Identity has been 'increasingly medicated' since the turn of the twentieth century. According to Ibrahim in her text "Becoming Black: Rap and hip hop, race, gender, identity and politics of ESL learning", with this identified we can further question "Who learns what" and "How is it learned'? Ibrahim further questions how can we develop pedagogy in a 'post colonial' society? And why are black L2 students drawn to learn 'North American Black English? Race is increasingly being studied in respect to second language learning and, according to Ryuku Jubota and Angel Lin, can help the word race not be so vitally equated with racism.
There is no better or worse language, there is no high or low end of identity or communication However, there is a prescriptive and descriptive way of speaking.
She is concentrated with "the linkages among the self, identity, desire, and the English(es) that students invest in." She suggests that there is a desire to use BSE and BE to better identify with people that look similar. I think that she is displaced and her study is not wide enough for her to identify and critique all areas of why BSE is used. Her subjects were black and attended a high school in Ontario, Canada. She continues to describe what hip hop is. "I use hip-hop to describe a way of dressing, walking, and talking. The
dress refers to the myriad shades and shapes of the latest fly gear: high-top sneakers, bicycle shorts, chunky jewelry, baggy pants, and polka-dotted tops (Rose, 1991, p. 277). The hairstyles, which include
high-fade designs, dreadlocks, corkscrews, and braids (Rose, 1991, p.
277) are also part of this fashion."I like that she asked the question "...how do who we identify with effect how and what we learn?" This statement is a generalization and acts as rhetoric to further marginalize and other. I am interested to see if a students culture effects how they think of learning, and if it does inhibits them or benefit them in any way.
"The Western hegemonic representations of Blackness, Hall (1990) shows, are negative and tend
to work alongside historical and subconscious memories that facilitate
their interpretations by members of the dominant groups." I think it would be interesting to find out where and what these negative representations of Blackness are, and why they are perceived as negative by the collective. In the study, she confesses that the largest influence the black students have come from the television. Ibrahim states, "this identification was certainly connected to their inability to relate to dominant groups, the public spaces they occupied, and their cultural forms and norms." I do not agree with the usage of the word 'dominant'. Language is strong, and perhaps it is this sort of rhetorical language that guides people into the mindset that there is a 'lesser dominant' culture and lifestyle. Perhaps this is why some fall in the 'post colonial' era. The given standard is not their culture, and as stated here, the given standard is more dominant than their culture. It does not shock me that some of these students feel as if they do not connect with the language learning in the classroom. I also found it interesting that, despite what was suggested before about how this is subconsciously acted upon, the students were able to express exactly why they were drawn to certain cultures.
She later continues to comment on pedagogy "Thus we as teachers must, first, identify the different sites in which our students invest their identities and desires and, second, develop materials that engage our students' raced, classed, gendered, sexualized, and abled identities." It is easy to assume that all of the students have similar needs, and similar backgrounds Though, what is not said, is as important as what is said. She states that 'Black music' such as rap, should be engaged with. I would like to propose that she goes beyond this and question what is being engaged in the classroom, and what is accepted to be the norm?
Kubota and Lin's text asks the reader to first question what race is. They state "According to Omi and Wmant 1994 , race ·IS a concept which signifies and symbolizes social conflicts· and interests ..." Race is socially constructed, which can call for further questioning of who is exactly making these social constructions. With the examination of these articles, the reader can further explore identity, culture, and race in reflection to multilingual student.
No comments:
Post a Comment