ON DEMAND: "Anti-racist pedagogy” in practice: Sifting through racist constructs of truth in course and assignment development

Abstract

“This Ain’t Another Statement! This is a DEMAND for Black Linguistic Justice!” (2020) was written in the context of the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests. These protests, in the name of George Floyd and several other African Americans murdered by police across the U.S. in recent years, have drawn further attention to systemic racism in the U.S., which the authors of “This Ain’t Another Statement” point out does not exist only outside the gates of the university or the doors of the classroom. Their demands, along with April-Baker Bell’s (2020) book on linguistic justice for speakers of Black English (BE) and Green and Condon’s (2020) epistolary book chapter subtitled “Anti-Racism and the Teaching of Writing”, demonstrate a new urgency among scholars and educators to promote anti-racist pedagogy, legitimize Englishes of all types, both inside and outside the classroom, and to advocate for multiply marginalized students across the board.
With this urgency as a backdrop, a small team of GMU Composition faculty and library scientists will share a video presentation on the anti-racist writing course they developed that centers the multiply-marginalized student and focuses on the promotion of linguistic justice and information literacy in a world of fake news and market-driven algorithms.

During the 15-minute video presentation, presenters will walk through the syllabus, focusing on the course’s rationale, pedagogical principles, and major assignments and units. Participants will walk away with one concrete example of what the oft-cited phrase “anti-racist pedagogy” looks like in practice.