Video

Here is my video.

Writing Veterans

The Hyphenated African

            This week’s reading really inspired me to be creative. This concept of critically conscious narrative/counternarrative made me think about how to use narration to “de-Other” by allowing someone to “imagine the mind of the oppressed and to see, and perhaps vicariously experience, the world through their eyes” (Willis et.al 112). My friend and I were brainstorming when she came up with the idea of writing a narrative about racial identity, but exchanging our narratives with one another in order to get both the experience of being “the other” as well as getting to see the world through someone else’s eyes (I think I said that right). Basically, the idea is that each person starts to write their own story, you trade papers with one another, and then you add on to the other person’s story from your own perspective. Once we made sense of it, we decided to add my mother and my niece to the equation.          

     

            We chose to write about the different perspectives in the racial identity of being African-American, and whether or not the “hyphen” is the absence or presence of identity. We call it: The Hyphenated African. My friend is east African, and she wrote about identifying as “African”. I wrote about identifying as just “American”. We had my mother write about identifying as both African and American—hence the need for hyphenation (mainly because she was around for the all the name changes, movements, and racist stuff). Then I had my niece write about how she identifies herself, because she is mixed and requires more hyphens to define who she is (pretty perceptive for a 10 year old). Here’s what we came up with:

Zam Zam: Growing up I was told to be proud about my heritage. I was told not to forget my history. To do so would disgrace all those who died protecting it in the civil war in Somalia. My mother even took it so far as to check the "other" slot when filling out documents asking about race. Even though we were naturalized as US citizens, she refused to check African-American. She refused to consider she was hyphenated in any manner. Eventually this rubbed off on me. You see I'm not a first generation--- I'm an immigrant like my mother from Somalia. I came here at the young age of 5, at times I'm so Americanized that I relate more to the American culture than my African one. However, in the end, I can tell I don't fit in the African-American culture. The label doesn't capture the collective experiences I've had in my lifetime. I may look African-American but I identify myself as African who is American. I am not hyphenated nor will I accept that label.

Me: I am not African. I am not from Africa. I am from America. I was born on American soil, to American parents, and many of my ancestors were Native American. I am more than just the descendant of former slaves. Although it is a part of my history, I refuse to allow slavery to define my identity. You cannot “hyphenate” me. You cannot “Other” me, create a separate label for me, but still allow me to be an “—American”. I was an American before there was an America.  

Mom: Our ancestors were brought from Africa as slaves to America. Our people helped to build this country, and because they were slaves they never got any pay for their work. Without the work of slaves there wouldn’t be an America. Our ancestors earned the title of American. The best way to describe Black people is African American. Black is an acceptable way to refer to us, or Negro if you know how to pronounce it correctly.

Ladybug: (Note: because of her age I had her answer questions rather than write a paragraph)…

            Q: What are you? (Name all).

                        A: German, Irish, French, Indian, Black, White, Black-Frenchman

Q: Are you African? Why?

A: No, I don’t think I’m African because out of all the parts I’m made of that’s not on my list.    

            Q: Are you American? Why?

A: Yes. Because I am free. An American is someone that was born and raised in America.

            Q: Are you African-American? Why?

                        A: No. Because I’m only American which is halfway not fully African American.

Yay Last Reading

So I'm not sure if it's just because I did this reading during a break in my Methodology writing or what, but I thought this section was by far the best section of the book.  If the book had been structured along the lines that were presented in bullet point form in the afterward, I think I would've enjoyed the whole thing more overall.

A few things I didn't understand:

On page 109, the opening of this reading, the authors state that "Historically, oppressed people have expressed themselves using their languages, literacies, music, and arts...."  What means of expression does this not include?  Do they mean academic works?  If so, why is that separate from languages and literacies?  What is the difference between the word "literacies" here and the words "literature" or "writing"?

On 111, they mention a scholar focused on "Chicana feminist pedagogy."  What exactly does that mean?  Teaching the subject of Chicana feminism?  Teaching in a Chicana feminist way?  Teaching in a way that emphasizes the importance of Chicana feminism?

On 116, there's a section that I found myself agreeing strongly with where the authors discuss how indigenous groups are discussed as a historic event in the classroom but not as a contemporary entity.  However, after a little more thought, I think that applies to a lot of things.  As an education system, we are scared to deal with contemporary events.  A lot of US History curriculum ends around WWII--I know anecdotally that very few classrooms cover Vietnam or the 60s in general except to acknowledge the Civil Rights movement very peripherally.  I agree that indigenous people's marginilization is much more than the events I just listed, but I think as a culture we are hesitant to insert anything into the History classroom that is still controversial.

On 117, a scholar is quoted as dividing counternarratives into autobiographies, biographies, and composites.  It doesn't define composites, but I didn't understand why counternarratives can't include fictive works, or poetry, or academic work in general.

A few things I liked:

Importance of narrative on 110.  Something that's really hit home with me this semester, in both this class and in Dr. Jackson's narrative class.

Problems with language in the classroom on 114.  In an education system built around evaluation, it's inevitable that we value one language more than another.

Acknowledgment that primary sources are downplayed on 127.  Only addition I have to this is the recent example of a Wikipedia editor refusing to use an email from Philip Roth on the author's Wikipedia page because Wikipedia only accepts secondary sources.  The practice is understandable, if they used primary sources then anyone would be able to insert their own spin on their Wikipedia page, but we have to draw the line somewhere.

One thing I didn't like:

This section as a whole explored the importance of narrative IN research, but doesn't seem to acknowledge the potential of narrative AS research, like in works such as Notes of a Native Son, Bootstraps, or other critical memoirs.

Language use and Power

Language Use and Power

Although I enjoy learning about the different methods of critically conscious research, I am finding some parts of this book hard to follow due to the “listing” nature of the book (In some parts, the authors seem to only list the research on a particular subject).  Chapters 4, 5, and 6 are no different

In chapter 4, the authors describe the different aspects of Critical Methodologies.  For example, “Critical Discourse Analysis is a form of discourse analysis that is inspired by the thinking of Derrida, Hebermas, Gramsci, and Marx among others.  Bloome and Carter submit that, historically , the term discourse was used as a verb” (52).  In other words, the methodology in this sense is utilized to form a “discourse community.

In chapters 5 and 6, the authors discuss the varying power structure evident in the varying structures (government, religion, laws, etc); they also present the different research for the power structures in language use.  The most interesting part was the research done by Moje, who posited that gang members didn’t utilize communication to just assimilate to the gang culture, but, instead, they used language to find meaning with their incomplete identities: “Their language use indicates willingness to engage of a gangsta lifestyle and reveals aspects of evolving identities” (92). 

