Excuse Me, Are You the Teacher?: the Experiences of Racialized Esol Teachers in Private-Language Schools in Toronto

EXCUSE ME, ARE YOU THE TEACHER?: THE EXPERIENCES OF RACIALIZED ESOL TEACHERS IN PRIVATE-LANGUAGE SCHOOLS IN TORONTO

Vijay Anil Ramjattan

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Graduate Department of Leadership, Higher and Adult Education Ontario Institute for Studies in Education University of Toronto

EXCUSE ME, ARE YOU THE TEACHER?: THE EXPERIENCES OF RACIALIZED ESOL TEACHERS IN PRIVATE-LANGUAGE SCHOOLS IN TORONTO

Master of Arts 2014

Vijay Anil Ramjattan

Department of Leadership, Higher and Adult Education University of Toronto

Abstract

Like other service workers, racialized English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) teachers in private- language schools are judged on their embodied traits, which are their (perceived) language proficiency and race, sometimes along with other social markers. Research has suggested that because they are not the ideal White, native-English-speaking instructor, racialized teachers usually experience awkward, confusing, and discriminatory encounters in their workplaces. These interactions are racial microaggressions because they send insulting messages to these teachers. Employing a critical race methodology, this study examines the microaggressions that 10 racialized teachers experience in various private ESOL schools in Toronto.

Moreover, it looks at how these microaggressions impact the teachers’ professional identities. The findings highlight how the teachers experience a range of microaggressions that occasionally go beyond issues of language and race, all of which promote internal and external identity work. Furthermore, these findings provide the impetus to prevent microaggressions in the ESOL context.

Acknowledgements

No one can accomplish everything alone, and this thesis is certainly no exception. Indeed, even though my name appears as the sole author of this work, I am indebted to a wide array of individuals who have helped me in my thesis journey and must be properly acknowledged.

First, I sincerely thank all 10 participants of this study, whose stories were the ultimate resource in answering my research questions. Each of you is like a piece of buried treasure: difficult to find, but greatly cherished when found. In fact, I came to admire all of you as individuals as you shared various aspects of your personal and professional lives with me. I wish you all the best in your future endeavours!

In addition to the participants, I am grateful for the expert guidance provided by my thesis committee. To Dr. Kiran Mirchandani, my thesis supervisor, thank you very much for your sage advice and positive support all throughout this thesis journey. From suggesting theories and readings to informing me about various scholars and courses, you always seemed to be many steps of ahead of me in thinking what this thesis can accomplish. And for that, I am forever thankful. Along with Dr. Mirchandani, I wish to thank my second reader and one of my biggest supporters, Dr. Christine Connelly. Equally as grand as your intellect and overall knowledge base is your compassion and optimism. These qualities were certainly evident in your comments and suggestions in all stages of my thesis writing. I am forever thankful to you as well.

Aside from my committee members, I also wish to thank the late Dr. Roxana Ng, Angela, Cathy, Loren, Stephanie, Rob, and Dr. Jamie Magnusson from the course entitled, “Decolonization and Transformative Education.” How fortunate I am to have met people like you who taught me how to begin to decolonize (in all senses of the word) in the academic realm and beyond. This thesis is inspired by your many insights, etc., and is hopefully just the beginning of my own decolonizing project.

Another set of individuals who has inspired me is my VAC study group. To Alison (A) and Cristina (C), thank you very much for your genuine interest in my research, expert knowledge, and kindness. Amidst our ‘friendly conflicts’ over who was going to pay for coffee, I have come to greatly admire both you as not only amazing graduate students, but also, amazing individuals.

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For the numerous professors and peers that I have met at OISE and the rest of the University of Toronto, please note that I greatly appreciate all of your individual feedback, thoughts, etc., on my research.

Furthermore, thank you very much to all of my family, friends, colleagues, and acquaintances who have helped me in various ways such as forwarding recruitment flyers on my behalf and simply being supportive of my research.

In particular, I wish to thank my parents, Vishnu and Geeta as well as my sister, Venita for their love and various kinds of support throughout all stages of my research. Thank you very much for allowing me to pursue something in which I find great joy in doing.

Even though I have spent the last two years living like a hermit in order to get this thesis done, the above acknowledgements showcase how the following study is truly a group effort.

Table of Contents

Abstract ...... ii

Acknowledgements ...... iii

List of Tables and Appendices ...... vii

Chapter One: My Narrative as an Introduction to the Study ...... 1 Background: English, Late Capitalism, & Canadian Private-Language Schools ...... 3 Purpose of the Study & Research Questions ...... 10 Significance of the Study ...... 11 Organization of the Remainder of the Thesis ...... 12

Chapter Two: The Driving Forces Behind Racial Microaggressions in ESOL ...... 13 Critical Race Theory and The Three Rs: Race, Racialization, and Racism ...... 13 The Three Rs and Native and ‘Nonnative’ Speakers of English ...... 30 Embodiment in Service Work and the ESOL Industry ...... 57 Concluding Remarks ...... 68

Chapter Three: Understanding Racial Microaggressions and Their Impact on Teacher Identities ...... 69 What Exactly are Racial Microaggressions? ...... 69 Exploring Microaggressive Themes in the ESOL Literature ...... 80 Institutional Racism against Racialized Teachers ...... 80 Complaints and Struggles with Racialized Accents ...... 83 Student Disappointment with Racialized Teachers ...... 85 Open Challenges to Teachers’ Authority ...... 86 Student Avoidance ...... 87 Cases of Mistaken Identity and Questioning Teachers’ Backgrounds ...... 88 Backhanded Compliments ...... 90 (Teachers’ Professional) Identities, Interpellation, and Identity Work ...... 91 The Effects of Racial Microaggressions on the Professional Identities of Racialized Teachers ...... 101 Racialized Teachers’ Professional Responses to Racial Microaggressions ...... 103 Contributions of the Current Study to the Existing Literature ...... 105

Chapter Four: Methodology ...... 107 What is a Critical Race Methodology & Why is it Useful? ...... 107 Setting, Recruitment, and Participants ...... 113 Angelina ...... 116 Chao ...... 116 Chiyo ...... 117 Josh ...... 117

Maria ...... 118 Meezy ...... 118 Q ...... 119 Sharon ...... 119 Yun ...... 120 Zoe ...... 120 Data Collection ...... 121 Narrative Interviews ...... 121 Researcher’s Diary ...... 123 Data Analysis ...... 123 Concluding Thoughts about Ethical Issues and My Role as a Researcher ...... 126

Chapter Five: The Teachers’ Stories of Racial Microaggressions ...... 129 Not Having the Right/White Qualifications for the Job ...... 129 Student Disappointment with Having a Nonwhite Teacher ...... 134 Questions Concerning Teachers’ Backgrounds ...... 137 Doubts about Teachers’ Abilities and Knowledge ...... 140 Cases of Mistaken Identity ...... 145 Stereotyping and Lack of Cultural Understanding ...... 149 Backhanded Compliments ...... 152 Environmental Microaggressions ...... 156 Discussion and Concluding Remarks ...... 158

Chapter Six: Linking Racial Microaggressions to Professional Identities ...... 165 The Effects of Racial Microaggressions on the Teachers’ Professional Identities ...... 165 Experiencing Doubt and Pain from Interpellation ...... 165 Dual Reasoning ...... 169 Detaching the Personal from the Professional ...... 172 The Professional Responses to Racial Microaggressions ...... 174 Changing Students’ Perceptions ...... 175 Performing Ethnic Identification ...... 177 Enacting Preventive Measures ...... 179 Becoming Anti-Racist Educators ...... 183 Discussion and Concluding Remarks ...... 186

Chapter Seven: Concluding Thoughts About the Study ...... 193 Limitations of the Study and Suggestions for Future Research ...... 195 Ways to Combat Racial Microaggressions in the ESOL Context ...... 197 Final Remarks ...... 201

References ...... 202

List of Tables and Appendices

Table 1—Demographic Information of the Participants ...... 115

Appendix A: Recruitment Flyer ...... 224

Appendix B: Informed Consent Letter ...... 225

Appendix C: Interview Questions ...... 227

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Chapter One: My Narrative as an Introduction to the Study

Ever since I started working in a private-language school as an English for Speakers of Other

Languages (ESOL) teacher, a typical first day of class would consist of the following events. First of all, as new students, who come from such countries as South Korea and Brazil, entered the class, they would look at me, politely smile, and sit down at one of the tables. When I would ask for their schedules to make sure that they were in the right class, some of them would ask in a somewhat surprised voice, “Are you the teacher?” I would politely respond in the affirmative and carry on with whatever task that I was doing at the moment. Once all of the students arrived and class officially started, I would give a brief monologue about myself including the fact that I was born and raised in Canada by Indo-Trinidadian parents.

After this mini-presentation, some students would ask, “So, where did you learn English?” I would be somewhat surprised by this type of question as I would usually say in my monologue that English is my first language and the one in which I have the most proficiency. Despite this surprise, I thought that the question was a result of some sort of lack of listening comprehension, etc.

Once past the first day of class, I felt that my language ability was still under the scrutiny of students as I would continue receiving questions about my nationality and competence in the English language. Moreover, I began to think that students held some negative feelings toward me. For instance, when teaching a particularly difficult grammar point one day that frustrated the class, I overheard one student say to another that the reason that they did not understand was because I knew bad English.

These comments made me doubt myself as a teacher since it seemed that I was not living up to my students’ expectations. Furthermore, as these learners were customers of the school, I felt that I was not giving them quality service. But why would students be dissatisfied with my service?

After much contemplation throughout the years, I came to the conclusion that I did not have the embodied characteristics of a desired ESOL service provider. In fact, my race seemed to undermine both

1 2 my language and teaching abilities. Research has suggested that the ideal ESOL teacher for students around the world is White because of the belief that White native speakers of English possess the innate expertise to teach the language (e.g., Amin, 1997, 1999, 2000, 2004, 2005, 2006; Braine, 2010;

Breckenridge & Erling, 2011; Curtis & Romney, 2006; Faez, 2012; Hansen, 2004; Javier, 2010; Kubota,

2002; Kubota & Lin, 2006; Liu, 1999; Mahboob, 2011; McFarland, 2005; Motha, 2006; Romney, 2010;

Ruecker, 2011; Shin & Kubota, 2008; Sung, 2011). Thus, my nonwhite skin signalled overall deficiency in the eyes of my students.

I believe that the above misconception came to life through the small interactions that I have had with not only students, but also employers/colleagues, who often mistook me for an ESOL learner if they did not personally know me. The literature has referred to these interactions as racial microaggressions, which can be described as “brief, everyday exchanges that send denigrating messages to people of color because they belong to a racial minority group” (Sue et al., 2007, p. 273). By asking when I had learned

English and where I was born, students were sending me the message that a person of colour could not be

Canadian or a native speaker of English (Amin, 1997). Moreover, by claiming that I knew ‘bad English,’ these learners were implying that all racialized speakers of English are deficient users of the language.

Finally, by mistaking me for an ESOL student, perhaps my employers and colleagues were suggesting that racialized individuals are perpetual learners of English.

These microaggressions certainly had an impact on my professional identity as briefly mentioned above. In fact, even though I had superior ESOL teacher training, I began to feel insecure as a teacher. If students believed me to be a deficient instructor, I felt that I was not doing enough to prove them wrong.

My race did not allow me to be an average teacher. I needed to go the extra mile by developing more creative lesson plans, being extremely kind to students, etc., in order to compensate for my nonwhite skin.

In other words, I felt the need to become an ideal service provider of English. Providing ideal service was important for me because I considered my Toronto private-language school to be a business.

My experiences as a racialized ESOL teacher in a private-language school in Toronto are the driving force behind this study. Indeed, I explore the microaggressions that other racialized teachers in the same school and geographical context (have) experience(d) and the influence of these microaggressions on their professional identities. Before delving into the specific details of my study, it is necessary to provide background information on private-language schools in Canada as they transform ESOL teaching into service work and teachers into embodied workers.

Background: English, Late Capitalism, & Canadian Private-Language Schools

Reynolds (1996) states, “We [do not] often hear teachers referred to as workers nor are we inclined to describe their classrooms and schools as workplaces” (p. 74). When we examine private-language schools (in Canada), we must adopt this rare point of view because such schools are considered businesses that transform ESOL teaching into a commercial activity (Walker, 2013). Indeed, Hodge (2005) mentions how private ESOL schools, in the Canadian context at least, have a dual nature: they are an institution of education and an institution of business. Let us first look at the educational aspect in order to glean more insights into these schools.

Examining the realm of education is a bit difficult as such schools are privately-owned, not subject to extensive labour and educational legislation, and are rarely the subject of research (Breshears, 2008).

Referring to the Canadian context in particular, Hodge (2005) provides some concrete details. First of all, the goal of private-language schools is to provide language training for international students. Furthermore,

“these schools operate on the assumption that, after a brief stay in Canada—anywhere from one week up to one year—the learners will then return to their home countries with improved communication skills and increased fluency” (Hodge, 2005, p. 1). As a way to facilitate these goals, Hodge (2005) explains that many ESOL schools adopt a teaching methodology that stresses authentic, fluent communication not only among learners, but also between learners and their teachers. Of course, the reason why private-language

4 schools emphasize communication skills is because international students see these skills as valuable commodities in the current age of globalization (Block & Cameron, 2002).

Indeed, this commodification of English/communication skills is indicative of the changes in today’s globalized economy where language is increasingly viewed less as a symbol of a particular nation or ethnicity, and more as a product with economic value (Block & Cameron, 2002; Heller, 2010, 2011; Heller &

Duchêne, 2012). The context of Japan provides a good example of this point. In fact, Kubota (2002) explains how English plays a vital role in the discourse of kokusaika (translated to internationalization or international understanding) in which the language is a means for Japan to understand other countries and more importantly, for other countries to understand Japanese people and culture. English also becomes a valued asset for Japan because it fosters communication with those in the West with political and economic power, most notably individuals from the United States.1

The Japanese context exemplifies how more and more people around the world see English as a source for their own social and economic advancement.2 This desire to learn the language is no surprise since it is associated with such attractive things as modernization, development, science, technology, and business (e.g., Mahboob, 2011; Pegrum, 2004; Phillipson, 1992). The attractiveness of English is not one- sided. That is, Pegrum (2004) rightly notes that while English “brings advantages to many of those who learn it,…[it also presents benefits] to those who sell it” (p. 3). This point is salient when one looks at private-language schools all over the world.

In the Canadian context, the increased number of international students coming to these schools has led to increased economic benefits for both these institutions and the country. For instance,

Languages Canada (2013), a national organization representing the language-training sector of the

1See Grant and Lee (2009) and Shin (2006) for similar discourses in the context of South Korea. 2Although I do not dispute that the global spread of English has marginalized other languages (e.g., Phillipson, 1992), I am more interested in “why people choose to use English” (Pennycook, 2001, p. 62). Thus, I do not see English-language learners as entirely passive subjects who are forced to learn the language.

Canadian economy, reported that in 2012, its 191 member programs (which included 155 private schools) generated an estimated $535,600,000 in tuition revenue and $1,443,000,000 in revenue for the entire country. Although some of these programs offer French or are public programs, it is evident that the private

English-language industry makes a significant contribution to this prosperity. In order to reap these economic rewards, Canadian ESOL schools also function as businesses, which is the other aspect of these institutions that I will further explore below.

These schools market English as a good that can be bought by international learners in the form of

English-language classes (Abrile, 2006; Hodge, 2005). Canadian private-language schools further transform English into a product by accentuating its unique Canadian features. For instance, Hodge (2005) comments on how the promotional materials of some schools highlight that students can learn Canadian

English, which is marketed as more ‘neutral’ than British or American varieties. Here, speaking ‘neutral

English’ is deemed beneficial because of the belief that one can become understandable for other speakers of English (e.g., Cowie, 2007; Mirchandani, 2004). Thus, the perceived neutrality of Canadian English gives this product added value (Heller, 2010, 2011; Heller & Duchêne, 2012).

This added value of Canadian English speaks to the fact that while language may be less likely viewed as symbol of a nation, the nation may nevertheless aid in the increased worth of the language by making it authentic, one-of-a-kind (Heller & Duchêne, 2012). The only way that students can learn authentic, neutral Canadian English is by studying in Canada, not in any other country. Therefore, in order to learn the authentic language, an ESOL learner must pay tuition to a Canadian school. This point can be expanded beyond Canada as Pegrum (2004) mentions how various schools market the idea that one can learn English much more quickly by studying in English-speaking nations such as England (since one can use the language both inside and outside of the classroom).

As seen above then, Canadian private-language schools act like businesses because they offer

English as a unique product that can be bought by international students. Thus, these schools are

6 representative of the commodification of language brought on by globalization (Block & Cameron, 2002).

Aside from this trend, Canadian ESOL schools also symbolize another aspect of the changing globalized economy: the increasing prominence of the tertiary sector (Heller, 2010; Heller & Duchêne, 2012). In fact, when students ‘buy’ English from these schools, they are truly buying a service, which consists of the teaching of the language by a professionally-trained ESOL instructor.

However, ESOL teaching, no matter the context, has been perceived as a service. As Walker

(2013) notes, like “other services, [ESOL] is characterized to some extent by intangibility, inseparability (the service is produced and consumed simultaneously), and heterogeneity (the nature of each customer- provider interaction is discrete because of variation in actors, context, and content)” (p. 73). Moreover, like other types of service work, ESOL teaching requires a balance of hard and soft skills. Indeed, Walker further explains that in addition to having the right teaching qualifications, an instructor needs to be

“service-oriented (i.e., is friendly, supportive, responsive, and demonstrates empathy with students)” (p.

74). While the service aspect of ESOL teaching may be important for student success, it may become exacerbated in the context of the private-language school as teachers are positioned as service providers who must cater to the needs of their student-customers (Breshears, 2008).

