positioned collec-tivities. At the same time, Whiteness loses any special status or claims.

It’s noteworthy that several other participants explicitly rejected the kinds of White identity status imagined by Eurocentric discourses of Canadian identity. To the questions “Do you feel Canadian? Who is Canadian in your opinion?” they responded:

Nadia: [ Pause ] Hmm, that is interesting, my point is that Canadian is to be every color … . So now, everybody is so different, it’s really hard to say who is and is not a Canadian now … . I would say once you have your citizen[ship], you are Canadian. But the Indians are the real real Canadian. So maybe we should not apply to government immigration but to ask the Indian people to become a citizen, to say, “Will you accept me”?

Natasha: [ Pause ] First you have to know what it is, Canadian! For me, Canadian is [ pause ] I don’t really know! [ Laughing ] [ Pause ] Probably I do feel, because I just feel at home here, fi rst. Second, I respect this country. And Canadian person is not White Canadian! I don’t think so, so probably that’s one of the reasons too I like to feel Canadian!

Both born in Russia and comparatively Whitened in their school, Nadia and Natasha recognize the paradox of claiming membership in a collective identity so broadly defi ned in ethnoracial, historical, or political terms. They are clear, however, that the Canadian identity they claim is one predicated on recognition of the unique status and rights of First Nations, and one which is explicitly multi-ethnoracial. These identity claims assert a “multiculturalism from below” ( Bannerji,


2000 , p. 22), which imagines this postcolonial settler society as a pro-foundly hybridized “diaspora-space”: “a point of confl uence of eco-nomic, political, cultural and psychic processes … where multiple subject positions are juxtaposed, contexted, proclaimed or disavowed” ( Brah, 1996 , quoted in Parker, 2000 , p. 73).

CONCLUSION: IMPLICATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

The research presented in this article makes a strong case for TESOL practitioners and researchers to attend to the sociocultural and sociopolitical contexts of English language learning. In particular, this case study argues for an understanding of racialized power dynam-ics as integral to processes of social identity construction through English language learning, especially as they intersect with competing discourses of national identity, cultural citizenship, and linguistic com-petence/legitimacy in the case of immigrant ESL learners. These fi nd-ings also suggest the need for more research of explicitly antiracist ESL pedagogy in different settings.

The portraits of Cory and Nico suggest that integrative antiracism education can support immigrant language learners’ development of expanded, intersectional, and even multilevel (individual, collective, institutional) conceptions of discrimination. The value of these under-standings lies in the potential for learners to recognize and question forms of discrimination they had previously accepted as natural or exceptional. Re-examining these forms as socially constructed and col-lectively experienced may open avenues for individual and collective interventions into these lived examples of discrimination and inequity.

These expanded analyses of discrimination can also potentially facil-itate nonessentialist identity claims as learners identify in complex ways with different groups from different positions within different con-texts. Facilitating such identity claims is particularly important as ESL youth navigate the paradox of identity common to experiences of migration and minoritization: as described below, immigrant language learners are challenged to make sense of the unprecedented plurality and fl uidity of roles they come to play in their new society even as ethnocentric norms reduce them to totalizing, frozen stereotypes:

Nowhere is there more dramatic evidence of change, as the new arrival suddenly becomes a minority, a target of racism, class dislocation, cultural and family upheaval … . At the same time ‘immigrant woman’ [or ‘ESL learner’] carries with it a fi xed, enduring and totalizing quality … it becomes the totality of her identity in the dominant society, the only way in which she will be seen, however long she resides in Canada, as long as

TESOL QUARTERLY540

she speaks with an accent, or her difference is marked by skin color or other physical signifi ers that deviate from the norm of white (fe)maleness. ( Rockhill & Tomic, 1994 , p. 21)

This research also suggests that meaningful, personal engagement in a supportive learning environment with integrative antiracism analy-sis and values can open a distinctively ethical stance vis-à-vis becoming Canadian. Nico and other relatively White participants identify with a Canadian national identity based not in racial or ethnolinguistic hier-archies but in a common set of values that remember and challenge Eurocentrism, racism, and colonialism.

Finally, this research urges us to recognize that our practice of TESOL is never neutral but always embedded within racialized and imperialist (as well as gendered, heteronormative, classed, ethnocen-tric, and nationalist) discourses that our pedagogy might either per-petuate or challenge. TESOL and ESL are border sites where the cultural, racial, national, and linguistic Other is produced as much as taught ( Luke, 2004 , p. 25), and where racialized cultural and language difference is reifi ed as much as negotiated ( Kubota, 2001 ). White Anglophone TESOL and ESL teachers need to recognize that our bodies are themselves part of the hidden curriculum, that they rein-force dominant images of English as a White language and of White native speakers as the most qualifi ed teachers ( Amin, 2000 ; Braine, 1999 ). We can work to challenge these dominant discourses in many ways: through curriculum choices (Who is represented and how in our teaching materials? Whose knowledge counts in our classrooms?), stu-dent-centered classrooms and whole school environments (Whose faces are on the walls? Whose voices give the announcements?); through professional alliances to effect changes in school and educational pol-icy (including prioritizing faculty diversifi cation) ( Banks & Banks, 2004 ; Coelho, 1998 ; Cummins, 2001 ).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author gratefully acknowledges the supportive suggestions of the editors, reviewers, colleagues Katie Rehner and Eve Haque, and most important, the leader-ship, generosity, and insights of camp participants and organizers.

THE AUTHOR

Lisa Taylor completed her doctoral degree at OISE/UT, University of Toronto, On-tario, Canada. As an ESL, EFL, and social justice educator of 17 years, she conducts research in critical multicultural, multilingual, and multiliteracies education in multilingual contexts, as well as cultural studies, critical race, feminist poststructural-ist and postcolonial theory in education.


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APPENDIX A

Power Triangle Activity from Facilitator’s Handbook ( Equity Studies Offi ce, 2000 )

DAY TWO

UNDERSTANDING DISCRIMINATION

PURPOSE: To give the students new vocabulary and concepts to organize their experiences.

METHOD: Write the words: Stereotype, Prejudice and Discrimination on the fl ip chart. Ask the students to defi ne these words as a group. The bottom line of these defi nitions should be that:

Stereotypes are ideas , generalizations etc.

Prejudices are feelings , attitudes etc.

Discrimination is action .

It will be helpful to have the students give concrete examples of each. Next, ask the students who can have stereotypes. (Everybody) Who can have prejudice?

(Everybody) What does someone need to discriminate? (Power) One needs some sort of power to be able to act. What gives people power in our society? (Authority, size, language, education, money, etc.)

When students are clear on these concepts ask them to fi ll out the “When I see, hear, fear” forms with a partner. As they report back group the responses under three headings: Dominant ideas, Individual actions and systemic or institutional practices or policies. Don’t tell the students what your organizing principle is. Ask them to fi gure it out.

Ask the students how these areas are connected. .... Connections should run both ways from each corner. Ask them what it feels like to be in the centre of all this and on the receiving and of such ideas and actions.

Finally ask them what kinds of activities are necessary to change this cycle at each corner, i.e. Ideas are changed through education, individual actions are changed by rules and con-sequences, systemic practices are changed by political action.

Note. From Equity Studies Offi ce (2000) . Reproduced with permission of Toronto Board of Education.

wrestling with race: the implications of integrative antiracism education for immigrant esl youth

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