Encouraging Agitation: Teaching Teacher Candidates to Confront Words that Wound.

Abstract

Introduction Gee's (1986) emphasis on teachers' consciousness about political nature of their posits literacy education as a social justice project. Advocating this stance is particularly important as we work to understand and negotiate post-9/11 literacies, those socially situated and culturally informed literacy practices that acutely traverse, are responsive to, and make meaning from the politically charged popular culture narratives of our current day and age (Staples, 2008a). These literacies are entangled with constructs like race, gender, culture, religion, terror, and sexuality in ways that are globally unprecedented and hyper-communicated at lightning speed. Gee clarifies the importance of teachers' stances on their as primary vehicles through which we can influence the ways language, literacy, and power intersect to enable or stunt the sensitivities, inclinations, and even trajectories of our students (Fecho & Allen, 2003, p. 234). This enable or stunt dichotomy is often the result of teachers misunderstanding ways to support students' language learning and the barrage of linguistic violence students are exposed to and utilize on a regular basis. In this analytic conceptual essay, and from my standpoint as an African American woman teacher/researcher, I present a rich description of a personal sensibility and promising professional practice for literacy educators and those who prepare Reading/English/Language Arts teacher candidates for service among students who are historically marginalized and underserved by schools and communities. First, I examine some of the literature on the racial and gender identities of most teacher candidates in America, the corollary between this group's inexperience with students who are different from them, and conceptions about language in relationship to racism and sexism. Second, I provide examples of the ways demeaning are used in popular culture narratives among those who are privileged and how their alienate and oppress others. Finally, I define the Agitator Identity Trait and articulate the ways it can develop promising pedagogical practices among teacher candidates, counter words, and assist students' counter-oppressive thinking and action. While I ultimately contribute these promising practices for identifying and countering overt language adversities as they occur in popular culture narratives, I also present a brief review of the two primary ways language adversities function--covertly and overtly--as a way to frame the intersections of racist and sexist ideologies, and human objectification. Words That Wound Matsuda, Lawrence, Delgado, and Crenshaw (1993) wrote of wounding words and their implications with respect to the field of law and the intersections it shares with sociology and history. Their seminal work paved the way for inquiry into the intersecting fields of literacy education, teacher preparation, media, and popular culture. Their work is significant because hurtful are frequently exerted in private and public discourse. Words that wound, characterizing individuals as inadequate, and therefore less valuable than those considered normal and favorable, are used to subjugate. Words like retards, nappy headed hos, bitches, dykes, kikes, spics, and niggers come to mind. With a greater rate of recurrence, individuals who use these openly or privately and can be considered power brokers because of their gender, ethnicity, social affiliations, professional positions, and/or access to broad communication arenas in the public domain, exert or are complicit in the propagation of these words. They wreak havoc on readers and listeners. Those who promulgate racist and sexist language incite disorder and the deconstruction of humanity in several ways. First, they disregard the insidious nature of words. …