Statement on Racism: SUNY Potsdam Writers’ Block Statement on Racism and Peer Tutoring of Writing

SUNY Potsdam Writers’ Block

Statement on Racism and Peer Tutoring of Writing

Draft in progress; please check back. As of August 24, 2020

Actions must match words. In this statement I strive to articulate the values behind our writing center work as well as goals we can and should realistically achieve. 

As director of the Writers’ Block, I know that Black Lives Matter and Black literacies matter. I grieve the loss of Black lives to police violence and the stress and fear that racial violence imposes on people of color. I am committed to doing more to challenge racism. I also grieve the loss of Indigenous people’s lives and Latinx people’s lives to police violence, as well as people with mental illness and disabilities, who are also vulnerable to this violence and its ripple effects. We must do better to prevent such violence across our criminal justice system and to learn about the underlying forms and histories of racism that shapes our society and our cross-racial interactions today.

The Writers’ Block’s purpose is to meet each student writer where you are to support you in your growth as a writer. Tutors help writers to clarify their meaning and to assess and improve their communication. They share knowledge about writing process, college assignments, style, and citation. In pursuit of that mission, our peer tutors strive to be a sensitive sounding board for each writer. We recognize that racism and white privilege can complicate the writing experience for students of color, whether they were born in the US or immigrated here. We respect that each person experiences their intersecting identities in a unique way and navigates social challenges differently. We strive to provide a safe space for students as they grow through those challenges, a place where we the staff strive to be humble and sensitive in support of student writers.

Previously, the Writers’ Block has engaged matters of racism and linguistic diversity in our COMP 406 Peer Tutoring Practicum class. We have discussed bias and racism in our staff development, including the video Black Parents Explain How to Deal with the Police. We have required staff to attend Days of Reflection events. Our staff is racially diverse. Our clients are much more likely to be people of color than are nonclients, suggesting that we have successfully created a welcoming environment.

In conversations with senior tutor Imani Doumbia, a Black woman, she has reminded me of how important racial microaggressions are in discussing writing by students of color. It is essential that students not feel misjudged because of their written language in the writing center. Imani has reminded me that “Students of color often feel misjudged in academia, where there is normally a singular, and extremely narrow, range for what is seen as professional or academic written language.”

This reminds me of two central tenets in anti-racist writing center theory and practice. Students’ writing skills must not be perceived as a reflection of their intelligence, dedication, or ability. And tutors’ criticisms of writing skills must be made in a respectful and informed way. The same should be true for teachers. However, normally, the teacher, tutor, and student writer themselves do not recognize the cultural influences on all writers’ use of grammar and style and the difficulty of analyzing the relationship between different codes, which is truly normal for that student. In a society where racial microaggressions are common, “this criticism is often exceedingly ostracizing to student writers,” as Imani wrote. Code switching is not a simple mechanical choice, but it carries the weight of cultural and identity work in ways that are unique to each student. Thus, while a critic is trying to help a student, the criticism may have more negative effect on the student than it does positive. 

Thus, while instruction in the dominant written style can help students to advance within academia, discussions must be more respectful, nonjudgmental, and educational. Similar problems may occur for English language learners, whose use of two or more languages shapes parts of their written grammar and syntax. Furthermore, current scholarship on code meshing shows that students can honor and use an alternative code while also learning and using the dominant code.

As a resource for students on campus, it is our job as Writers’ Block director and tutors to be ready to discuss these issues and to support student writers as they grow. As we do so, it is also our job to be aware of the microaggressions we may perform when tutoring a student of color who meshes less dominant grammars with the dominant grammar of “standard edited English.” We must always act from the knowledge that our student clients’ intelligence and capacity to succeed in academia are very high and are not measured by writing style or “correctness”; that diverse grammars can be employed in texts which communicate effectively; and that student writers need new understandings to continually negotiate their choices about how they design their written language and how they discuss their language style. We must move beyond tolerating linguistic diversity and towards enacting linguistic justice. We must become more aware of and able to discuss and resist typical racial microaggressions, stereotypes, bias, and defensiveness. We have addressed these issues in tutor education and staff development, but we commit to addressing them more deeply and consistently. I commit to embrace this development as a benefit for all staff individually and as a community.

Please see below for other supporting statements, including those from the leading professional organizations in writing instruction and writing center. Please also see the themes in our writing contest announcement, Writing our way toward Justice: A Black Lives Matter Writing Contest and Blog for SUNY Potsdam Students.

As I mentioned earlier, these issues are discussed within recent scholarship of writing studies and writing centers. I have been deeply influenced by books from the field which address these issues, including Writing Centers and the New Racism: A Call for Sustainable Dialogue and Change (award winner); Other People's English: Code-meshing, Code-switching, and African American Literacy; Everyday Writing Center: A Community of Practice; Out in the Center: Private Struggles and Public Controversies; Facing the Center: Toward an Identity Politics of One-to-One Mentoring; "'Nah, We Straight': An Argument Against Code Switching"; and “An Essay on the Work of Composition: Composing English against the Order of Fast Capitalism.” (See below for position statements from professional associations.) I commit to continue to share these sources with tutors. 

