Nativity and Race as Social Constructs

Today’s brief discussions about the different ways Roadville and Trackton are presented in Ways With Words harks back (not that far back… just last week!) to our discussions on ways that cultural stereotypes in TESOL are sometimes so prevalent that they are also transparent. Several people today mentioned that they picked up on racial stereotypes in Heath’s book. Delineating differences based on race is in some ways similar to delineating differences based on “nativity” in English. Both race and nativity are social constructs, determined in large part by one’s visible/audible appearance and on some occasions by one’s birthplace. Imagine, though, someone expressing preferences for teachers/people/students/etc. based on race in the same way that some job advertisements, etc. express preferences for nativity.

Native-like English teacher sought. (perfectly acceptable according to some large institutions like TESOL)

White-like English teacher sought. This, of course, would not fly, and thank goodness for that!

Likewise, while racial identity is important to some who proclaim pride in their race (and perceived as oppressive to varying degrees - compare "Black Pride" to "White Pride", and we can start to see how colonialism plays in further to those interpretations), we saw from Matsuda’s short piece that nativity - or non-nativity - in English can also be a source of pride. So while many critical theorists (Samimy, Brutt-Griffler, Amin, to name a few) call for the dismantling of the NS/NNS dichotomy, it is also useful to look at the NS/NNS dichotomy as one that is not harmful in all contexts except when judgment is based solely on that criterion. (I don’t think I really believe that, but I can see how the dichotomy might be descriptive, if not always useful, so long as it doesn’t lead to judgments of value, worth, deficiency, or degrees of personhood).