'The Production of Whiteness in Education'

I’m posting a link to an article entitled ‘The Production of Whiteness in Education: Asian International Students in a College Classroom’ (DiAngelo, 2006).

While I do not necessarily endorse the positions taken in this article and certainly have reservations with the methodology and constructs employed, it resonates with recent personal experiences in higher education and I feel it may be an interesting stepping stone for discussion.

What do you think?

http://www.tcrecord.org/Content.asp?ContentID=12719

BTW… I’m not sure how long this link will work for, it the link goes down and people let me know, I can try and post the article somewhere else.

The article pretty much tells the story from a "white" prespective, to be more specific, someone who hunts for clues to support the claim that his race is far superior than others'. This has nothing to do with the so-called superiority of a certain race than basically lack of self-esteem of another. It's very difficult to make generalisations but I now know for sure that some people, probably those whose nations were once colonised, might think of Whites as of higher status, and I was shocked to see how these people look down at themselves and treat other perfectly normal people as Gods and Godesses. I certainley don't, In fact, I believe that as far as economey is concerned, where I come from is far superior and economey by far is a very significant factor contributing to this misunderstanding. I believe that around 50 thousands Brits and 150 thousand Yanks work in my country and, as far as I can tell, none from where I come from work in these countries, whose position is higher now?

Thanks for bringing this issue and hopefully my comments don't offend anyone!

Arsenal supporter (gooner)
The only English team with no English players at the start-up line!

"I believe that although this Asian American Speaker has been speaking in the class, her Asian heritage triggers a racialized response from the Speaker that renders her less visible"

In the article, the evidence for bold claims such as the above are weak to say the least. I am dubious of any research which begins by categorising its participants by the constructs it wishes to use before any observations have even been made. Of course one will find differences between Whites and Asians if one looks for them, much as one would find differences between any two randomly assigned groups if one wishes to.

However, much like Orpheus, I think that there is something worth investigating here, and I too have experienced (many) classes in which student participation is dominated by 'home' students, whose first language is the language of the classroom. However, in my experience, these students have been ethnically White, Black, Asian. As such, I do not believe that racial factors are at play (although it would be difficult to prove or disprove this belief).

It is also worth noting that one should not generalise from one classroom which a researcher has observed, or ever from one student's (mine) experiences over the last 2-3 years. However, my hunch is that it these issues of (non-) participation are more down to institutional or linguistic factors:

Institutional in that international students may not feel as much a part of the university environment as home students. Naturally, I do not feel that this is the case, but suspect that some students may see themselves as outsiders, merely observing UK university life, and not participating in it. Again, this would be difficult to prove one way or the other.

Linguistic in that, rightly or wrongly (actually, definitely wrongly) some international students may lack the confidence to use a language which is not their mother tongue to express what are often difficult thoughts and concepts in front of their peers. The researcher's suggestion that this should not be true because all international students have acheived a high IELTS score is just ridiculous. Passing a language test, and confidently using a language in the 'real world' are two totally different things, especially since one can become very accustomed with the former, without ever engaging in the latter.

I think that this kind of interaction needs some CA analysis, with a focus on the use of identity in UK HE classroom interactions. Benwell and Stokoe have written about identity in universities, although only with regards home students. That would be a starting point though. What do you think Orpheus? Fancy a little side project? Got hods of spare time to get a little paper written, haven't we?

gooner2, i suspect that I either misunderstand your comments, or you have misunderstood the paper. I do not think the research is hunting "for clues to support the claim that his race is far superior than others'". In fact, my impression is much the opposite - that the author is trying to call into question why White dominance in the classroom (in their view) exists, and to begin movements to change that.

Finally, while I respect your opinion, I do not believe that any ethnic, racial or national group is superior to any other, regardless of economic status, or which nation attracts the most overseas employees.

This has turned out longer than I'd expected Thanks if you've read this far

Does anybody else have any thoughts on classroom participation in university? Has anybody else experience 'White' dominance, or international student non-participation? If so, has anybody thought about why this might be?

Could be! nevertheless, making an issue of such a trivial thing is, by all means, a serious form of prejudice. Trying to find solutions for a problem that doesn't exist in the first place cannot be interpreted otherwise, or that at least what seemed to me.

Why international students don't participate in classroom? Because they are inferior to "Whites"? Sounds irreasonable enough to just think in this way and on the evidence I encountered throughout the article, all what I see directly or not supports my previous assumption.

I however agree with you that IELTS or TOEFL don't really tell if students can engage in a fruitful conversation in the classroom, my GF for example who's an international student can hardly say a sentence in any conversation in or outside the classroom and her score shows over 6.5 in speaking which I believe is good. This could be an interesting subject to investigate that's by far less racially tensioned than the one we have here.


irrelevant: Arsenal are still top of the league!