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Diversity Essay

Diversity can be represented by two types of struggles in literacy: a struggle of learning a

second language and another struggle created by how the society chooses to define the former

struggle. If an individual literacy process can be considered as a river, second language

learners’ will be the ones going further. They span areas that other tributaries traditionally

reach, in attempts to meet the ocean. This transcendence in itself takes efforts to overcome

more soil and its resistance. However, they also have to overcome another resistance, that is,

the ocean’s contempt for their humble origins. The ocean is composited of more diverse

ingredients than rivers and has been shaped to distinguish different rivers flowing into the

itself by hierarchy.

The courage of rivers: to overcome labels

In many cases, the courage of second language learners is not praised, but despised. They

are not confined to the inland of their mother tongue, where they can live comfortably, and

choose to make more efforts to run to the ocean of a second language, where they are placed

at the lower rank of “an intelligence hierarchy”. The hierarchy was intentionally associated

with skin color, and used to assert that lighter skin tone could be positively associated with

higher levels of intelligence, that is, white people are biologically predisposed to be highly

intelligent, while Mexican Americans are less so, and African Americans remain at the

bottom (Blanton, 2000; Delpit, 1993).

Hopewell and Escamilla’s study (2014) has problematized such a hierarchy with the

example of the Colorado Basic Literacy Act on categorization of third-grade biliterate

students by applying two competing ideologies (parallel monolingualism and holistic

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bilingualism) to interpret one set of data. They have found that “the same set of scores tells an

entirely different story depending on the frames of reference” (Hopewell, & Escamilla, 2014,

p. 68), that is, many biliterate children labeled as at risk of reading failure in fact are

proficient readers who are making satisfactory progress in the holistic bilingualism frame. “In

other words, it is highly probable that thousands of biliterate students, across the state of

Colorado, were labeled as ‘at risk’, and placed on ILPs (Individual Literacy Plan)

unnecessarily” (Hopewell, & Escamilla, 2014, p. 81). Another example is the “reading

disabled”label, when there seems to be a discrepancy between a child’s intelligence and her

or his reading level, but recently this discrepancy approach has been found to mix together

two very different groups of children: those who have an actual reading disability and those

who have been dubbed “garden variety” poor readers (Stanovich, 1988, as cited in Byrnes,

2007, p. 148). “Whereas the latter can be brought up to speed through a short period of

intense tutoring (e.g., six weeks), the former cannot” (Vellutino, Scanlon, Sipay, Small et al.,

1996, as cited in Byrnes, 2007, p. 148).

Students with normal intelligence being wrongly labeled not only are “relegated to

compensatory education that neither builds on what they know and can do nor allows

resources to be targeted to those truly in need” (Hopewell, & Escamilla, 2014, p. 81), but also

may achieve the self-fulfilling prophecy under the low expectations of their teachers resulted

from false labels. The self-fulfilling effect (Merton, 1957, as cited in Gadsden, & Davis, &

Artiles, 2009, p. 7), is “when a false definition of a situation evokes a new behavior that then

makes the original false conception come true” (Gadsden, Davis, & Artils, 2009, p. 7).

Rosenthal and Jacobson’ research (1968, as cited in Gadsden, & Davis, & Artiles, 2009, p. 7)
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also has shown that “students’ performance was in consistent with teachers’ expectations of

those who had been identified as high achievers, irrespective of their actual performance”

(Gadsden, Davis, & Artils, 2009, p. 7). In other words, labels are reinforcing the stereotypes

in the hierarchy in the form of the Matthew effect: second language learners who already

need extra efforts to learn a second language, still need to overcome the impacts of teachers’

low expectations. In return, the greater resistance to their success is in also reinforcing the

idea of hierarchy, which becomes a negative spiral that takes real courage to escape from.