Like always, I will try to take what I read and find meaning with my own work.  During the previous weekend (Marine Corps Birthday and Veterans Day), millions of Veterans grouped together to celebrate service to our country.  With my own experience, I am able to understand the importance of these two days.  This weekend, my battalion had a reunion and memorial service for our fallen; this weekend allowed me to notice the difference of comfort, within myself, when faced with the civilian world and the military world.  Although I have become articulated in both, my confidence is greater in another (the military world).  When understanding that confidence is a key factor with power and language use, I am able to see the importance of creating a more effective assimilation program for our veterans.

CDA, Critical Ethnography, and some other stuff...

Where to begin? There is so much information covered in this section 500 words just isn't enough to cover it all. There were a couple of parts that stood out to me the most. First, was the part about CDA--mainly because Dr. P. had us write one about a movie for class last year. Thinking critically about a movie takes all of the fun out of it--you develop this critical consciousness and have a heightened sense of awareness to everything. Next thing you know, every movie, every TV show, every commercial is racist and sexist and homophobic, and you're walking around in awe of how much of this stuff you were completely oblivious to. For example, Dr. P. had us read an article he wrote about the movie Shrek. I wasn't really interested in the movie before, but I never thought about it beyond it being a kid's movie with Eddie Murphy playing a stupid donkey.  After reading his article, I was amazed at how much racism I missed and had to go back and watch the movie. You can check out the article here.

Critical ethnography also got my attention. I wish there was more information on it, but the little overview made me want to do some more research into it. I liked Quartz's idea that critical ethnography "attempts to re-present the 'culture', the 'consciousness', or the 'lived experiences' of people living in asymmetrical power relations" (Willis et. al 55). In particular, I like the use of the word "re-present" instead of represent. Instead of trying to speak for that group of people, you are using their own words to present their culture, consciousness, and experiences. Big difference to me. The one thing that does bother me about this is how women and non-whites keep getting left out of the equation. How is it possible to focus on oppression, or oppressed people and not take their contributions into consideration?

The critically conscious study of whiteness and sexual orientation both interested me as well. I am a huge fan of Tim Wise (which is why I will post his video below), and for some reason language and sexual orientation both confuse and interest me. I think this is largely due to the fact that this is still new to me, but I am also realizing that I am at a disadvantage when talking to homosexual and transsexual people. It's has more to do with identity and language, but I've found that the lines aren't as clear to me as when I am dealing with something like race. Anyway, since I love visuals I wanted to add the Tim Wise video on whiteness. Hope you like it.

Chapters four, five, and six in "On Critically Conscious Research" are comprised of examples of different types of research projects from the past that are considered within the realm of critically conscious research. While reading a continuous thread of different examples of these types of research feels tedious at times, research that lies within the realm of the critically conscious is not easily defined and necessitates the use of multiple examples to show the wide range of theoretically critical lenses a researcher can use to analyze a problem within a group of people. Perhaps part of what makes critical theories so diverse and therefore difficult to define is that a scenario that calls for critical study involves examining a group of people where a variety of social constructs intersect (race, gender, social class, etc) to create dynamic relationships the can be analyzed and used to define what it means to exist within that culture. This makes critical theory applicable to virtually any study involving diverse peoples.

One thing that struck me as odd is mention only briefly on page 70: critical theory as applied to religion. The book barely mentions the use of critical theory to analyze religion, and only mentions a couple of examples: the image of Muslims in the post 9/11 world and the adaptation of Catholic education programs for Spanish speakers. The book states that "Although a part of CT, religion has remained distant from critical theories. Worldwide religious oppression is fraught with over-tones of mass murders and genocide that occur as powerful nations or groups seek to eradicate the religious beliefs of others." (70) When I read this I wondered why religion is not researched more thoroughly and frequently by critical theorists.Why is religion treated as sacred within this community when nothing else is? Critical theorists examine cultural, racial, and gender issues, and all of these facets of humanity are closely related to religion. Religion is generally culturally based and often has different roles for men and women as well as opinions regarding race (some explicit and some implicit), so it stands to reason that it would be necessary to critically examine the role of religion within a group of people. Of course religion is different from race and gender in a very big way: religion is a personal choice, race and gender are not.

After reading these chapters I also wonder about an idea that seemed to come up often regarding the teaching of English to students who are ESL and EL. While I can understand that teaching Americanized English to minorities can be problematic because of cultural differences and the idea that it makes the minorities language seem subordinate to English, I also see the importance of teach a lingua franca to all people within a globalized society. Perhaps it is easier for me to take this stance since my native tongue is English, but the issue of how to teach literacy in both English and the native language of a group seems like a complicated issue that I certainly do not have the answer to, I just know that the answer is not to stop teaching them English. And I say this not because of cultural reasons, but simply because in 2012 speaking and understanding English is essential to success in a globalized world. I do feel that all students in the United States would benefit from multilingual education.

Finally, Glazier and Seo addressed an issue I have wondered about throughout this book and during discussions on critical theories and race relations: what about White culture, or more specifically what appears to be a lack of White cultural awareness. In their study of European White student populations they find that "Whiteness studies are a missing link in teacher education that leaves many White educators feeling cultureless" (100). Maybe part of feeling "cultureless" (for myself anyway) comes from the knowledge that much of what European White Americans are taught as our history (and therefore our culture) are based on lies and half-truths and that many of the atrocities committed by White European ancestors are glossed over or ignored entirely. What I am certain of is the need for critical theory to examine the ways that race, gender, and social constraints interact to construct our global, multicultural society.

Ch 4-6

Chapters 4-6 this week were just as dense with theory as the reading for last week. It seemed like each paragraph or section could have been a term paper, and while reading I visualized myself surfing over a very deep ocean. Chapter four was on “Critical Methodologies and Methods” (philosophies and processes) then moving into specifically qualitative critical methodologies. My new friend Critical Discourse Analysis was in there with language and literacy research and critical ethnography. We saw CRT again (although I don’t any of these sections don’t include one another) and then critical policy analysis. Some of the critiques presented at the end were how critical theorizing needs to be disentangled from the narrow Marxist definition to be applied in education research and how insider/outsider perspectives cannot be essentialized. This moved into another section on insider/outsider perspectives.

The next chapter was “Critically Conscious Language and Literacy Research” which introduced domains of power and how critically conscious researchers use a socio-historical perspective in their research. The first section was on policies and government agencies, laws and critical language and literacy, religion, economics and critical consciousnesses. Then the authors had another larger section about Disciplinary domain of power, including indigenous schools and communities, language, literacy, and culture, and how all these theories could be put into practice by citing several examples of critical lenses in schools and how they worked to uncover formal and informal hegemony.

