Diversity Essay

Yifang Xu

Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania

EDUC 606: Literary Theory, Research, and Practice 

Alesha Gayle Mays

February 20th, 2022

 Diversity Essay

My inspiration for diversity in the literacy field came from The Declaration of

Independence. To be specific, even though people have different race, gender, ethnicity, and self-

defined identity, all human beings can have the equal access to acquire and learn literacy, thus

being well-educated. I strongly emphasize equal access because education is universally

acknowledged as the gateway to get out of poverty, in other words, to help a person live a better

life. However, from the start point, there are existing numerous inequalities in the pathway,

blocking people from getting equal access to learning, especially the pressures toward cultural

and linguistic assimilation (Nieto, 2010). In my conceptualization of promoting diversity in

literacy, I think taking culturally sustaining pedagogy (Paris & Alim, 2017) into consideration

and putting it into effect could help disrupt the White imperial concept in contemporary society.

Hispanic and Latino people consist of the American largest immigrant population (U.S.

Census Bureau). Among them, children under age 18 account for 26 percent of the total 72.8

million under age 18 population, also representing the largest group (National Kids count, 2020).

However, between 2019 and 2020, the poverty rate increased for Hispanics—a poverty rate of

17.0 percent (U.S. Census Bureau). Many scholars consider that socioeconomic disparities are a

primary cause of inequality because it drives and reinforces inequality in other domains (Carter

& Reardon, 2014; Huston & Bentley, 2010). The contexts of poverty are interwoven with

policies for border protection and immigration law (González et al., 2017), low level education

of parents (Blank et al., 2006), family structure (McLanahan & Percheski, 2008), and language

barriers (Huston & Bentley, 2010). Therefore, for those low-income Hispanics families who are

already in vulnerable status, there are other obstacles obstructing their children to obtain literacy.
   Before students go to school, based on different socioeconomic status, inequalities have

already set children off at different starting lines. Because of racial and socioeconomic

segregation, most black, Latino children grow up in low-income neighborhoods, and these racial

disparities are still persistent (Carter & Reardon, 2014). Therefore, the impoverished economic

situations have further negative influence on children’s health care, pre-kindergarten learning

opportunities, and physical activity resources. What’s worse, in Huston and Bentley’s (2010)

conclusion, early poverty seems to have a damaging effect on children's later achievement

trajectories and school careers.

Schools should shoulder the responsibility to help these under-resourced children, and

literacy is the tool that they can use to make their voices heard and identity to be recognized.

However, instead of learning and understanding immigrant students’ background, schools

usually make assumptions and blame students for their less intelligent gene, indifferent parents,

and deficit cultures (Nieto, 2010). And the example that discloses this absurd assumption is

literacy learning in immigrant children. For a long time, there has been a pervasive and

pernicious assumption that immigrant students whose mother language is not English have

language deficits, especially referring to those low-income family students (Flores et al., 1991).

In this view, the language deficiency makes immigrant students fail to deal with complex

educational contexts, and furthermore, to deny their cultural beliefs and identity values. The only

way for curing is to learn English and prohibit speaking mother languages. Gradually, immigrant

students choose to be silent in the class, in order to conform to these hegemonic rules.

Paris and Alim (2017) proposed culturally sustaining pedagogy to break up and disrupt

this White imperial concept and educational inequality. Immigrant students’ bilingual cultural

backgrounds should be admitted and recognized as cultural assets, rather than cultural deficits.
Equity and access could be achieved by immigrant students participating in educational

practices, learning not only languages but also literacies, cultures, and skills for their

achievement in future. Gutiérrez and Orellana (2006) came up with the idea to focus on what

constitutes the students’ literacy toolkit and repertoires. The repertoires for immigrant students

are their cultural and historical backgrounds. By valuing students’ diverse backgrounds as

heritages, students could use multimodal resources—verbal, gesture, and visual to have equal

access and be more engaged in the literacy learning process.

Regarding immigrant students’ diverse backgrounds as assets and repertoires, there are

lots of scholars putting forward specific programs to facilitate literacy diversity. Banks (2017)

suggested incorporating ethnic studies into school curriculum could help immigrant students

develop a sense of structural inclusion. Mangual Figueroa (2011) highlighted the important

function of negotiating after school homework with parents, because it can build a material and

emotional link between school and immigrant families.

All human beings’ cultures should be respected and valued. Literacy in culture could be

viewed as the daily oral communication, printed texts, visual crafts, and people’s gestures and

behaviors. Although literacy diversity has always been emphasized, I could tell the minority

groups’ literacy practices are often suppressed and even be rejected. For example, especially

after the breakout of pandemic Covid-19, I saw numerous cases reporting the discrimination

toward Asian people, such as beating and pushing Chinese students only because we have an

Asian face and speak Chinese. I think disrespecting a group of people’s identity is a form of

assault to literacy diversity.

In conclusion, by recognizing and valuing different group’s literacy as assets and

repertoires, we can promote the development of diversity. However, there are numerous
inequalities that thwart people to get equal access to literacy learning, and socioeconomic status

is a foundation that, to some extent, could decide a person’s ability to learn literacy.
References:

Banks, J. A. (2017). Failed citizenship and transformative civic education. Educational

Researcher, 46(7), 366-377.

Blank, R. M., Danziger, S., & Schoeni, R. (2006). Work and poverty during the past quarter

century. Working and poor: How economic and policy changes are affecting low-wage

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Bureau, U. S. C. (2020). Census.gov homepage. Census.gov. Retrieved February 19, 2022, from

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Carter, P. L., & Reardon, S. F. (2014). Inequality matters. New York, NY: William T. Grant

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Child population by Race: Kids Count Data Center. KIDS COUNT data center: A project of the

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