The CATESOL Journal

The field of TESOL has experienced a renewed interest in the role of race in language teaching and learning within the context of the recent “racial reckoning” in the US. As a result, the field has seen a plethora of DEI position statements, initiatives, and publications on race, racism, and anti-racism over the past two years. However, the persistence of linguistic, racial, and cultural hegemony, bias, discrimination, linguicism, and marginalization leads us to ask whether inclusion is an illusion. In answering this question, we describe the effects of this illusion in two areas: ELT curriculum and materials (Grant & Wong, 2008) and faculty hiring practices (Romney, 2010). With critical race theory and raciolinguistics as frameworks, we discuss the policies and practices that continue to marginalize Black TESOL professionals and disadvantage Black preservice teachers and English learners. We conclude the essay with recommendations for effective DEI and actionable allyship.

Events in 2020 sparked the need to continue a focus on ongoing inequities in the United States. This article addresses the preparation of ESOL teachers for antiracist work, acknowledging that racist beliefs and structures are pervasive in education and beyond, and how ESOL teachers can develop antiracist conscientização. I address questions related to power and privilege that are present in the TESOL field and provide an overview of historically racist practices that have been part of TESOL. I draw on some personal experiences with linguistic racism as a woman, Latina, transnational, immigrant, and selfidentified multilingual speaker who speaks English as an additional language to guide why and how I come to this work as a scholar and teacher educator. Drawing from the previous sections, I describe principles and practices to tear down those racist beliefs and structures, build antiracist classrooms, and guide the preparation of antiracist ESOL teachers.

This article first provides a framing of how raciolinguistics exists in the world despite global progress in the past century. Raciolinguistics is then defined within a historical context that leads to Europeanness versus non-Europeanness (white or nonwhite) differentiation, social hierarchies, racial oppression, and modern-day linguistic violence. The second section addresses language education in relation to an additive approach, raciolinguistic approach, or provincializing English. The third section introduces linguistic profiling within Spanishspeaking Latinx communities. In the fourth section, I share some of my experiences as a cis gendered Black man speaking Japanese in Japan and my experiences being a Black man speaking English in the United States. Finally, I include activities for educators and students that can be used to move towards anti-racist teaching and learning environments. In conclusion, there is always action that needs to be taken to resist complacency and to engage with anti-racist pedagogy in classrooms and teacher training.

The powerful undercurrents and rooted presence of coloniality continue to influence the field of English language teaching today (Kubota, 2016). Motha (2014) argues that our field in its historicity and embedded colonial lineage is inherently intertwined with notions of race and power. The language of the colonized is considered by the colonizers to be inferior to the colonial language “associated with the word and people of God, of territory and ownership” (Kalyanpur et al., forthcoming). This essay engages the reader in consciousness-raising practices that require deep introspection on our own positionality, intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989), and histories with the English language and suggests ways to transform the self and system that dismisses the linguistic and cultural wealth (Yosso, 2005) of our students.

This paper focuses on the concept of intersectionality, which has been used to account for multiple forms of identity and inequality. It argues that intersectionality is a powerful theoretical lens that could be used in analyzing language teachers’ identities and their various contexts. It is also deeply connected to an orientation and understanding of justice. One significant connection that still needs to be explored in TESOL education is how intersectionality and social justice interact. Thus, the paper examines what specific professional practices educators can develop to support the critical awareness of language teachers in training. It concludes that one of the most important tasks for language teacher educators is to help current and future practitioners not only to understand the theory behind intersectional pedagogy, but to generate their own relevant, critical questions about forms of social and educational injustice in schools and other institutional contexts.

In normative multilingual ESL/EFL contexts like India, non-dominant cultural and ethnic representations are absent or superficially represented in English textbooks. For learners from linguistically disadvantaged groups, English has to be negotiated through an unfamiliar dominant language. In this article, I argue that appropriate inclusivity self-checks at the predevelopment stage of materials preparation can contribute effectively to the development of culturally responsive English language teaching materials. Using the Steinhardt NYU Metro Center’s Culturally Responsive Curriculum Scorecard and the Fairness, Bias, and CulturalResponsiveness Checklist of the Centre for Collaborative Education, Indiana University, I examine whether, and to what extent, a set of state-mandated English textbooks reflect culturally responsive and inclusive pedagogy as a response to the English language needs of multilingual, multicultural learners in India. The study shows that by using appropriate selfcheck rubrics, textbook developers can identify sites of diversity-blindness or lack of cultural responsiveness, and design materials with inclusive cultural representations.

Language learning classrooms are sites of discovery not only of language, but of identity, culture, and community. The pedagogical approach described here, critical media work (CMW), integrates language teaching and social issues by using media literacy as a bridge. CMW explores antiracist discourse in popular media (digital and analog) to dismantle simplified, binary thinking about race. CMW encourages semiotic analyses of antiracist discourse and examines messages along continuums that emphasize complexities and intersections of race, language, and culture. We share how language teachers at two urban colleges that serve immigrant populations integrate CMW into their classes, and we discuss the effectiveness of this pedagogy in terms of language learning and antiracist education. We maintain that language teaching and social justice education can support each other and that media literacy provides a meaningful and effective foundation for engaged antiracist pedagogy.

This study draws upon critical theory for its theoretical underpinnings and narrative inquiry as a methodological tool to examine the ways that Black ESL teachers working in Intensive English Language Programs in the United States position themselves and define their roles as language educators especially with consideration of their diverse racial, linguistic, and cultural identities. Data collection consisted largely of a questionnaire survey and interviews that were conducted with seven teachers and administrators of African descent. Results suggested that teachers in the study see themselves as more than English language specialists but as role models, life coaches, cultural ambassadors, and agents of social change in ESL classrooms. Narratives showed that Black teachers’ perspectives and approaches to teaching English as a second language are a valuable resource for educators seeking to incorporate race pedagogy in the ESL curriculum and improve faculty racial diversity.

Informed by a critical antiracist perspective for teacher education, we describe a year-long research collaboration we engaged to interrogate how White allyship can be reimagined to support the design of critical antiracist initiatives in language teacher education. We were inspired to write this article because we see the realities, possibilities, and problems inherent in addressing the historic and entrenched ways that race and racism still operate in America, within teacher education, and within our institution, to sustain white privilege and power. This research is grounded methodologically in the notion of inquiry as stance, which recognizes the capacity of teacher educators to work collaboratively to reform education in democratizing ways. We conclude that within our institution and throughout teacher education barriers and resistance remain to taking antiracist actions to change the way we prepare teachers for guiding students who increasingly are not White and whose first language is not English.

Multilingual students learning English are situated in systems of oppression that require a critical understanding of the role that language plays in discrimination. We describe how we create opportunities to develop and implement critical pedagogies that aim to challenge white mainstream English (Baker-Bell, 2020) as the default language in our multilingual classroom spaces and detail how our pedagogies can contribute to decentering “whiteness” in English Language Teaching (Motha, 2014). Through narrative inquiry, we demonstrate how teachers can develop antiracist pedagogies in ELT by actively listening to each other’s experiences, forming hush-harbors (Kynard, 2010), and integrating radical love (hooks, 2001). Additionally, exposing students to counternarratives from marginalized writers diversifies and enriches their learning experience. These pedagogical practices create opportunities for students’ growth by centering love, humanizing education, and deliberately creating a sense of belonging.