Author: ksuchor

Friday, November 13, 2020
1:00–2:30 p.m. ET

View the webinar recording

CCCC membership is required in order to attend or view a recording of this webinar. Join now.

This panel features four recipients of the 2020 CCCC Gloria Anzaldúa Rhetorician Award and the CCCC Scholars for the Dream Travel Award. The presentations will be followed by an audience-driven Q&A session as well as networking time.

Presenters:

S. Brook Corfman, University of Pittsburgh
“Against Performance: Conference Themes and Trans Critique”
Spurred by the generic and uncritical use of “performance” across presentations at the 2019 CCCC conference—quite distinct from Vershawn Ashanti Young’s call—I bring trans studies and composition into conversation, including trans studies’ critiques of performance theories. I question when and how composition turns to other fields for its methods and innovations, showing how the tension of the composition–performance–trans studies triangle elucidates composition’s broader habits of borrowing without speaking back to other areas of cultural study.

Elise Dixon, University of North Carolina at Pembroke
“Making and Unmaking: What the Lesbian Avengers Taught Me about Writing”
This presentation details a queer and cultural rhetorics framework for understanding how queer communities’ communal composing practices allow them to enact the process of world making. Through ethnographically informed qualitative interviews, I detail themes related to making from former members of the Lesbian Avengers—an activist group prominent in the 1990s—to illuminate how the communal practice of making is a deliberate and complex rhetorical act of world building, especially for marginalized communities. I conclude by discussing what lessons (academic) leaders can learn from activist organizations such as the Avengers and how to apply those lessons in their administration.

Florianne (Bo) Jimenez, University of Massachusetts Amherst
“Echoing and Resistant Imagining: Cultural Rhetorics and Decoloniality in Filipino Student Writing”
I’ll be presenting my research on Filipino student writing during the American colonization of the Philippines at the turn of the twentieth century. Using theories from cultural rhetorics and decolonial thinking, I offer an overview of the transnational discourses on race, class, and language that collided at the colonial schoolhouse and analyze how student writers negotiated, resisted, and subverted US colonial ideology through writing in English.

Loretta Ramirez, California State University, Long Beach
“Critical Pedagogy and Chicanx Rhetorical Inheritances: Recovering Chicanx Historical Genealogies to Decolonize Composition Classrooms”
Developing insights from my work in decolonial theory and the long history of Chicanx visual and textual rhetorics, this presentation examines ways in which introducing genealogies of cultural rhetorics into the composition classroom may foster inclusive practices. By contextualizing student rhetoric within various cultural inheritances, I suggest that writing programs might better foster strategies wherein students enter their own historical rhetorical lineages to locate, assess, and participate in the formation of their own academic voices.

Moderator:

Timothy Oleksiak, University of Massachusetts Boston
Timothy Oleksiak is an assistant professor of English and director of the Professional and New Media Writing program at the University of Massachusetts Boston. His work on queer listening and rhetoric has appeared or is forthcoming in Composition Studies, PRE/TEXT, College Composition and Communication, Peitho, and Pedagogy.

 

Respondent:

Jackie Rhodes, Michigan State University
Jackie Rhodes is professor of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures at Michigan State University. A two-time cowinner of the CCCC Lavender Rhetorics Award (for Techne: Queer Meditations on Writing the Self and Sexual Rhetorics: Methods, Identities, Publics), she focuses her scholarly work on intersections of rhetoric, sexuality, and technology.

 

Share your learning on Twitter at #4Cchat.

View additional webinars in the CCCC Webinar Series.

Conference on College Composition and Communication
September 2020

Background Information

Read this message from Vershawn Ashanti Young, CCCC Chair, and Temptaous McKoy, Chair, CCCC Black Technical and Professional Writing Task Force, about the development of and exigency for this statement.

CCCC Black Technical and Professional Writing Task Force
Temptaous Mckoy, Chair, Bowie State University
Cecilia D. Shelton, University of Maryland
Donnie Sackey, University of Texas at Austin
Natasha N. Jones, Michigan State University
Constance Haywood, Michigan State University
Ja’La Wourman, Michigan State University
Kimberly C. Harper, North Carolina A&T State University

As a coalition of Black scholars, we participated in the Black Technical and Professional Writing Task Force convened by CCCC chair Vershawn Ashanti Young to create a position statement regarding Black technical and professional communication. In addition to fulfilling that charge, we used our agency as scholars in the area to produce the resource list presented here. We composed this position statement and resource list as initial steps toward defining Black technical and professional communication practices and practitioners; advocating for their inclusion in the body of mainstream disciplinary literature; and carving out the methodological, theoretical, and practical space that will enable other Black scholars in the field to see and do such work. The statement and resource list will also assist teachers and researchers of technical and professional communication.

Black technical and professional communication (TPC) is defined as including practices centered on Black community and culture and on rhetorical practices inherent in Black lived experience. Black TPC reflects the cultural, economic, social, and political experiences of Black people across the Diaspora. It also includes the work of scholars in the academy and the contributions of practitioners. In all, Black TPC contextualizes the experiences and cultures of Black peoples through research, teaching, and scholarship.

In lieu of a traditional written statement, we offer a thematically organized and contextualized list of suggested readings drawn from both within and outside of the discipline and the academy. We believe that these resources will begin defining the contours of the scholarship, activism, and design work that Black technical communicators and scholars are (and have been) doing. Furthermore, we believe that offering this resource, rather than a traditional statement, will help scholars better equip themselves with access to appropriate readings to continue the work of Black technical and professional communication advocacy.

Engaging with the Resources Provided

This resource list represents the beginnings of scholarship examining the Black experience in technical and professional communication. Achieving inclusion in TPC and in the academy requires scholarship that examines efforts to create a more equitable, socially just, and race-conscious academic field. The resources presented here include research addressing issues of inclusion and equity as related to Black scholars; this list is not exhaustive.