Indeed, success in teaching is often determined by student opinion in this school context. For instance, Breshears’ (2008) study of four teachers in two Canadian private schools suggests that teachers are pressured to perform in certain ways based on “client comment cards, student feedback surveys, [and] student…complaints to administrators” (p. 127). Furthermore, this feedback may not be constructive as it is concerned with the teacher as an individual. Hodge’s (2005) study of another private ESOL school in

Vancouver exemplifies this point. In fact, one of her teacher-participants noted how student evaluations can often criticize teachers’ personalities (such as being boring, etc.) rather than offer constructive criticism on their actual pedagogy. Just like other customers, ESOL learners may judge their service providers based on what they think about the latter (McDowell, 2009).

Even though this type of feedback is far from helpful, private-language schools must take it into consideration. If students are dissatisfied with the service that they receive for any reason, they can readily take their business elsewhere to other private-school competitors (Hodge, 2005). Therefore, private ESOL schools need to ensure that their service providers are pleasing to student-customers. Because ESOL teachers are essential in maintaining customer satisfaction, sometimes, like other service workers in late capitalism, their personal qualities become commodifiable to please the customer (Urciuoli, 2008). These personal qualities often come in the form of race and language ability.

As mentioned above, international students desire White native speakers of English because of the belief that they have the innate knowledge to teach the language (e.g., Amin, 1997, 1999, 2000, 2004,

2005, 2006; Braine, 2010; Breckenridge & Erling, 2011; Curtis & Romney, 2006; Faez, 2012; Hansen,

2004; Javier, 2010; Kubota, 2002; Kubota & Lin, 2006; Liu, 1999; Mahboob, 2011; McFarland, 2005;

Motha, 2006; Romney, 2010; Ruecker, 2011; Shin & Kubota, 2008; Sung, 2011). Because of this desire, employers of international private schools seek White native-English speakers to teach their programs, who consequently increase both the prestige and profit of these institutions (e.g., Braine, 2010; Heron, 2006;

Hsu, 2005; Kubota, 2002; Kubota & Fujimoto, 2013; Mahboob, 2011; McFarland, 2005; Romney, 2010;

Ruecker, 2011; Sung, 2011). Before returning to the Canadian context, it is important to clarify the reasons why students may want to have this particular kind of ESOL teacher in the classroom.3

The first reason concerns the new globalized economy, which has been a major topic of discussion in this section. That is, because the ideal English is believed to be spoken by White, middle-class, increasingly North American speakers, international learners must learn this type of English in order to acquire the same economic and social power in the global arena (Grant & Lee, 2009; Kubota, 2002). Thus, students need teachers with the above racial/linguistic background to achieve this high status.

3I will also delve deeper into this point in Chapter Two where I discuss the connection between language and race.

Contributing to this idea of the high socioeconomic status of White, middle-class English is the wide array of print materials used by ESOL learners. For instance, in her study of how the images of

English-speaking cultures in ESOL textbooks were perceived by Brazilian students and teachers, Taylor-

Mendes (2009) found that these images promoted the idea that (American) English speakers are “White, wealthy, powerful, isolated with members of their own race, and free of problems” (p. 76). Thus, these images suggest that speaking the English of these individuals will lead to the same kind of success.

Indeed, ESOL materials have been noted to be modelled on the speech of native speakers from such countries as England and the United States (e.g., Clark & Paran, 2007; Cook, 1999; Mahboob, 2011;

Phillipson, 1992; Thornbury, 2006; Widdowson, 1994).

One finding from Taylor-Mendes (2009) was the belief that races were divided geographically:

“Whites live in North America, while Asians live in Asia, Arabs live in the Middle East, and Blacks live in

Africa” (p. 75). This finding reflects the larger belief of students that only White people come from English- speaking countries. For example, Curtis (2006) suggests that the long British presence in Hong Kong has made English-language learners automatically assume that their teachers will be White and British.

Moreover, Javier (2010), a Filipino-Canadian teacher, narrated how one of her Chinese students thought that she could not have been Canadian because only White people live in that country.

These stereotypical views may originate from the media, which is the final reason why students may want White native speakers of English. In fact, American popular culture in particular has consistently portrayed White native speakers of English in a positive light, while denigrating both racial and linguistic

Others (e.g., Chamberlin-Quinlisk, 2012; Romney, 2006; Stephan, 2006). Therefore, ESOL learners who have been exposed to such movies or television shows may come to believe these representations.

Since international students may want White native speakers as teachers for the above reasons, the service logic of various private schools (Walker, 2013) dictates that they should provide this kind of service provider to their customers. Even though there is no explicit evidence that Canadian private-

9 language schools actively seek out White native-English speakers like other international schools, they seem to use Whiteness to promote their respective institutions. For example, Hodge (2005) mentions how some of the ESOL and marketing materials of some schools depict Canadian-English users as “the native white Anglo-Canadian speaker” (p. 39). Furthermore, in the particular school context that she investigated,

Hodge noted that some teachers felt that White teachers were the most visible types of instructors in promotional materials and marketing trips. Another way that Whiteness is emphasized is seen in Abrile’s

(2006) critical discourse analysis of the websites of two private-language schools in Montréal. In fact,

Abrile states how these websites promote the idea that learners can live with authentic Canadian families who are implied to be White and native speakers of Canadian English.

As suggested above then, Canadian private-language schools “[attempt] to control what counts as legitimate language and who count as legitimate speakers” (Heller, 2010, p. 108). That is, they promote neutral Canadian English spoken by White Canadians. However, what happens when the teachers of these schools are not ‘legitimate’ speakers because they are nonwhite or are nonwhite and ‘nonnative’ speakers of English?4 In other words, what happens when teachers do not embody the ‘Canadian’ product? This question is significant as service workers, such as ESOL teachers, are judged on their embodied qualities (McDowell, 2009). For instance, for sick patients in a hospital, they may negatively judge a male nurse because they assume that women are “well practiced in the skills necessary to perform work requiring care and warmth [such as nursing]” (Mirchandani, 2012, p. 17). For diners at a Japanese restaurant, they may be upset to have a White American sushi chef because of the belief that people of

Japanese heritage can make truly authentic sushi. Thus, the evaluation of services often entails ‘marking bodies’ (Connelly, 2008) as (un)suitable for various types of work.

4I problematize the ‘nonnative’ speaker of English in Chapter Two. For now, I use this term to refer to those who consciously learned the language outside of the home, and are perceived as not mastering the language (e.g., Cook, 1999; Thornbury, 2006). Therefore, a native speaker of English is one who has mastered English as a first language at home.

McFarland (2005) finds this stereotyping in service work ludicrous, but laments the fact that it still exists in the devaluing of nonwhite ESOL teachers. Such devaluing may happen because students often evaluate their teachers as “a result of assumptions and stereotypes based on such things as a teacher’s dress, sex, accent, voice, social class, and race” (James, 2001, p. 151). Given the preference for White teachers as described above, ESOL learners may negatively evaluate their nonwhite teachers for not being what they had paid for. This negative evaluation may take the form of racial microaggressions coming from not only students, but also from co-workers and employers. These microaggressions may impact the professional identities of racialized teachers of all linguistic backgrounds.

Purpose of the Study & Research Questions

In the current study, I address the above issues through an examination of the experiences of racialized ESOL teachers working in private-language schools. More specifically, I sought out 10 racialized teachers who (used to) work in various schools in Toronto, and documented their narratives about their daily interactions with students, employers, and/or colleagues. The narratives specifically pertain to racial microaggressions that these instructors have experienced from the above-mentioned individuals. In addition to narrating racial microaggressions, I also attempt to capture the influence of these events on the professional identity formation of the 10 teachers.

The purpose of this study appears in the form of the following questions, which will both be answered in their respective chapters:

1. What kinds of racial microaggressions do racialized ESOL teachers experience in the context of

private-language schools in Toronto?

2. Moreover, how do these microaggressions influence how the above-mentioned teachers construct

their professional identities?

Significance of the Study

With the possible exception of Hodge (2005), there is little literature that examines the experiences of racialized ESOL teachers in private-language schools in Canada. While Hodge and others (e.g., Amin,

1997, 1999, 2000, 2004, 2005, 2006) address how the prevailing ideology of White native-English speakers being the best ESOL teachers affect racialized instructors in the Canadian context, they do not satisfactorily address how this ideology is manifested in the daily interactions between these teachers and their students, employers, and/or colleagues. Thus, this study is significant in that I attempt to record these very interactions (i.e., racial microaggressions) within private-language schools.

Aside from the explicit discussion of racial microaggressions, the study is also important as I present ESOL teaching as service work. When thinking of such work, most of us imagine such areas as retail work and the hospitality industry. However, (ESOL) teaching is also a form of interactive service work since teachers’ teaching requires the presence of students/clientele (McDowell, 2009). Therefore, through this study, I expand the knowledge of what service work can be.

Along with highlighting the diversity of service work, I also showcase the diversity within service work. In much of the ESOL literature, there is primary focus on the diversity of the ESOL student population. For example, Wihak (2004) states, “[ESOL] students in Canada are typically members of visible or invisible minorities, and as such issues of racism, discrimination, and cultural identity are common in their experience” (p. 110). However, there is less focus on teacher diversity in the ESOL context, where racialized teachers may experience the very same issues. In this study, I attempt to highlight these issues as they pertain to racialized private-school teachers in Toronto.

The above point leads to the final significant aspect of this study: it is intended to have an awareness-raising effect. In order to solve a problem, the first step is to investigate the nature of it. For the participants and readers of this study, they can challenge the prevalence of microaggressions by understanding that they do exist in the private-school context in the first place. After reading/participating in

12 this study, teachers may design lessons, etc., that explicitly deal with the topic of racism (against teachers).

Readers who may be school administrators may decide to organize workshops for both employees and students that inform them about microaggressions and ways to avoid them. Simply put, this study seeks to inspire those to strive for positive change in their workplaces.

Organization of the Remainder of the Thesis

In this introductory chapter, I have shared my narrative as a personal way to introduce the topic of the study. Moreover, I have provided a brief background of Canadian private-language schools, as well as the purpose and significance of this thesis. In Chapter Two, I explore further driving forces behind racial microaggressions in order to provide additional background for the topic. After this exploration of these forces, I offer a combination of a theoretical framework and literature review in the third chapter. More specifically, I present the theoretical literature on racial microaggressions and (professional) identities with brief discussions of how they apply to the current ESOL literature. Following this hybrid chapter, I provide a detailed description of the methodology of the study in Chapter Four.

The subsequent chapters present the findings of the study. In Chapter Five, I detail the racial microaggressions that the participants experienced in their respective private-language schools. Afterward,

I analyze how these microaggressions influence the professional identity formation of the instructors throughout Chapter Six. The final chapter offers my concluding thoughts about the study.

Chapter Two: The Driving Forces Behind Racial Microaggressions in ESOL

In the previous chapter, I outlined how certain late-capitalist features of Canadian private-language schools may explain why racialized English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) teachers experience racial microaggressions. In this chapter, I describe additional explanatory forces in relation to the ESOL realm. More specifically, I look at the distinction between the native and ‘nonnative’ speaker of English, and the notion of embodiment in service work. My examination of these forces requires an understanding of critical race theory (CRT) and race, racialization, and racism, which I first describe below.

Critical Race Theory and The Three Rs: Race, Racialization, and Racism

CRT plays a major role in not only explaining the reasons behind microaggressions, but also explaining other elements of this study that I will discuss later. But what exactly is CRT? In addition to being a conceptual framework, it is “a movement [involving] a collection of activists and scholars interested in studying and transforming the relationship among race, racism, and power” (Delgado & Stefancic, 2012, p. 3). In particular, Taylor (1998) gives the following definition: “[a]s a form of oppositional scholarship,

CRT challenges the experience of whites as the normative standard and grounds its conceptual framework in the distinctive experiences of people of color” (p. 122). As Taylor notes, an understanding of “the social and experiential context of racial oppression is crucial [in CRT], particularly the way that current inequalities are connected to earlier, more overt, practices of racial exclusion” (p. 122).

This understanding of racial oppression first occurred in strictly a legal sense. In fact, “as an outgrowth of the Civil Rights movement and the Critical Legal Studies movement [in the United States],

CRT’s premise is to critically interrogate how the law reproduces, reifies, and normalizes racism in society”

(López, 2003, p. 83). Therefore, in contrast to the Civil Rights movement that stressed incremental progress, CRT questions the beliefs of the entire legal system (Delgado & Stefancic, 2012). Furthermore,

13 14 while CRT agrees with Critical Legal Studies that American laws/institutions preserve and legitimize unequal social and power relations, it has departed from the latter movement by placing a special emphasis on the struggles of racialized individuals (e.g., Brown & Jackson, 2013; Ladson-Billings, 1998).

Despite its legal origins, CRT is not exclusively reliant on legal theory. Rather, it is interdisciplinary as it borrows philosophies and methodologies from a wide spectrum of other fields such as feminist studies

(e.g., Closson, 2010; Delgado & Stefancic, 2012; Dixson & Rousseau, 2005). Aside from drawing from other disciplines, CRT has also entered into disciplines outside of the legal arena, most notably education

(e.g., Dixson & Rousseau, 2005; Ladson-Billings, 1998). In fact, CRT has started to appear in applied linguistics/second-language education as evident in Kubota and Lin’s (2009) work.

In addition to having a presence in a variety of fields, CRT holds a variety of tenets. As some of these tenets do not relate to the current study, I only mention the ones that help us better understand the driving forces behind racial microaggressions (in the ESOL context). Instead of listing these tenets one by one, I spread them across my discussion of race, racialization, and racism, which are central CRT concepts themselves and are the subject of the remainder of this section. Race, racialization, and racism are, to say the least, highly contested concepts (Satzewich, 1998). Each of these concepts, though related to some extent, are not always dependent on one another and in some cases, may even contradict each other (e.g.,

Hier, 2007; Miles & Torres, 1996). Nevertheless, they all play a role in the current research context and must be addressed in order to better understand racial microaggressions, even if they hold contradictory views. Perhaps it is best to first review the root word of all these notions: race.

To find one definition of race is a pointless task as it has meant different things throughout history.

Indeed, “there is nothing solid or permanent to the meaning of race. It changes all the time. It shifts and slides” (Jhally, Race: The Floating Signifier, 1996). In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Europeans held different notions of race than we would today. That is, they saw race as referring “to a lineage or line of descent where particular groups of people were attributed with a common history” (Banton, 1987, as

15 cited in Satzewich, 1998, p. 27). Therefore, a race could consist of a group of people sharing a common culture or language as it was believed in such countries as Germany (Haque, 2012).

However, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with the rise of European colonialism, the meaning of race shifted from referring to culture to being associated with biology. Curious to explain the physical and cultural diversity of the colonized Other and inspired by the science that attempted to explain this variety, many Europeans came to view race as biological differences between people as signified by phenotypical features such as skin colour and hair texture (Agnew, 2007; Carter, 2007; Hier, 2007; Miles &

Torres, 1996; Satzewich, 1998). These phenotypical differences became signs of higher-order traits where nonwhite skin colour was associated with low intelligence and Whiteness with progress, high intelligence, etc. (e.g., Adas, 2004; Memmi, 1965). These ‘natural’ deficits in nonwhite colonized peoples obviously allowed Europeans to justify their control over these groups and thus, we can say that race in this period was used to maintain power relations between both parties.

This notion of race being a biological phenomenon has been a lasting legacy of European colonialism. Although race has no biological reality, many people ignore this scientific truth and attach physical traits like skin colour to such things as “personality, intelligence, and moral behavior” (Delgado &

Stefancic, 2012, p. 9). This point explains why we have many racial stereotypes today that describe Black men as dangerous and hypersexual, people of Asian descent as obedient and unassertive, or Latinos and

Latinas as carefree and ‘nonnative’ speakers of English (Sue, 2010a). Aside from stereotypes such as these, the idea that race is a biological fact continues to be resurrected in the realm of genetics.

In fact, as noted by various scholars, race has shifted from being associated with phenotype to being based on genotype (Fullwiley, 2008; Hartigan Jr., 2008; Morning, 2008). For instance, Morning

(2008) discusses how scientists have claimed that they can determine individuals’ racial heritage through testing their DNA. Moreover, Fullwiley (2008) explains how certain health disparities/diseases have come

16 to be linked with race (e.g., sickle-cell anemia as an African-American disease). Certainly, genetics research promotes the idea that race is within the very core of us; in our DNA.

However, Hartigan Jr. (2008) warns us that “agreeing that race is fast accruing a certain ‘reality’ does not absolve us of either the ability or the necessity of [analyzing] the cultural dimension of this development” (p. 184). Similarly, Morning (2008) comments that our continued (scientific) efforts to

(re)shape the race concept “[testifies] to its enduring social [emphasis added] role as a tool for structuring and interpreting the world around us” (p. S130). Although science may offer some evidence of the existence of race, I take the viewpoint of the above scholars by stating that people create race to explain the world. Simply put, it is a human invention.

Therefore, I see race as a social construction, which is yet another way race has shifted in meaning and happens to be one central tenet of CRT (e.g., Agnew, 2007; Bonilla-Silva, 1999; Carter, 2007;

Dei, 2007; Delgado & Stefancic, 2012; Goldberg, 1993; Haney López, 1995; Hartigan Jr., 2008; Hier, 2007;

Kubota & Lin, 2006; Ladson-Billings, 2013; Li, 1998; Miles & Torres, 1996; Morning, 2008; Mukhopadhyay,

2011; Omi & Winant, 1993; Satzewich, 1998). As one can extrapolate from the above discussion, “race is socially and historically constructed and shaped by discourses that give specific meanings to the ways we see the world” (Kubota & Lin, 2006, p. 474). From seeing it as lineage, to phenotype, and now to genetics, race is created to mean different things for different purposes. One purpose has been oppression.

Especially in the case of European colonialism, race is a result of power relations: the oppressor uses the physical characteristics of the oppressed as justification for control over the latter.

