A Decentering Other in the Academy: Disrupting the Ordinariness of Racism and English Native Speakerism in Canadian University Education, and in the Study and Teaching of Writing in Canadian Writing Classrooms

Abstract

Abstract This study is a part of my decentering/decolonial journey—a journey intended to identify, unravel/unsettle, and challenge the nexus of politics and poetics of whiteness, white supremacy, racism, linguistic imperialism, and other forms of injustices in Canadian University education writ large, and in particular, in the study of writing and the teaching of writing in Canada. It has become increasingly evident that the discriminatory practices have negatively affected students, teachers, staff and other people of colour. Historically, this nexus has been under theorized, under-researched and under-addressed in Canadian writing studies and writing instructional practices because of the continuing legacy of colonial ideology, systemic racism, and white supremacist thinking among mainstream writing scholars. The works of majority of mainstream Canadian scholars reveal that there is a persistent tendency to perform and maintain silence, touristic gaze and lip-service when it comes to dealing with some of the central issues such as politics of whiteness, racism, white supremacy, Eurocentrism, linguistic imperialism, and their toxic effects on the racially and variously Othered people in the field. While mainstream Canadian writing studies scholars have widely discussed the marginalization of writing studies as a field and collectively advocated for its emerging disciplinary identity, they have not demonstrated the similar interest and willingness to address the problems of ordinariness of racism, linguistic imperialism, white supremacy, native speakerist ideology, and other discriminatory practices. These issues have historically underpinned the epistemic foundations of the field of writing studies and the institutions that house it. Instead, the mainstream scholars in the field have persistently demonstrated native-speakerist, and Eurocentric tendency to tell only single stories of whiteness that befit and benefit its own members. The onus, then, is left upon marginalized students, professors, researchers, and their white allies to theorize this nexus of intersecting discriminations through decentering practices. Studying and addressing the intersecting discriminations within Canadian university education in general and the teaching and learning of writing studies practices in Canada, necessitates an intersectional approach that incorporates, but is not limited to, stories of lived experiences of racism, CRT informed applied linguistic considerations, and critical historical analyses and/or historicization of the field from the Othered perspectives. The intersectional approach offers a unique perspective and strategy to fight the ongoing nexus of intersecting discriminations within the field of Canadian writing studies. In my effort to decenter whiteness, I have taken up Aja Martinez’s hybridizing approach/method to mesh my personal stories of racism with various discursive approaches such as postcolonial theory, CRT informed applied linguistic analysis, historical analysis, and other analytical measures. While this forging of our stories of lived experiences and hybridizing methods are crucial to fight racism, white supremacy, linguistic imperialism, and other discriminatory practices, these methods could face limitations and challenges especially when racial discriminations take more sophisticated and cryptic turns in the future as artificial intelligence of whiteness holds a firm grip in academia or elsewhere. To overcome both old and emerging challenges, nonetheless, our decentering efforts must be unrelenting.