We identify three goals for this resource list:

1. To advocate for the inclusion of Black TPC scholars’ intellectual contributions, acknowledging that our scholarship and rhetorical traditions are fundamental to developing a fuller and richer understanding of TPC’s disciplinary history and future
2. To raise awareness of and amplify Black TPC methodologies, theoretical frameworks, and spaces and places of practice
3. To identify the contours of scholarly, activist, and design work in which Black TPC practitioners have long been and continue to be engaged

As you engage with this list, please be aware that some resources are repeated across categories because we acknowledge the overlap in ideas and primary concepts. As a coalition of scholars, we are working actively to amplify Black scholars and scholarship in TPC. With that in mind, please look forward to the publication of an already-in-progress article detailing the contemporary trajectory of Black research and pedagogy in our field. The following list summarizes the themes addressed here.

Black User Experience Design: Our attention to Black perspectives on user experience design answers the question of how we can use design to enable more inclusive experiences across users, especially for Black people.

In the Community: We draw your attention to community through literature on space and place in order to consider how Blackness constitutes and is constituted by location.

Black Rhetorics of Health Communication: We draw your attention to the importance of understanding rhetorics of health communication from a Black perspective.

Social Movements, Black Activism, and Digital Rhetorics: We draw your attention to the long-standing themes of social justice in the Black rhetorical tradition and the tactics that activists use to advance social movements.

Black Cultural Rhetorics as Technical and Professional Communication: We draw your attention to the presence of Black culture and its influence on the production of technical and professional communication.

Black Digital Methods and Methodologies: We draw your attention to conversations and developing methodologies across a number of fields that use Black experience and existence as a place of departure.

Narrative and Black Experiences in TPC and the Academy: We draw your attention to the labor bestowed upon and endured by Black scholars in sharing their narratives alongside and within their TPC scholarship.

Black User Experience Design

User experience design from the perspective of Black TPC taps into Molefi K. Asante’s concept of Afrocentricity by placing the suppressed histories and experiences of the Black Diaspora at the center of evaluating the social, economic, and political aspects of design. These perspectives are driven by practitioners (rather than scholars) of technical and professional communication who push against the marginalization of Black lived experiences in design thinking. Their perspectives encourage us to consider design as it positively impacts and emerges from the needs of the Black community.

“Benjamin Evans: The Power of Inclusive Design.” Design Better from InVision, 28 May 2019, https://www.designbetter.co/podcast/benjamin-evans.

Blacks Who Design. Blacks Who Design, 2020, https://blackswho.design.

Cherry, Maurice, editor. Recognize (design anthology). 30 Sept. 2019, https://www.invisionapp.com/inside-design/category/recognize/.

Gebru, Timnit. “Understanding the Limits of AI: When Algorithms Fail.” MIT Technology Review, 26 Mar. 2018, https://events.technologyreview.com/video/watch/timnit-gebru-ai-limits-algorithms-fail/.

Iyamah, Jacquelyn. “Black People Have Always Been UX Designers: Space-Making Is an

Iterative Design Process.” Medium, 8 June 2019,

https://medium.com/black-ux-collective/black-people-have-always-been-ux-designers-sp

ace-making-is-an-iterative-design-process-fcefe4cce846.

Nechole, Amber. “A Journey into Afrocentric UX.” Medium, 2 Sept. 2018, https://medium.com/black-ux-collective/a-journey-into-afrocentric-ux-2709a3534521.

Revision Path. Maurice Cherry, 28 Feb. 2013, https://revisionpath.com/.

28 Black Designers. 28 Days of Black Designers Project, 2020, www.28blacks.com.

In the Community

Community in Black technical and professional communication involves considering how Black peoples are bound together in place on account of where they live, work, visit, and play. The focus on community in Black TPC centers on considerations of how rhetorical practices construct and are constructed by place to support the lives of Black peoples. In these contexts, communities can be form in workplaces, public spaces (e.g., neighborhoods, towns, barbershops, music venues), private spaces (e.g., churches), and digital spaces (e.g., Black Twitter). A focus on community takes into account the ways in which Black peoples practice forming spaces into places while using these locations to examine identities, experiences, and associations.

Battle-Baptiste, Whitney, and Britt Rusert, editors. W.E.B. DuBois’s Data Portraits: Visualizing Black America. Princeton Architectural Press, 2018.

Brock, André, Jr. Distributed Blackness: African American Cybercultures. New York UP, 2020.

Byrd, Antonio. “Between Learning and Opportunity: A Study of African American Coders’ Networks of Support.” Literacy in Composition Studies, vol. 7, no. 2, 2019, pp. 31–55.

———. “‘Like Coming Home’: African Americans Tinkering and Playing toward a Computer Code Bootcamp.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 71, no. 3, 2020, pp. 426–52.

Finney, Carolyn. Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors. U of North Carolina P, 2014.

Florini, Sarah. Beyond Hashtags: Racial Politics and Black Digital Networks. New York UP, 2019.

McIlwain, Charlton D. Black Software: The Internet and Racial Justice, from the AfroNet to Black Lives Matter. Oxford UP, 2019.

Moore, Kristen R. “Black Feminist Epistemology as a Framework for Community-Based Teaching.” Key Theoretical Frameworks: Teaching Technical Communication in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Angela M. Haas and Michelle F. Eble, Utah State UP, 2018, pp. 185–211.

Moss, Beverly J. A Community Text Arises: A Literate Text and a Literacy Tradition in African-American Churches. Hampton Press, 2003.

Black Rhetorics of Health Communication

Black rhetorics of health communication (BRHC) build on the work of scholars from health communication, rhetorics of health and medicine, technical and professional communication, medical communication, rhetoric, and other fields. BRHC scholarship acknowledges the health disparities and generational mistrust that Black communities have in relation to the medical establishment and discusses what happens when race, gender, and class intersect with the health-care industry. It takes account of Black maternal health, reproductive justice, Black feminism, and rhetorical theories. It brings together academics, practitioners, and health-care providers from divergent fields to discuss the design, delivery, and effects of written documents on patients, communities, and the medical profession. These works, while not rooted in TPC, are integral to any study of health communication that aims to understand and deal with issues of ethics and health disparities in American medical culture.