The above point is an important reminder that “races are constructed relationally, against one another, rather than in isolation” (Haney López, 1995, p. 168). Speaking about being Black, Fanon

(1952/2008) echoes this point: “[f]or not only must the black man be black; he must be black in relation to the white man” (p. 90). Black individuals are inferior because White people are superior. This notion certainly gave European colonizers justification to rule over the nonwhite masses (e.g., Adas, 2004;

Memmi, 1965). In recent times, our minds are still ‘colonized’ by such views as we continue to view

Whiteness as the normal, unmarked standard for all other races (Agnew, 2007; Ladson-Billings, 2013).

This point is important when looking at the intersection of race and language, which I will discuss in the next section concerning native and ‘nonnative’ speakers of English.

Returning to the concept of race alone, I must acknowledge that viewing it as a social construction is not without its problems. For example, many scholars have argued that if race is something that is imagined, then it should not be used as an analytical/descriptive category in research, which would suggest that races are indeed real (e.g., Carter, 2007; Kubota & Lin, 2006; Loveman, 1999; Miles & Torres, 1996;

Satzewich, 1998). While I agree with the above criticism in principle, I still see the need to use ‘race’ as a concept in this thesis for the following reason.

That is, “race is both a biological fiction and a social-cultural reality” (Mukhopadhyay, 2011, p. 206).

In other words, race plays a real part in an individual’s life even though it exists in the imagination.

Similarly, Dei (2007) states that race is “a contemporary lived or experiential reality” (p. 57), while Bonilla-

Silva (1999) goes even further by stating that it is a social fact: “race is a real and central social vessel of group affiliation and life in the modern world [original emphasis]” (p. 899). Omi and Winant (1993) probably go the furthest by stating that race is essentially who we are:

At the level of experience, of everyday life, race is an almost indissoluble part of our identities. Our society is so thoroughly racialized that to be without racial identity is to be in danger of having no identity. To be raceless is akin to being genderless (p. 5).

Thus, “race can affect the ways a person is perceived by others, the ways they interact with others and the ways they interact with and within institutions” (Lau, 2008, p. 15).

Seeing race as part of one’s everyday life is significant in the context of the current study as ESOL teachers of colour may face everyday discrimination from their interactions with students, employers, and peers within various institutions such as private-language schools. We must use the concept of race here because both students and employers may still believe that race is real. These individuals see value in a

18 teacher’s race; either it signifies high or low teaching ability. This point leads to another aspect of my understanding of race for the present study.

That is, I agree with Li (1998) that race has a social value in the Canadian context, at least. Adding to the idea that races are constructed relationally (Haney López, 1995), Li states that “there is a social hierarchy of races, which is manifested in Canadians’ view of which [racial] groups are socially desirable or undesirable” (p. 115). Historically, this point can be seen in Canada’s racist immigration policies up until the 1960s that deemed White Europeans as ideal citizens because they could assimilate to ‘Canadian’ culture, while Asians and Africans were deemed undesirable on account of being nonwhite (Guo, 2006).

Simply put, there were good races and bad races.

Li (1998) explains that despite the promotion of multiculturalism in Canada, this view of good/bad races still persists today with individuals of European origin being held in higher regard than their nonwhite counterparts in national surveys, etc. Moreover, Li explains that this social value of Whiteness also has a market value as people of colour generally earn less than White individuals (as seen through his analysis of

1991 Census data). While this data is outdated, Block (2010) supports Li’s findings in the context of

Ontario by stating that racialized Ontarians are paid less than their non-racialized peers. While we need to account for other factors such as language, foreign credentials, and gender in these findings of economic inequality, it is safe to assume that nonwhite races “carry a lower market worth” (Li, 1998, p. 128) in various types of employment (in the Ontarian/Canadian context at least).

As will be discussed in depth in the discussion on embodiment, I see racialized ESOL teachers as possessing races that are both socially and economically devalued. The word ‘possess’ is appropriate here since race can be perceived as a kind of property that an individual owns and can appreciate or depreciate in value over time. In racial terms, the ultimate property is Whiteness as it offers a variety of benefits and privileges to its owners (Delgado & Stefancic, 2012; Harris, 1993). This notion of Whiteness as property is

19 another tenet of CRT, which according to Closson (2010), is not widely used in the CRT literature, but is nevertheless relevant to this study.

Even though Whiteness, like other races, is socially constructed, White people have treated it as a kind of material property. In fact, Fasching-Varner and Mitchell (2013) remark “that white people have vested interests in protecting whiteness and keeping the benefits of whiteness from others while simultaneously experiencing a high sense of value for their own whiteness” (p. 357). Therefore, Whiteness comes to mean something that is protected from others and is valuable for its possessor. This notion can be traced back to the times of slavery in the United States. In fact, Harris (1993) explains how in the system of slavery, being White protected one from becoming a commodity:

Slavery as a system of property facilitated the merger of white identity and property. Because the system of slavery was contingent on and conflated with racial identity, it became crucial to be “white,” to be identified as white, to have the property of being white. Whiteness was the characteristic, the attribute, the property of free human beings (p. 1721).

Harris (1993) goes on to explain that Whiteness as property was characterized by purity: one had to be completely White in order to access the benefits of Whiteness. Thus, if one was mixed-race, one would simply have devalued property. According to Harris, such beliefs became ratified in various laws and customs in order to protect the social and economic benefits of pure White individuals. Having such benefits, some may see Whiteness as “a form of status property” (Harris, 1993, p. 1734) for those who possess it. Just as we might admire someone walking down the street with expensive clothing and may think that this person is rich, sophisticated, etc., we may admire someone walking with their Whiteness, which connotes prestige and other attributes that we deem positive.

In the realm of ESOL teaching, Ruecker (2011) adopts Harris’ (1993) notion of Whiteness as status property to explain how native-English-speaking, national, and racial identities have “been constructed through legal and recruitment discourses as a property with real economic benefits” (p. 407). Ruecker elaborates on this point by examining how schools in Asia legally require native-speaking ESOL teachers

20 born in Inner-Circle countries to teach at their schools. Moreover, some job advertisements explicitly ask for White teachers and may even require teachers to submit a photo to prove that they are White. In this context, being White ensures getting an ESOL teaching position, while being nonwhite does not. As I have stated in the previous chapter, this preference for White teachers is due to the belief that they embody the necessary traits of the ideal ESOL service worker. Consequently, racialized teachers may come to be devalued by students/employers because they do not have the desired embodied traits. As I will discuss later in greater detail, being White is indeed advantageous in the realm of ESOL teaching.5

For now, I end my discussion of race by re-stating how I interpret it for this study. While being socially constructed, race still has real meaning for many people and thus, must be used as an analytical category. Furthermore, race is something that an individual possesses and subsequently has a certain value in the eyes of others. However, race alone cannot fully explain the discrimination experienced by

ESOL teachers of colour. In fact, we need to briefly examine racialization as well.

In order to emphasize the socially-constructed nature of race, scholars use the term ‘racialization’

(e.g., Agnew, 2007; Dei, 2007; Henry & Tator, 2009; Kubota & Lin, 2006; Li, 1998). Similar to race, racialization has been subject to various interpretations, but many scholars often acknowledge Miles’

(1989) definition of this concept:

Those instances where social relations between people have been structured by the signification of human biological characteristics in such a way as to define and construct differentiated social collectivities…The concept therefore refers to a process of categorisation, a representational process of defining an Other (usually, but not exclusively) somatically (p. 75).

5Leong (2013) may provide an interesting counterargument in her discussion of racial capitalism, which can be understood as “the process of deriving social and economic value from the racial identity of another person” (p. 2152). In her article, Leong explains how mostly White institutions/individuals use nonwhite people to gain social and economic value. For instance, universities may advertise their diverse student bodies in order to gain respect from the public, which in turn, may lead to increased enrolment and donors. While this valuing of nonwhite bodies may happen in certain contexts, I have not found any evidence of this trend in the ESOL industry. However, racial capitalism may be prevalent if we look at the commodification of White bodies, which will be discussed in greater detail in the section on embodiment.

In other words, racialization refers to how in various social interactions, people place each other into pre- defined categories based on (perceived) bodily traits, most often skin colour. Thus, when store owners see young Black men walk into their establishments, they may follow these men because they associate being

Black with being criminal. Also, when students ask their Asian peers for help with their math homework, they are racializing the latter group by associating good math skills with being Asian. As seen with these examples, “the process of racialization is…external and strategic, and it is not the responsibility of the person being targeted” (Dei, 2007, p. 61).6

These examples also lead to another aspect of racialization: various racial groups are racialized differentially from one another (Delgado & Stefancic, 2012). Therefore, using the above examples once again, Asian men are not usually associated with criminality, while Black individuals are not seen as being exceptional in mathematics. In this research context, I would add that White ESOL teachers are not deemed deficient users and teachers of English (in contrast to their nonwhite counterparts).

While the above examples of racialization rely on phenotype to explain higher-order traits, it is important to note that this concept does not always rely on skin colour and other somatic features (Miles,

1989). For example, Satzewich (1998) states that “while particular groups may be labelled as races it sometimes happens that these groups…are defined culturally rather than biologically” (p. 32). This point can be seen in the Irish being viewed as distinct from the British in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (e.g., Miles & Torres, 1996). Another example is the work of various nineteenth-century

European philologists that used language as a way to create racial groups. For instance, Semitic and

European peoples could be distinguished by their languages and because there were perceived linguistic deficiencies in the former’s, the former was also deemed deficient (Haque, 2012; Said, 1978).

6Kubota and Lin (2006) explain that racialization can also be internal as “a minority and subordinate group can racialize themselves to construct their own identity in positive terms for the purpose of resistance” (p. 447). Even though this process is internal, it is still strategic.

Even though I do not dispute the fact that racialization can be based on non-somatic features, I choose to emphasize racialization that is based on phenotype, namely skin colour. Indeed, in contrast to the more elaborate explanations of this concept as mentioned above, I adopt Delgado and Stefancic’s

(2012) simplified definition of racialization: “injecting a racial element into a situation” (p. 171). I would take this point to mean that race can be inserted into topics, events, etc., that do not explicitly focus on race.

For example, the low standardized test scores of racial minority youth may be blamed on the students’ race

(and its link to their intelligence) rather than on the nature of the test itself. Also, in the context of ESOL, the idea of the native speaker of English, while supposedly a linguistic concept, is tied to the race of the speaker (Brutt-Griffler & Samimy, 2001). As will be discussed in the next section, the native speaker of

English is usually portrayed as White, whereas the ‘nonnative’ speaker of English is nonwhite or racialized

(e.g., Kubota & Lin, 2006).

For the purposes of this study, Delgado and Stefancic’s (2012) definition of racialization is useful as it explains how teachers’ linguistic and teaching capabilities, which are race-neutral attributes, can still be determined by their race.

Perhaps with the exception of Asians being exceptional in mathematics, I have portrayed racialization as a negative process, but Hier (2007) reminds us that this process “does not [always] imply any moral judgement or evaluative assessment” (p. 28). In fact, Snowdon (1983) gives the historical example of ancient Greeks and Romans who recognized the darker skin tones of the Ethiopians and

Egyptians, but nevertheless, held them in high regard (as cited in Hier, 2007). Once again, I do not dispute this claim, but rather, I choose to emphasize negative racialization in this study. Indeed, Agnew (2007) states that racialization “occurs in the context of power relations” (p. 10) and is often used to describe the discrimination of marginalized, nonwhite groups. Therefore, when I use the term, ‘racialized ESOL teacher,’ I am referring to a nonwhite instructor who may experience discrimination from students,

23 colleagues, and employers. This discussion of negative racialization is an appropriate transition to talking about racism, which “is a loaded and ambiguous term that has a long history” (Agnew, 2007, p. 11).

Indeed, trying to understand racism in certain historical/geographical contexts is a lengthy task as racism has taken on a variety of meanings, etc., in these contexts (Goldberg, 1993). Rather than venture into detailing racism as a historical phenomenon, I choose to look at the relatively contemporary scholarly views of this concept. But even choosing to do this task is challenging as many scholars have provided their own definitions of this term with varying degrees of detail.

Some shorter definitions come from Goldberg (1993) who states that “racism excludes racially defined others, or promotes or secures, or sustains such exclusion,” (p. 101) and Lorde (1992) who claims that it is “the belief in the inherent superiority of one race over all others and thereby the right to dominance”

(p. 496). Similarly, Essed (1990) sees racism as “[denoting] the definitive attribution of inferiority [original emphasis] to a particular racial/ethnic group and the use of this principle to propagate and justify the unequal treatment of this group” (p. 11). Implied in these types of definitions is the idea that one group is deemed superior to all others and historically, this group has been White people.

Thus, power and difference are essential features of racism (Agnew, 2007). Historically and today,

White individuals (have) justified their power over nonwhite populations because the latter were/are different and therefore, deficient. However, we should not view racism as solely a Black-White issue.

Indeed, Miles and Torres (1996) remind us that seeing racism as a White/Black dichotomy ignores the possibility that groups other than White people can practice racism and that other nonwhite groups besides

Black people can be the target of racism. For the purposes of this study, I agree with Miles and Torres that nonwhite people can be perpetrators of racism as I argue that ESOL students (who are most likely racialized individuals) may discriminate against their racialized teachers.

Aside from the Black/White dichotomy, another misconception of racism is viewing it as solely individual pathology (Goldberg, 1993). That is, if a person has racist thoughts about a racialized person or

24 group, then there must be some kind of psychological problem with this individual. However, I take the position that racism is an ideology that manifests itself in all aspects of a society. An “ideology is a set of beliefs, perceptions, assumptions, and values that provide members of a group with an understanding and an explanation of their world” (Henry, Tator, Mattis, & Rees, 1998, p. 15).7 By extension, an ideology of racism provides explanations of why some racial groups are better than others. This point is echoed by

Miles (1989) who offers the following definition of racism:

Racism is…a representational form which, by designating discrete human collectivities, necessarily functions as an ideology of inclusion and exclusion: for example, the signification of skin colour both includes and excludes in the process of sorting people into the resulting categories. However, unlike the process of racialisation, the negative characteristics of the Other mirror the positive characteristics of Self. Racism therefore presupposes a process of racialisation but is differentiated from that process by its explicitly negative evaluative component (p. 79).

For Miles, racism is a form of negative racialization (i.e., the various somatic and other features of the Other are deemed inferior to those of the Self). This representational view of racism manifests itself as racist ideologies that create and perpetuate power structures in a variety of areas ranging from our values, education, politics, economics, social norms, public discourse, the media, and so on and so forth (e.g.,

Essed, 1990; Henry et al., 1998; Hier, 2007).

What the above discussion of racism as ideology suggests is “that what exists is not so much racism, but rather a range of racisms [original emphasis]” (Satzewich, 1998, p. 39). I adopt this perspective in the current study by explaining how various racisms help to explain the racial microaggressions experienced by racialized ESOL teachers. One such racism is cultural racism which Sue (2004) defines as

“the individual and institutional expression of the superiority of one group’s cultural heritage…over another group’s, and the power to impose standards upon other groups (as cited in Sue, 2010a, p. 8). As a result, cultural racism “is the inability or unwillingness to tolerate cultural difference (Agnew, 2007, p. 13). While

7Ideology will be discussed in further detail in the following section as well as Chapter Three in which I discuss its relevance to interpellation and (professional) identity formation.

25 the focus on culture (i.e., history, traditions, arts, language, etc.) may seem to steer away from phenotype,

Agnew (2007) reminds us that the cultural elements of nonwhite groups are typically devalued.

Conversely, the culture of White individuals is deemed superior and as such, should be adopted or imitated throughout the world. One historical example of this point is with regard to the indigenous populations of the Americas being forced to speak English or other European languages by European colonizers because their native tongues were deemed inferior (Sue, 2010a). This discrimination of languages has not disappeared today and can be seen in how people characterize different varieties of

English. As I will discuss in detail in the next section, people perceive proper, Standard English as being spoken by White native speakers while nonwhite speakers are seen to use non-Standard English (e.g.,

Kubota & Lin, 2006). These skewed views manifest themselves in English-language teaching where the

White native speaker of English is deemed the norm and ideal for ESOL learners (e.g., Amin, 1997, 1999,

2000, 2004, 2005, 2006; Braine, 2010; Breckenridge & Erling, 2011; Curtis & Romney, 2006; Faez, 2012;

Hansen, 2004; Javier, 2010; Kubota, 2002; Kubota & Lin, 2006; Liu, 1999; Mahboob, 2011; McFarland,

2005; Motha, 2006; Romney, 2010; Ruecker, 2011; Shin & Kubota, 2008; Sung, 2011). With regard to racial microaggressions in private-language schools, this type of cultural racism manifests itself when students question their racialized teachers’ linguistic competence when looking at grammar, or when ESOL employers refuse to hire teachers of colour because they are not White native speakers.

This latter example is also an instance of institutional racism, which is another racism that explains racial microaggressions in the ESOL context. Situated in the sphere of cultural racism, institutional racism can consist of both informal and formal acts of discrimination within institutions (Henry et al., 1998; Sue,

2010a). More specifically, it “is manifested in the policies, practices, and procedures of various institutions that may…promote, sustain, or entrench differential advantage or privilege for people of certain races”

(Henry & Tator, 2009, p. 29). In the ESOL context, this type of racism is seen in the hiring practices of international schools where White individuals gain (prestigious) teaching positions rather than their

26 racialized counterparts (e.g., Braine, 2010; Heron, 2006; Hsu, 2005; Kubota, 2002; Kubota & Fujimoto,

2013; Mahboob, 2011; McFarland, 2005; Romney, 2010; Ruecker, 2011; Sung, 2011).

As outlined above, institutional racism is useful in providing background information on how racialized teachers may experience microaggressions from others because they are not seen as the ideal service worker by the latter group. However, since racial microaggressions are often characterized as subtle occurrences (e.g., Sue, 2010a; Sue & Constantine, 2007), we need to examine racism that is even less overt than in the institutional sphere. This idea of covert racism is yet another CRT tenet that states that racism is not random, individual acts of hate, but rather, endemic throughout society (Closson, 2010;

Delgado & Stefancic, 2012; Ladson-Billings, 1998; 2013; López, 2003). In fact, CRT believes that “racism is ordinary, not aberrational—‘normal science,’ the usual way society does business, the common, everyday experience of most people of color” (Delgado & Stefancic, 2012, p. 7). The notion that racism is an everyday occurrence closely aligns with the notion of everyday racism.

