Keywords
discourse analysis
systemic racism
whiteness
tutorials
higher education
Abstract
Critical race theory interrogates how systemic inequities in higher education are reproduced through institutional cultures and everyday practices, which interact with material disparities in broader society. Actors positioned within these institutions can collude with or resist unjust systems, within their means. The discourse analysis that anchors this article explores how contractually-employed teaching assistants (henceforth simply Assistants) contribute to, or resist, injustice while working with students in the context of tutorials that directly topicalise systemic racism. Based on individual interviews with Assistants serving in a Department of English and Cultural Studies at a historically-white South African university where the contemporary student body predominantly identifies as black, I unpack the discursive practices through which Assistants implicate their own institutional embeddedness in students’ learning experiences. I hone this article on Assistants’ openness to vulnerability as they interrogate their own systemic embeddedness, and how they experience themselves as becoming vulnerable to expectations from students.
References
Adams, G., Salter, P., Kurtis, T., Naemi, P., & Estrada-Villalta, S. (2018). Subordinated Knowledge as a tool for creative maladjustment and resistance to racial oppression. Journal of Social Issues, 74(2), 337-354. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/josi.12272
Adhikari, M. (2013). Burdened by race: Coloured identities is southern Africa. Cape Town: UCT Press.
Allais, S., Cooper, A., & Shalem, Y. (2019). Rupturing and reinforcing inequality? The role of education in South African today. Transformation: Critical perspectives on Southern African, 101, 105-126. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/745637 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/trn.2019.0039
Belluigi, D. & Thondhlana, G. (2020). Your skin has to be elastic: The politics of belonging as a selected black academic at a ‘transforming’ South African university. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 35(2), 141-162. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2020.1783469
Brisnett, N. (2020). Teaching like a subaltern: Postcoloniality, positionality, and pedagogy in International Development Education. Comparative Education Review, 64(4), 577-597. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/710694
Cook, L. & LeBesco, K. (2006). Introduction: The pedagogy of the teacher’s body. Review of Education. Pedagogy and Cultural Studies, 28(3-4), 233-238. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/10714410600873159
Corces-Zimmerman, C. & Guida, T. (2019). Toward a critical whiteness methodology: Challenging whiteness through qualitative research. Theory and Method in Higher Education Research, 5, 91-109. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/S2056-375220190000005007
Dick, L. & Painter, D. (2021). On the verge of a nervous breakdown: Neoliberal subjectivities and precarious resistance in the contemporary South African university. Acta Academica, 52(2), 37-51.
Garrett, H., Segall, A., & Crocco, M. (2020). Accommodating emotion and affect in political discussions in classrooms. The Social Studies, 111(6), 312-323. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00377996.2020.1758015
Gilson, E. (2011). Vulnerability, ignorance and oppression. Hypatia, 26(2), 308-332. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1527-2001.2010.01158.x
Hlatshwayo, M. (2020). Being black in South African higher education: An intersectional insight. Acta Academica, 52(2), 163-180.
Jones, A. (2021). Letters to their attackers: Using counterstorytelling to share how Black women respond to racial microaggressions at a historically White institution. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2021.1942292
Kelly, L. B. (2017). Welcoming counterstory in the primary literacy classroom. Journal of Critical Thought and Praxis, 6(1), 38-52. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31274/jctp-180810-68
Kerr, P. (2020). Addressing five common weaknesses in qualitative research: Sticking feathers together in the hope of producing a duck. PINS, 59(1), 107-123.
Khunou, G., Phaswana, D., Khoza-Shangase, K., & Canham, H. (2019). Black Academic Voices: The South African Experience. Cape Town: HSRC Press.
Kumashiro, K. (2000). Toward a theory of anti-oppressive education. Review of Educational Research, 70(1), 25-53. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543070001025
Rudick, C. & Golsan, K. (2018). Civility and white institutional presence: An exploration of white students’ understandings of race-talk at a traditionally white institution. Howard Journal of Communications, 29(4), 335-352. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/10646175.2017.1392910
Sambaraju, R. & Minescu, A. (2018). ‘I have not witness it personally myself, but…’: Epistemics in managing talk on racism against immigrants in Ireland. European Journal of Social Psychology, 49, 398-412. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2539
Makhubela, M. (2018). Decolonise, don’t diversity: Discounting diversity in the South African academe as a tool for ideological pacification. Education as Change, 22(1), 1-21. DOI: https://doi.org/10.25159/1947-9417/2965
Makombe, R. (2021). The Covid-19 Pandemic as a Platform to Rethink the Decolonisation of Higher Education in South Africa. In T. Mgutshini, K. Oparinde, & V. Govender (Eds.), Covid-19 Interdisciplinary Exploration of Impacts on Higher Education (pp. 1-16). Johannesburg: Sun Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.52779/9781991201195/01
Matthews, S. (2021). Decolonising while white: Confronting race in South African classroom. Teaching in Higher Education, 26(7-8), 1113-1121. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2021.1914571
Mueller, J. (2017). Producing colourblindness: Everyday mechanisms of white ignorance. Social Problems, 64(2), 219-238. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spx012
Mueller, J. (2020). Racial ideology or racial ignorance? An alternative theory of racial cognition. Sociological Theory, 38(2), 142-169. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0735275120926197
Wale, K. (2019). Towards critical cultural openness: (in)vulnerability in white student narratives of transformation in South Africa. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 43(7), 1189-1207. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2019.1642502
Yosso, T., Smith, W., Ceja, M., & Solórzano, D. (2009). Critical race theory, racial microaggressions, and campus climate for Latina/o undergraduates. Harvard Educational Review, 79(4), 659-690. DOI: https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.79.4.m6867014157m707l
License
Copyright (c) 2023 Marthinus Stander Conradie
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Manuscript authors are responsible for obtaining copyright permissions for any copyrighted materials included within manuscripts. The authors must provide permission letters, when appropriate, to the Society Register Editors.