Davis, Angela. “Racism, Birth Control, and Reproductive Rights.” Women, Race, and Class. Random House, 1983, pp. 202–21.

Harper, Kimberly C. The Ethos of Black Motherhood in America: Only White Women Get Pregnant. Lexington Books, 2020 (forthcoming).

Heifferon, Barbara, and Stuart C. Brown. Rhetoric of Healthcare: Essays toward a New Disciplinary Inquiry. Hampton Press, 2008.

Jones, James H. Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment. Free Press, 1993.

Nelson, Alondra. Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight against Medical Discrimination. U of Minnesota P, 2013.

Roberts, Dorothy. Killing the Black Body: Race Reproduction and the Meaning of Liberty. Vintage, 1999.

Ross, Loretta J. The Color of Choice: White Supremacy and Reproductive Justice. Duke UP, 2016.

Ross, Loretta J., and Rickie Solinger. Reproductive Justice: An Introduction. U of California P, 2017.

Smith, Wilbert. Hole in the Head: A Life Revealed. Christian Faith, 2018.

Townes, Emilie M. Breaking the Fine Rain of Death: African American Health Issues and a Womanist Ethic of Care. Wipf and Stock, 1998.

Washington, Harriet A. Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present. Harlem Moon, 2006.

Social Movements, Black Activism, and Digital Rhetorics

With the social justice turn in TPC studies (see, for instance, Technical Communication After the Social Justice Turn: Building Coalitions for Action, Rebecca Walton et al., Routledge, 2019), much more scholarly and pedagogical focus has been applied to the ways in which technical and professional communication reinscribe inequities, as well as the possibilities for our discipline to intervene toward more just outcomes. As one might expect, this focus includes both a growing body of research on racial justice and calls for the fields of technical communication and professional communication to specifically redress racial harm. The short bibliography presented here aims to add dimensions to that call in three ways: (1) focusing on technology and anti-Blackness, (2) focusing on Black activists’ and Black researchers’ communication and analysis of technology and Blackness, and (3) focusing on Black activist rhetorics as kinds of technical communication.

Benjamin, Ruha. Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code. Polity Press, 2019.

Black Lives Matter. https://blacklivesmatter.com/. Accessed 8 Aug. 2020.

BYP100. Black Youth Project 100. https://www.byp100.org/. Accessed 8 Aug. 2020.

Browne, Simone. Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness. Duke UP, 2015.

Heyl, Julia Childs. “We Hid Escape Routes in Our Roots: Honoring the History of Hair Braiding in the Black Community.” Julia Childs Heyl, 25 July 2019, http://juliachildsheyl.com/we-hid-escape-routes-in-our-roots-honoring-the-history-of-hair-braiding-in-the-black-community/.

Jones, Natasha N. “The Importance of Ethnographic Research in Activist Networks.” Communicating Race, Ethnicity, and Identity in Technical Communication, edited by Miriam F. Williams and Octavio Pimentel, Taylor & Francis, 2014, pp. 46–61.

Shelton, Cecilia D. On Edge: A Techné of Marginality. 2019. East Carolina University, PhD dissertation. http://hdl.handle.net/10342/7433.

Black Cultural Rhetorics as Technical and Professional Communication

Cultural rhetorics in TPC call for the use of nontraditional knowledge-making practices that are not directly tied to institutional or higher-education knowledge. Moreover, cultural rhetorics in TPC combine the lived experiences of practitioners with what we’ve come to know, and even redefine, TPC to be. This list includes scholarship that exemplifies the combination of culture and the academy while remaining true to the origin of information and its relevance.

Banks, Adam J. Race, Rhetoric, and Technology: Searching for Higher Ground. Routledge, 2006.

Carson, A. D. Owning My Masters: The Rhetorics of Rhymes & Revolutions. 2017. Clemson University, PhD dissertation.

Cobos, C., et al. “Interfacing Cultural Rhetorics: A History and a Call.” Rhetoric Review, vol. 37, no. 2, 2018, pp. 139–54.

Hierro, Victor Del. “DJs, Playlists, and Community: Imagining Communication Design through Hip Hop.” Communication Design Quarterly Review, vol. 7, no. 2, 2019, pp. 28–39.

Jackson, Ronald L., II, and Elaine B. Richardson, editors. Understanding African American Rhetoric: Classical Origins to Contemporary Innovations. Routledge, 2014.

Leger, Shewonda. The Cultivation of Haitian Women’s Sense of Selves: Towards a Field of Action. 2019. Michigan State University, PhD dissertation.

Mckoy, Temptaous T. Y’all Call It Technical and Professional Communication, We Call It #ForTheCulture: The Use of Amplification Rhetorics in Black Communities and Their Implications for Technical and Professional Communication Studies. 2019. East Carolina University, PhD dissertation.

Richardson, Elaine. African American Literacies. Psychology Press, 2003.

Watts, Eric King. “‘Voice’ and ‘Voicelessness’ in Rhetorical Studies.” Quarterly Journal of Speech, vol. 87, no. 2, 2001, pp. 179–96.

Black Digital Methods and Methodologies

The following is a working list of sources that highlight Black digital methods and methodologies across various fields. One commonality among these methods lies in the fact that they center Black experience(s) as a way of understanding technology, community, ownership, and ethics through a cultural lens. Understanding that digital or online data are “always already” shaped by and through people, these methods stress that data are never separate from human experience. Thus, they remind us that we should continue to cultivate research practices that are critical, relative, and multifaceted.

Brown, Nicole M. “Methodological Cyborg as Black Feminist Technology: Constructing the Social Self Using Computational Digital Autoethnography and Social Media.” Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, vol. 19, no. 1, 2019, pp. 55–67.