The section in this chapter on religion took my notice because it pointed out to me how clearly troublesome essentializing can be. My own history with “religion” and those people I know who are very “religious” fall completely out of this category. I think today in a world where not all people are religious and religion is often associated with culture, it would be helpful to both think of religion as a cultural practice and as a culture of its own rather than as a completely separate reflection of culture.

The final chapter focused on “Hegemonic Domain of Power” in critical language and literacy research. They “tackle the domain of power as well as inherent domain levels (83). Because there is no ideology free teaching practice, they define “critical literacy” and “critical pedagogy.” After defining it, the authors analyze critical pedagogy among White students. The researcher’s values reinforced White middle-class norms and found that the students generally adhered to gendered stereotypes in class discussions. They pointed out what seemed to be rather obvious: that taught literature tends to be White and male, therefore White males relate to it more. The next section was on sexual orientation and how literacy norms are generally presented in the dichotomous heterosexual male/female which excludes those who do not fall into that traditional norm. The next section is about studies among students of color and racial/ethnic/cultural identities that emerge and are created in the classroom and in research of language and literacy with the researcher and participants.  Finally, there were many smaller sections about pedagogy, popular culture, agency and student voice, teacher education, and critical media. I found the last section on media and pop culture especially interesting because this is what I have been focusing on in my research projects. In critical media studies, the researcher breaks  down the implicit messages that are being created for race, gender, culture, nationality, sexuality, and just about any marginalized group, with the idea pointed out here that “popular” culture usually means “White” culture. 

On Critically Conscious Research (Ch. 4-6)

We must “interrogate relationships between literacy performances and power dynamics in which we engage—not with the belief that we will ever achieve a perfectly just community or society, but with the understanding that the justice lies in perpetual interrogation” (Blackburn).

The three chapters that we read for this week in “On Critically Conscious Research” focus on critical methodology or the philosophies that underlie research and the methods or processes and techniques of research.  Critical methods do address and challenge “taken for granted assumptions about objectivity, validity, reliability, and who should be involved in the research process” (51).  The chapters focused on defining terms such as dialectics, critical literacy, critical ethnography, and how critically conscious language and literacy researchers aim to do.  These researchers “aim to deconstruct, demystify, and articulate the relationship among the disparate beliefs, thoughts, and actions, as well as to illustrate how these ideas influence equity and social justice” (55). 

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It discusses Structural, Disciplinary, and Hegemonic domains of power and how many of these domains operate invisibly to people who are privileged under the system—primarily White, middle class, men.  The chapters use research examples that have tried to go against the status quo, and how they may or may not have accomplished that.

The section on ELL students really caught my attention in particular.  I met a lot of students who were dealing with trying to learn at the high school level or college level in an American University and their primary language was not English.  Many of the students struggled with the ways they were taught, specifically that there was little to no place for their native language within American culture.  Many of the students that I met when I worked as a long term substitute teacher did not openly talk Somali, although they were fluent, except when they were alone, or within the ESL classroom where Mr. Sommers let them talk in Somali.  Over his time as a teacher, he’d had the students teach him Somali as well as share their culture with him.  They were comfortable with him—but it was clear that comfort didn’t extend to a lot of other members of the faculty.  It makes me wonder now, what kinds of curriculum were reinforced that tried to squash these students’ culture and language, and whether the teachers even realized they were doing it or not.

 I also remember being taken aback when a faculty member asked me why I’d chosen one of the Somali students for one of the English award, since her “native language isn’t English.  Why would you choose her?”  I was really confused by this question.  “Because she was one of the top students in the class,” was my reply.  I felt angry that he’d questioned it, but I didn’t really spend a lot of time asking myself WHY he’d questioned it.  How did his attitude about this matter play a role in his job as a teacher, teaching these students?  I guess I don’t really know.  But it gave me a lot to think about.

Crit. Conscious Research Chapters 4-6

This week's reading was interesting and created interesting perspectives on the use of CDA, or Critical Discourse Analysis. CCR defines CDA as "language use in speech and writing as a form of social practice...the discursive event is shaped by situations, institutions and social structures, but it also shapes them." It also describes how CDA represents the minority, or underprivileged, and emphasizes anti-racism and anti-bias in research. I agree that effective research needs to be as objective as possible and this theoretical perspective can help researchers achieve accurate results in their projects. 

Trainor examines White identity and racism among English majors using CDA. What is interesting to me is that there are no apparent "White identities." In mixed group settings I have observed that Whites are quiet when it comes to race discussions. The more subtle forms of language may be a factor to be both acknowledged and discovered, but as a white person I find this subject challenging. This of course means that it does not exist, but my understanding of scenarios "normalize" subjective bias. 

Now for my rant:

I am not a fan of this book because it uses high-level language to bring its points across. In a way, I think it attempts to make the reader feel intelligent or stupid, depending on your perspective. The other focus of the book is to “fight the power” but really ideologies are oppressive as well as ethnocentricities (belief that one’s culture is superior to another). The fact of the matter is that people who focus on how different we are takes a negative approach to cultural relations. I take from this book the examples of how to recognize bias and attempt to minimize it in the researchers eyes. In that aspect, the book is wonderful. However, this book does not attempt to put things in “laymans’ terms” and does not reach a large audience. The lack of pictures and explanatory endnotes makes this a difficult read. The next critique is the use of “Collins’s model of analysis.” The book vaguely describes this model on page 65.

Wow, what a rant. The most important part of Critically Conscious Research is to identity bias and other factors that reduce objectivity. The different parts of critical ideologies include passive opposition to activist declarations. I think that the most apparent concept of critical ideologies is the activist declarations. You can see this types of ideologies in politics, such as the extreme views of political parties, especially when one ideology triumphs over another. The biggest problem is that these oppressive ideologies are rarely challenged. My view of “normality” demonstrates how I’m not challenging “assumed cultural norms.” I hope that in the future I can recognize oppressive ideologies and seek to understand the “oppression of normalcy.”

Thanks for reading!  

Applying CRT, finally.

