Blogbook -- The Difficulty of Avoiding White Language Supremacy in Standards
Entry 38 If what I’m saying about learning outcomes and standards for language seem counterintuitive or wrong, it’s because the systems we live in are built on whiteness (see post 28 on HOWL ), and that whiteness is hard to recognize as politicized or positional (that is, biased). Whiteness is a deep part of the structures that make us as teachers, our languaging, the CCSS, and the OS. The CCSS validation committee (listed in Reaching Higher: The Common Core State Standards Validation Committee ), is a collection of national experts and teachers, and they illustrate the problem I’m speaking of. The problem of white language supremacy is in part embodied in the whiteness of the people who created and validated the CCSS. The CCSS validation committee “was charged with providing independent, expert validation of the process of identifying the Common Core State Standards as part of the CCSSI” ( note 256 ). This committee essentially checked the work of the numerous other working groups and...