, 14 tweets, 4 min read Read on Twitter
I have seen people citing this article that was published a year ago and feel like I need to set the record straight on a few things. Despite what the abstract suggests this is primarily an attempted critique my work with @DrJonathanRosa. IMO he misunderstood the argument.
The author suggests that we are making the argument that teachers who rely on additive based approaches to language education are racist. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't. But that isn't our argument. In fact, that isn't even the theory of race and racism that we are using.
Our basic argument is that appropriateness-based models to language education (which additive bilingualism is one example of) does not account for the ways that the white listening subject over-determines the language practices of racialized communities to be deficient.
We carefully provide evidence to illustrate the ways that the racialized position of people of color are heard as deficient even when they engage in language practices that are not heard in the same way when spoken by white people.
From this perspective, the question shifts from the supposed empirical linguistic practices of the racialized speaking subject to the ideological position of the white listening subject that forms the foundation of mainstream schooling and society.
Our unit of analysis is not individuals but institutional. From this perspective, racism is not a product of individual beliefs but a system of oppression that is embedded into the social fabric of schools and the broader society in which they are embedded.
The author also does what he has done in response to past criticism. He changes the terminology while keeping the underlying framework intact. He did it with the move from semilingualism to BICS and CALP and does it here with the move from additive to active bilingualism.
From a raciolinguistic perspective, the limitation to additive bilingualism is not that it is “infused with raciolinguistic ideologies” (as the author suggests we are arguing) but rather that it offers a purely linguistic analysis of a phenomenon that is highly racialized.
Our argument is that despite nods to structural inequality, at the core of additive bilingualism is a similar theory of change as the one that lies at the core of subtractive bilingualism--that the root of the problems confronted by racialized students is linguistic in nature.
Our argument is that additive bilingualism fails to challenge the logic of colonialism that has historically and continues to produce raciolinguistic ideologies that frame the language practices of racialized communities as inherently deficient.
In a society built on a foundation of white supremacy, a failure to actively work to dismantle white supremacy in the frameworks we use will ensure the continued maintenance of the racial status quo. I don't see how the shift from additive to active bilingualism does that.
I have seen people citing active bilingualism as if it was proposed in the spirit of wanting to push forward conversations about race that @DrJonathanRosa were seeking to bring to the forefront. That is not my reading of it. I think it is trying to derail those discussions.
I have also seen people citing active bilingualism as if it addressed the core concerns we were raising. It did not. It just rebranded additive bilingualism and said that it now resists raciolinguistic ideologies. If it were only that simple to dismantle white supremacy.
So I humbly ask that if you do cite this article that you make it clear that he is not trying to build up a raciolinguistic perspective but rather trying to bring it down a notch. That is certainly his right. But can we please call it what it is?
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