Expanding on Positionality in Education
Working in the ESL classroom at Canal Alliance has opened my eyes up to all the different ways that my own education has directly influenced my privilege. James Baldwin’s ideas of education acting as a paradox have helped bring me to the realizations about how I live and think in a closed box. Baldwin details this paradox: ”as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated” (1). I know that I am lucky to have received the nurturing and quite cushy education that I have, but I now understand the deep rooted conformity and ignorance that is prevalent in our education system and our country as a whole. We should be taught how to be problem solvers; resilient and individual, but instead we learn one ideal, one goal.
This ignorance often manifests itself in oppressive structures that effect immigrants, such as the students at Canal Alliance. Hurdles are set up throughout the American education system and job system that are designed to prevent immigrants and non-English speakers from reaching higher levels of education and breaking the cycle of poverty. At Canal Alliance I witness students file into the classroom for class at eight pm every Wednesday. Wednesday is my busiest day, and by the time I make it to Canal Alliance I am always exhausted physically and mentally. However, I always must remind myself that most students in my class work long hours at physically demanding and laborious jobs that they must keep in order to have food on the table and a roof over their heads. On top of that they still choose to spend four nights a week at Canal Alliance learning English in order to have a better life in this country. In the ESL classroom, as with any classroom, students who receive help and support at home, take part in extracurriculars, and don’t have to spend time working will directly be more successful. This is how the cycle of poverty remains unbroken.
Words from thinkers Beverly Tatum and Ibram X. Kendi have tuned me into the role that people in my position must take on, and have motivated me to rethink my own opportunities, achievements, and overall positionally in our society.
Many of Tatum’s ideas in “The Complexity of Identity: ‘Who Am I?’” deal with examining and defining dominant and subordinate groups. The privileged group, the dominant group, is who holds the power. They set the social norms, and “assign roles to the subordinate that reflect the latter’s devalued status, reserving the most highly valued roles in society for themselves” (Tatum 12). The subordinate group becomes labeled by the dominants as “defective or substandard” which has implications in systemic oppression that go deeper than the surface. This power dynamic can become internalized by the subordinate group, and many individuals can not see beyond the image that dominants have painted of them. On the flip side, I often have a hard time seeing my own image as a member of the dominant group. I do not talk about how I’m white or how I’m straight very often, all because these parts of me fit into the privileged group. Tatum elaborates on this by saying “it is the targeted identities that hold our attention and the dominant identities that often go unexamined,” which makes sense because society wouldn’t have any interest in pointing out my dominant characteristics (11). This makes it easier for privilege to fly under the radar or become almost unrecognizable in many everyday situations.
Most individuals in these adult ESL classes at Canal Alliance do not have more than an elementary school education, and haven’t been in a classroom environment in years. On top of that they are in a new country, a country with a currently rampant anti-immigration rhetoric in play. I would not be surprised if these students, people who are working hard and putting themselves in a vulnerable learning position, have a deeply internalized substandard image of themselves that has been subconsciously forced into their mind by the dominant group.
Race has obviously been an overarching and reoccurring topic while reflecting on my experiences at Canal Alliance so far. I know that I came into the service learning process with an awareness of many racist policies and ideas that I have certainly benefited from, regardless of the fact that I do not actively support them. I am following Kendi’s beliefs by “publicly donating my time… to antiracist policymakers, organizations, and protests” (226), so I must always make sure to remind myself to also match Kendi’s struggle to also push antiracist power in the space of Canal Alliance. I must also remind myself that my time at Canal Alliance is not about my own achievements, but about sharing educational and cultural growth with the students.