Everett, Anna. “The Revolution Will Be Digitized: Afrocentricity and the Digital Public Sphere.” Social Text, vol. 20, no. 2, 2002, pp. 125–46.

Jones, Natasha N. “Rhetorical Narratives of Black Entrepreneurs: The Business of Race, Agency, and Cultural Empowerment.” Journal of Business and Technical Communication, vol. 31, no. 3, 2017, pp. 319–49.

Richardson, Elaine, and Alice Ragland. “#StayWoke: The Language and Literacies of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement.” Community Literacy Journal, vol. 12, no. 2, 2018, pp. 27–56.

Sawyer, LaToya Lydia. “Don’t Try and Play Me Out!”: The Performances and Possibilities of Digital Black Womanhood. 2017. Syracuse University, PhD dissertation. https://surface.syr.edu/etd/785.

Wourman, Ja’La J., and Shingi Mavima. “Our Story Had to Be Told! A Look at the Intersection of the Black Campus Movement and Black Digital Media.” Spark: A 4C4Equality Journal, vol 2, no. 9, 2020, sparkactivism.com/volume-2-call/vol-2-intro/our-story-had-to-be-told/.

Narrative and Black Experiences in TPC and the Academy

The following list provides resources on narrative (and storytelling) and Black experiences in TPC and the academy. Narrative resources can include scholarship that examines or explains how narrative, storytelling, or both are used by Black scholars (in method, theory, and practice). Narrative approaches to research and pedagogy often highlight the lived experiences of Black scholars in TPC, in the academy, and in the world. As a result, this list also includes scholarship about the lived experiences of Black scholars in technical and professional communication and beyond.

Baker-Bell, April. “For Loretta: A Black Woman Literacy Scholar’s Journey to Prioritizing Self-Preservation and Black Feminist–Womanist Storytelling.” Journal of Literacy Research, vol. 49, no. 4, 2017, pp. 526–43.

Edwards, Jessica. “Race and the Workplace: Toward a Critically Conscious Pedagogy.” Key Theoretical Frameworks: Teaching Technical Communication in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Angela M. Hass and Michelle F. Eble, Utah State UP, 2018, pp. 268–86.

Jones, Natasha N. “Narrative Inquiry in Human-Centered Design: Examining Silence and Voice to Promote Social Justice in Design Scenarios.” Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, vol. 46, no. 4, 2016, pp. 471–92.

Jones, Natasha N., and Miriam F. Williams. “Technologies of Disenfranchisement: Literacy Tests and Black Voters in the US from 1890 to 1965.” Technical Communication, vol. 65, no. 4, 2018, pp. 371–86.

Mckoy, Temptaous T. Y’all Call It Technical and Professional Communication, We Call It #ForTheCulture: The Use of Amplification Rhetorics in Black Communities and Their Implications for Technical and Professional Communication Studies. 2019. East Carolina University, PhD dissertation.

Williams, Miriam F. From Black Codes to Recodification: Removing the Veil from Regulatory Writing. Routledge, 2017.

———. “A Survey of Emerging Research: Debunking the Fallacy of Colorblind Technical Communication.” Programmatic Perspectives, vol. 5, no. 1, 2012, pp. 86–93.

———. “Tracing WEB Dubois’ ‘Color Line’ in Government Regulations.” Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, vol. 36, no. 2, 2006, pp. 141–65.

Williams, Miriam F., and Octavio Pimentel. Communicating Race, Ethnicity, and Identity in Technical Communication. Routledge, 2016.

This position statement may be printed, copied, and disseminated without permission from NCTE.

Thursday, September 24, 2020
1:00–2:30 p.m. ET

View the webinar recording

While this recording is available to everyone, you will need to login into the NCTE site to view the video (there is no cost to create a login). To view this video with closed captioning, hover over the bottom right of the video and click “CC” and “English.”

This panel features four recipients of the 2020 CCCC Disability in College Composition Travel Award. An audience-driven Q&A as well as networking time will follow the presentations.

Presenters:

Anna Barritt, University of Oklahoma
“When UDL Isn’t Enough: Navigating Institutional Barriers to Access”
Universal design for learning is critical for creating an accessible and inclusive classroom environment, but writing instructors are often left with insufficient resources and guidance for supporting students with disabilities beyond access to class content. This presentation documents one administrator’s journey in making a writing program more widely accessible, including the failures, successes, and lessons learned.

Adam Hubrig, Sam Houston State University
“Eugenic Ideologies in Composition’s Past and Present”
As composition studies was forming in America, so were eugenic ideologies. This presentation explores how eugenic ideology continues to shape conversations about composition.

Jessie Male, The Ohio State University and NYU Gallatin
“Building a Community of the Sick (Or Why You Should Read the Acknowledgments)”
This presentation will address the teaching of pain memoirs, specifically Porochista Khakpour’s Sick, Sonya Huber’s Pain Woman Takes Your Keys and Other Essays from a Nervous System, and Esmé Wang’s The Collected Schizophrenias. These texts demonstrate a veritable shift within the genre of disability memoir by capturing disability identities and experiences that don’t adhere to a social model—writing that both indicates disability pride and a desire for cure. The presentation focuses on how the utilization of these memoirs in the classroom complicate popular understandings of disability as enforced isolation, potentially shifting students’ relationships with their own bodies and communities, inviting them to consider disability as transformative and rooted in care.

Ruth Osorio, Old Dominion University
“Inviting Human Frailty into the Academic Conference: An Analysis and Oral History of the CCCC Access Guides Authors”
This presentation examines the rhetorical work that goes into composing genres that enact access within professional settings.  Furthermore, the presented will discuss how these guides enact access as an ongoing rhetorical project, in which a community welcomes, values, and makes space for the presence of human frailty.

Moderator: Christina V. Cedillo, University of Houston-Clear Lake

Respondent: Jay Dolmage, University of Waterloo

Share your learning on Twitter at #4Cchat.