As noted above, this statement reflects the fundamental values which have informed our tutor education, staff development, and tutors’ daily practices. We have addressed these issues explicitly in tutor education readings as well as in some staff development activities. We have emphasized the importance of creating a safe space for all of our clients and working with them without judgment. However, we need to sustain and deepen this effort. These issues of linguistic justice are not often discussed among whites, in particular, and we need to develop a viable literacy.

On behalf of the Writers’ Block, I commit to the following goals:

         ·     Continue to recruit, develop, and support a racially diverse staff that strives to be anti-racist.

• Redesign the tutor education class to more fully address tutoring and linguistic justice.
•  Provide ongoing staff development to discuss style, grammar, and cultural differences, striving to help tutors have sound knowledge to draw on, even though they are not linguistic experts. 
• Continue to engage staff in discussions of microaggressions, bias, defensiveness, and educational and linguistic equity.
• Sponsor a Black Lives Matter Writing Contest in Fall 2020, creating a blog to host student writing submitted to this contest.
• Conduct surveys and focus group discussions with our Writers’ Block clients to hear their ideas for how we could improve our services, especially regarding the need to respect students as they explore the relationships between linguistic diversity and academic success.
•  Create a resource for faculty which helps them to consider how they might discuss dominant language design and cultural variations with student writers.

Sincerely,

Dr. Jennifer Mitchell

SUNY Potsdam Writers’ Block Director and Associate Professor

 

Related statements from the professions and faculty-staff

Conference on College Communication and Composition: This is also an issue that is widely discussed in the field of writing studies. A new “Demand for Black Linguistic Justice” has just been issued by the Conference on College Communication and Composition. The demand is rooted in years of other professional statements and scholarship about the validity of Black English and the importance of more fully supporting and accepting students’ linguistic diversity while also teaching them to use dominant language. Code meshing is a valuable and affirming skill to add to code switching. The first demand is that “teachers stop using academic language and standard English as the accepted communicative norm, which reflects White Mainstream English!”

International Writing Centers Association: The International Writing Centers Association produced this position statement on anti-racism in the writing center field in 2010. I was part of the group which finalized the statement, which concludes: “As the International Writing Center Association’s Special Interest Group on anti-racist activism, we condemn all such measures to restrict linguistic diversity and to limit academic freedom along racial lines for their legal sanction of systemic and institutional racism. As a counterweight to these measures and in resistance to them, we hope to foster conversations in writing centers everywhere . . .  about racism and oppression more generally. In our capacity as advocates of one-with-one tutoring, we seek to move the discourse surrounding race and immigration status into a more honest and humane space, in our own writing centers and in our communities at large.” The IWCA will soon work on more updated statements.

 

Here are two other statements from some college faculty and staff from August 2020:

“We, the undersigned faculty and staff at SUNY Potsdam, wholeheartedly support the Black members of our community. We cry out for racial justice, and we say with one voice: Black Lives Matter. We condemn the Potsdam Back the Blue rally of August 15 as a thinly veiled anti-BLM protest that also exploits our first responders for that purpose. Amidst a pandemic, when racial inequities in health and healthcare are made starkly visible, Black communities continue to endure the pain of racial injustice and oppression that has existed in our society for over 400 years. We are committed to fighting injustice. We stand with the Black members of our community. We urge the entire community to join us, to take up the work of undoing racism and to speak out against it. Our campus mission says in part: With an abiding sense of responsibility to our region and to the world beyond, SUNY Potsdam fosters an appreciation of and respect for the variety of human experience. We the undersigned, say with one voice: Black Lives Matter.“ (To be signed by a number of faculty staff starting Friday, Aug. 14 through Monday, Aug. 17. A signed public version will be published next week as an ad in North Country This Week, the free print version of NorthCountryNow.com.)

(Note: Our purpose in writing this (and I was not on the core team) was to oppose Back the Blue, affirm Black Lives Matter, and commit to work for more change in undoing racism. We acknowledge that a statement, a rally, and three letters to the editor are no substitute for substantive, concrete, and lasting change. That's what students of color and their families are saying loud and clear. In this particular case, it seemed important to promptly and publicly respond to these two simultaneous rallies in Potsdam, Back the Blue and Black Lives Matter. Given the threats of violence, we heard that students and families wanted to know how the college was addressing the community. (In response to this statement by a number of faculty and staff, President Esterberg sent faculty and staff an email, “Standing in Support,” affirming BLM and affirming that Black faculty, staff, and students matter. -- Dr. Jennifer Mitchell)

And from Dept. of English & Communication department chair (other departments are also posting statements on their social media and department web pages): “To our students, faculty, and staff of color, we recognize that this is a physically, psychically, and emotionally difficult time. Amidst a pandemic, when racial inequities in health and healthcare are made starkly visible, Black communities continue to endure the pain of racial injustice. We see you, we are listening, and we are committed to fighting injustice. We are here for you. We urge White people in our communities to take up the work of undoing racism and to speak out against it. Black Lives Matter. - Dr. Stanavage Dept. Chair”