I just reviewed a piece for the Journal of Linguistic Anthropology on a similar topic (title: Colorblind along the Color line: Racialized fractals, recursive oppositions, and control of meaning in developmental spaces)
The article posits that white students often police race talk in their alignments with the ideology of “colorblindness”.
The author writes that the ideology of “colorblindness” interprets explicit mention of race in addition to the more obvious racial slurs or White supremacist discourse, as racist and makes any discussion of race off-limits. The consequence is that white students are quick to label any transgression of this unspoken rule “racist” and to position such comments as an unwarranted preoccupation with race on behalf of people of color.
The author argues that racialized differentiation is recursively produced by these pre-adolescents, who are being socialized to reproduce the ideologies of colorblind racism and White privilege that dominate society and shape the lives of the actors within it – ensuring the position of White at the top and Color at the bottom.
In regards to your 2011 paper, would you talk a bit about your fieldwork?
Jane Hill who writes that “The theme of race is both everywhere and nowhere, consisting largely of silences, of the failure to be specifically anti-racist, of careful failure to notice racially-shaped phenomena” (Hill 2008, 47).
Your work suggests that it’s more than silence: students actively police – even if it’s in humorous ways – even unrelated mentions of the color term “black”. Is this policing of the ideology of colorblindness a way to suppress race talk or to provoke conversations about it?
Is “crying racist” a plea by students to talk about race because so many teachers don’t want to?
How can this kind of research reach teachers and be applied to their training? To what extent do you see that as part of your role as a researcher?
Regarding the methodology chapter, would you explain Silverstein’s metapgramatic regimentation? How can language regiment its own pragmatics? What is the difference between denotationally implicit and explicit metapragmatics? (p. 460).
Doing discourse analysis across events is potentially relevant to the work several students in this class are engaged in that involve processes like learning, identity formation, and socialization. To what extent is your analysis based on a single event (a within event analysis) or across events?
I challenge each of you to reflect on how you plan to incorporate context beyond the speech event itself and what discreet events and “cross event pathways” each of you could potentially analyze?
Sara’s work on translanguaging practices in computer science lessons;
Carmín’s study of the reactions of readers to the appointment of a female police superintendent and the ensuing debates over whether to use the -e or -a morphological gender marker for her title;
Kelsey’s study of language ideologies in an adult second language program,
Marcos’ study of sharing of political video content on social media, Ekaterina’s examination of constructions of community in Stuytown on Twitter
Andy’s examination of a Colombian-based internet forum visited and maintained by male clients of male-to-female transgender sex workers
Angie Waller’s analysis of Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg responds to public outcry around privacy breaches using prophetic ethos to redirect discourse to the ambitious mission of his social media platform
Anthony’s study of religious indoctrination through radio shows for women under Franco in Spain,
Ariel’s work on cross-racial adoption and how parents navigate racial difference
Angie Pickens’ work on representations of the ongoing Oklahoma teachers’ strike looking teachers’ picket signs, public comments by legislators, and a Facebook group