In addition, all published papers in Society Register are published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 Unported License.
1.1 The Author hereby warrants that he/she is the owner of all the copyright and other intellectual property rights in the Work and that, within the scope of the present Agreement, the paper does not infringe the legal rights of another person. The owner of the copyright work also warrants that he/she is the sole and original creator thereof and that is not bound by any legal constraints in regard to the use or sale of the work.
1.2. The Publisher warrants that is the owner of the PRESSto platform for open access journals, hereinafter referred to as the PRESSto Platform.
2. The Author grants the Publisher non-exclusive and free of charge license to unlimited use worldwide over an unspecified period of time in the following areas of exploitation:
2.1. production of multiple copies of the Work produced according to the specific application of a given technology, including printing, reproduction of graphics through mechanical or electrical means (reprography) and digital technology;
2.2. marketing authorisation, loan or lease of the original or copies thereof;
2.3. public performance, public performance in the broadcast, video screening, media enhancements as well as broadcasting and rebroadcasting, made available to the public in such a way that members of the public may access the Work from a place and at a time individually chosen by them;
2.4. inclusion of the Work into a collective work (i.e. with a number of contributions);
2.5. inclusion of the Work in the electronic version to be offered on an electronic platform, or any other conceivable introduction of the Work in its electronic version to the Internet;
2.6. dissemination of electronic versions of the Work in its electronic version online, in a collective work or independently;
2.7. making the Work in the electronic version available to the public in such a way that members of the public may access the Work from a place and at a time individually chosen by them, in particular by making it accessible via the Internet, Intranet, Extranet;
2.8. making the Work available according to appropriate license pattern CC BY-NC 4.0 as well as another language version of this license or any later version published by Creative Commons.
3. The Author grants the Publisher permission to reproduce a single copy (print or download) and royalty-free use and disposal of rights to compilations of the Work and these compilations.
4. The Author grants the Publisher permission to send metadata files related to the Work, including to commercial and non-commercial journal-indexing databases.
5. The Author represents that, on the basis of the license granted in the present Agreement, the Publisher is entitled and obliged to:
5.1. allow third parties to obtain further licenses (sublicenses) to the Work and to other materials, including derivatives thereof or compilations made, based on or including the Work, whereas the provisions of such sub-licenses will be the same as with the Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Creative Commons sub-license or another language version of this license, or any later version of this license published by Creative Commons;
5.2. make the Work available to the public in such a way that members of the public may access the Work from a place and at a time individually chosen by them, without any technological constraints;
5.3. appropriately inform members of the public to whom the Work is to be made available about sublicenses in such a way as to ensure that all parties are properly informed (appropriate informing messages).
6. Because of the royalty-free provision of services of the Author (resulting from the scope of obligations stipulated in the present Agreement), the Author shall not be entitled to any author’s fee due and payable on the part of the Publisher (no fee or royalty is payable by the Publisher to the Author).
7.1. In the case of third party claims or actions for indemnity against the Publisher owing to any infractions related to any form of infringement of intellectual property rights protection, including copyright infringements, the Author is obliged to take all possible measures necessary to protect against these claims and, when as a result of legal action, the Publisher, or any third party licensed by the Publisher to use the Work, will have to abandon using the Work in its entirety or in part or, following a court ruling in a legal challenge, to pay damages to a third party, whatever the legal basis
7.2. The Author will immediately inform the Publisher about any damage claims related to intellectual property infringements, including the author’s proprietary rights pertaining to a copyrighted work, filed against the Author. of liability, the Author is obliged to redress the damage resulting from claims made by third party, including costs and expenditures incurred in the process.
7.3. To all matters not settled herein provisions of the Polish Civil Code and the Polish Copyright and Related Rights Act shall apply.