View additional webinars in the CCCC Webinar Series.

Committee Members

Alexandria Lockett, Co-chair
Matthew Vetter, Co-chair
Sweta Baniya
Charles Bazerman
Dana Comi
Dylan B. Dryer
Tarez Samra Graban
Jennifer K. Johnson

Committee Charge

1. Knowledge Equity: Focus the efforts of the initiative on knowledge and communities marginalized by structures of power and privilege within academia and Wikipedia.
2. Capacity Building: Organize events, programs, and collaborative projects for CCCC members editing Wikipedia as subject specialists.
3. Infrastructure: Develop online spaces to provide support resources and ongoing opportunities for engagement, collaboration, and community for initiative participants.
4. Sustainability: Serve as primary point of contact with initiative partners, advisors, and personnel, and work with the NCTE Executive Director to develop grant proposals to fund activities with associated costs.
5. Research and recommendations: Track participation and assess impacts of initiative activities, circulating findings and actionable recommendations to the CCCC Executive Committee and interested stakeholders.

Conference on College Composition and Communication
July 2020

This Ain’t Another Statement! This is a DEMAND for Black Linguistic Justice!

As with previous CCCC/NCTE resolutions and position statements, we situate this demand in our current historical and sociopolitical context. Our current call for Black Linguistic Justice comes in the midst of a pandemic that is disproportionately infecting and killing Black people. We write this statement while witnessing ongoing #BlackLivesMatter protests across the United States in response to the anti-Black racist violence and murders of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, and a growing list of Black people at the hands of the state and vigilantes. We are observing calls for abolition and demands to defund the police. We are witnessing institutions and organizations craft statements condemning police brutality and anti-Black racism while ignoring the anti-Black skeletons in their own closets. As language and literacy researchers and educators, we acknowledge that the same anti-Black violence toward Black people in the streets across the United States mirrors the anti-Black violence that is going down in these academic streets (Baker-Bell, Jones Stanbrough, & Everett, 2017). In this current sociopolitical context, we ask: How has Black Lives Mattered in the context of language education? How has Black Lives Mattered in our research, scholarship, teaching, disciplinary discourses, graduate programs, professional organizations, and publications? How have our commitments and activism as a discipline contributed to the political freedom of Black peoples?

It is commonplace for progressive scholars and teachers today to acknowledge students’ multiple language backgrounds. In fact, CCCC/NCTE has created numerous resolutions and position statements related to language variety since the 1974 “Students’ Right to Their Own Language resolution,” a response to the Black Freedom Movements and new research on Black Language of the time. Since then, CCCC/NCTE policymaking in relation to language rights has included the following: Expanding Opportunities: Academic Success for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students; CCCC Statement on Ebonics; CCCC National Language Policy; CCCC Statement on Second Language Writing and Writers; Resolution on the Student’s Right to Incorporate Heritage and Home Languages in Writing; Supporting Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Learners in English Education; Resolution on Affirming the CCCC “Students’ Right to Their Own Language”; Resolution on Diversity; Resolution on Bilingual Education; Resolution on Developing and Maintaining Fluency in More Than One Language; Resolution on Language Study; Resolution on Inclusion; Resolution on English as the “Official Language”; Resolution on English as a Second Language and Bilingual Education; Resolution on the Responsibility of English Teachers in a Multilingual, Multicultural Society; Resolution on Preparing Effective Teachers for Linguistically Different Students; Resolution on the Students’ Right to Their Own Language.

Though CCCC/NCTE has been active in the ongoing struggle for language rights, Kynard (2013) reminds us that “the possibilities for SRTOL [were] always imagined, and yet never fully achieved [and this] falls squarely in line with our inadequate responses to the anti-systemic nature of the ’60s social justice movements” (p. 74). In reflecting on the current historical moment and movement for Black lives, Baker-Bell (2020) argues that “the way Black language is devalued in schools reflects how Black lives are devalued in the world . . . [and] the anti-Black linguistic racism that is used to diminish Black Language and Black students in classrooms is not separate from the rampant and deliberate anti-Black racism and violence inflicted upon Black people in society” (pp. 2–3). Today, we uphold the updated CCCC statement on Ebonics that explicitly states:

Ebonics reflects the Black experience and conveys Black traditions and socially real truths. Black Languages are crucial to Black identity. Black Language sayings, such as “What goes around comes around,” are crucial to Black ways of being in the world. Black Languages, like Black lives, matter.

As an organization that proclaims “to apply the power of language and literacy to actively pursue justice and equity for all students and educators who serve them,” we cannot claim that Black Lives Matter in our field if Black Language does not matter! We cannot say Black Lives Matter if decades of research on Black Language has not led to widespread systemic change in curricula, pedagogical practices, disciplinary discourses, research, language policies, professional organizations, programs, and institutions within and beyond academia! We cannot say that Black Lives Matter if Black Language is not at the forefront of our work as language educators and researchers! In our efforts to move toward Black Linguistic Justice, we build on the historical resolution/policymaking work within CCCC/NCTE that has laid the foundation for our discipline, but we want to be clear: This Ain’t Another Statement! This is a DEMAND for Black Linguistic Justice! PeriodT!

This list of demands was created by the 2020 CCCC Special Committee on Composing a CCCC Statement on Anti-Black Racism and Black Linguistic Justice, Or, Why We Cain’t Breathe! The members of this committee include April Baker-Bell, Bonnie J. Williams-Farrier, Davena Jackson, Lamar Johnson, Carmen Kynard, and Teaira McMurtry, six Black language scholars whose lived experiences as Black Language speakers inform our teaching, scholarship, research, and activism. Through our collective work on these demands, we are channeling the Black Radicals who came before us, both in our disciplines and in our communities! We intentionally created a fluid text from our multiple voices rather than a singularly voiced, standardized, white document.

