Asao B. Inoue's Infrequent Words

On April 18, 2021, I posted on this blog about why I was leaving and the CWPA and asked for a loving and compassionate boycott of the CWPA until it could demonstrate structural changes that addressed its racism and White supremacy culture. As of today, that post has been accessed 11,850 times (less than a week). Three days later, the WPA Journal and its publisher, David Blakesley, both offered a statement and letter of support of the boycott and the demand for the CWPA to make antiracist changes. Patti Poblete, one of the CWPA EC members at the meeting, offered her own rendering of and thinking about the meeting on her blog (4/21/2021). Six days after I posted, the CWPA's  Executive Board released a formal statement  (dated 4/23/2021). On May 10, 2021, the CWPA-GO officially separated from CWPA and issued this statement with demands .  As of this writing (revised on 09 Sep 2021), the petition for boycotting the CWPA has 778 signatories on it. That is over double the t...

Entry 15 Now, I’ve mentioned a few times that racist discourse is a dialectic that is mutually reinforcing. What I mean is that racist language justifies and explains a racist world of racist judgements, actions, practices, and outcomes. At the same time, racist judgements, actions, practices, and outcomes justify the racist language. All the while, most of these judgements, actions, practices, and outcomes are not labeled as racist. This dialectic generates power. Think of it like a mobius strip, or a tacit racist tautology that ultimately produces racialized flows of power in particular directions, mostly toward middle and upper-middle class White people in Europe and America. Even the founders of the U.S. as a nation understood how power is produced through such categorizing of race. In describing Jefferson’s drafting of the Declaration of Independence, and the debate around it in the Continental Congress, Ibram X. Kendi explains:  For these rich men, freedom was not the power t...

The full title of this post could be: "Why I Left The CWPA And What Others Might Learn From It." Know that, and know there's antiracist lessons for everyone in this post.  Recently, I severed all my ties and professional associations with the Council of Writing Program Administrators (CWPA). I had to. It was the only thing I could do, and I want to tell you about it.  I've been an active member of the CWPA for about 15 years. I haven't always been able to attend their summer conference, but I have kept up with its journal ( WPA: Writing Program Administration ), the people in organization, the statements and other work of the organization, and the good work its members have done over the years. Also I was until recently a member of its celebrated Consultant Evaluator Service, which offers a valuable service to the discipline and institutions by reviewing and offering recommendations to colleges and universities concerning their writing programs.  Up until recentl...