Week 9, Post 3: The Breakdown

In your blog, first summarize each individual reading in a few bullet points:
What is the genre of the article: Is it a study? A theory piece? A pedagogy piece?  A historical piece?
Who’s the audience for the article?
What points is the author making?  What’s the authors purpose in making these points? 
How might you summarize the article in a few sentences?  
How does this article tie to articles in the previous round of presentations?

Gonsalvez
This is a study.

The audience is post secondary educators who deal with inter-racial faculty/student issues, specifically those with African-American males.

The author seems determined to help bridge the relationship gap between White comp teachers and African-American males, particularly.  The point is to avoid the potential pitfalls -- 1. failing to address writing problems early on, 2. the ensuing frustration, 3. assuming too much about the student -- and, to the importance of going beyond the usual teacher-student conference, to cultivate a real relationship with him.

Compared to the first group of articles on Students' Rights, this was extremely fair and balanced in its presentation, much more productive in its positive suggestions, and not the least focused on home dialect as the being the magic bullet.  Similar to the other papers, though, the Gonzalvez study highlights the sensitive issues race brings up for both teacher and student; like the other papers, the onus is on the White educator, not the student, to go above and beyond the norm to give Black males extra help.

Coker
This is a study.

The audience could be any college educators interested in insights into the psyches of Black women in college and their struggles to adapt.

The goal seems to help educators understand their Black female students.  The paper covers key reasons these women went on to university, the challenges they face and their means of coping.

Like the articles last week, the focus here is largely on Black perceptions and Black assumptions about prejudice.  Most of the findings focused on the assumptions these Womanist students made about being marginalized by White instructors, though they never spoke to the teachers to ascertain any information; assumptions were made and inferences followed.  For example, if a student felt her opinion in class discussion wasn't given adequate credence, her conclusion was that this was because the teacher was a racist or because he lacked the compassion to give her special attention, since she was an older, re-entry student.  Unlike the article above, or those last week, Coker's attention is on the Black females' on-campus survival skills, rather than placing the responsibility on White educators.

Wallace/Bell
This is a study.

The audience would appear to be post secondary educators who are open to affecting change on behalf of Black students.

The article draws attention to the peculiar issues faced by Black students at a predominantly White college campus.  Specifically, the article underscores problems of (unintentional) racism encountered by Black students, their coping mechanisms, and what faculty can do to assist these students.

Like last weeks' papers, this one addresses challenges in dealing with home dialect and the dubious goal of teaching SE to the unwilling.  Unlike those papers, the Wallace/Bell article takes neither side: "..simply respecting students' home cultures and requiring them to learn new discourse practices is...not a sufficient answer" (323).  The authors maintain that teachers need to be as interested in community literary practices as we expect our students to be about acquiring SE (while some ethnographer/linguists tout this technique for promoting "co-researching," Wallace & Bell fail to mention this, and argue for it merely for its fairness).

Ultimately, English faculty prodded to become "advocates for educational equity in higher education."

Fordham
This is a historical piece (?).

The audience is anyone interested in Fordham's earlier piece on Capital High students.  Her thrust seems more sociological/anthropological than the previous article, which centered on classroom language, home dialect and Ebonics.

Chiefly, Fordham defends her previous paper, laments it's misappropriation and explores related interpretations of the term "acting White."

Essentially, Fordham seems to set herself up as a one-woman army fending off affluent Blacks, well-meaning Black students in her college class, powerful figures in the Black community (Bill Cosby), as well as myriad misunderstanding and opposing researchers and journalists (Time, NY Times, etc).  Ultimately, in her pursuit of "the elimination of the Black-White achievement gap" (235), she echoes her earlier article: "one major reason black students do poorly in school...(is their) inordinate ambivalence and affective dissonance in regard to academic effort and success" (236).

Like her earlier article on Capital High, the gist of this article is, despite an avalanche of opinion within and without the Black community (and logic?), the great obstacle to Black advancement is the White machinery that keeps all Blacks enslaved.

My issue with Fordham's logic is this: She attacks the White machinery that prevent Blacks from success; she attacks the Black machinery that judges other Blacks if they (try to) succeed; yet, she also denies that, as Bill Cosby says, the problem in the Black community is within, not without.  How can this be?  At the very least, by her own admission (above), "ambivalence" about success is at the core of the problem, both on a cultural and individual level.  Once this attitude is clarified, most of your obstacles will have been eliminated.