After last week's reading of CRT history, I was glad to see that the book finally moved to a discussion of how these theories might be used. Chapter four provided many interesting examples, such as the Trainor's work on "white talk" in the English classroom. This portion of the book really helped answer some of the questions we brought up in class last time, including how white privilege can be invisible yet always present. From my own experience, I have seen this type of "white talk" and it was interesting to see how these experiences I have had might be studied in depth using a larger framework. The book then moves on to a few key methods that might be used, including critical policy analysis where a researcher might look at government policies. Interestingly, chapter four also brought up several problems or critiques of CRT, which I think helped me in determining what constitutes CRT; specifically, I was really interested in this concept of the
"inside/out" relationship, where a person from a dominant group might erroneously consider themselves outsiders "within" a marginalized group. This is another phenomena that I have seen play out in many courses I have taken, where students have difficulties dealing with books written by people of color. In our attempts to relate to historically "minority" groups, it's extremely easy to fall into this trap where our supposed celebration of diversity instead becomes a way to point out differences. One thing that comes to mind for me is how teachers tend to use African-American history month to focus on issues that should really be dealt with year-round. I have no problem with the concept, but I do agree with the book that emphasizing the importance of African-American authors might also be inadvertently "exoticizing' these works. 

Chapters five and six also helped me better understand these concepts, because they gave concrete examples of how CRT might be applied both properly and improperly. For example, as a teacher and tutor, I can see how CRT is the perfect lens to adopt to look at language and literacy in marginalized groups. There is definitely an undercurrent of racism in these policies, and CRT would allow for a much more robust discussion than most of the other approaches we have studied. The use of the term "other children" in literacy policy seems like a perfect example of how we can use a CRT lens to identify systemic racism. By contract, the book showed us how CRT might be improperly applied within gender and queer studies. On a personal note, I've always found Queer studies extremely insightful because these critiques lay out ideas that surprise me. That being said, the book's discussion of the problems in equating the queer experience with the African-American experience seemed to me a perfect example of an improper use of CRT. It concerns me that some researchers try to adopt the same methodology of dealing with queer studies as is used in studies of race or ethnicity. These populations are different for many reasons, and it did make me uncomfortable when the book detailed writers who have in the past conflated these concepts. This was glad to see the book get into these kinds of specific examples, because it really helped me conceptualize what CRT does and does not encompass. 

The Mexican American Evolution

Chapter 4 defines critical discourse analysis (CDA)  as “ a set of approaches to discourse analysis focusing on power relations”(52). In conducting one of my interviews I was impatient to do some discourse analysis as Matthews explains which “explores how dominant discourses work through multiple texts to show how identities are established and how knowledges and understandings are taken up as history, politics, justice and ‘truth’”(53). With that said, I wanted to take this blogging moment to get some of the stuff up in my head having to do with this reading and my recent interview, down.

Yesterday I just was interviewing one of my participants for my research. I’ve been trying to find ways to ask my research questions without making it feel like a formal interview. So we went out to eat at this Mexican restaurant Jalisco de Rodeo . I notice that there was a loop of garlic hanging over the door, next to it a glass of water, and a small piece of paper with what looked like a prayer written on it.  We started talking about rituals, traditions and superstitions, and eventually arrived at a discussion over the term  Mexican American and the idea of culture that was attached to his ( my participants) Mexican American Identity.

Now so far with every interview, when it comes to the part where my participants are trying to explain to me their Mexican American Identity, they need me to join in. They want to know how their articulation of Mexican American Identity compares with mine, as if in order to solidify it, it needs to have certain elements of mine encompassed in it.

 My participant knows me, and knows that at this point, I have considered myself predominantly culturally white. He knows I don’t speak Spanish and that it isn’t my mother’s first language either.  He knows this because in the process of explaining what his idea of Mexican American Identity encompasses he has included me in this idea by asking me questions about my language and culture in my immediate family. His idea of what it means to be that doesn’t just consist of HIS experiences as a Mexican American, but those of his Mexican American peers (me).

We eventually got to breaking down the term Mexican American. We discussed how in that term Mexican was the adjective for American. What kind of American are you? A MEXICAN American. We talked about how not every American has an adjective prefix to identify what kind of American they are. Then we arrived at the idea of evolution. How are we as Mexican Americans evolving?

 And apparently, according to my participant, I was this evolution. I am the evolved Mexican American.

 According to my participant evolution is progress and the Mexican American Identity is going to inevitable progress into someone like me. A monolingual, English speaking Mexican American. I right away did not like this idea and I started picking at his words. The words he used to explain this “evolution”. My participant is political science major and is always busting out his dictionary to situate the words we use to see if they are serving to articulate our thoughts. He does this even if we’re not in the middle of an interview. So according to Merriam web evolution is:

c (1): a process of continuous change from a lower, simpler, or worse to a higher, more complex, or better state : growth (2): a process of gradual and relatively peaceful social, political, and economic advance

Initially my participant was good with this idea. He agreed, this is what evolution is, the change from lower state to a better state. But what that means, was that I was the better state of Mexican American. Me, the culturally white, monolingual, Mexican American, was the EVOLVED Mexican American.

It’s not the first time this idea has been presented to me. It was usually coming from the parents of the guys I dated; I was a valued, educated evolution of the Mexican American. I only know this cause the Southside and Westside mothers always made it a point to tell me how happy they were that their son was dating a “good” girl like me. They didn’t know all the things I did that would probably change their idea of me as potentially “good”,  but what they did know was, I spoke English without an Spanish/Southside/Westside accent, I lived on the Northside (white side/ suburbs), I went to school and I didn’t speak Spanish. In this idea of me being a “good” girl the loss of language was a small sacrifice to become the evolution I am.

Which is bullshit.

After breaking down the words evolution as betterment from a lower state, I pointed out that I considered myself, as he did too, culturally white. It wasn’t until I said this, that he slowly started reevaluating his evolution statement. I explain that if I was the evolution of the Mexican American then that meant we saw white culture as a better and higher standard of culture than Mexican culture. If Mexican is the adjective of American then isn’t what he considered evolution the evolution of losing the Mexican and just becoming American. We talked about how it was inevitable that the later generations ( like the 2^nd generation and on) was going to lose some aspect of their culture. But if we moved away from our culture, what were we moving closer to. And why was the move considered an evolution. This evolution is seemingly synonymous with cultural genocide.

Unfortunately because of my participant familiar relations with me there was a silence that he was trying to maintain. I asked him about 4 or 5 times, what are the later Mexican American generations moving towards when we move away from our culture. My participant thought I was TRYING to get him to say we are moving towards white culture. I know this because he straight up accused me of doing so. But I tried to explain that I wanted to know what he honestly thought, where he considered us to be moving if we were moving away from our culture.

He never answered my question.

This is only my second interview with this participant and I plan to have more with him. I found it interesting to watch him struggle with figuring out in which direction we are moving when we move away from our culture. He had a lot to consider, he considered old rituals and traditions he was glad to move away from, mostly he was referring to patriarchal traditions he found oppressive. I know this was important to him considering he was raised by his mother and is very close with his sister. He also is an atheist and is glad to move away from religious parts of Mexican American culture and identity.

