Tasha Austin PhD [she]
@profeaustin.bsky.social
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48 posts
Assistant Prof Teacher Ed| Multilingualism| Language Education
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#BlackWorldLanguaging #EducationalLinguistics #LanguageEducation #TeacherEd #Racialization #Culture
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![The edTPA (Educative Teacher Preparation Assessment) obscures this racialized sense of ownership by unmarking (Mena and García 2021) academic language as a racialized register. The maintenance of white supremacy through commodifying terms like “social,” “linguistic,” and “cultural capital” (Melamed 2006), solidifies racial hierarchies by offering to the ‘unintelligible’ Black student whose access is necessarily limited to capitals of a lesser value, two options: either attempt intelligibility for the white perceiving subject (Rosa and Flores 2017), or accept pathologization (Nair et al. 2023; Privette 2021). The fundamental understanding of the capital metaphor reproduces the image of the culturally-bereft subhuman (Wynter 2003) Black student who must be given white language (Fanon 1967) and culture (Kynard 2013) or ways of being to interrupt their burdening of a benevolent nation.
This pursuit of social uplift, which is cast as either the responsibility of the learners or teachers (Kynard 2013) depending upon the (con)text, counterintuitively positions Black students as valueless and perpetual consumers of more quantity and quality capital—a euphemism for humanness or whiteness (Wynter 2003). The representation of Black students in particular as receptacles for white mainstream language and culture does not reveal that the ability to occupy white subject positions or to derive social benefits from said positions directly violates the logics of the capital metaphor. Fanon cautions that “[t]he colonized is elevated above his jungle status in proportion to his adoption of the mother country’s cultural standards” (1967, p. 18), thereby rendering Black students in U.S. schools as cultureless and their cultural ways of being as commodifiable entities disembodied from the people who perform them (Smalls 2020). This continued denial of Black humanity (Shange 2020) is evidenced by the unmarking (Mena and García 2021) of white mainstream English (Smitherman 1998) through ra…](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:fkbto2nkox2r5aohryveq5as/bafkreih6l2hhnml6rxm5h7w4nukzajs7gregfoupwonsztoiqkjl2zo3ia@jpeg)
Reposted by Tasha Austin PhD [she]
![“The Negro in a tight place is a genius”: Black language teachers and the (re)making of [B]lack jobs
Tasha Austin
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0677-5061
Abstract
This chapter discusses the need for Black language scholars particularly in the role of educational linguists. It details the author’s introduction to the field and describes the vantage point of those multiply marginalized as uniquely valuable to educational linguistics. The author then introduces the raciolinguistic genealogical methodology (Flores, 2021) followed by its application in a brief study on the naturalized discourse of the Black language/teacher shortage. In taking a genealogical perspective on the discourse of Black teacher shortages, the study outlines the material distribution of both land and monies through the first and second Morrill Acts becoming the model for stratified U.S. (higher) education. Finally, the chapter concludes with an invitation for more Black/Indigenous language scholars to engage in educational linguistics to unsettle recurring discourses around “Black jobs,” who is deserving of liberal arts, (and thus, language-rich) educational opportunities, and other pressing issues in education research.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:fkbto2nkox2r5aohryveq5as/bafkreiaerk3af7vuty3o4aqg2jwtyjijr3gdv4xbdv33udqfk63wmewr3i@jpeg)
![This chapter presents a raciolinguistic genealogy of Black language/teacher education demonstrating my assertion that educational linguistics is apt for those whose experiences most acutely reflect the shortcomings of society– particularly through the apparatus of schooling as an institution. Folks at the intersections of Black, queer, poor, women and disabled groups (among others) should be overrepresented among educational linguists not only because of their being framed as “problems” within dominant society (Du Bois, 2015), but because of our position on the margins which imbues us with perspectives often invisible to the majoritized group/s (Crenshaw, 1994; Collins, 2006). Of note, teacher education replicates some of the same challenges as linguistics– it is disproportionately valuable to peripheralized groups for the potential leverage it offers in shaping the ideologies of future generations, yet remains statistically least accessible to them (Austin & Anya, 2024; Austin, 2023; Charity-Hudley, 2023; Allen et al., 2017; Milner, 2010; Sleeter, 2001). To better understand the under-realized value of Black teachers (of language, specifically) and the apparatuses that stifle their entry to the ranks, I will take a raciolinguistic genealogical approach to denaturalizing how who is suited for leisure has been racialized as white while those suited for labor has been racialized as Black in U.S. higher education. I will first highlight the intersections between the two disciplines, teacher education and linguistics, then unpack my application of the critical educational linguistics methodology that befits the analysis –raciolinguistic genealogy (Flores, 2021), and finally present the findings of my analysis of language teacher education and its relationship to “[b]lack jobs” in the modern U.S. formation.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:fkbto2nkox2r5aohryveq5as/bafkreih73ilnhzu635hmnvalqe4uiugl7xann5fdri4bx2ckqfmazla4jy@jpeg)