For Essed (1990), one of the first investigators of this phenomenon, this type of racism is the

“various types and expressions of racism experienced by ethnic groups in everyday contact with members of the more powerful (white) group” (p. 31). Henry and Tator (2009) add that “it expresses itself in behaviours; anecdotes; sexualized, ethnicized, and racialized jokes; inappropriate glares and glances; gestures; and forms of speech” (p. 27). For instance, a White woman may clutch her purse tightly when being approached by a Black man, which signals that this woman may believe that all Black men are criminals. This example also reminds us that everyday racism “serves to reinforce racialized ideology often expressed very subtly and spontaneously (Henry & Tator, 2009, p. 28). The woman did not explicitly call the man a criminal, but rather, her body language suddenly displayed the same message. However, the woman’s changed body language is not due to conscious fear, which leads to another important point about everyday racism. That is, this type of racism is barely noticed by its perpetrators, while being psychologically damaging to racialized people who experience it on a repeated basis (Essed, 1990; Henry

27 et al., 1998; Henry & Tator, 2009). Thus, people of colour have expert knowledge of this racism, which echoes the CRT tenet to value the voice/experiential knowledge of individuals/communities of colour as they have first-hand experience dealing with racism in their everyday lives (e.g., Closson, 2010; Delgado &

Stefancic, 2012; Dixson & Rousseau, 2005; Ladson-Billings, 1998, 2013; Solórzano & Yosso, 2002).8

The link between everyday racism and racial microaggressions is obvious as microaggressions are also brief, everyday encounters that send hurtful messages to racialized individuals and thus, negatively affect them both psychologically and physically (Sue, 2010a; Sue & Constantine, 2007). In fact, Solórzano and Pérez Huber (2012) claim that racial microaggressions are specific manifestations of everyday racism

(i.e., the actual gestures, jokes, etc.), and I will explore this point in detail in later parts of this thesis.

However, both everyday racism and racial microaggressions still portray racism as a Black-White issue, which I find problematic for the current study. While scholars such as Essed (1990) and Henry and Tator

(2009) view everyday racism as racist acts committed by White people against people of colour, I would like to expand this definition to include racist acts committed by people of colour as well. As mentioned above, ESOL students, who are mostly racialized people themselves, may also hold racist views about their teachers’ language and teaching abilities (e.g., Amin, 1997, 1999, 2000, 2004).

But racialized students do not devalue their nonwhite teachers solely because of racism or notions of race and racialization for that matter. Instead, a combination of other social markers may also influence a teacher’s worth in the eyes of ESOL learners. This point leads to one final CRT tenet: intersectionality.

According to Delgado and Stefancic (2012), this concept “means the examination of [such things as] race,

8Hearing the voice of racialized people often entails the telling of stories. In fact, Dixson and Rousseau (2005) comment that “one of the functions of voice scholarship is to provide a ‘counterstory’—a means to counteract or challenge the…story [of the dominant group]” (p. 11). The stories of the dominant group are often called majoritarian narratives, which silence the experiences of people of colour and portray Whiteness as natural and superior (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002). Therefore, counter-stories try to overturn these narratives by sharing the experiences of people of colour. This thesis is dedicated to sharing the stories of racialized ESOL teachers, and I will explore this point in more detail in the methodology chapter.

28 sex, class, national origin, and sexual orientation, and how their combination plays out in various settings”

(p. 57). More specifically, CRT places emphasis on race, racialization, and racism, but recognizes that they interact with other kinds of discrimination based on gender, class, age, sexual orientation, (dis)ability, language, etc., thereby creating unique forms of oppression for individuals with multiple group identities

(e.g., Howard & Reynolds, 2013; López, 2003; Solórzano, 2013).

Intersectionality was first introduced by Crenshaw (1989) who stressed that viewing discrimination as occurring on a single categorical axis masks the subordination of Black women. In fact, Crenshaw

(1989) mentions how in legal cases involving racial discrimination, the focus is on “sex- or class-privileged

Blacks” (p. 140). Moreover, “in sex discrimination cases, the focus is on race- and class-privileged women”

(Crenshaw, 1989, p. 140). Therefore, the discrimination of multiply-subordinated individuals such as Black women are not fully addressed and remedied.9 Crenshaw (1991) thus adopts an intersectional perspective that states “that the intersection of racism and sexism factors into Black women’s lives in ways that cannot be captured wholly by looking at the race or gender dimensions of those experiences separately” (p. 1244).

For example, in rape cases, the sexual assaults of Black women receive less attention and less punishment than those of White women because the former tend not to be perceived as believable victims

(perhaps due to the idea that Black women are seen as hypersexual) (Crenshaw, 1991).

While Crenshaw (1991) focuses on the intersection of race and gender, she acknowledges that other identity markers such as class and sexuality negatively affect the lives of multiply-subordinated groups. Indeed, as I have mentioned above, race, racialization, and racism can intersect with a wide variety of social categories. In the current research context, we often see race intersect with language background. For instance, racialized individuals who are ‘nonnative’ speakers of English are often

9Some scholars adopt an intersectional lens to discuss the experiences of singly-subordinated individuals. For example, Howard and Reynolds (2013) use intersectionality to explain the oppression of Black heterosexual men, who although enjoy the privilege of being heterosexual males, suffer from discrimination because of their race in particular.

29 perceived as foreigners in various English-speaking countries (e.g., Shuck, 2006). In the ESOL context, race not only intersects with language, but also with gender and class as exemplified by the narratives shared by Lin et al. (2004) who describe their experiences as women of colour teaching ESOL (which I will discuss more fully in the following chapter). Therefore, racialized ESOL instructors may suffer from discrimination based on multiple, intersecting aspects of their identities; not simply their race.

Even though I recognize the applicability of intersectionality in the context of ESOL, I do not wish to use this concept as a way to state that one racialized teacher experienced discrimination due to a clear combination of this and that. Rather, like Ladson-Billings (2013), I see intersectionality within CRT as useful in engaging “in the ‘messiness’ of real life” (p. 40). Ladson-Billings gives the example of a Black woman wearing workout gear entering a luxury car dealership and being ignored by various salespeople

(who perhaps serve wealthy White men). Is the woman being ignored due to her race? Perhaps. Is she being ignored because of her gender? Perhaps. Is she being ignored because she is not in professional attire? Perhaps. Or is it a combination of all three identity markers? Perhaps. We may never know the true answer to this situation. Similarly, when racialized teachers experience discrimination in the ESOL school, we cannot always name which social marker is responsible for the discrimination. Is it because of their race, language ability, national origin, gender, all of the above, or none of the above?

My above mention of intersectionality is not intended to dismiss all that I have said about race, racialization, and racism within a CRT framework. Indeed, I still insist that everyday racism and the other racisms, the process of racialization, and the socially-constructed value of race allow us to have an understanding of racial microaggressions in the ESOL context. However, in order to give the reader an even deeper understanding of this topic, we must look at intersectionality by examining how ‘The Three Rs’ intersect with language. This point is the central topic of the following section in which I situate The Three

Rs in the continuing debate over the native and ‘nonnative’ speaker of English.

The Three Rs and Native & ‘Nonnative’ Speakers of English

Indeed, race, racialization, and racism can explain why racialized teachers in private ESOL schools may not be seen as native speakers of English and hence, subject to racial microaggressions. But in order to clearly explain this point and to avoid redundancies, I initially remove the discussion of The Three Rs in my analysis of the differences between native and ‘nonnative’ speakers. One such difference is on the linguistic/pedagogical level in which the native speaker (of English) is deemed superior.

Simply put, the native speaker (of English) continues to be regarded as the ideal user and teacher of the language as noted (and mostly lamented) by various scholars (e.g., Amin, 1997; Braine, 1999b;

Breckenridge & Erling, 2011; Brutt-Griffler & Samimy, 1999, 2001; Clark & Paran, 2007; Cook, 1999;

Davies, 2003; Holliday, 2006; Kramsch, 1998; Kubota & Lin, 2006; Pegrum, 2004; Phillipson, 1992; Sung,

2011; Thornbury, 2006; Todd & Pojanapunya, 2009; Widdowson, 1994). Conversely, the above authors have mentioned how the ‘nonnative’ speaker is thus deemed the opposite in the linguistic and pedagogical realms. But why does this distinction between the two speakers exist? What superior qualities does a native speaker possess?

A straightforward answer comes from Thornbury (2006) who states that native speakers know their

“language intuitively, and [know] how to use it accurately, fluently, and appropriately” (p. 140). Both Davies

(2003) and Medgyes (1992) echo this point and add that native speakers are also able to be creative with the language. Furthermore, Medgyes, in particular, comments on how ‘nonnative’ speakers merely imitate native speakers and “are ill at ease with using English accurately and appropriately, and their fluency does not come up to native levels, either” (p. 343). Cook (1997) further separates monolingual native speakers and second-language (L2) users (a term he uses in place of ‘nonnative speakers’) in terms of language and thought processing (as cited in Cook, 1999). For example, he found that L2 users are slightly less effective at L2-related cognitive tasks than their monolingual counterparts.

Apart from possessing superior language competence, it seems that native speakers have a pedagogical advantage over their ‘nonnative’ counterparts as well. This point is especially true with regard to English-language teaching. Indeed, in various textbooks and other teaching materials, the native speaker of English serves as the model for ESOL learners to imitate (e.g., Clark & Paran, 2007; Cook,

1999; Phillipson, 1992; Thornbury, 2006; Widdowson, 1994). Furthermore, since the native speaker is the norm in various classrooms, students aspire to use English like native speakers and hence, want native- speaking teachers (e.g., Clark & Paran, 2007; Timmis, 2002; Todd & Pojanapunya, 2009).

If ESOL learners want native-speaking teachers, then what is the benefit of having such teachers?

Lasagabaster and Sierra’s (2005) study of Basque ESOL students’ perceptions of native and ‘nonnative’ teachers provides some answers to this question. For these students, the native teacher is superior in terms of pronunciation, culture and civilization, speaking, listening, and to some extent, vocabulary. Benke and Medgyes (2005) conducted a similar study with Hungarian learners of English and came to similar findings. In fact, the pair found that students saw native teachers as superior in teaching conversation and supplying cultural information. Moreover, the students deemed native teachers as more friendly and having more interesting lessons that their ‘nonnative’ counterparts. Moving away from the European context,

Mahboob (2004) looked at the benefits of native teachers from the perspective of ESOL students in an intensive English program in the United States. Like the above authors, Mahboob (2004) found that native speakers excel in teaching oral skills, vocabulary, and American culture.

While the above studies focus on students’ perceptions of native and ‘nonnative’ teachers, one might wonder what actual ‘nonnative’-speaking instructors believe. Tang (1997) responds to this gap in her study of ‘nonnative’-speaking teachers’ perceptions of the language proficiency of native and ‘nonnative’ speakers of English, which was conducted in Hong Kong. Tang’s main finding from her survey is as follows: the teachers believed that native speakers were superior to their ‘nonnative’ counterparts “in speaking (100%), pronunciation (92%), listening (87%), vocabulary (79%), and reading (72%)” (pp. 577-

578). Furthermore, some of the teachers commented that students can benefit from native speakers’ natural and accurate use of English, which would aid the former in learning how to communicate authentically in the language. What is striking about Tang’s study is that it suggests that teachers and students (as seen in the above studies) see the same value in native speakers.

However, do they see any redeeming qualities in ‘nonnative’ ESOL teachers? Despite the preference for native speakers, the answer is ‘yes.’ In fact, in Tang’s (1997) study, the teachers in Hong

Kong believed that they were more effective instructors than their native counterparts because they could do such things as use students’ mother tongues to help lower-level and weaker learners, and use their experiences as former ESOL learners to understand and empathize with their students’ errors. Coming from the perspective of ESOL students, Benke and Medgyes (2005), Lasagabaster and Sierra (2005), and

Mahboob (2004) found that learners saw ‘nonnative’ speakers as superior in teaching and explaining grammar in particular. Mahboob (2004) adds that students saw the personal value in having ‘nonnative’ teachers because they can empathize with students since they were once students themselves.

Medgyes (1992, 2001) would agree with Mahboob (2004) as he also sees ‘nonnative’ ESOL teachers as more sensitive to their learners’ needs because they have been/continue to be learners themselves. Moreover, Medgyes (1992, 2001) lists the following strengths of these teachers: they provide a more realistic learner model; they can teach learning strategies more effectively; they can provide more information about the English language; they can better predict learner difficulties; and finally, they can use their students’ mother tongue if in a monolingual setting. Thus, Medgyes supports the idea that ‘nonnative’ teachers bring their own unique benefits to the ESOL classroom.

If we are able to argue that ‘nonnative’ speakers can bring pedagogical benefits to their students, I believe that it is also possible to highlight how their language competence can be equal to that of a native speaker. As I mentioned earlier in this section, native speakers are seen to have a natural intuition about their language and consequently, are able to use it fluently, accurately, appropriately, and creatively

(Davies, 2003; Medgyes, 1992; Thornbury, 2006). However, many of these assumptions that we have of native speakers are simply false when looking at everyday examples. To take a simple example, some native speakers do not use English accurately as evident in spelling mistakes in their writing or when they say something like “I did good” instead of “I did well.”

Furthermore, a great deal of the criteria that we use to describe native speakers can easily be applied to ‘nonnative’ speakers (Cook, 1999; Jenkins, 2003). With regard to intuitively knowing the language, Italian students learning English may intuitively recognize that the word ‘school’ is the equivalent of the Italian ‘scuola’ because they are cognates. Also, the ‘nonnative’ speaker’s command over the language may be greater than the native speaker’s. For example, as mentioned above, Medgyes (1992,

2001) states that ‘nonnative’ speakers can provide detailed knowledge about the English language to their students because they have been explicitly taught English grammatical rules.

Therefore, if we are able to blur the lines between native and ‘nonnative’ speakers in terms of language/teaching proficiency, why do we need such labels as ‘native’ and ‘nonnative?’ If ‘nonnative’ speakers know and can do the same things as their native counterparts, it would make sense to call them native speakers as well. However, as Brutt-Griffler and Samimy (2001) and Higgins (2003) comment, native-speaker status is rarely based on linguistic proficiency alone. Indeed, rather than examining what native speakers know and can do linguistically, we need to know who is considered a native speaker in the first place. Thus, who exactly is the native speaker?

Historically, one of the earliest references to the term, ‘native speaker’ was found in the work of

Bloomfield (1933) who stated that the “first language a human being learns to speak is his native language; he is a native speaker of this language” (as cited in Davies, 2003, p. 4). Implied in this definition is the idea that native speakers are individuals who have inherited the language from their parents since birth and have acquired it without any formal instruction (e.g., Amin, 2000, 2004; Mesthrie & Swann, 2010; Rampton,

1990). In contrast, “a [nonnative] speaker of a language has learned it as a second (or later) language

34 some time after being initiated into his/her native language” (Mesthrie & Swann, 2010, p. 102). This idea that the native speaker naturally acquires the language (while the ‘nonnative’ speaker must learn it)

(Krashen, 1985, as cited in Ortega, 2009) seems to be influential in recent times.

For example, Davies (2003) states, “The native speaker acquires the L1 [first language] of which s/he is a native speaker in childhood” (p. 210). Cook (1999) seems to agree when he comments that

“being a native speaker…is an unalterable historic fact; individuals cannot change their native language any more than they can change who brought them up” (p. 186). This idea that one is ‘stuck’ with a native language may explain why individuals who do not exhibit the traditional qualities of native speakers are deemed such speakers nevertheless. Cook (1999) gives the example of the famous theoretical physicist,

Stephen Hawking who must rely on a computer to communicate (which affects his fluency), but is regarded as a native speaker of English because he was brought up by English-speaking parents.

Aside from complicating the idea that proficiency is the sole characteristic of the native speaker, this idea that the native language can be inherited from birth raises a number of other issues. In particular,

Jenkins (2003) comments on how this view of the native speaker has a monolingual bias: we come to believe that children acquire only one native language. However, as Jenkins points out, this scenario rarely exists internationally. In fact, she explains that since multilingualism (rather than monolingualism) is the norm in most of the world, it is difficult to determine what language a child has learned first, second, and so on and so forth. Furthermore, for multilingual individuals, it may be easier to blur the lines between native and ‘nonnative’ when they look at their competence in each of their languages.

The above point has been explored in a few studies looking at the linguistic identities of Generation

1.5 immigrants (those who arrive to a new country before or during puberty) in such English-speaking countries as the United States and Canada. For instance, in Liu’s (1999) study of ‘nonnative’ ESOL professionals’ feelings about the native/’nonnative’ distinction, he found that some participants thought that their native language had changed. For example, Ms. I, one of the participants who originally spoke Italian

35 at a young age, stated that she became a native-English speaker after moving to the United States since she became more competent in this language than her previous languages. Thus, Liu’s study suggests that individuals may see the native speaker as a fluid rather than static concept: one can transform into a native speaker of another language over time.

In the Canadian context, Faez’s (2011a, 2011b) study of the linguistic identities of teacher candidates revealed similar findings. In fact, even though English was the third language for one of her participants named Peter, he still identified as a native-English speaker because his English was better than his Cantonese and Vietnamese, which were his first and second languages, respectively. Peter’s self- identification as a native speaker goes against Bloomfield’s (1933) original assertion that the native language is one’s first language (as cited in Davies, 2003). Like Ms. I as mentioned above, he became a native speaker of English later in life.

Aside from complicating the idea that the native language is the first language, these studies also combat the notion that the native speaker is a monocultural entity (Kramsch, 1998). That is, if one’s native language is Japanese, for example, one must strictly live by Japanese culture. However, as Kramsch

(1998) reminds us, most individuals live by “various cultures and subcultures” (p. 80) in their everyday lives.