Critically Conscious

The more I read this book the more I want to beat my head with it. I feel like everything I've read or have been taught in school was rewritten in this short book. In the least, I may feel this way because I have done quite a few advertising research projects based on these theories. 

In chapter four, the authors discuss critical ethnography and the importance of including "knowledge, values, society, culture, and history"(55). I remember in my research, I had to focus on a certain group (which ever our target audience was) and delve into each of the characteristics listed prior. To know and understand a culture will give more insight than anything possibly could, especially with an targeted group you are examining. 

However, the inequalities are an important factor that one must always be aware of when researching. to be universal in one's writing/ researching one must look at every different angle. One must try not to be biased against other individuals with the focus group/ research group, but to look through many different lenses and see the different shades. 

Chapter five goes into specific fields that focus on politics and power and involve different cultures. This chapter and the next are both like chapter four, in that, the information is very similar to what we have been taught to understand and use in other theory classes. I recognize the need and important to be aware of these theories when creating one's lit review, I just don't understand why I have to read 5 chapters talking about the same damn thing. ugh. 

Critically Conscious Research 11/12

As I started the reading, I found myself linking topics between classes. The first chapter, which discusses Critical Methodologies and Methods, focuses on exactly that, and delves into how those specific methodologies affect our research. As the chapter began defining and widening the scope of what critically conscious research is, I recalled a similar subject from my Theory class. Defining rhetoric is not an easy task, and many people seem to have what they perceive to be "the right answer", whether it be grounded historically or maybe it just sounds right; I would say the same is true of "critically conscious research" or "critical methodologies". Assigning one definition to each topic is difficult, so we should consider what the subjects can do, as opposed to defining them singularly. I think the first chapter did a good job of not focusing on the narrow, but rather expanding the topics in a way that make them accessible to all people in academia that are conducting research in a way that challenges the norm.

In the next chapter, we are faced again with power struggles and how they continue to affect education. Education is affected by funding that is supported by political interests...no, who would have thought? This predicament not only makes it difficult for the students that don't fit into the "cookie-cutter", one-size fits all system of learning, but also for researchers trying to overcome a terrain that has been customized to fit prevailing assumptions. I again, like always, began thinking about white privilege and how students of color are left unengaged. It's a crisis that has come to the forefront of research...but is really still overcome by politics.

Instead of focusing on white privilege, like I'm always inclined to do since it's literally everywhere around us, I'll try to center my response to the last chapter on any other topic that always intrigues me: gender and sexual orientation. Gender can almost always be connected to sexual orientation. We're always faced with these binaries, right? (white/nonwhite, male/female, gay/straight, etc). I think it's interesting how much power literature has in reinforcing or destabilizing these binaries and norms. These power dynamics are reinforced in the lives of LGBTQ people, and affect the way they carry themselves, whether it be when modifying how they identify with different groups, or whether the media is constructing the way a gay person "should" act. It's very similar to sexism and discourses that preach to women about how we should carry ourselves. And presently, it seems as though sexual orientation, like race, and sex, become the forefront of what a person is. We need to know this in order to overcome "whiteness" and other defined norms, but like most everything else, these orientations just align themselves to correlate more with whiteness, and understanding groups that a different than the WASP group.

Critical theories

In chapter 4, the book discussed critical race theory (CRT). This is an interesting concept in itself because it looks at people of color to question and even break away from certain beliefs, knowledge, and ways of looking at things. This is a great tool because it brings to light different perspectives that would otherwise go unnoticed. I like it because it deals with a concept that needs acknowledgement by others, so it does a good job of doing that. However, I wonder how it applies to a different country where people look the same.

México is a good example of what I mean. I can’t say that everyone looks the same over there because there are vast differences, so I’ll base certain claims on the census. The census for the U.S. specifically gives different races: White, African American, Asian, Native American and that’s all I can remember. The government places these races, so people follow them. There are more than two races to compare ourselves to, so it gets complicated when dealing with issues from the U.S. perspective. In México, according to a friend that lived over there for 24 years, there are only two choices in the census for them: indigenous and some other name to say Mexican. Needless to say, the indigenous people are the minority.

With this in mind, I wonder if the race factor is such a pertinent issue within their educational and governmental institutions. Class struggles are definitely prominent as can be heard in numerous songs (“Gimme the Power” by Molotov is my favorite). In other songs, they mention tensions between Mexican people and white people, but they always refer to people in the U.S.  and not within themselves. I resort to songs because I don’t live over there and don’t have a clue as to what students over there study.

Having said that, it prompts me to ask myself if critical race theory, critical theory in general, or any other theory that tries to break away from the dominant culture is ever successful. I feel that even if I look at things a certain way, it is because I learned it from an institution that follows a dominant culture. It’s hard to shake off what’s dominant, marginalized, or true.

On Critically Concious Research: Blog

“Critically conscious language and literacy researchers aim to deconstruct, demystify, and articulate the relationship among disparate beliefs, thoughts, and actions, as well as to illustrate how these influence equality and social justice” (52).

               This week’s reading seemed to cover a vast amount of theories in which any student could use in their thesis or dissertation. Even though it seemed borderline overwhelming at some points, I know I will see these theories again, if I do not utilize them myself. Just a few days ago I was reading Hip Hop Intellectual Resistance by A. Shahid Stover in which he uses the phrase “‘neo-colonial’ American Ghetto” to describe the modern, oppressed African-Americans which in turn is the creative foundation for the Hip Hop culture, respectively. His phrase stems from the ideologies behind The Black Panther Party’s embracing Fanon’s viewpoint of “humanizing Black consciousness” (21). There are numerous rhetorical connections similar to this example that are becoming more apparent to me, the further I read.

               What are interesting to me are the underlying connections that are seen throughout every section. All of the topics or methodologies that every chapter has discussed have included a level of language and/ or a level of experience. This notion of communication and experience is blatantly in-your-face, but this book has not discussed or commented of any of the rhetorical strategies that critically conscious research includes. Although I am still a fan of this book, and I do appreciate the compilation of various different types of critical theories; I do find myself correlating this book and the text for Rhetorical Theory often while I read. One the other hand I would consider that a positive aspect rather than a negative!

               In chapter five as well as chapter six, the text was primarily concerned with the structures of power, how they maintained the power through literacies, and how different critical theories can be used to combat the powers in charge. One issue that stood out to me was the two contradicting, coexisting beliefs that face indigenous cultures when they oppose the government. The government has rules and regulations in place to stifle their culture but at the same time the government allows them rights to work within the system. These parameters cause indigenous cultures to become stagnant and therefore remain dependant. This trait is all to commonly seen and enhanced in the indigenous communities. What stood out is the fact that this could be juxtaposed with almost any oppressed individual. Just the frequency in exploitation in America is disgraceful.