Invisible hand behind the hierarchy: power

However, this demand for the extraordinary courage is unnecessary and inequitable to

these young rivers. Compared with their peers, the additional resistance they have faced, the

inequity, is determined by a significant factor in the United States — racism

(Ladson-Billings, & Tate, 1995, p. 48). The critical race theory reveals that “racism is not a

series of isolated acts, but is endemic in American life, deeply ingrained legally, culturally,

and even psychologically” (Ladson-Billings, & Tate, 1995, p. 52). Though the resistance of

the self-fulfilling prophecy effect arisen from labels might be considered one example of the

psychological aspect of this racism, racism based on law and power is a more subtle and

influential type of resistance.

Marable (1983) has indicated that “traditional civil rights approaches to solving

inequality have depended on the ‘rightness’ of democracy while ignoring the structural

inequality of capitalism” (Ladson-billings, & Tate, 1995, p. 52). Ironically, “democracy in the

U.S. context is built on capitalism (Ladson-billings, & Tate, 1995, p. 52). Laws in this context

historically tend to protect property rights rather than civil rights as they claimed to protect.
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When African-Americans were considered “property”, the vested interests of white people

were protected by the laws, and so far they are still substantially benefiting the white people.

The New Deal, for example, claimed that social security should be applied to all citizens

except farm workers, domestic workers and stay-at-home mothers, which directly excluded

the interests of a large number of black people. “Through its power of racial classification,

the state fundamentally shapes one’s social status, access to economic opportunities, political

rights, and indeed one’s identity itself” (Omi, & Winant, 1986, p. 121). In other words, social

hierarchy not only deepens racism, but power and laws continue to limit the social status of

blacks under the influence of racism, which becomes a second negative spiral facilitated by

laws and power, far beyond what the young rivers could overcome in their efforts.

Reflection: to overcome the resistance

Prior to flowing into the ocean of diversity, these two negative spirals constitute the main

resistances of the young rivers. With respect to education, the approaches to overcoming

them probably include the transformation from a deficit model towards an asset model (Rose,

2006), and the utility of counter stories (Vue, & Haslerig, & Allen, 2017). The pedagogy of

discomfort (Boler & Zembylas, 2003) briefly mentioned in the interdisciplinarity essay may

also create a healthier literacy environment to examine and challenge the false beliefs shaped

by power. However, for the whole society, the road to a truly inclusive ocean is full of

resistances, and it is still long.

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References

Blanton, C. K. (2000). “They cannot master abstractions, but they can often be made efficient

workers”: Race and class in the intelligence testing of Mexican Americans and

African Americans in Texas during the 1920s. Social Science Quarterly, 81,

1014-1026.

Byrnes, J. P. (2007). Beginning Reading. In Cognitive development and learning in

instructional contexts (pp. 121–158). Pearson.

Delpit, L. D. (1993). The silenced dialogue: Power and pedagogy in educating other people’s

children. In L. Weis & M. Fine (Eds.), Beyond silenced voices: Class, race, and

gender in United States schools (pp. 119-139). New York: State University of New

York Press.

Gadsden, V. L., Davis, J. E., & Artiles, A. J. (2009). Introduction: Risk, Equity, an Schooling:

Transforming the Discourse. Review of Research in Education, 33(1), vii–xi.

Hopewell, S., & Escamilla, K. (2014). Struggling Reader or Emerging Biliterate Student?

Reevaluating the Criteria for Labeling Emerging Bilingual Students as Low

Achieving. Journal of Literacy Research, 46(1), 68-89.

Ladson-Billings, G., & Tate, W. F., (1995). Towards a Critical Race Theory of Education.

Teachers College Record, 97(1), 47-68.

Marable, M. (1983). How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America. Boston: South End

Press.

Omi, M., & Winant, H. (1986). Racial Formation in the United States. Routledge.
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Rist, C. R. (1970). Student social class and teacher expectations: The self-fulfilling prophecy

in ghetto education. Harvard Educational Review,40, 411-451.

Rose, H. A. (2006). Asset-Based Development for Child and Youth Care. Reclaiming

Children and Youth, 14(4), 236–240.

Vue, R., Haslerig, S. J., & Allen, W. R. (2017). Affirming Race, Diversity, and Equity

Through Black and Latinx Students’ Lived Experiences. American Educational

Research Journal, 54(5), 868–903.