Asao B. Inoue's Infrequent Words

Entry 7  (part 1 of 2) In the next few sections (and blog posts), I will discuss racism as a discourse in order to end on a heuristic of sorts for literacy and language teachers. That’s my goal of this chapter, to get to that heuristic. That is, I’ll end chapter 1 with a way to understand antiracism as an orientation to the world and our classrooms. We’re about half way there! But let me offer a taste of where we will end up. Antiracist orientations address racist discourse in the literacy and language classroom, whether that is high school English classrooms or college writing courses.  To help with where we’ll go and why, let’s consider an extended metaphor. I think it will suggest ways to use the ideas and history I’m offering in this blogbook in your classroom -- that is, these ideas should help build your own antiracist orientations. Racism isn’t simply people treating others badly, or some kind of evil intention within us. It ain’t about nefarious and prejudiced purposes...

Entry 6 Okay, so race is an evolving concept over time in different places on the Earth. It has, and still does, tacitly organize much of our world and understandings of our world and ourselves. This happened because of conditions in Europe that coincided with colonizing efforts, empire-building, exploration, missionary work, and of course, the intellectual currents that gained currency in Europe. But what exactly were the systems of race that birthed the concept we have today?    The first racial classification systems were published by Francois Bernier (1625-1688), Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778), Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707-1788), and Johann Friederich Blumenbach (1752-1840). Blumenbach’s would be the one that sticks, but he’s at the end of a line of early racial pseudo-scientists. The earliest system, Bernier’s system, was based on geography, complexion, and physical traits. Published anonymously in the Journal des Sçavans (1684), Bernier had four divisions ...

Entry 5 (Wed, 03 Mar 2021) Since I’m discussing ELA and college writing or language classrooms, and race is in large part constructed by language or words, then we should be specific about the history and etymology of the word “race.” In fact, knowing about the history and development of the word “race” can provide insight into why it has the associations and power it does today.  Western traditions have not always had the term “race” in their lexicon. In fact, the word wasn’t used in the way we use it today until around the later part of the seventeenth century CE.  Furthermore, “race” appears to have entered Western European languages, such as Spanish, Italian, French, English, and Goidelic (or Gaelic) languages between about 1200 to 1500 CE.  Statue of William Dunbar In his extensive study of the concept of race in Western history, Ivan Hannaford explains: “In most Western languages its [race’s] earliest meanings related to the swift course or current of a river or a t...

Entry 4 (Mon, 01 Mar 2021) Race organizes how we understand people, their languaging, and our histories. Take for instance any travel book or travel show, which if done right should arguably be what we might call “multicultural,” a show that values a multitude of cultures, places, people, and languages. That is, traveling around the world to learn about different people, places, cultures, and foods seems like a project that values and respects a wide array of people and places.  But how is such traveling, places, people, and languages organized for consumption by a viewing audience? And I use that term, “consumption,” consciously since our society mostly produces things for consumption only, even education. Who is that audience imagined to be? What are their dispositions toward things? How might such a show or book be a racial project, one that does race making, or even produces racist outcomes?  At its face, a show like the late Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown would not be ...