Ms. I from Liu’s (1999) study exemplifies this point as evident in her reflections about her name (which is not revealed in the study). Indeed, Ms. I felt that her name symbolized her dual identity in America: it was

Italian/Spanish in origin and thus connected her to her familial culture, but it also had an English pronunciation, which highlighted her American identity. Therefore, it is possible to suggest that Ms. I is a native-English speaker who holds a bicultural identity.

Whereas Liu’s (1999) participant merges language and culture(s), one of Faez’s (2011a) participants named Sandy seems to do the opposite. Like Ms. I, Sandy is ethnically Italian but unlike Ms. I, she seemed to separate her Italian identity from her English proficiency. Even though she compared her

English-language skills as near identical to those of a native speaker, Sandy still culturally identified as

Italian rather than a generic Canadian, etc. Sandy’s self-ascription suggests that native-English speakers do not need to adopt an English-speaking culture in order to retain their native speaker status. One’s linguistic identity can be a ‘mismatch’ of language and culture. Sandy could then be defined as an Italian who is a native speaker of English.10

As noticed above, both Faez (2011a, 2011b) and Liu’s (1999) studies highlight how individuals determine their own linguistic identities based on their individual experiences, which is a point echoed in the profiles of the participants of this study. However, in Faez’s studies, she also had native-English-speaking educators judge whether the participants could be deemed native speakers, which sometimes led to contradictory views (while some participants identified as native speakers, the teacher educators did not see them as such). This aspect of Faez’s work leads to another issue when trying to define the native speaker. That is, while individuals may see themselves as being a native speaker due to proficiency or their self-identification as one, others may not always agree with this self-perceived status.

In short, being a native speaker (of English) also entails being accepted as one by others in wider social contexts (e.g., Braine, 1999b; Brutt-Griffler & Samimy, 2001; Davies, 2003; Faez, 2011a, 2011b; Liu,

1999; Rampton, 1990). Kramsch (1997) refines this point when she states that “native speakership…is more than privilege of birth or even of education. It is acceptance by the group that created the distinction between native and nonnative speakers” (p. 363). But who exactly separates native and ‘nonnative’

10One problem with expanding the notion of the native speaker is that it may still promote the hegemony of native speakers. That is, becoming a native speaker makes one a part of the group that claims linguistic dominance over ‘nonnative’ speakers. While I acknowledge this problem, I nevertheless choose to make the distinction between native and ‘nonnative’ speakers in this thesis. Like race as I mentioned in the previous section, the native speaker is a social construction that people believe to be true (Brutt-Griffler & Samimy, 2001). Thus, until the terminology evolves, I continue to refer to the native speaker of English. (See pages 56 and 57 for further reasons why I choose to use the terms native and ‘nonnative’).

37 speakers? The most likely answer is the native speaker. However, it is not simply any native speaker; it is a person who speaks the ‘correct’ variety of the language.11

Indeed, the native speaker is sometimes seen as speaking the so-called standard variety of the language, which in this case is Standard English (e.g., Davies, 2003; Jenkins, 2003; Schneider, 2011;

Thornbury, 2006). Before providing a definition of Standard English, it is necessary to examine what is meant by a standard language and the ideology that accompanies it. Simply put, a standard language is a variety of a language that is considered to be the “yardstick against which other varieties of the language are measured” (Jenkins, 2003, p. 29). A language becomes standardized in four stages: first, a social/regional variety is chosen as the standard; second, the variety is codified in dictionaries, etc.; third, the variety is promoted in various aspects of life; and last, the variety is further elaborated and accepted by its speakers and others (Haugen, 1966, as cited in Mesthrie & Swann, 2010).

Like racism as I have described in the previous section, I see a standard language as embodying an ideology, which is aptly named a standard language ideology. Milroy and Milroy (1999) see a standard language ideology as a belief that there is only one correct variety of a language and any other variety is deficient and/or undesirable socially. As Milroy (2001) points out, part of this ideology is the idea of correctness: “when there are two or more variants of some word or construction, only one of them can be right” (p. 535). Let us now look at the ideology accompanying Standard English.

As Jenkins (2003) comments, “Standard English is by no means an easy language variety to identify” (p. 30). Furthermore, Thornbury (2006) suggests that each English-speaking country has its own standard variety. Thus, we have Standard Canadian, American, and British Englishes, just to name a few.

As it is difficult to define, Trudgill (1999) suggests that we should look at what Standard English is not in

11Instead of having to differentiate between a dialect (referring to grammar, semantics, and pronunciation) and accent (solely referring to pronunciation), I adopt Mesthrie and Swann’s (2010) use of the term, ‘language variety.’ In fact, this is a generic term “that avoids having to specify whether one is concerned with an accent, dialect, or…a particular language.” (p. 77).

38 order to partially understand its nature. Therefore, the first aspect of Standard English is that Standard

English is not a language in its own right. Rather, it is a variety of English that is used/inspired by the written language; used in education systems worldwide; and taught to ‘nonnative’ students. Secondly,

Trudgill states that Standard English is not associated with any particular regional accent. This point is true with Standard Canadian and American Englishes, which are regarded to have geographically-neutral accents (e.g., Chambers, 1998; Dollinger, 2011; Lippi-Green, 2012; Milroy, 1999; Milroy & Milroy, 1999;

Schneider, 2011). Perhaps the only exception that Trudgill mentions is Received Pronunciation (RP), which is associated with Standard British English.12 While Agha (2007) describes Standard English as a register that one can choose in certain settings, Trudgill would seem to disagree when he says that

Standard English is not a style nor a register because one can be more or less formal by simply changing vocabulary, etc., rather than changing varieties. For instance, “I am extremely fatigued” and “I’m very tired” are both considered Standard English even though the former is more formal than the latter.

In the end, the only conclusive aspect of Standard English that Trudgill (1999) can confidently state is that it is a social dialect. That is, it is a prestige variety because it has been associated with those with social/economic/political power (see also Lippi-Green, 2012). Of course, those with power are those responsible for maintaining the illusion that Standard English is the best and correct form of English. They also perpetuate the idea that Standard-English speakers are also native speakers, but only if they come from certain geographical contexts.

Indeed, Brutt-Griffler and Samimy (2001) and Widdowson (1994) point out that one’s native- speaker status may be partly determined by the country where one was born. Thus, in order to be considered a native speaker of Standard English, one must have been born in Standard-English countries.

12Agha (2007) and Trudgill (1999) describe how RP, while not a regional accent, is mainly a middle-to-upper class, educated accent. Thus, one may call it a social accent. Standard Canadian and American accents are also associated with higher-class, educated individuals (e.g., Chambers, 1998; Dollinger, 2011; Lippi-Green, 2012; Milroy, 1999; Milroy & Milroy, 1999; Schneider, 2011).

But where are these countries? Kachru’s (1990, 1996) response to this question would be what he terms the Inner-Circle Countries, which include the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and

New Zealand.13 Kachru calls these countries norm-providing as their varieties of English have served as the model for others to adopt and/or imitate. Consequently, the native speakers from these countries serve as the ideal speakers and teachers of the language, especially if they speak British or American English

(Kubota, 2002; Shin & Kubota, 2008). But how did these native speakers exert so much influence upon the rest of the world in the linguistic sense?

To begin to answer this question, one must look at colonialism. Indeed, language has always been a tool for the metropole to govern the colony (Memmi, 1965; Woolard, 1998). This point is especially true with regard to British exploitation colonies of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In fact, in colonies such as India, the British chose to educate the indigenous elite (and their offspring) in English in order for the latter to help in governing the colony (e.g., Phillipson, 1992; Schneider, 2011). As Pennycook (1998) explains, this decision ultimately led to the development of formalized English-language teaching (ELT), which coincided with the spread of the empire.

13Kachru’s (1990, 1996) concentric-circle model showcases how English has historically spread across the globe. The first and smallest circle consists of the Inner-Circle nations (i.e., the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand), the second one includes the Outer-Circle countries (i.e., India, Nigeria, Jamaica, South Africa, etc.), and the last circle includes Expanding-Circle Nations (i.e., China, Japan, South Korea, etc.). According to Schneider (2011), in the Inner-Circle countries, English is a native language, meaning that it is spoken as a first language for the majority of the population. Schneider further explains that English is a second language in the Outer-Circle nations because it has acted as a(n) (co-)official language in the country and/or in people’s everyday lives. Also, English has made a presence in these countries due to historical reasons (e.g., mainly colonialism). Lastly, Schneider notes that in Expanding-Circle countries, English is a foreign language because it is mainly used/taught in an educational context and is not widely used outside of the classroom. While Kachru’s model is widely cited in the ESOL literature, both Schneider (2011) and Ruecker (2011) note that it is quite simplistic and outdated in some respects. For example, Schneider explains how in Inner-Circle countries, people may be bilingual or speak an entirely different first language (such as Americans who speak Spanish). Motha (2006) further problematizes Kachru’s model by implying that it is highly racialized: countries such as Jamaica, which have racialized native speakers of English, are placed in the Outer Circle because they are not ‘traditionally-White’ countries such as the United States and Canada. Despite these criticisms, I still find Kachru’s model useful in highlighting the fact that the English of Inner-Circle nations is seen as the global standard. (See Sonntag [2003] for a revised model that remedies some of the above issues).

Thus, the metropole became the model for Standard British English. Indeed, the British colonizer was the expert who was supposed to civilize the colonized through the English language (Adas, 2004;

Pennycook, 1998). Thus, to know and teach English signified that “someone [was] endowed with superior knowledge about the world” (Pennycook, 1998, p. 156). This promotion of English in the colonies resulted in the “low status of dominated languages…[as well as] local traditions and educational practice[s] being ignored” (Phillipson, 1992, p. 128). In short, the local vernaculars/cultures were deemed deficient.14

Despite being devalued in terms of language/culture, the colonized aspired to learn English because for them, it increased access to such things as (economic) power, science, and modernization

(Canagarajah, 1999; Pennycook, 1998; Phillipson, 1992). Perhaps this point is the central reason why many former British colonies have kept hold of English as an official language or language of education despite decolonization (Jenkins, 2003; Schneider, 2011). Simply put, English continues to be seen as a language of progress. With the rise of globalization and the growing international desire to have closer ties with the West, this positive view of English/the Inner Circle is stronger than ever.

This desire to be connected to the Inner Circle is what Al-i Ahmad (1984/2004) would term

Occidentosis or ‘Western-struckness.’ That is, people from around the world may consume Western goods and adopt Western models of education, culture, etc., without producing and developing their own goods and forms of knowledge. In short, they develop a ‘disease,’ an infatuation with the West/Inner Circle. In the ESOL context, Occidentosis may come in the form of native-speakerism, which is defined as “the belief that ‘native-speaker’ teachers represent a ‘Western culture’ from which spring the ideals both of the English

14As Memmi (1965) rightly states, “[i]n the colonial context, bilingualism is necessary” (p. 107). While the indigenous languages and cultural practices of various British colonies were indeed deemed inferior, there is evidence that local vernaculars were used in education and other day-to-day affairs of the colonies (Pennycook, 1998; Phillipson, 1992). For instance, Canagarajah (1999) discusses how while the colonial administration in Sri Lanka preferred the use of English for administrative affairs, etc., the church preferred to use the local languages because it was easier to convert the locals using those vernaculars. Canagarajah also stresses the point that we should not view English as being imposed upon the unwilling, powerless colonized. Rather, the indigenous elite (at least in Sri Lanka) used their English education as a means to maintain local social/gender hierarchies.

41 language and of English language teaching methodology” (Holliday, 2005, as cited in Holliday, 2006, p.

385). In short, the native speaker of the West is perceived as the all-knowing expert of English.

As Holliday (2006) explains, native-speakerist sentiments are reminiscent of the civilizing mission of the European/British colonial project. In fact, “implicit in the native-speakerist ‘moral mission’ [is the idea of bringing] a ‘superior’ culture of teaching and learning to students and colleagues who are perceived not to be able to succeed on their own terms” (Holliday, 2006, p. 386). This point is particularly seen in the relatively recent promotion of communicative language teaching (CLT) by Western native speakers of

English. In essence, CLT emphasizes a “shift…away from teaching language systems (such as vocabulary and grammar) in isolation to teaching people how these systems are used in real communication”

(Thornbury, 2006, p. 36). While CLT may at first seem pedagogically sound, some have criticized how it fails to take into account the local international contexts where it is used (e.g., Bax, 2003). For example, silence in East Asian classrooms is a valued form of communication as it allows students to learn from each other simply by listening to one another (Shin, 2006). Conversely, silence in a CLT classroom would signify “an inability or unwillingness to participate in the class interaction” (Shin, 2006, p. 157). In a CLT perspective then, like in a colonial perspective, there is a right way of doing things and of course, a wrong/indigenous way.

Moving away from pedagogy and returning to language, I would also see native-speakerism as promoting the idea that particularly North American and British varieties of English are deemed superior in many parts of the world (e.g., Kubota, 2002; Shin & Kubota, 2008). This promotion of these varieties has ultimately led to the denigration of other World Englishes such as Indian and Nigerian English. We already know that the Englishes of the Inner Circle are deemed standard because they are associated with those in power (Trudgill, 1999). However, when we denigrate other Englishes, we do not devalue them on account of the low socioeconomic status of their speakers (Higgins, 2003). Rather, we mask this truth by referring to deviant linguistic features. Indeed, as Milroy (1999) explains, part of a standard language ideology is

42 believing that “language change equates with language decay, and variation with ‘bad’ or ‘inadequate’ language” (p. 175). This point is evident in the discussion about World Englishes.

According to Platt et al. (1984), one feature of a World/New English is that “it has become

‘localised’ or ‘nativised’ by adopting some language features of its own, such as sounds, intonation patterns, sentence structures, words, and expressions” (as cited in Jenkins, 2003, p. 23). As Jenkins

(2003) summarizes, the reason for this ‘nativization’ in the British colonial context was because the British colonizers often relied on local, ‘nonnative’ teachers to teach English in the classroom. By being exposed to local teachers, students tended to adopt their teachers’ hybrid speech. Therefore, today we have witnessed the birth of new varieties of English such as Indian English/Hinglish, “which comprises unique word-meanings as well as the comfortable coexistence of words and grammars from various languages in single sentences in both spoken and written language in India” (Mirchandani, 2012, p. 41).

Indian English and the other World Englishes are subject to the standard language ideology as many Standard English speakers believe that having multiple varieties of English will divide us and make us unintelligible to one another (Widdowson, 1994). Perhaps this fear is correct as exemplified by the word prepone, which is used in Indian English. While Indian speakers of English use it as an antonym for postpone, speakers of the Inner Circle may never have heard of this word. As Widdowson (1994) comments, since “prepone is coined by a nonnative-speaking community,…it is not really a proper English word [original emphasis]” (p. 384). In other words, because the Inner Circle never uses prepone, it is considered an error according to the rules of Standard English.

The above point leads to the claim that only the native speakers of the Inner Circle own English and thus, have the privilege to expand its vocabulary, etc. (Higgins, 2003; Widdowson, 1994). Thus, if a

Canadian speaker of English used prepone, then it would become an acceptable word in the language. As

Higgins (2003) explains, since speakers of other Englishes do not own English, they are perpetually seen as ‘nonnative’ speakers of the language. In fact, World Englishes are deemed ‘nonnative’ because they

43 are seen as a fossilized language or a permanent interlanguage: their language systems are close to

Standard English, but because they contain certain ‘errors’ that will not go away, they are not considered full-fledged forms of the language (e.g., Jenkins, 2003; Kachru, 1996). Thus, when an Indian-English speaker says, “I have read this book yesterday” (Higgins, 2003; p. 627), it is considered a fossilized error

(because one should use the simple past ‘read’ to talk about past actions at specific times).

While the linguistic differences between Standard and World Englishes are significant, they are not the only way to differentiate the two. There is something more about these Englishes that makes them distinct, and which is the ‘elephant in this section’ about native and ‘nonnative’ speakers. With this statement, I am referring to the ‘racial elephant.’ That is, as Jaimungal (2013) and Shin and Kubota (2008) comment, the literature on the politics of English and the distinction between the native and ‘nonnative’ speaker, respectively, disregards the salience of race. Indeed, my discussion thus far highlights how simple it is to ignore race. Yet race and the other ‘Two Rs’ (racialization and racism) are present when we determine who is (not) a native speaker of English. Let us first look at race and racialization.

Remember that Kramsch (1997) states that part of being a native speaker (of English) is being

“[accepted] by the group that created the distinction between native and nonnative speakers” (p. 363).

From this perspective, one way of being considered a native speaker is to look the part in the eyes of others. In fact, Kramsch (1998) states that the native-speaker construct is based “on stereotypical features of appearance and demeanor” (p. 80). Therefore, as Brutt-Griffler and Samimy (2001) comment, the notion of the native speaker is less of a linguistic construct and more of a social one: there are “preconceived notions of what [such a] speaker should look like or sound like” (p. 100).

In the context of the English language, “there is an abstracted notion of an idealised native speaker… from which ethnic and linguistic minorities are automatically excluded” (Leung, Harris, &

Rampton, 1997, p. 546). Amin (2005) would agree with this point by her view that “white people from the predominantly English-speaking countries of the First World” (p. 183) are perceived to be the true owners

44 of English. Jenkins (2003) would agree with Amin when she states that it is “the ethnic Anglo speaker” (p.

81) from the Inner Circle who is regarded as the reference point for all other speakers of English. It is evident from these points that “whiteness is often closely associated with nativeness” (Sung, 2011, p. 26).

But why do we have this association? Motha’s (2006) response would be that “because the spread of the

English language across the globe was historically connected to the international political power of White people, English and Whiteness are thornily intertwined” (p. 496). As seen above with the discussion of colonialism and globalization, “notions of the ideal English-language speaker are still largely determined by one’s race, cultural and economic capital” (Grant & Lee, 2009, p. 51). As White people have held the most power and resources, their English has been deemed valuable.

