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From: ylalyre@doe.mass.edu (Yvonne L Lalyre)
To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-esl@literacy.nifl.gov>
Subject: Re[2]: social identity
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Thanks Abbie Tom for bringing the subject home.
One of the problems of trying ascribe a single social identity to
persons of Latin American origin in this country is precisely the
labeling. It is quite demeaning to reduce someone who has had years
of experience training, working and being recognized as an individual
of certain economic and/or social distinction, as most educated
visitors or university students are, as "Latino" or "Hispanic",
knowing that Latino or Hispanic in the U.S. denotes largely being of
limited economic means and lacking academic skills. If you share the
latter's conditions, however, and you are treated worth of being
educated by an ESOL teacher, you would feel, at least temporarily,
elevated and enthusiastic about learning.
Adjudicating an identity to someone by virtue of a "social" label have
effects relative to different environments. Although ultimately all
are alienating for meaningful communication, some are more positive
than others.
For example, being labeled may not have great importance to most U.S.
Americans abroad because simply being labeled as "American" qualifies
one as being a linguistic authority (provided one's skin color is not
too dark and the hair straight enough), equated with the ability to
teach English a a Second Language, regardless of one's credentials.
Charles Januzzi, I think, speaks of the skin color prejudice openly.
It may also not be a "big deal" for Europeans here, where their
accents are "cute", their skin color acceptable, and no matter what
their level of education is, they are considered to have the minimum
skills of reading and writing. They are also generally considered
"exotic" and interesting no matter how dull their lives may have been
in their country or how little education they may have. They are all
happy to be Europeans in this continent.
We know the stories of Asians from India, Korea, China and Japan.
Their cultures are relatively exotic as well and "ancient". It is
quite another situation for the "lesser" cultures, where
coincidentally, people's skin color is darker (Indians do not fall
into this category because their exoticity overwhelms, in most cases,
the skin color factor): Vietnamese, Cambodians, Indonesians, and so
on. They may be exotic but not interesting enough. Most of them are
refugees and nothing in the U.S. English discourse points to the need
to learn from their cultures.
At the bottom of the pile of cultural labels, are North Africans and
Middle Easterners, "kinky hair" Africans and Latin Americans.
(1) I am omitting Native Americans in this discussion because as far
as labels are concerned, they have no proper identity. Imagine what
that little Native American boy must have felt hearing himself called
"Indian", a clear misnomer, but the only used by most U.S. Americans
to identify him!). Among these groups there are people of different
backgrounds and reasons to be in this country learning English. U.S.
Americans, however, including ESOL teachers, tend to protract, in
labeling learners, all the cultural prejudices embedded in the
literature and the mainstream media. Those prejudices include
paternalism, pity, commiseration and a host of other feelings and acts
that, in general, denigrate individuals from the "two-thirds world"
countries, no matter how well intentioned they may be.
The important difference for learning English lies, not on the lumping
everyone together but on which pile one is "lumped into". As Marilyn
Gillespie rightly suggested, teachers that begin questioning their own
prejudices and shedding them, can help the field veer away from
labelling students and propping on them an identity that may
effectively deprive them of the individuality so essential to learning
and communicating as human beings.
Thank you to all of you who have identified yourselves as individuals.
I would like to consider myself a mixture of all the languages I speak
and all the cultures I have lived in and experienced: Spanish, French,
German, Turkish, Italian, and last, but not least: Latin American. I
wish Char Ullman had done so. It would have been a totally different
discussion, this one of "social identity" would it not?
ylalyre@doe,mass.edu
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