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.