In the previous section, I saw race as something that one can possess and carries a certain social/market value (Li, 1998). If we connect this point to the above discussion of the racial identity of the native speaker, then if one possesses Whiteness, one possesses Standard English. Conversely, if someone is nonwhite, that person possesses another language or a deficient variety of English. This point of view is what Romney (2010) terms ‘linguistic racial profiling.’ This term refers to “a set of assumptions about speakers of English, based on their race, not on their speech. It is the racial rather than linguistic factors that determine whether someone is perceived as a native speaker of English or not” (Romney,

2010, p. 26). This idea of profiling is associated with racialization as one is “injecting a racial element into a situation” (Delgado & Stefancic, 2012, p. 171) that has nothing to do with race. In fact, even though native- speaker status should be a linguistic category, it is sometimes determined by one’s appearance.

As we racialize native and ‘nonnative’ speakers of English, we end up adhering to this essentialized equation offered by Kubota and Lin (2006): “native speaker = Standard English speaker = white versus nonnative speaker = non-Standard English speaker = nonwhite [original emphasis]” (p. 481).

While there are obvious problems with this simplified dichotomy, it does summarize why World Englishes are deemed ‘nonnative’ varieties of the language. In fact, Davies (2003) and Higgins (2003) comment on

45 how the racial background of World-English speakers may prevent them from being seen as native speakers of English. This point is exemplified by the perceptions of Caribbean Englishes or English-based

Creoles. These Creoles were the result of a “mixture of the syntax, morphology, and phonology of West

African and other ethnic languages and the lexicon of British English” (Nero, 1997, p. 586). As Blay (2008) adds, “because they emerged within the constraints of colonization and enslavement, Creole languages have long been stigmatized throughout history, often regarded as ‘primitive’ and not worthy of academic consideration” (p. 316). In short, they are not Standard English.

As they are stigmatized, these Caribbean Creoles are deemed languages other than English.

Motha (2006) emphasizes this point in her discussion of Jamaican English, which is not considered part of

Kachru’s (1990, 1996) Inner Circle despite the fact that many Jamaicans speak English as a first and family language. In fact, Motha “suggest[s] that race is the most significant factor keeping many language variations, including Jamaican English, from amassing the same linguistic power as, for instance, British,

American, and Canadian English” (p. 509). As Jamaican/Caribbean English is not considered an Inner-

Circle variety, many Caribbean students who attend school in the West are incorrectly identified as

‘nonnative’ speakers. For instance, both Motha (2006) and Nero (1997) mention that children from the

English-speaking Caribbean are frequently placed into ESOL classes despite the fact that these students may define themselves as native speakers of English.

As suggested above with regard to prepone in Indian English, one may make the case that

Caribbean Creoles cannot be considered Inner-Circle Englishes as certain vocabulary items or grammatical structures would be incomprehensible for English speakers of the Inner Circle. But even this point is also racialized if we take a brief look at the history of Australian English. Similar to the language mixing evident in Caribbean Englishes, “the English spoken by white Australians…has been influenced by…indigenous languages mostly in their word stock” (Schneider, 2011, p. 115). Therefore, speakers of Canadian or

American English may not fully understand Australian vocabulary items because they are unique to

Australia. Nevertheless, Jenkins (2003) mentions how by the 1970s, Australian English graduated from a nonstandard variety to a standard one with the production of its first official dictionary in 1976. I contend that Australian English became an accepted form of English because it is a country with a large White population. Conversely, Caribbean Creoles and other World Englishes are deemed nonstandard/deficient because they have been associated with nonwhite populations (Romney, 2010).15

One may think that if racialized groups speak or learn to speak an Inner-Circle variety of English, then they would also be deemed true native speakers of English. However, I argue that linguistic racial profiling (Romney, 2010) is so strong that it may make people wrongly determine who is and is not a native speaker of English. Indeed, racialized individuals who were born and raised in such Inner-Circle countries as Canada and the United States may be falsely recognized as ‘nonnative’ speakers on account of their race (e.g., Braine, 2010; Kubota & Lin, 2006). For instance, in Rubin’s (1992) study, two groups of students heard the same recorded lecture of a native speaker of American English with the exception that one group saw a Caucasian face during the lecture, and the second group saw an Asian face. Rubin reported that listening comprehension was lower for students exposed to the Asian face and moreover, these students believed that they heard a foreign accent. Therefore, this study suggests that people hear race or “[listen] with their eyes” (Romney, 2006, p. 190).

Outside of Rubin’s (1992) controlled experiment, racialized Generation 1.5 individuals who have native proficiency in English are also perceived as ‘nonnative’ speakers. For example, in Liu’s (1999) study

15Even Inner-Circle varieties of English are racialized/stigmatized as seen in the case of African American Vernacular English (AAVE). African Americans have historically been considered speakers of ‘bad’ English “because of their former slave status, racial segregation, economic discrimination, and the continuing poor-quality education afforded to many African American children” (Grant & Asimeng-Boahene, 2006, as cited in Grant & Lee, 2009, p. 45). This devaluation of AAVE thus has a class element since it is considered a variety of English spoken by poor African Americans (e.g., Lippi-Green, 2012; Milroy, 1999; Milroy & Milroy, 1999). Despite being seen as a deficient variety of English, “it has been established that AAVE has a rule-governed grammar” (Lippi-Green, 2012, p. 187). For example, Siegel (2006) mentions how a statement like “She be here” is not an error, but a way to express a habitual action (i.e., “She’s always here”).

47 as mentioned on page 34, Mr. K, who is Korean American and has no ‘nonnative’ accent, described how his students did not see him as a native speaker of English because of his ethnic background.

Furthermore, in Faez’s (2012) study of Generation 1.5 teacher candidates, her nonwhite participants felt hesitant to call themselves native speakers of English because their race prevented the local community from seeing them as such speakers. As Faez summarizes, “notions of nonnativeness were attributed to their race, so their linguistic identity was in conflict with their racial identity” (p. 136).

Faez’s (2012) study is interesting because her White Generation 1.5 participants had opposite sentiments: because they were White, “their claims of native status would not be challenged by members of the community, who would perceive white individuals as fluent native-speakers” (p. 136). This belief has been confirmed in various real-life examples. For instance, returning to Liu’s (1999) study, Ms. DK, who was born in Denmark, reported that her “students saw her as [a native speaker] of English because she is

Caucasian” (p. 97). Similarly, Hansen (2004), who speaks Danish as her first language but has “American- accented English” (p. 40), claims to be mistaken as a native-English speaker because of her appearance.

These cases of mistaken identity, according to Hansen, have helped her materially as she was once offered a position in Japan that was reserved for native speakers only.

Sung (2011) reports a similar story based on his experiences teaching in a private-language school in Hong Kong. In fact, one of his colleagues who was from southern Europe, had only a high-intermediate proficiency in English, and did not have any relevant teaching degrees, was given a job at the school because the parents wanted their children to have a foreign teacher. In contrast to Hansen (2004) who had native proficiency in English, Sung’s colleague had absolutely no qualifications to teach ESOL. The only qualification was her Whiteness and that gave her legitimacy in the eyes of the parents.

This value for Whiteness simultaneously signifies that nonwhite ESOL teachers, native speakers or not, are undesirable instructors. Indeed, these teachers suffer from a combination of the third ‘R,’ racism and native-speakerism where White native speakers from the West are believed to bring the ideal form of

English and the ideal teaching methodology to students (Holliday, 2006), whereas nonwhite (native) speakers do not. In other words, students, parents of students, and/or employers see the White native speaker of English as the ideal user and teacher of the language, which subsequently implies that nonwhite

(non)native speakers are deemed deficient users and teachers of English (e.g., Amin, 1997, 1999, 2000,

2004, 2005, 2006; Braine, 2010; Breckenridge & Erling, 2011; Curtis & Romney, 2006; Faez, 2012;

Hansen, 2004; Javier, 2010; Kubota, 2002; Kubota & Lin, 2006; Liu, 1999; Mahboob, 2011; McFarland,

2005; Motha, 2006; Romney, 2010; Ruecker, 2011; Shin & Kubota, 2008; Sung, 2011).

How this belief manifests itself in the institutional racism prevalent in the ESOL industry (and in everyday interactions) will be discussed in-depth later in this thesis. However, I will provide a couple of examples now in order to emphasize the power of the above belief. One manifestation of this view of the inferiority of the nonwhite ESOL teacher is in discriminatory hiring practices. Take the following excerpt from an Internet job posting from China:

Full-time American & Canadian conversational English…White people from America, Canada only…Native English-speaker from America or Canada…Fluent verbal (non- accented) and written English… (http://www.teachoverseas.ca/index.pl?noframes;read=6532cache, as cited in Romney, 2010, p. 19).

After being baffled by the overtly racist criteria, one may notice how the standard language ideology of English is linked to notions of race. That is, being capable of using fluent, non-accented English suggests that both Whiteness and Standard English are neutral or unmarked (i.e., they are not corrupted by outside influences) (Motha, 2006; Shuck, 2006). Thus, to be a White native speaker is to speak a neutral type of English. This point is supported by the fact that both Canadian and American Englishes are considered to have geographically-neutral accents (e.g., Chambers, 1998; Dollinger, 2011; Lippi-Green,

2012; Milroy, 1999; Milroy & Milroy, 1999; Schneider, 2011).

Even if racialized ESOL teachers avoid this kind of hiring discrimination, they may nevertheless feel inadequate/disadvantaged when compared to their White counterparts. For example, Amin (1999)

49 mentions how she cannot adopt the same pedagogical strategies as her White colleagues because of her race. For instance, while teacher-training courses state that it is acceptable for teachers to say that they do not know the answer to a student’s question (because it humanizes the teacher), Amin felt that if she adopted this technique, it would signify that she and other racialized teachers were deficient in the English language. Thus, it would be “confirming what the students [already thought] of [her]” (p. 100).

Indeed, ESOL students come with preconceived notions about racialized teachers and this point is clearly articulated by Amin (1997) in her discussion about English-language learners in the Canadian context. In fact, according to Amin, ESOL students make the following assumptions: “(a) [o]nly White people can be native speakers of English; (b) only native speakers know ‘real,’ ‘proper,’ ‘Canadian’ English; and (c) only White people are ‘real’ Canadians” (p. 580). Therefore, we end up with another essentialized equation: White = native speaker = Canadian; nonwhite = ‘nonnative’ speaker = non-Canadian. This equation leads to another important distinction between the native and ‘nonnative’ speaker of English, which is perhaps the most dangerous. That is, to be a racialized ‘nonnative’ speaker of a language signifies that one is also ‘nonnative’ to the nation(s) where that language was born. In other words, the

‘nonnative’ speaker is a perpetual foreigner, an outsider in the nation (Shuck, 2006).

I have already made mention of this point, but with regard to the native speaker of English. In fact, as I have discussed above, one’s national origin determines whether one is a native speaker or not (Brutt-

Griffler & Samimy, 2001; Widdowson, 1994). Thus, to be a ‘true’ native speaker of English, one must have been born in an Inner-Circle nation such as Canada or the United States. However, if someone moved to one of these nations later in life and subsequently learned English, I argue that this person would forever be deemed an immigrant and ‘nonnative’ speaker. The reason for this argument comes from a point that I also referenced earlier in this section. That is, “the native speaker is…a monolingual, monocultural abstraction; he/she is one who speaks only his/her (standardized) native tongue and lives by one

(standardized) national culture” (Kramsch, 1998, p. 80). Those who immigrate to Inner-Circle countries

50 most likely have more than one language and culture and thus, cannot be true citizens. To find the reasoning behind this belief entails examining European nationalism.

Indeed, particularly in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, the elite of Europe believed in and promoted the idea of having one language and one culture within one clearly-defined nation (e.g., Amin,

2000, 2004; Bauman & Briggs, 2003; Hackert, 2009, 2012; Heller, 2008; Kramsch, 1997; Shuck, 2006).

Behind this one nation-one-language-one culture nationalist discourse, the concept of the native speaker emerged (Hackert, 2012). As a native speaker of a language, one embodied the culture, history, traditions, etc., of the nation. Furthermore, being a native speaker was a birthright, a status based on one’s racial/ethnic background (Bonfiglio, 2013; Hutton, 1999). One of the most prominent supporters of these beliefs was the German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803).

According to Hackert (2012), Herder saw language as the primary means to connect individual members of a nation. Hackert further explains that Herder saw the national language as expressing the national spirit because “it embodied the collective experience of a nation by conserving all of the thoughts and emotions that had occurred in its history” (p. 192). What all this meant was that one had to be born in a particular nation in order to be considered a real, authentic speaker of the national language, which in turn, allowed one to truly understand the national spirit. Conversely, Herder saw speaking a foreign language as being inauthentic, being out of touch with a nation’s culture, etc. Simply put, a foreign speaker could claim no connection to native speakers. Perhaps this view is why Herder believed “a Volk [people, original emphasis], a nation, a culture, a polity must be homogenous—diversity is unnatural and destructive of the bonds of sentiment that hold a people together” (Bauman & Briggs, 2003, p. 180).

Therefore, we can see in Herder a fear that ‘nonnative’ speakers will threaten national unity. Later, the German scholars of the Nazi period inherited this fear in their articulation of linguistic/racial theories that justified anti-Semitism. In fact, Nazi scholars made the connection between language and race more explicit: “speaking a particular language goes together with a particular national or racial identity” (Hackert,

2012, p. 201). For these scholars, to speak a different language and to be a different race meant that one had a unique worldview from other peoples (Hutton, 1999).16 As such, “different languages[/races] embodied different cultural and ethical values” (Hutton, 1999, p. 4). Furthermore, from a Herderian view, this belief meant that foreigners could not co-exist with citizens of a nation because they simply valued different things or acted in different ways. In short, the former could not embrace the national spirit.

While these scholars saw a connection between language and race, they saw the latter as having more influence over/than the former. For example, even though linguists admitted that racial outsiders could share some of the worldview of Germans if they spoke German, they believed that the race of these outsiders prevented them from becoming true insiders (Hutton, 1999). In fact, since race was believed to embody ethics, customs, sense of justice, etc., racial outsiders who spoke German would “become corrupters of that language” (Hutton, 1999, p. 99) because they would be injecting their racialized customs, worldview, etc., into the language, thereby making it deficient.

The above points are eerily reminiscent of the belief that racialized speakers of World Englishes make Standard English deficient by incorporating indigenous language features, etc., into the language

(e.g., Jenkins, 2003; Kachru, 1996; Mirchandani, 2012). By having racialized speakers ‘contaminate’

English with their local languages/cultures, English would cease to be English (i.e., English speakers from different countries would be unable to understand one another) (Widdowson, 1994). Perhaps as a reaction to this diversification of English and its speakers, the Britain and the United States of the nineteenth century also adopted similar notions of European/German nationalism as described above.

In fact, during this time period in particular, an ideology of Anglo-Saxonism was adopted in both countries as a way to define ‘true’ British and American citizens on linguistic/racial grounds. Part of Anglo-

16This belief would be an example of the strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that “makes the claim that the structure of the language one habitually uses influences the manner in which one thinks and behaves” (Kramsch, 1998, p. 11). The strong version of this hypothesis states that our language determines how we think. Thus, speakers of different languages think differently.

Saxonism was believing that since the origins of English could be traced back to the Anglo-Saxons,

English-speaking people thus had Anglo-Saxon blood (Hackert, 2012). Having this blood and language signified that English native speakers had inherited Anglo-Saxon strengths such as “an expansionist drive, a youthful and manly character, and an emphasis on political liberties” (Hackert, 2009, p. 312). Particularly in the American context, this racial exceptionalism of the Anglo-Saxons certainly justified colonial expansion and the right to govern over inferior nonwhite peoples (e.g., Greenberg, 1982; Hackert, 2012;

Schmidt, 2002). This point is important because Anglo-Saxonism did not refer to one nation (which is contrary to the ideas about European nationalism as described above), but to one race.

As such, all White native speakers of English, regardless of country, were connected by their

Anglo-Saxon blood. Kumar (2003) expands on this point by stating that Anglo-Saxonism “referred to a whole civilization or way of life; it included not just England, but the United States, Canada, Australia, New

Zealand and other territories where English people had settled” (p. 206). The fact that English-speaking people had managed to take control of various territories around the world further emphasized the overall superiority of the Anglo-Saxon way of life. What connected all of these nations was the English language as proudly expressed by Meiklejohn (1899):

The English Language.—The English language is the speech spoken by the Anglo-Saxon race in England, in most parts of Scotland, in the larger part of Ireland, in the United States, in Canada, in Australia and New Zealand, in South Africa, and in many other parts of the world. In the middle of the fifth century it was spoken by a few thousand men who had lately landed in England from the Continent: it is now spoken by more than one hundred millions of people. In the course of the next sixty years, it will probably be the speech of two hundred millions (as cited in Hackert, 2012, p. 231).

Implied in Meiklejohn is the idea that English belongs to those individuals who are Anglo-Saxon in blood.

Also implied is that since English is the language of these dominant White groups, it must also be the primary or sole language of their respective nations due to its growing number of speakers.

This point has been encapsulated in recent attempts to implement English-only language policies in the United States, which imply that speaking English is ‘speaking American’ (Lippi-Green, 2012).

Schmidt (2002) clearly articulates this notion when he argues that

a conjunction of the hegemonic position of the dominant English language and the socially constructed normalization of whiteness creates an ideological context within which Americans speaking languages other than English, and whose origins lie in continents other than Europe, are racialized as alien outsiders, as Others [original emphasis] (p. 142).

Subtirelu (2013) provides evidence for Schmidt’s argument in his critical discourse analysis of critiques of a revised bill requiring the provision of multilingual voting materials. For example, some of the keywords that assimilation advocates often used to describe ‘nonnative’-English speakers included “immigrants, foreign,

Mexico, and Hispanics [original emphasis]” (Subtirelu, 2013, p. 11). What these words imply is that to speak another language is to be from another world.