There were two points that peaked my interest in Chapter 4 of On Critically Conscious Research: Critical Discourse Analysis and Critical Race Theory. I have been thinking a lot about these two ideas as they pertain (or have pertained) to my present and past thesis ideas.

Critical discourse analysis was going to be my methodology for my veganism idea. Bloome and Carter define it as "a set of approaches to discourses analysis focusing on power relations. The models of power, understandings of language, culture, and social processes, and foci of analysis, varies across approaches" (as cited in Willis 52). The specific discourse that I was interested in critically analyzing was vegan cookbooks, blogs, websites, and other spaces where vegans articulate their identity in written form. I was interested in seeing how the vegan identity comes off as negative to those who aren't vegan, so perhaps the "power relations" would've come into play with vegans who deem themselves as "more vegan" than others--I know, it sounds ridiculous, but I've come across vegans who are very critical of what other vegans consume or wear and the second they fall out of line they are no longer "vegan." I guess you could say they hold each other accountable! That methodology would have certainly cultivated an understanding of cultural as well as social processes I think. There is a great article* on critical discourse analysis that was recently published in CCC that would be helpful for anyone looking to use CDA as a research method: http://search.proquest.com.libproxy.txstate.edu/docview/1081830959/fulltextPDF?accountid=5683

I was also intrigued by the section on critical race theory in that it reminded me of my current thesis topic, even though my current thesis topic doesn't have much to do with race (although it could). I'm arguing the value and viability of narrative inquiry as a method of examining the concepts of community and exclusion in the writing center. This passage stood out to me as it pertains to my specific method of research:

"[Scholars] use autobiography, biography, parables, stories, testimonio, and voice, infusing humor and allegory to expose hidden truths and to explicate and situate race, racism, and power within the experiences of people of Color without the need for interlopers, interlocutors, or interpreters of the 'Other'" (58).

The stories I will be weaving into my thesis do contain and address themes of racism and power, although that is not the focus of my project, so I don't think that I would name critical race theory as necessarily guiding my project... any thoughts?

The Insider/Outsider/Within section on page 61 also stood out to me, since I deal a lot with the ideas of insiders and outsiders, given my themes of community and exclusion. I can see myself taking on the "outsider within" label, given that I spend a lot of time discussing the students who are excluded from writing center communities, typically the ESL students with whom I was close during my time as an undergraduate writing tutor. "Because of their unique and unusually close relationship with and among their participants of Color, they possess an uncanny understanding of the lived experiences, culture, and language of their participants and concomitant empathy for the oppression and racism experienced by their participants. In other words, they describe themselves as 'outsiders within'" (61-62). Then again, if I am speaking with the experience of a writing center tutor who was an "insider," perhaps I am more accurately an "insider-outsider-within"?

*If the link doesn't work, it's:
Huckin, Thomas, Jennifer Andrus, and Jennifer Clary-Lemon. "Critical Discourse Analysis and Rhetoric

and Composition." College Composition and Communication 64.1 (2012): 107-29. National Council of Teachers of English. Web. 2 Oct. 2012.

On a Critically Conscious Literature Review (pt 2)

On a Critically Conscious Literature Review (pt 2)

Again, dislike this book. Bloated lit review with little substance beyond a guided reading.

Chapter 4

I found the modern interpretation of dialectic as presentation of the truth to be an amusing throwback to the Greeks, who at the time used dialectic as a label for non-rhetorical discussion. Given that critical theory is pretty much all rhetoric, yet dialectic is used to describe it, yet... The dividing line between what is rhetorical and not is so arbitrary anyways.

Book says discourse was a verb, now a noun and modifier. Proceeds to not give a case of when it's a modifier.

Critical Discourse Analysis “emphasizes anti-racism and anti-bias” (53) but isn't critical race perspective, then goes on to show all the ways it kind of is critical race perspective. I don't get this, or the exact difference. Also, hasn't most qualitative research moved in the direction of declaring nothing as anti-bias? Why does this get to claim otherwise?

Their definition of a critical ethnography just sounds like a good ethnography to me. What kind of ethnography would it be to not take in historical and extraneous circumstances? Also I'm curious as to if there are ties between the movement behind critical ethnographies and the activist anthropologists. If not, there should be. How can you be conscious of the driving factors that surround the marginilization of the people are you critically ethnographing (yes, I made it a verb) and not become partially an activist?

Also I guess my experience in undergraduate school was unique, because this chapter says on page 58 that CRT are counterstories against mainstream academic pictures of culture. CRT was definitely the mainstream in my experience. Of course, I'm sure there are some no-true-Scotsmen arguments to be made about the mainstream professors preaching counterstories, but we could go in that circle endlessly.

Finally, on page 60, they cite Grande as someone who wants individual race theories to be more distinctive, and I wonder at what point that kills their value as theories used to look at information. I understand the need to consider every aspect individually, but there has to be a line as we cannot possibly hope to grant every individual who has ever existed's exact identity a fair shot at being theorized upon.

Chapter 5

I'm sad this book helped these people's academic career since I don't think anyone else could ever cite this book as a source, given it's pretty much a tertiary text.

Case et al.'s groundbreaking 2005 study that there are invisible standards which hold Whiteness above others truly opened my eyes. No wait, it just made me hope this book has left out some crucial new aspect of that work in their summary.

Yes, one size fits all education hurts. Yes, fixing deficits model instead of using strengths sucks bad. But what is the realistic solution? Hiring “appropriately trained teachers” (67) is so far from being pragmatic in the current environment that it hurts. Shifting evaluations is a good idea, but somehow I don't see the people preaching the need for it going off to develop a better way that doesn't involve huge amounts of man power.

Finally, at the end of this chapter, they say they don't like pretending literacy is neutral. I'm curious as to if they would prefer every literacy measurement start with a disclaimer that says “THIS MEASURE OF LITERACY VALUES ONE LANGUAGE OVER OTHERS AND THEREFORE IS BIASED.” What would that serve? What is the solution?

Chapter 6

Waiting with bated breath for any comments on the quote about what white people lack.

BEST PART OF TODAYS READING – Conflation of the ideas of digital identity with gender identity and how they might be facets of the same institution. Very cool.

