A Time of Reckoning, a Call for Change
by María Rosa Brea, Ph.D., CCC-SLP
I haven’t written about my identities and experiences in a long time. Perhaps this is the reason why I find it difficult to know where to begin.
I have been a Speech-Language Pathologist (SLP) for 20 years, and I have been in academia, in various positions, since 2005. And over the course of 20 years, regardless of where I have practiced, there have been families, students, and colleagues who have sought me out because I looked like them, because I am like them.
When multilingual families of children with speech and language-learning disabilities have come to see me with anguish and guilt because another SLP emphasized that their use of a home language was ‘delaying’ the development of English, I have told them of being 17, not speaking a word of English and walking into my first American History class in my senior year of high school. I’ve told them of times when I’ve been told: “Are you stupid? Don’t you know how we speak English? You should learn.” I pause to give room to the grief I feel that I’ve given up writing in my lengua materna, which is beautiful and romantic, to write in the rational, measured, and direct English register in which I write. And yet, after 28 years of living in the United States, English is not the language in which I express my anger, nor the one in which I do math computations, and especially not the one in which I sing. I shamefully remember the times I’ve heard myself thinking “I suppose that my dissertation, which focused only on Spanish phonotactics, is not an impactful contribution to our field,” as if in order for my narrative to be credible and complete, English must take up space. To them I say: Your language matters. Your language is necessary. Your language is your legacy.
When young undergraduate students come to see me and describe me as the mythical unicorn for which they’ve been looking and say: ‘I’ve never met a Latinx Professor. I never thought that was possible.” I tell them of the times when I, too, didn’t see myself in the books or in my teachers, of the times when I did not find my experience reflected in a chapter riddled with stereotypes about Hispanic Americans, or glossed over in a lecture or a slide. I speak of when the realization I was invisible created the pathway for me to make a difference. To them I say: Do not look for the unicorn, become it.
When prospective students who are Black and from different cultures, ethnicities, and linguistic backgrounds are applying for their SLP graduate programs and they nervously ask what they can do to increase their chances (read that word again — their CHANCES) for being admitted, as if anything we work towards should be left off to chance. And they ask this question because their Graduate Record Exam (GRE) scores are not meeting the metrics for acceptance. With those future SLPs, I’ve shared the story of when a certain Latinx SLP applied and was accepted provisionally into her Master of Science (M.S.) program because, while her GPA was 4.0, her GRE was more than a few percentiles below expectations. I tell them that when the same SLP applied for a Ph.D., she enrolled in prep classes, took the GRE 4 times, and still failed to meet the standards. I share that this certain SLP was explicitly told by the then Director of Admissions that the Committee was not ‘unanimous’ in her acceptance and that there was doubt that she would maintain academic performance that matched that of other applicants, but that two faculty members in the Committee had fervently advocated for her to be admitted. Then, I tell them the happy ending she made for herself: She became the first Latinx student to ever graduate from her Ph.D. program. To those future SLPs I say: Do not give up. You are enough. You will beat the odds. You will succeed.
When graduate students in my predominantly White departments of practice knock on my door fearfully searching for a “safe space” to share they’ve been told that their English use is not standard-enough, that their accents need plastic surgery, and that their writing is insufficiently literate, I tell these students of the time when, after internalizing others’ views of my Spanish-colored English phonology and syntax, I apologized to my classes. And I refer to the day one of my students raised his hand and said: “Ms. Brea, don’t apologize for the sound of your identity.” To those I tell the story of María Rosa, the M.S. student who submitted 17 revisions of the first chapter of her Master’s thesis. I tell them of the essential role of mentors in our success. Those 17 drafts were returned with carefully crafted paragraphs between my double-spaced lines, feedback that prompted deeper thinking, that helped me draw connections between literature sources, that shaped my mind, and that explicitly taught me the basic rules of written English. And on the role of feedback in my formation, these were all comments to which I paid acute attention because that is learning: To attend, to reflect, to internalize, to use, and to modify as my own. I tell them that after submitting and resubmitting, I had memorized those initial 57 pages containing only my rationale and research questions, that I went on to defend my thinking and that I passed. To those students I say: Don’t shrink back. Don’t blend in.
When doctoral students and colleagues who look like me say “I don’t think I belong. I disagree but I can’t speak up. I don’t think my voice matters,” with those I share that I have felt and feel that way in the present. I speak transparently of the gas-lighting that happens in academic settings, in spaces that include progressive liberals and white feminists. I tell them of my journey to finding allies outside of my practicing spaces. I tell them of how white privilege masquerades in the ‘politics of workplace professionalism.’ I give examples of when I have been ignored, when I have been segregated, when I have been silenced. I tell them that having 1–2 “diverse” faculty in our departments is certainly not enough because the policies that create the modus operandi of programs have a majority vote. I say that we must dismantle White Supremacy within ourselves, first. We speak about looking for co-conspirators, building community, and opening and holding the door open for others who share identities and positionalities with them because there is some truth to the idea that there is strength in numbers, that real change can happen if more are willing to transform our broken structures. We co-learn through reading about equity, belonging, and liberation. We strategize together. To those future and current influencers I say: I see you. I am with you. I am you.
The truth is that we, Black and Brown and other minoritized individuals, ‘Bodies of Culture’ as Resmaa Menakem encapsulates us, have to work harder to prove that we are worthy. We have to be louder to be heard by one person with privilege who can, then, give up their privilege to open space for us. We have to seek our brave spaces. We may be participants in the “room where it happens” but the politics, policies, research frameworks, and pedagogical approaches are developed without seeking, accounting for, and respecting our perspectives and experiences. Our higher education settings develop and implement what is operationalized as academic rigor and the tradition of academia from a glass half- empty mentality without, as a dear colleague once taught me, ever being curious about “what is filling the different glasses.” There is much, much work to be done for each of the groups who have crossed the threshold of my office to sit across from me and share their life story.
In the last 20 years, I’ve learned to say:
Your language matters. Your language is necessary. The study of your language is your legacy.
You became your own unicorn.
You are enough. You beat the odds. You succeeded.
Don’t shrink back. Don’t blend in.
To those of you who have privilege in your ability to blend in with the Power majority, I ask:
How can we do better?
How do we want to show up?
How do we use this moment to elevate the voices of minoritized insiders, highlighting their brilliance without re-victimizing them, while putting them on display?
How do we move beyond merely invoking “diversity,” inclusion, and cultural competence as the balms that absolve us from intentional, liberatory actions?
To the families, my students and co-learners, my colleagues who have endured and still thrived and still made impacts:
I see you. I am with you. I am you, and I will do better.
