Dylan Nice Blog Post #4

A few falls ago, I arrived at EPB very early in the morning for a 7:30 am class. I found the building papered with hundreds of copies of a student essay. It was taped to the doors, left on desks in classrooms and common spaces, and slide under the doors of instructors' offices, a corner of the text often clearly still sticking out. I took a copy to my office and read it instead of doing my last minute class preprations. It was titled "The Liberal Promise" and was a personal essay written by a Black student about a very unpleasant in an EPB classroom. The incident happened during a peer review of an essay draft. The Black student leveled a (valid, I think) criticism of a White student's reading of Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow. But, the instructor intervened, saying it was too late in the process for revisions of the global order, like thesis statements. Thus, a White student's perspective was protected while while a Black perspective was silenced. The author then cited other examples when Iowa was an unwelcoming, dismissive, or hostile place for a student of color to be. At first, I admittedly thought the author of this essay was overreacting. But as I continued to reflect on the argument, the evidence, and the clear truth of the experience, I became more acutely aware of the problem. Iowa often simply talks the talk of diversity without doing the hard, necessary work of it. Now I pair the student essay with Alexander's text each semester and ask my students to respond. Often, they do better with the text than I did at first. I suppose I'm citing this experience because I was reminded of it as I engaged with the three readings for this week. I went through the same kind of process with the CCCC statement: resistance, confusion, and finally a more nuanced appreciation of an academic experience outside my own, one that happens inside a space where you are often made to feel you don't belong. In the classroom, in America. I find the argument of the CCCC statement persuasive, but still can't totally parse what it means in terms of practice. This lack of understanding and vision on my part, I suppose, is part of the very problem the statement is addressing. My expertise is in Standard English after all, that is the engine I know how to make run. I am, however, very interested in learning more about what scholars in Black English have to say about how to approach the tension between fluidity in language and the need for some standard elements.

Comments

  1. RbtaylorSeptember 22, 2020 at 2:00 PM

    Dylan,

    I empathize with your reflection above because in a lot of ways, it mirrors my own. Your line, "In the classroom, in America. I find the argument of the CCCC statement persuasive, but still can't totally parse what it means in terms of practice," echoes my own struggles with the CCCC's statement and the current reality for education. I feel as if the very fact that the experience of Black writers and students exists outside of my own in some way diminishes my ability to incorporate it into my practices. However, I am willing to shed dusty, old conventions of academic English if it means allowing students to express themselves with more authenticity.

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