On Critically Conscious Research

I was really surprised by this book in how different it is from the other NCRLL volumes we've been looking at--it seems like something that would be assigned in the social justice class. Since this is research methods, the one thing I had in my mind while reading the first three chapters was how I would use this in my own research. Maybe the instructional nature of the other texts we've read that I fought against for so long has finally sunken in, because now that we're reading a text that isn't instructional I'm not quite sure what to make of it. I was grateful for their explications of Kant, Hegel, and Marx in the first chapter because I always shied away from undergraduate philosophy classes. The overview and historical background of critical race theory as well as whiteness studies was also helpful. For those of us who are white, having an awareness of how we are privileged can lead us toward exploring the biases that might impact our research. It's not about eradicating white privilege, which would be nearly impossible because it is so ingrained within our society, but acknowledging its existence so that we can point to the ways in which it is wrong and begin to move away from it--something that sounds simple, but isn't when you consider how many white people would be vehemently opposed to the suggestion that they are privileged. The line that resonated the most with me was "While the West envisages itself as transcending race/ethnicity and gender oppression, silences about past and current colonization, genocide, imperialism, and mass murders are constant reminders of human rights abuses and human suffering" (33). I can't help but be reminded of my students here--if you ask them, we are long past racism and sexism, and if you speak Spanish in today's society, you have an advantage because you can get jobs more easily. So many people are blissfully ignorant of the fact that humans are still being oppressed--our country isn't the happy melting pot that our elementary school teachers have made it out to be.

I'm interested to see where else this book takes us and how I can implement more critically conscious research into my own projects.

EdTech was listening to our conversation last night...

http://www.edtechmagazine.com/higher/article/2012/11/how-hybrid-classroom-found-home-grand-rapids

"“Lecturing is more like a monologue; it really belongs on a theater stage.”"

Hegel's Master/Slave Relationship...

For some reason, Hegel's Master/Slave relationship example stuck in my mind while I was reading. Immediately, my mind went to chattel slavery and colonialism. It amazes me that Hegel could make this association with consciousness, but still believe that black people "had not historically or  intellectually evolved to consciousness and, at best, could only seek to imitate White males" (Willis et al. 9). How can Hegel acknowledge that consciousness comes from this type of relationship, and the desire for freedom, but not acknowledge the consciousness of black people who were slaves, or victims of colonial oppression? I particularly appreciated Fanon's response that basically argues black people have their own consciousness that is unique (not universal) to their experience of oppression, and not merely an imitation of white people: "I am wholly what I am. I do not have to look for the universal...My Negro consciousness does not hold itself out as a lack. It is. It is its own follower." (qtd. in Willis et al. 21).

His misunderstandings of Black consciousness (while understandable), do seem to reflect his own racism--if only in his concept of Universality. However, the book does point out that there is a "universalistic position" in the Master/Slave relationship where "slaves become conscious of their masters' dependency on the slaves' labor and obedience" (Willis et al. 10). Of course, when you add chattel slavery and good ole Willie Lynch to the equation, it seems rather difficult to make this position universalistic. In fact, it makes Hegel's idea of imitation a tad bit more palatable in the sense that American slaves didn't fully "develop a personal sense of reality based on new understandings" (Willis et al. 10). In other words, the Master used language as a tool of oppression in order to "inculcate dominant ideologies through speech and literature in the lives of the less powerful" (Willis et al. 22), and it is this dominant ideology that would be the foundation of the American slaves' understanding. The American slave, in particular, would have his/her reality shaped by, based on, the understanding of white people from the moment they were brought to this country and stripped of their own culture, language, etc., and given the language/literature of their oppressors. This is another reason I love Fanon :-).

So, seeing as how I'm a visual person, I'm really tired, and I haven't had the opportunity to throw a video in on these posts as of yet.  I found a video on Fanon. It talks about some of this stuff in there. Hope you like it.