Perhaps as a way to mask these racist sentiments, Schmidt (2002) mentions how assimilationists do not endorse a complete expulsion of minority languages from the country. Rather, they emphasize that

“ethnolinguistic diversity in the U.S. is best understood as a private matter [original emphasis]” (Schmidt,

2002, p. 152). That is, if individuals wish to retain their ethnic languages, they should do so at home rather than rely on the government for support. This relegation of minority languages to the private realm is quite similar to what has happened in the Canadian context.

Like the United States and England as described above, “Whiteness has defined the Canadian nation” (Agnew, 2007, p. 21). However, in contrast to these countries that have proclaimed themselves to be monolingual/monocultural, Canada is seen as a White settler bi-cultural nation ‘founded’ by both the

English and French (Haque, 2012; Haque & Cray, 2006). As these two cultures founded the nation, it is quite obvious that their respective languages would come to dominate Canada.17 Indeed, as Haque and

Cray (2006) clearly state, both English and French gained the status of official languages “through a

17Since the present study focuses on the English language, I will not discuss French in detail.

54 historical dismissal of Aboriginal languages…[and] also as the result of marginalizing all other minority languages” (p. 73).

This marginalization of other Canadian languages was strengthened through the findings of the

Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism (B and B Commission) that started in the 1960s.18 As

Haque (2012) describes, the B and B Commission further emphasized language/race as a boundary separating segments of Canadian society, with some groups being favoured more than others. More specifically, Haque explains that the commission solidified the role of English and French as official and dominant languages in various aspects of public life, while relegating other languages to the private realm where they do not receive any institutional support. Thus, in the end, the B and B Commission emphasized that to truly integrate into Canadian public life, to be a true Canadian, one must acquire English or French, which were/are associated with Canada’s original White settlers.

While the B and B Commission sought to unite the multicultural nation through these two official languages, it can be argued that Canadian language policy has continued to marginalize ‘nonnative’ speakers of English. This point can be particularly expressed through a brief examination of the Language

Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC) policy, which was established in 1992 by the Canadian government. Recognizing that language is the fastest way to fully integrate new Canadians in the social/political/economic realm, the government offers LINC to immigrants in their first year in the country

(Haque & Cray, 2006). LINC may seem noble at first, but it does suffer from some problems.

18According to Haque (2012), the B and B Commission was established by the Liberal government “as a response to growing nationalist sentiment among French Canadians in Quebec” (p. 5). The specific mandate of the commission was to

inquire into and report upon the existing state of bilingualism and biculturalism in Canada and to recommend what steps should be taken to develop the Canadian Confederation on the basis of an equal partnership between the two founding races, taking into account the contribution made by the other ethnic groups to the cultural enrichment of Canada and the measures that should be taken to safeguard that contribution (Canada, Book I, 1967, as cited in Haque 2012, p. 5).

Namely, one issue with LINC is that it “defines newcomers as having no official language competency or awareness of Canadian culture and values” (Haque & Cray, 2006, p. 82). Therefore, it views ‘nonnative’ speakers of English from a deficit perspective. That is, stating that newcomers do not know English (or French) implies that they do not know the important language(s). It also “denies recognition of the value and legitimacy of their first language(s)” (Haque & Cray, 2006, p 83). Moreover, the belief that newcomers have no knowledge of Canadian culture suggests that born-and-raised

Canadians are the only ones who can teach the national culture. This point is Herderian in nature as it suggests that native-speaking Canadians are the carriers of national culture.

In the context of ESOL teaching, I have already mentioned these points in my discussion of the studies by Lasagabaster and Sierra (2005), Benke and Medgyes (2005), and Mahboob (2004), who all report that students see native speakers of English as being better able to teach English-speaking culture than their ‘nonnative’ counterparts. As Amin (1997, 2000, 2004) explains in the Canadian context, since students are invested in learning English because they are immigrants (and must learn to adapt to a new country), they desire a teacher who has insider knowledge of this culture (meaning someone who was born and raised in Canada). For some students then, the ideal teacher has to embody Canadian culture, which comes in the form of a Canadian-born, White native speaker of English.

Racialized immigrant ESOL teachers may come to internalize these student beliefs as exemplified by the private-language-school teachers in Hodge’s (2005) study. For instance, Lee, originally from

Singapore, stated how she felt self-conscious about teaching Canadian culture (in the form of slang, etc.) because she had little knowledge in that area. In fact, she held the fear that she would be discovered as a

“language teacher imposter” (Hodge, 2005, p. 102) because of her lack of cultural knowledge about

Canada. The use of the word ‘imposter’ is interesting because it implies that someone is not supposed to be in a particular place. In the case of ‘nonnative’ speakers/teachers of English, this word suggests that if they fail to gain the cultural knowledge of native speakers, they should exit the ESOL classroom.

This idea of racialized speakers of English being imposters is a useful way to conclude this section.

As described earlier, while racialized ‘nonnative’ speakers may achieve the same or even surpass the linguistic and pedagogical competence of a native speaker, they cannot imitate the latter’s race. That is, if they are born nonwhite, they cannot fool those who believe that White individuals from the Inner Circle are the true native speakers of English. This idea that racialized speakers of English are failed imposters can be a driving force behind the racial microaggressions that nonwhite teachers experience. Another driving force behind microaggressions is the widespread employment discrimination that racialized teachers face in the ESOL industry. Indeed, since nonwhite speakers of English do not embody linguistic and pedagogical superiority, they may be deemed deficient service providers. Before venturing to explain this point in the following section, I must mention my use of the words native and ‘nonnative.’

As discussed throughout this section, there are numerous problems with naming individuals as either native or ‘nonnative’ speakers of English. Perhaps the biggest issue with these terms is that they maintain a false notion of a superior Self and an inferior Other (e.g., Brutt-Griffler & Samimy, 1999; Hodge,

2005; Pennycook, 1998). Indeed, Cook (1999) mentions how we have come to see ‘nonnative’ speakers as “failed native speakers” (p. 195). As a way to escape this Self-Other dichotomy, various scholars have proposed new names to describe those with differing relationships to English.

For instance, Cook (1999) uses the generic term L2 user in place of ‘nonnative’ speaker (although he still uses ‘native speaker’). Rampton (1990) gets rid of both terms as he argues that instead of using nativeness to describe users of English, we should use expertise as it “shifts the emphasis from ‘who you are’ to ‘what you know’” (p. 99). Since “expertise is learned [rather than] fixed or innate” (Rampton, 1990, p. 98), a ‘nonnative’ speaker can become a native speaker through proper education, etc. While the use of expert seems promising, it may perpetuate a Self-Other dichotomy because fluent users of English may be deemed experts while non-fluent ones may be called non-experts (Jenkins, 2003). In order to avoid this problem, Jenkins (2003) proposes the use of the following terms: Monolingual English Speaker (for those

57 who only speak English); Bilingual English Speaker (for those who are proficient in both English and another language); and Non-Bilingual English Speaker (for individuals who have mastered one language and may have some competence in English, but are not yet fully proficient in it).

Even though I admire these attempts to dismantle the native/‘nonnative’ distinction, I choose not to adopt any of the above terms because there is no scholarly/public consensus on which of these terms should replace native and ‘nonnative.’ Another reason why I retain this dichotomy is because the participants of this study use native and ‘nonnative’ to describe themselves. In fact, as I view my participants as sources of knowledge, I do not dictate how they should (not) describe their linguistic identities. However, I continue to use ‘nonnative’ in quotation marks because there are no concrete criteria to determine who is a ‘nonnative’ speaker. In fact, we only understand what ‘nonnative’ speakers cannot do in relation to native speakers: they are less fluent than native speakers, they do not know how to teach pronunciation, they are not Canadian, they are nonwhite, and so on and so forth.

The use of these negative prefixes and adverbs signals the overall negative status of the

‘nonnative’ speaker of English. The ‘nonnative’ speaker is devalued when compared to the native speaker, especially when the former is racialized. This devaluing happens in the realm of employment, which is an issue that I discuss below with regard to embodiment in service work and the ESOL industry.

Embodiment in Service Work and the ESOL Industry

Indeed, the appearance of ESOL instructors can determine their (lack of) worth in the eyes of students, colleagues, and/or employers. As described in the previous section, if they are White, they are exceptional. Conversely, being nonwhite signals deficiency. Viewed from this perspective, ESOL teachers are similar to other service workers because their service is judged on what they look like (McDowell,

2009). This judgment may be unavoidable as appearance/bodies play(s) a vital role in the provision of services. In fact, according to Wolkowitz (2002), “the distinctive feature of service work is its relationship to

58 the body, both the body of the service provider and the service recipient, rather than (disembodied) social interactions” (as cited in Pettinger, 2004, p. 177). To repeat, service work requires bodies.

Macdonald and Sirianni (1996) echo the above points as they argue that face-to-face interactions are an essential part of service work. McDowell (2009) further explains that the co-presence of both the service worker and customer is necessary as the latter consumes the ‘product’ that the former creates during the interaction.19 Therefore, restaurant servers need diners in order to take the orders of the latter.

Nurses require sick patients to care for. A hairstylist can only cut a client’s hair if the client decides to enter the salon. In the case of ESOL teaching, language teachers cannot teach a particular grammar point without the presence of students.20

However, there is much more to service work than the mere co-presence of the service worker and client. Indeed, “the personal embodied attributes of workers enter into the exchange process in a direct way” (McDowell, 2009, p. 9) as clients make judgment calls on these attributes when determining the value of the service. McDowell (2009) provides the following examples:

When we ask for a waiter’s advice about what to choose to eat, or consult a stylist about what might suit us, we evaluate their advice not just on the basis of the technical information that they might give us but also on the basis of what we think about them: whether we find them sympathetic and trustworthy, whether they are personable, friendly, standoffish, even aggressive, whether we admire or resent their youthful good looks or their facial piercings and fashionable dress (p. 9).

Therefore, the physical and higher-order traits of service workers also play a role in the effectiveness of the service in the eyes of clients. If customers have a positive impression of the embodied attributes of a worker, then they will deem the service positive. Conversely, if these clients hold a negative opinion about any of a worker’s traits, then they will see the service as unsatisfactory.

19As Macdonald and Sirianni (1996) note, voice-to-voice interactions also constitute service work as in the case of call centres. In fact, Mirchandani (2012) states, “[u]nlike many other forms of service work where workers and customers interact face-to-face, call center agents are embodied through voice” (p.16). 20Today, language education is not always dependent on flesh-and-blood teachers. In fact, many language learners may learn a new language through such things as online programs.

Perhaps as a method to avoid such a negative perception, “managers attempt to match the ‘type’ of service provider with their assumptions concerning the customer’s expectations of the nature and meaning of the service” (Macdonald & Merrill, 2009, p. 115). If customers expect certain bodies to perform certain services, then businesses also adopt the same viewpoint in order to attract and/or retain their clientele. Therefore, employers, like customers, see “the embodied attributes of workers [as] part of the service—their height, weight, looks, attitudes are part of the exchange” (McDowell, 2009, p. 9). Moreover, as McDowell (2009) notes, these embodied attributes are most often determined by widely-held perceptions about such social markers as gender, race/ethnicity, class, age, and so on and so forth. Let me illustrate the above arguments using gender and race/ethnicity as primary examples.

With respect to gender, employers may seek female rather than male service workers because of the belief that the former embody feminine traits like docility and empathy, which are characteristics especially desired in retail jobs, for example (e.g., Macdonald & Sirianni, 1996; McDowell, 2009; Williams,

2006; Williams & Connell, 2010). Gender may also intersect with race/ethnicity as evident in the tourism industry. For instance, in her discussion of the racial and gender stratification of labour in Cuba’s all- inclusive beach resorts, Cabezas (2006) found that the perceived hyper-sexuality of Afro-Cuban women was exploited in the entertainment sector where the women were expected to be very flirtatious, etc., with guests. With these examples, notions of race and/or gender help create the ideal worker for various forms of service work. Additionally, these notions also dictate who is not the ideal worker.

This point is particularly relevant for Black men as they are suffer from a variety of stereotypes that conflict with notions of the ideal service worker who is polite and docile. In fact, Black men are subject to

“gendered racist stereotypes…[that] emphasize the dangerous, threatening attributes associated with Black men and Black masculinity, framing Black men as threats to white women, prone to criminal behavior, and especially violent” (Wingfield, 2009, pp. 9-10). As such, employers may believe that Black men do not possess and/or are incapable of acquiring the soft skills needed for low-level service work (Moss & Tilly,

1996). Moreover, when Black men are service workers, they may experience hostility from clients. For example in the case of Wingfield’s (2009) study on Black male nurses, some nurses reported having patients express discomfort or fear of being cared for by a Black man.

Whether they are a means to vilify certain workers (as in the case of Black male nurses) or to find the ideal worker (as in the case of Afro-Cuban women), employers/clients use racial/ethnic and other social markers as “indicators of the nature of the service itself” (Macdonald & Merrill, 2009, p. 125). Therefore, we come to realize that “service work has become a major source of group stereotypes and prejudices”

(Williams, 2006, p. 95). This perpetuation of stereotypes in service work is not accidental. Rather, it is strategic. In fact, as I have said earlier, “employers take customers’ stereotypes into account and then hire a person who will fit these stereotypes or fulfill their corporate ‘brand’” (Macdonald & Merrill, 2009, p. 122).

The above point is an example of aesthetic labour, which Warhurst and Nickson (2007) define as the following:

Aesthetic labour is the employment of workers with desired corporeal dispositions…These dispositions are, to an extent, possessed by workers at the point of entry to employment. However, and importantly, employers then mobilize, develop and commodify these dispositions through processes of recruitment, selection, training, monitoring, discipline and reward, reconfiguring them as ‘skills’ intended to produce a ‘style’ of service encounter that appeals to the senses of customers, most usually visually or aurally…[Aesthetic labour creates commercial benefits for companies] because in aesthetic laboring employees contribute to the production and portrayal of a distinct and defined corporate image or, more prosaically, are simply…attractive to customers and so likely to enhance initial and repeat custom (p. 107).

What Karlsson (2012) stresses from this detailed explanation is the idea that “aesthetic labour means corporeal dispositions in people that employers can commodify and exploit to their advantage when competing with other firms” (p. 54). Indeed, Witz, Warhurst, and Nickson (2003) describe how aesthetic labour is truly embodied labour as service workers are told by employers how to look, act, and speak in ways that are pleasing to the customer and thus, profitable for the business. This point highlights how

61 aesthetic labour has been colloquially perceived as the work of “looking good and sounding right” (Warhurst

& Nickson, 2001, as cited in Karlsson, p. 53).

This work of looking good and sounding right is exemplified in Williams and Connell’s (2010) study of service workers in American high-end retail stores. In fact, Williams and Connell document how these

“stores prefer to hire class-privileged workers because they embody particular styles and mannerisms that match their specialized brands” (p. 349). The stores exploited these styles and mannerisms by requiring workers to wear the clothing of these stores as well as having them use scripted language to entice customers to buy more products, etc. Therefore, the retail workers were expected to look and sound the part as defined by the stores. Williams and Connell note that workers were not only recruited on the basis of class, but also on gender and race (with White females perceived to have the right aesthetic). This point leads to another important aspect of aesthetic labour. That is, aesthetic labour attributes and skills are partly determined by intersecting social markers such as gender, class, race/ethnicity, age, and attractiveness (e.g., Karlsson, 2012; Pettinger, 2004; Macdonald & Merrill, 2009; Witz et al., 2003). The

‘right’ intersecting markers may result in employment, while the ‘wrong’ ones may not.

Williams and Connell’s (2010) study is also representative of the fact that much of the current literature on aesthetic labour/embodiment focuses on the retail and hospitality industries (e.g., Gruys, 2012;

Karlsson, 2012; McDowell, Batnitzky, & Dyer, 2007; Pettinger, 2004; Warhurst & Nickson, 2007; Williams,

2006; Witz et al., 2003). As Macdonald and Merrill (2009) rightly note, this focus on the retail and hospitality industries creates the false idea that aesthetic labour only occurs in these fields. However, they state that this kind of labour “exists in all customer service jobs” (Macdonald & Merrill, 2009, p. 123).

Perhaps other scholars have taken note of this point as we have seen aesthetic labour studied in unique workplace contexts such as call centres in India (e.g., Mirchandani, 2012; Nath, 2011) and fashion modelling (e.g., Wissinger, 2012). Despite delving into unique work contexts such as these, the literature

62 has not explicitly named ESOL teaching as embodied service work. While ESOL teaching has not been named in this way, it does not mean that aesthetic labour does not exist in this context.

Indeed, ESOL teaching is all about looking good and sounding right, albeit in a broader sense. As described in the previous section, ESOL teachers are judged on their race and language ability as seen in the belief that White native speakers of English are the best users and teachers of the language (e.g.,

Amin, 1997, 1999, 2000, 2004, 2005, 2006; Braine, 2010; Breckenridge & Erling, 2011; Curtis & Romney,

2006; Faez, 2012; Hansen, 2004; Javier, 2010; Kubota, 2002; Kubota & Lin, 2006; Liu, 1999; Mahboob,

2011; McFarland, 2005; Motha, 2006; Romney, 2010; Ruecker, 2011; Shin & Kubota, 2008; Sung, 2011).

From the perspective of aesthetic labour then, to look good is to be White; to sound right is to be a native speaker (which implies that one is a speaker of Standard English) (e.g., Kubota & Lin, 2006).21

Viewing ESOL teaching as a form of aesthetic labour or embodied service work in general is important as this type of teaching is not necessarily typical service work. In fact, Walker (2013) mentions how ESOL students/clients are not only co-producers of a service (i.e., they must be present in order for the service to occur), but are also the co-creators of the value of the service. That is, unlike mundane interactions such as ordering a meal at a restaurant, students may see value in using the service. Thus, they may enjoy having their teachers teach them a new language because they feel that they are making real progress. However, part of seeing value in a service is the client’s perception of the worker providing the service (Macdonald & Merrill, 2009). If students find teachers pleasing or attractive, then their teaching is also pleasing. In the ESOL context, employers rely on the aesthetic labour of White ESOL teachers in order for students to see value in (and thus, spend money on) their classes.