We DEMAND that:

1. teachers stop using academic language and standard English as the accepted communicative norm, which reflects White Mainstream English!
2. teachers stop teaching Black students to code-switch! Instead, we must teach Black students about anti-Black linguistic racism and white linguistic supremacy!
3. political discussions and praxis center Black Language as teacher-researcher activism for classrooms and communities!
4. teachers develop and teach Black Linguistic Consciousness that works to decolonize the mind (and/or) language, unlearn white supremacy, and unravel anti-Black linguistic racism!
5. Black dispositions are centered in the research and teaching of Black Language!

We expand on this list of demands in the section below.

DEMAND #1: We Demand that Teachers Stop Using Academic Language and Standard English as the Accepted Communicative Norm, which Reflects White Mainstream English!

The language of Black students has been monitored, dismissed, demonized—and taught from the positioning that using standard English and academic language means success. Since these terms’ early inception, schools have upheld linguistic ideologies that continue to marginalize Black students. Socially constructed terms like academic language and standard English are rooted in white supremacy, whiteness, and anti-Blackness and contribute to anti-Black policies (e.g., English only) that are codified and enacted to privilege white linguistic and cultural norms while deeming Black Language inferior. The learning of standard English has historically been obligatory despite our knowledge that linguistic shaming and dismissal of Black Language has a deleterious effect on Black Language speakers’ humanity (Smitherman, 2006; Rickford & Rickford, 2000). We must acknowledge that Black students’ language education continues to perpetuate anti-Black linguistic racism (Baker-Bell, 2020) and creates a climate of racialized inferiority toward Black Language and Black humanity.

We DEMAND that:

1. teachers and researchers acknowledge that socially constructed terms such as academic language and standard English are false and entrenched in notions of white supremacy and whiteness that contribute to anti-Black linguistic racism.
2. teachers STOP telling Black students that they have to “learn standard English to be successful because that’s just the way it is in the real world.” No, that’s not just the way it is; that’s anti-Black linguistic racism. Do we use this same fallacious, racist rhetoric with white students? Will using White Mainstream English prevent Black students from being judged and treated unfairly based solely on the color of their skin? Make it make sense.
3. teachers reject negative perceptions of Black Language and no longer use racist linguistic ideologies that perpetuate hate, shaming, and the spirit murdering (Johnson et al., 2017) of Black students.
4. teachers and researchers reject anti-Black linguistic racism as a way to describe the deficit positioning of Black students’ use of Black Language.
5. teachers acknowledge and celebrate Black students’ use of Black Language in all its linguistic and cultural glory.
6. teachers and educational researchers champion linguistic justice (Baker-Bell, 2020).

DEMAND #2: We Demand that Teachers Stop Teaching Black Students to Code-Switch! Instead, We Must Teach Black Students about Anti-Black Linguistic Racism and White Linguistic Supremacy!

We DEMAND that language and literacy researchers and educators stop the promotion of code-switching. This approach does not celebrate and love on Blackness and Black Language. In fact, when teachers force Black youth to code their language, it is a form of anti-Black linguistic racism. We DEMAND that language researchers and educators recognize that it is destructive and injurious to ignore the interconnection between language, race, and identity. As Black Language speakers and scholars, we don’t encourage code-switching, because it places whiteness and White Mainstream English on a pedestal while showcasing Blackness and Black Language as inferior, lesser, and secondary. Instead, we encourage, utilize, and elevate the beauty and brilliance in Blackness and Black Language.

We DEMAND that:

1. teachers stop policing Black students’ language practices and penalizing them for using it in the classroom.
2. teachers stop utilizing eradicationist and respectability pedagogies (Baker-Bell, 2020) that diminish Black students’ language practices.
3. Black Language is acknowledged in the curriculum.
4. teachers are trained to recognize Black Language and work toward dismantling anti-Black linguistic racism in their curriculum, instruction, and pedagogical practices.
5. teachers stop promoting and privileging White Mainstream English, code-switching, and contrastive analysis at the expense of Black students. This is linguistically violent to the humanity and spirit of Black Language speakers.
6. teachers recognize that multiple languages can coexist (Young et al., 2014).

DEMAND #3: We Demand that Political Discussions and Praxis Center Black Language as Teacher-Researcher Activism for Classrooms and Communities!

The historical processes of defining and pursuing CCCC/NCTE policies in relation to multilingualism have been vital to classrooms and communities.. However, teacher-researchers must keep pushing further and lay out the specificity of Black Language. Educators who research and support Black Language must move beyond merely understanding and codifying current scholarship, data-driven study, and linguistic analyses. They must be activists. Respect for Black Language fundamentally requires respect for Black lives, a political process that must inherently challenge institutions like schools whose very foundations are built on anti-Black racism. We DEMAND political discussions and praxis of Black Language as guided by the work of teacher-researcher-activists in classrooms and communities who stand against institutions that seek to annihilate Black Language + Black Life.

We DEMAND that:

1. researchers, educators, and policymakers stop using problematic, race-neutral umbrella terms like multilingualism, world Englishes, translingualism, linguistic diversity, or any other race-flattened vocabulary when discussing Black Language and thereby Black Lives.
2. researchers, educators, influencers, and public scholars reject notions of a single nonmainstream language category that erases the linguistic, cultural, and political specificity of Black Language and Life struggles.
3. researchers, educators (in and out of schools), and activists frame Black Language struggles in historical and ongoing Movements for Black Lives.
4. ALL WORK related to Black Language and Black youth commit unequivocally to the freedom, dignity, and creativity of young Black people’s lives rather than demand more data extraction and labor from them.
5. researchers, scholars, educators, and all everyday Black folx center Black Language on its unique philosophies and survivances of Black Life rather than on a set of linguistic departures from a fictional, white norm.
6. researchers, scholars, educators, school/district/national leaders, administrators, and activists address anti-Blackness as endemic to how language functions, how English/education has been historically situated, and how college writing has been actively constructed.

DEMAND #4: We Demand Black Linguistic Consciousness!