The first three chapters of Critically Conscious Research constitute my presentation material source for tonite's class. The book is a bit of a departure in our class in that it is in no way instructional so far in its approach. Indeed there is a sense that the authors do not wish to offer any instruction but rather to encourage some critical thinking on Critical Thinking about teaching Criticality. In support of their desire to set the stage for helping the reader to choose their paths regarding Critical Consciousness these first chapters focus upon the roots of such thought in their semi-extricable antiquity, their transition into the post-modernist era and entrance into the American body of thought, and their progress and change as they enter into the Pedagogical Universe.
     My strategy for dealing with the three chapters will be one of excision, explication, and exercise, respectively. Meaning I intend to justify dumping the first chapter after a cursory glance. Then I will draw out the salient dichotomy of ideas that characterize the time and space and state of thought which defines the beginnings of the post-modernist movement in CT. Lastly I will give a reductive overview of what seems to me to be the common theme in all the offerings in chapter three as a precursor to encompassing that theme in a game, an exercise, a moral effort and experiment to see if our tiny microcosm will, in fact, re-enact the greater gestalt faced by all pedagogical adaptations of Critical work.
      So, somebody fetch me a dull ax, let's go behind the shed and liberate chapter one of Critically Conscious Research with extreme prejudice now. There is nothing in particular wrong with it and it fulfills its role within the framework of the book adequately, namely to generally place the origins of Critical Theory in the the creation/recognition of a burgeoning Critical Consciousness in concerned intellectuals and academics in a formative period of history. It does that just fine so what's my beef? My beef is this, there is a limit the futility of abstraction that I can tolerate in the creation of a premise. I mean you pluck out enough history to support an unfinished definition of a term you wish to educate me about and simultaneously speak of how incomplete this definition must be so as not to overly parameter the development of the flowing present in which the subject of your definition must be allowed to romp free to properly embrace its destiny. The actual history is not done justice and the historicity is done violence.
    This is a stepping stone to the present where the material of the book dwells and I got a different book right here(thump) that's twenty times the size and opens with a meek apology for being too small to accomplish this same task. Getting your history straight as a starting place is good stuff but it is better performed elsewhere and is done so in a fairly admittedly perfunctorily way here. Apart from that the chapter somewhat suddenly wholeheartedly throws in with Collins 2000 Matrix of Domination theory as the team it wants to on for kickball. So its on to chapter two unless any one has any aspect of this first chapter they would like to discuss.
      The chapter overview, apart from mislabeling in which chapter they place their emphasis on Gramsci and Fannon(the former is mentioned once in chapter one, the latter not at all), describes chapter two as extending "to a focus on the the contributions of African American scholars and social activists and like minded whites in their quest to address oppression in the United States" but less than half the chapter involves U.S. thinkers and then it seems not so much to show a transition as a runaway rebirth that styled itself in a fairly revolutionary way in its critical focus. Dubois seems the last one attempting to process the values of Marx and then those concepts lose market share or get repackaged.( Marx is so unpopular on these shores that even his most benevolent wisdoms need a fresh nom de' plume every generation.). What the chapter more clearly seems to show is the actual, tangible birth of, lets face it, American Critical Consciousness. Its really different than its predecessors. It was similar to other nascent  ideals coming across the pond and drew heavily upon them to get started but the sheer freedom from history and open intellectual territory waiting to be claimed made it qualitatively different than the various evolutions and reactions following Marx. Praxis never had it so good. Praxis is the living opposite of universality and universal applicability was not a concern to the new critical consciousness. No, relevance and fearlessness are the hallmarks of the new American CT described in Chapter two.  
      Yes, by the time it was blowing up here we had made it uniquely American and inverted the whole process of accessing ones own CC. This inversion and transition can well be made to act as the crucial dividing line between modern and postmodern critical thought. The inversion was the mental act of personalizing oppression and its cures. We are so steeped in this individualistic view now that elucidating what came before it seems odd. Nontheless, an impersonal, generalizable concept of the methods of oppression as simple economic human nature was quite new and sexy in Marx's time. This because it could blend so well with Science and and that meant change was not a matter of goods and evils or even hateful haves and humble have-nots but a forgivable progression into the future. It was the first non-villan based ideology for economic justice and people really liked that. We could hate the game and not the players and in terms of change that was a new technology. This, in terms of Critical thought, is Modernism. The using of science and reason to predict peaceful change.
     Post-modernism in critical thought starts with an examination of how this body of Modernistic thought is incomplete and culminates its birth process by rejecting it outright. The thinkers whose ideas bookend this birth of the PoMo/U.S. flavored CT or CC are Gramsci and Fannon and I went outside this book to obtain extra data to flesh out the underpinnings of my theory as it is presented here. What is at issue for both thinkers here is how they responded intellectually to the inadequacy of Modernism to address the needs of the Peoples each of them loved. Inadequacy or unwillingness. To be clear, in the understanding which frames this speech, Marxism is the essence of Modernism, and PostMarxism is not PostModernism. Postmodernism begins by problematizing out from the individual instead of inward from the larger societal construct. Gramsci and Fannon prepared these lenses to be taken up by the U.S. thinkers.
       Central to each of these people are the mid-sized social constructs to whom they feel allegiance and whose fate they cannot bear to view in a statistical or generalized fashion. And whose being left behind or marginalized constitutes a kind of proof that the Modern ideologies are failing. If I see my people being left out of the better things in a larger society, that pretty well proves that the methods for detecting and correcting unfairness are not working. In Gramsci's story he hewed to the founding ideals and identity of several dominant political groups and strove to adapt them to better serve people more like the ones he loved. His disinterest in Socialism was simply that it did not help Sardinians that much. In his hunger to do right by his class he walked and worked a path much like our Ben Franklin in becoming a Publisher/Journalist and getting as close to the flow of information as possible. In noticing and framing the culture war, he may have been its first true 4-Star General.
     Marxism, in its nearly non-moral account of distributive inequity utterly failed to account for how such systems resist change and redirection. What allows an inequity to persist in an at least partially ethical and moral society must be some means of slapping a glamour on those inequities. They must be made palatable to persist in a situation which characterizes itself as having moral and ethical rules. Two main additions to the economic patterns elucidated by Marx were needed. The creation or codification of the concept of a Cultural Hegemony, which serves a normative function over conditions of inequity and recasts them as helpful, inevitable, or under construction. It accomplishes this via the creation of consent which is a form of coercion in that it creates a manufactured and false consensus as a frame or context to fix its principles upon.
     The other is the complexification of our understanding of the locus of ruling power into a stratified oligarchy of economic players who intermingle with the distributors and producers of culture. In this way the actual power can regulate how it is perceived by the populace by carrying its messages across the dual sides of power regulation. Political Society is the embodiment of force and Civil society is the embodiment of consent. He borrowed the term "blocs" for these collaborative units too monstrous and varied to be isolated but still obvious enough to be studied and examined.
     Gramsci sought and fought for reforms that would give distributive and productive control to the working class by tuning Marxism to address the Nations view of itself. The workers councils would stand and speak for themselves in an organized manner. This was the clearest and truest path to equity in his eyes and when it was completely defeated by political and propagandistic forces in 1920 Gramsci did two things. One was to be done with Socialism and help found Italian Communism and the other was to conceive of a new class of intellectual to balance forces of consent and transform Academia from within to support a more egalitarian National view. If you look around you you will see examples of the bourgeois/prole scholars envisioned by Gramsci. We are well and truly his children in that sense. Transforming the institutions which resist transformation by enhancing the balance of thought within them is the praxis of critical consciousness and one end of the spectrum in the Postmodernist view. Gramsci's progression from Idealism to pragmatism shows his increasing dissatisfaction with systems of thought too incomplete to address the needs of the people he cared about.
     The other end of that spectrum starts with Fannon. Frantz Fannon is a recognizable influence on the tremendous internal power of American Critical Thought. He gave the necessarily individualistic voice to Racial Injustice studies that lent the urgency that was missing from CT at the time. He poetically and articulately stood for his own significance. Basing his critical view on the realities that impacted upon him and stressing how his view of his world was superior to that of any person of any stripe. I will not repeat any of his words here because each of us should be free to feel them privately and taste how much we crave them as our own. This emphasis is understandable in light of Fannon's life path.
       While his education is tolerably parallel to Gramsci's and his predicament extremely similar in that his adoptive Algerian people were being continuously denied progress and economic justice, his lived story is one of battle and healing. He made his living as a psychiatrist and through his work there honed his understanding of the role of coercive consent in oppressed peoples. All Fannon's work was with individuals and the day to day good he strove to produce was done one person at a time. It is easy to see how he came to see the individual as the fundamental unit of change in a society. We take this for granted now but it was crazy talk until Fannon hit out of the park a concept that had been tee'd up by Gramsci's acknowledgment of the wider forces of culture. Fannon criticized society's failures and taught us to criticize our culture from our place within it, regardless of how we, or others, see that place.
  As with all things quintessentially American, the U.S. PoMo thread of CT was a radical reinterpretation of something that was just happening a little too slow for our tastes and once these thinkers crack the door we barged right in.
     This concludes my analysis of chapter two and to introduce my plans for chapter three I will state the lens that occurred to me as I read it and then we will proceed to the exercise. What I got from the chapter dedicated to the transition of CC and CT into the pedagogical world was that no body of thought could resist the pull toward universality. You can't teach that one of us is more deserving of focus than another even if that makes a super profound story or essay, even if its the new American way, it just ain't the academic way and all self based philosophies seem to drift toward a more egalitarian view as they are prepared to be taught.
Lets take a breath and see if there is time for a group exercise to study this idea.