We DEMAND the cultivation of Black Linguistic Consciousness. Raising Black Linguistic Consciousness requires place and space for divulging untold truths. This, in turn, prioritizes the reversing of anti-Black linguistic racism, the healing of the souls of Black folks, and the empowering of agentive political choices that call for the intentional employment of Black Language (Baker-Bell 2020; Kynard, 2007; Richardson, 2004). This is the exercising of liberation. Further, this requires that all students get an opportunity to learn about Black Language from Black language scholars or experts (via texts, lectures, etc.). For Black students specifically, it is imperative that they learn Black Language through Black Language; that is, they learn the rich roots and rhetorical rules of Black Language (Baker-Bell, 2020) by any means necessary. At the same time, this warrants the ceasing of anti-Blackness and miseducation—specifically, ineffectual language arts instruction—that misguidedly limits language mastery to White Mainstream English (revisit Demand #1). Black students need the kind of artful language instruction in which they are positioned as the linguistic mavens they are who can teach you a thing or two about language.

We DEMAND that:

1. teachers and researchers decolonize their minds (and/or) language of white supremacy and anti-Black linguistic racism and study the origin theories and sociolinguistic principles that exist about Black Language.
2. teachers engage their students in “Black linguistic consciousness-raising that provides them with the critical literacies and competencies to name, investigate, and dismantle white linguistic hegemony and anti-Black linguistic racism” (Baker-Bell, 2020, p. 86).
3. teachers reject deficit descriptions and other misnomers (e.g., home language, informal English, improper speech, etc.) that disrespects the existence and essence of Black Language. Call it what it is: Black Language!
4. teachers, researchers, and scholars put some respeck on Black Language and refrain from engaging in Black linguistic appropriation (Baker-Bell, 2020). This means that you stop the hypocrisy. Realize that it is not okay for Black Language to be used by nonnative users for popular and capital gain while native users are simultaneously mocked and widely denigrated.
5. teachers not dismiss Black Language simply as a dialect of English, and do not treat it as a static anachronism—it’s not a thing of the past, spoken only by Black people who are positioned in a “low” or “working class.” Recognize it as a language in its own right! Revisit Demand #1 again.
6. teachers respeck Black thought and how that thought manifests in Black speech and writing. That is, it might not sound like you desire it to, but remember, it sounds real right, regardless of unrelenting white supremacist socialization.

DEMAND #5: We Demand that Black Dispositions Are Centered in the Research and Teaching of Black Language.

We DEMAND that research and the teaching of Black Language center the work of Black language scholars whose research agendas and expertise are informed by their lived experiences as Black people and Black Language speakers. We specifically call for the centering of scholarship by Black women and early career Black language scholars whose scholarship is often marginalized in the research literature. We denounce the centering of research by white scholars on Black Language, which has too often been elevated in the field and deemed leading and foundational scholarship (e.g., Caldwell, Labov, Wolfram, Heath, etc.). This has contributed to many white and non-Black scholars of color gaining a platform to discuss Black Language and culture without including Black perspectives or commitments to the political freedom of Black peoples. This is an act of dehumanization and erasure of Black bodies from our own lived experiences! We demand that researchers, teachers, editors, and those in positions of leadership within CCCC/NCTE (and all professional organizations) call out these examples of anti-Black violence as well as hold themselves accountable.

We DEMAND that:

1. teachers assign readings that are written by foundational and contemporary Black language scholars.
2. teachers include assignments that give Black students the option to explore or connect with their cultural knowledge and perspectives.
3. professional organizations whose popularity hinges on Black language scholars’ presentations and service learn to center them and not the white scholars who merely tokenize such work.
4. research submitted for publication on Black Language and culture be reviewed by Black language scholars whose research agenda and expertise are informed by their lived experiences as Black people and Black Language speakers.
5. the review process for CCCC/NCTE journals (and all educational scholarship) include criteria that reflect a Black-centered citation politic. When evaluating manuscripts on Black Language and culture, authors must include citations that center the scholarship of Black scholars whose research agenda is informed by their lived experiences as Black people and Black Language speakers.
6. graduate programs in the fields of composition studies and English education develop the next generation of researchers’ Black Linguistic Consciousness of citationality politics and a Black activist research disposition.

CODA

If reading this made you feel some kinda way, instead of coming for these demands, let us help you redirect that energy. If you thought these demands were simply about teaching within traditional white norms or fixing Black students and their language practices, you got it wrong! This is a DEMAND for you to do much better in your own self-work that must challenge the multiple institutional structures of anti-Black racism you have used to shape language politics. To all the upper-level college administrators, mid-level college managers, WPAs, deans, department chairs, superintendents, school district leaders, principals, school leaders, curriculum coordinators, state and national policymakers, and editors: We see y’all! Don’t get it twisted—these demands are for y’all too!

Don’t get silent when it comes to Black Lives and Black Language in these academic streets! Keep that same energy when it comes to fighting for Black Lives in our field that you had when you used the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter on your social media platforms following George Floyd’s murder; chanted #SayHerName for Breonna Taylor and #AllBlackLivesMatter for Tony McDade at your first #BLM protest this summer; sent that email/text to your Black “friend” to profess your allyship; and helped craft that Black Lives Matter statement on behalf of your institution or department.

We DEMAND Black Linguistic Justice! And in case you’ve forgotten what WE mean when WE say Black Lives Matter, we stand with the words of the three radical Black organizers and freedom dreamers/fighters—Alicia Garza, Patrisse Khan-Cullors, and Opal Tometi—who created the historic political project #BlackLivesMatter:

Black Lives Matter is an ideological and political intervention in a world where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise. It is an affirmation of Black folks’ humanity, our contributions to this society, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression.

This list of demands was generously created by the 2020 CCCC Special Committee on Composing a CCCC Statement on Anti-Black Racism and Black Linguistic Justice, Or, Why We Cain’t Breathe! The members of this committee include:

April Baker-Bell, Chair, Michigan State University

Bonnie J. Williams-Farrier, California State University (Fullerton)

Davena Jackson, Boston University

Lamar Johnson, Michigan State University

Carmen Kynard, Texas Christian University

Teaira McMurtry, University of Alabama at Birmingham

REFERENCES

Baker-Bell, A. (2020). Linguistic justice: Black language, literacy, identity, and pedagogy. Routledge & National Council of Teachers of English.

Baker-Bell, A., Jones Stanbrough, R. J., & Everett, S. (2017). The stories they tell: Mainstream media, pedagogies of healing, and critical media literacy. English Education, 49(2), 130–52.

Johnson, L. L., Jackson, J., Stovall, D. O., & Baszile, D. T. (2017). “Loving Blackness to death”: (Re)Imagining ELA classrooms in a time of racial chaos. English Journal, 106(4), 60–66.

Kynard, C. (2007). “I want to be African”: In search of a Black radical tradition/African-American-vernacularized paradigm for “Students’ right to their own language,” critical literacy, and “class politics.” College English, 69(4), 360–90.

Kynard, C. (2013). Vernacular insurrections: Race, Black protest, and the new century in composition-literacies studies. SUNY Press.

Richardson, E. (2004). Coming from the heart: African American students, literacy stories, and rhetorical education. In E. B. Richardson & R. L. Jackson II (Eds.), African American rhetoric(s): Interdisciplinary perspectives (pp. 155–69). Southern Illinois University Press.

Rickford, J. R., & Rickford, R. J. (2000). Spoken soul: The story of Black English. Wiley.

Smitherman, G. (2006). Word from the mother: Language and African Americans. Routledge.

Young, V. A., Barrett, R., Young-Rivera, Y., & Lovejoy, K. B. (2014). Other people’s English: Code-meshing, code-switching, and African American literacy. Teachers College Press.

This position statement may be printed, copied, and disseminated without permission from NCTE.

Thursday, July 16, 2020
3:00–4:30 p.m. ET

View the webinar recording

CCCC membership is required to attend and view a recording of this webinar. Join now.

This panel, featuring three CCCC 2020 award winners, focuses on activist transnational rhetorics, the influence of language ideologies on transnational students’ identities as writers, and approaches for affirming linguistic diversity in the writing classroom. An audience-driven Q&A as well as networking time will follow the presentations.

Presenters:

Wenqi Cui, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, “Multilingual Writers’ Identity Construction through Academic Writing Discourse Socialization”

Subhi Hindi, University of Houston, “The Commonplace Writing Classroom: Code-Meshing FYC Students’ Rhetorics in College Writing”

Zhaozhe Wang, Purdue University, “Assemble Commonplaces through Activist Rhetoric in Transnational Cyber-Public Spaces”

Moderator: Vershawn Ashanti Young, CCCC Chair, University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

Respondent: Michael A. Pemberton, Georgia Southern University, Statesboro

Share your learning on Twitter at #4Cchat.

View additional webinars in the CCCC Webinar Series.

CCCC Task Force on Intersectionality and Equity-based Perspectives (2024–2025)
Alexis McGee, Chair
Lisa King
Eunjeong Lee
Donnie Johnson Sackey

CCCC Task Force to Revise Scholarship in Rhetoric, Writing, and Composition: Guidelines for Faculty, Deans, and Chairs (2024–2025)
Paul Matsuda, Chair
Andrea Lunsford
Aja Martinez
Jennifer Mitchell

CCCC Task Force to Revise the Statement on Globalization in Writing Studies Pedagogy and Research (2024–2025)
Steven Fraiberg, Chair
Tarez Graban
Alena Kasparkova
Teresa Mateo-Girona
Xiqiao Wang

CCCC Task Force Revising the Statement on Preparing Teachers of College Writing (2024–2025)
Brad Smith, Chair
Carolyn Calhoon-Dillahunt
Doug Kern
Khirsten Scott
Qianqian Zhang-Wu

CCCC Task Force on a Statement on Online/Social Media Engagement for Academic Purposes (2024–2025)
Michael Trice, Chair
Maggie Fernandes
Wyatt Paige Hermansen
Quang Ly
Katja Thieme

Monday, May 18, 2020
2:00–3:00 p.m. ET

Watch the webinar recording.

CCCC membership is required to attend and view a recording of this webinar. Join now. To view this video with closed captioning, hover over the bottom right of the video and click “CC” and “English.

Recent disruptions to standardized testing are forcing many institutions to consider alternative methods for writing placement. The presenters in this webinar—Katherine Conlon (UMass Lowell), Ann Dean (UMass Lowell), Jeroen Gevers (University of Arizona), and Erin Whittig (University of Arizona)—will share their recent experiences implementing Directed Self-Placement and offer support for those looking into new placement approaches, while acknowledging there is no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to DSP. Participants will be encouraged to ask questions that help them develop their own strategies for developing local DSP expertise, establishing connections with other stakeholders on campus, getting “buy-in” from various stakeholders, addressing common challenges such as resistance from faculty, staff, and administrators, overcoming disagreements over relevant constructs or program goals while implementing DSP, designing valid and effective DSP instruments, and supporting students throughout the DSP process. Presenters will share material resources that participants can use at their own institutions.

Share your learning on Twitter at #4Cchat.

View additional webinars in the CCCC Webinar Series.

April 29, 2020

As a result of continued uncertainty surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, CCCC leaders have made the difficult decision to postpone the 2020 CCCC Summer Conference at Boston University, July 9–10, until the summer of 2021. We express our sincerest thanks and appreciation to Ellen Carillo and Jason Courtmanche, University of Connecticut; Alice Horning, Oakland University; and Matthew Parfitt, Boston University, for their planning, leadership, and commitment in developing the program for Critical Literacies in the 21st Century Classroom.

Look for updates on future CCCC events on Facebook and Twitter.