I argue that much of this aesthetic labour happens during the recruitment process where schools seek out White native speakers of English to teach their classes. However, this racist preference for White

21Some scholars such as Macdonald and Merrill (2009), Williams and Connell (2010), and Wissinger (2012) have stressed the need to look at how aesthetic labour is racialized. I address this need in my present discussion.

63 teachers is often masked by the use of the term ‘native speaker’ in job advertisements (e.g., Davies, 2003).

While these advertisements emphasize that the native speaker is “the best embodiment of the target and norm for learners” (Phillipson, 1992, p. 194), they also end up emphasizing that this embodiment is largely determined by national and racial origin. In fact, a large number of private-language schools in Asia in particular have expressed explicit preference for White native speakers from such Inner-Circle countries as the United States, England, and Canada, and consequently, shun both racialized native and ‘nonnative’ speakers (e.g., Braine, 2010; Heron, 2006; Hsu, 2005; Kubota, 2002; Kubota & Fujimoto, 2013; Mahboob,

2011; McFarland, 2005; Romney, 2010; Ruecker, 2011; Sung, 2011). As Hsu (2005) mentions, this demand for White teachers is so great that schools in China will hire White ‘nonnative’ speakers from various European countries (which is an issue that I have discussed on page 47).

Using the language of aesthetic labour, this widespread hiring of White teachers over nonwhite ones signifies how the former have the ‘look’ desired by customers. Schools seem to exploit this look in a variety of ways. For example, schools may display pictures of White teachers on textbooks and promotional materials in order to entice customers to learn English (e.g., Mackie, 2003). Or they may place

White native speakers in prestigious leadership positions in order to increase their prestige in the eyes of

(potential) customers (e.g., Lin, 2006). This commodification of White bodies in the ESOL context can be described as an example of racial capitalism as ESOL schools use Whiteness as a way to increase their economic wealth and overall prestige (Leong, 2013).

However, the commodification of White bodies is not only based on ideas of superior language and teaching ability, but also on the exoticness of English-speaking culture. Indeed, especially in the Asian context, the teacher is expected to play the role of the cultural outsider who imparts knowledge on to the learners (Mackie, 2003). For instance, Mackie (2003), recounting her experiences as a White female

ESOL teacher in China, mentions how in the classroom, she was expected to impart her knowledge on “all

64 manner of things, including dancing, music, world history, classic English literature, movie stars, sports rules and heroes and so on” (p. 31). This role of exotic outsider can also lead to tokenism.

In fact, in their examination of the experiences of several White native speakers of English in

Japanese schools, Breckenridge and Erling (2011) explain that some of their participants felt that they were placed in classes simply to “reinforce rather than break down stereotypes about Westerners” (p. 92). In fact, many of them were placed in classrooms as the token White person who served as a spoken model for various class activities. As one participant put it, “So, I’m sort of—look at the white girl—that’s my role”

(p. 92). Therefore, these teachers come to be fetishized by students. They are living objects to be admired and imitated. Of course, this fetishization may take on a truly sexual nature.

This point is exemplified in Appleby’s (2013) study of the experiences of White male Australian teachers working in private-conversation schools in Japan. Appleby explored how these teachers are favourably viewed by their Japanese female customers as they embody a Western sexual allure that appeals to these women who dream of romance and exotic experiences. As Kubota (2011) adds, since

White Western men are perceived to be “more chivalrous, romantic, and sophisticated than Japanese men”

(p. 481), they become sexually attractive in the eyes of Japanese women. Taking notice of these perceptions about White men, Appleby suggests that the pairing of White male teachers with female students is a conscious decision of various schools in order to associate the learning of English with exotic romance and fantasy. Thus, this study is an instance of aesthetic labour where the schools exploit the embodied qualities of White male teachers in order to generate further business.

Aside from the pairing of teachers and students, Appleby’s (2013) study exemplifies how aesthetic labour is also shaped by the intersecting embodied attributes of workers (e.g., Karlsson, 2012; Pettinger,

2004; Macdonald & Merrill, 2009; Witz et al., 2003). In fact, in addition to being White and native speakers of English, the masculinity and heterosexuality of Appleby’s participants were exploited by the conversation schools in order to attract heterosexual female clients. Indeed, it is the White, masculine, heterosexual,

65 native-speaking man from the West who embodies exoticism and adventure; not any other combination.22

If the female Japanese students had a female or homosexual teacher, they might feel that they would have no chance of developing a close relationship leading to the exotic wonders of English.

While there may be desires for a specific type of White teacher as suggested by Appleby (2013), for the purposes of this study, I emphasize that Whiteness in general is the primary embodied trait that is desired in the ESOL industry. Moreover, this clear preference for White teachers simultaneously means a devaluing of racialized teachers of all backgrounds. For instance, in Hong Kong, Heron (2006) reported on a survey asking various language schools and potential clients for their views on their preferred ESOL teacher. The findings were that 67 percent of schools and 47 percent of clients preferred White teachers over nonwhite ones. Having a Western/White appearance was seen as more valued than qualifications, etc., as on average, White teachers were paid more than their racialized peers.

According to McFarland (2005), similar sentiments and practices exist in China where various schools maintain a hiring hierarchy based on appearance. In fact, this hierarchy goes as follows: White native speakers of English with superior qualifications are hired first; then average White native speakers, highly-qualified racialized native speakers, and White ‘nonnative’ speakers; and finally, racialized

‘nonnative’ speakers. Therefore, racialized teachers are hired, but they are low on the priority list of various employers. When racialized instructors are hired, they are not necessarily given higher-level teaching positions. This point is clearly expressed in Govardhan’s (2006) narrative of his experience as an Indian

ESOL teacher working in Nigeria:

When I started working in the Nigerian school system, I realized that in spite of my advanced degrees and several years of teaching experience, the state public service commission had placed me lower than native English speakers who had only bachelor’s degrees and in some cases no experience at all. For example, White Canadians with bachelor’s degrees were placed at a higher grade level than I was, although I had the highest qualifications among all of the teachers in the school. What was more disturbing

22Mahboob (2011) might add that youth is also another embodied attribute that schools and customers desire. This preference for young teachers can obviously lead to instances of ageism.

was that one of my colleagues did not even possess a college degree, and yet the authorities thought that, by virtue of being a native speaker of English, this individual was qualified to teach English (p. 140).

Govardhan’s (2006) narrative suggests that one’s racial/ethnic identity trumps one’s skills and qualifications (Macdonald & Merrill, 2009). Even if Govardhan was the most qualified to teach English, his

Indian identity made him the least qualified in the eyes of employers. This example from Nigeria thus echoes the institutional racism that happens in many parts of Asia as described above. However, as the current study focuses on the experiences of racialized teachers in Canada (specifically Toronto), we must examine if similar racist practices and/or beliefs exist in the Canadian context.

This task might prove difficult as “Canada has legislation against hiring discrimination” (Amin, 2006, p. 151) and thus, overt preferences for White native speakers would not be seen in job postings. However, the teachers in Hodge’s (2005) study mention how Asian and nonwhite teachers are noticeably absent in the promotional materials and marketing trips of their private-language school, which suggests that this business is trying to appeal to international students’ preference for White teachers. Aside from their absence in school advertising, one of Hodge’s participants suggests that various schools choose not to hire immigrant teachers. However, we must take Hodge’s findings with a grain of salt because there is no concrete evidence of Canadian schools discriminating against nonwhite teachers.23

Perhaps the only form of hiring discrimination in the Western context that can be documented concerns the preference for native speakers of English.24 For example, Mahboob, Uhrig, Newman, and

Hartford’s (2004) survey of 118 administrators of college-level ESOL programs in the United States found that most of these administrators saw native-speaker status as an important hiring criterion. Moreover,

Mahboob et al. discovered that “the more importance program administrators give to the ‘native English

23As I discuss later, the teachers of this study do support this point as suggested by their individual experiences with institutional racism in Toronto. 24Although Mahboob (2006) reports on his own experience of employment discrimination at an American university on page 81, he does not necessarily suggest that this discrimination is systematic.

67 speaker’ criterion, the smaller the number of [‘nonnative’ speakers] employed in their programs will be” (p.

115). In the context of the United Kingdom, Clark and Paran (2007) came to similar findings as they note that most of the 90 ESOL institutions that were surveyed saw native-speaker status as an important criterion when hiring teachers. What is interesting about both studies is that the investigators found no explicit preference for specific ethnicities. Once again, perhaps the reason for this lack of racism is due to the fact that these countries have stricter anti-discrimination laws than other nations.

What is equally interesting about Clark and Paran’s (2007) study in particular is that private- language schools were the group with the highest preference for native speakers. The pair suggests that this preference exists as these institutions are not publicly funded and thus, have no specific accountability to address discrimination in their hiring practices. Therefore, the lack of regulation for private ESOL schools may encourage employment discrimination. This danger may also be present in the Canadian context as ESOL schools are subject to little educational/labour regulation (Breshears, 2008).

This lack of regulation of Canadian ESOL schools may allow some of these schools to employ dubious tactics to attract international student-customers. More specifically, they may come to make

Whiteness a selling point in their ESOL education (e.g., Abrile, 2006; Hodge, 2005). As we have seen,

Whiteness has both social and market value from the perspective of students and employers (Li, 1998).

White native speakers are socially valued as excellent teachers of English (due to their embodied attributes) and this social value translates into economic worth as these individuals are chosen for jobs that are denied to racialized speakers. Therefore, we can return to the CRT tenet of Whiteness as property:

“the notion that whiteness itself has value for its possessor and conveys a host of privileges and benefits”

(Delgado & Stefancic, 2012, p. 174). Racialized teachers are denied access to this property on account of their appearance. Thus, employers and students may think that these teachers do not have what it takes to be effective ESOL instructors. This prejudice against racialized teachers can result in negative interactions between both parties, namely in the form of racial microaggressions.

Concluding Remarks

Before defining racial microaggressions, it is important to summarize the driving forces behind them in the ESOL context. If we look backwards, racialized individuals, because they are nonwhite, do not embody what employers and students desire in an ESOL instructor. Being nonwhite is significant here because it signifies that one is a ‘nonnative’ speaker of English (Kubota & Lin, 2006), which in turn, signifies that one is a deficient user of the language. Because English is associated with Whiteness (e.g., Motha,

2006), even nonwhite native speakers are deemed ‘nonnative.’

The above points are obviously intertwined with CRT and The Three Rs. Indeed, the employer and student desire for White teachers and conversely, the lack of desire for nonwhite teachers showcase how races have a high or low market value (Li, 1998). Certain races are valued because they house valuable traits, which in the current context, is mostly native-speaker proficiency. Determining this proficiency requires a process of racialization in which phenotype is used to identify who is (not) a native speaker.

That is, White bodies are native while nonwhite ones are ‘nonnative’ (Kubota & Lin, 2006). This racialization is often negative and thus results in racism, which is an ideology that states that White native speakers of English are superior to all other racialized speakers. This ideology of racism manifests itself culturally (as seen in how White native speakers are thought to know the best pedagogical practices) and institutionally (as seen in how White native speakers are perceived as the ideal service worker). Of course, the ideology also comes to life in everyday interactions, which is known as everyday racism, a concept very much related to racial microaggressions (Solórzano & Pérez Huber, 2012).

The reader must note that not every microaggression reported in this study can be explained by the above forces (as evident in my discussion of intersectionality). However, these forces do help to explain the majority of them. For those microaggressions that are not related to The Three Rs, native and

‘nonnative’ speakers, and/or embodiment, I detail the explanatory forces as they emerge. For now, let us gain a better understanding of racial microaggressions and their impact on teachers in the next chapter.

Chapter Three: Understanding Racial Microaggressions and Their Impact on Teacher Identities

After briefly repeating their connection to everyday racism and critical race theory (CRT), I provide a detailed definition of racial microaggressions in this chapter. I then look at the English for Speakers of

Other Languages (ESOL) literature that describes instances of microaggressions committed by employers, colleagues, and/or students against racialized teachers. The second half explores the theoretical literature on (teachers’ professional) identities, interpellation, and identity work in order to showcase how microaggressions may influence professional identities. Following this section, I briefly explore the professional effects of and responses to microaggressions in the ESOL literature. I conclude the chapter by stating how the current study contributes to the literature.

What Exactly are Racial Microaggressions?

In the last chapter, I mentioned several tenets of CRT that are important for the current study. One tenet that I wish to re-state is the belief that “racism is part of our everyday reality” (López, 2003, p. 84).

This point is certainly true for racialized people of all backgrounds. Take the following example from Gloria

Ladson-Billings (1998), a prominent CRT scholar who describes an incident in a hotel after giving a lecture at a major university:

One of the nice perks that comes with these lecture “gigs” is a decent hotel. This one was no exception. My accommodation [sic] were on the hotel’s VIP floor—equipped with special elevator access key and private lounge on the top floor overlooking the city. As I stepped off the elevator, I decided to go into the VIP lounge, read the newspaper, and have a drink. I arrived early, just before the happy hour, and no one else was in the lounge. I took a seat on one of the couches and began catching up on the day’s news. Shortly after I sat down comfortably with my newspaper, a White man peeked his head into the lounge, looked at me sitting there in my best (and conservative) “dress for success” outfit—high heels and all—and said with a pronounced Southern accent, “What time are y’all gonna be servin’?” (p. 8).

69 70

While this story is uneventful, the message behind it is not. Most likely, the man thought that Ladson-

Billings was a server at the hotel because he held the notion that African American women (Ladson-Billings is an African American woman) are poor and that they work in low-level service jobs.

Ladson-Billings’ (1998) narrative is very similar to Essed’s (1990) notion of everyday racism where racialized individuals experience small acts of racism in their day-to-day contact with White people. For

Essed, the above story exemplifies how everyday racism subtly reinforces an ideology of White superiority and Black subservience (in this specific instance). In the CRT literature, everyday racism is often called by another name which I will now explore in greater detail: racial microaggressions.

Indeed, as I have mentioned before, everyday racism and racial microaggressions have an explicit connection as Solórzano and Pérez Huber (2012) comment that these “microaggressions are one form of systemic everyday racism used to keep those at the racial margins in place” (p. 1489). Moreover, the relationship between the study of racial microaggressions and CRT is explicit as both are concerned with recognizing and exposing covert racism that racialized individuals deal with on a daily basis (Minikel-

Lacocque, 2013). But what exactly are racial microaggressions? Up until this point, I have only spoken of them in a general sense, without any specific mention of their origins, how they operate, etc. In order to truly understand the concept of racial microaggressions, we must venture into the fields of psychiatry and psychology, where the concept first emerged.

In fact, the concept of microaggressions was introduced by Chester M. Pierce, a prominent professor of psychiatry in the United States. Pierce (1995) describes microaggressions as mechanisms of sexism and racism and gives the following definition:

These are subtle, innocuous, preconscious, or unconscious degradations, and putdowns, often kinetic but capable of being verbal and/or kinetic. In and of itself a microaggression may seem harmless, but the cumulative burden of a lifetime of microaggressions can theoretically contribute to diminished mortality, augmented morbidity, and flattened confidence (p. 281).

For Pierce then, microaggressions are everyday indignities that when left unchecked over a period of time, can threaten one’s mental health. If looking at microaggressions based on racism, Pierce gives the example of a lone Black professor among a group of White professors being asked to move the chairs before a meeting can commence (perhaps implying that being Black entails being subservient to White people). By having to decide how to respond to microaggressions like this one, the professor and other racialized people may experience significant stress.25

The study of racial microaggressions does not stop with the work of Pierce. In fact, much of the current work on microaggressions comes from the field of psychology, and much of it is published by

Derald Wing Sue and his colleagues (Minikel-Lacocque, 2013). This current literature does not stray away from Pierce’s (1995) definition of (racial) microaggressions in any significant way. Rather, it expands on this definition by offering a fairly detailed taxonomy of microaggressions and their effects on various marginalized groups. I emphasize ‘various’ because microaggression literature examines discrimination based not only on race, but also on other identity markers such as gender, sexual orientation, disability, class, and religion (cf. Sue, 2010a, 2010b). For the purposes of this study, I pay particular attention to racial microaggressions (with some caveats explained later in this section).26

25This example also highlights aspects of everyday racism as discussed on pages 26 to 27. This fact is not surprising as racial microaggressions are considered forms of everyday racism (Solórzano & Pérez Huber, 2012). 26Readers with some familiarity with microaggressions may wonder why I do not focus on linguistic microaggressions, which can be described as daily indignities that marginalized individuals experience based on their language (Charity Hudley & Mallinson, 2014). As Charity Hudley and Mallinson (2014) explain, “[l]inguistic microaggressions can…interact with microaggressions based on ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, region of origin, and more” (p. 57). Therefore, the pair gives the following examples: African Americans being complimented for being articulate (implying that most African Americans are inarticulate); being criticized for sounding like a girl; or being criticized for sounding gay. It seems that Charity Hudley and Mallinson’s conception of linguistic microaggressions solely focuses on perpetrators’ comments on the actual language use of marginalized individuals, which is a reason why I do not refer to this type of microaggression in the current study. That is, racialized ESOL teachers may not only experience microaggressions based on how they use the language, but also on perceptions of their overall language ability. For example, a student may not take a nonwhite teacher’s grammar class because of the belief that the teacher would not be able to explain particular points very well. In this instance, race becomes a signifier (Jhally, 1996) for a teacher’s grammatical competence. Thus, I feel that racial microaggressions better explain the overall experiences of racialized ESOL instructors in private-language schools.

For Sue et al. (2007), “racial microaggressions are brief and commonplace daily, verbal, behavioral, and environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults to the target person or group” (p. 273). Moreover, racial microaggressions, like other types of microaggressions, “reflect the active manifestations of oppressive worldviews that create, foster, and enforce marginalization” (Sue, 2010b, p. 6). Therefore, we might say that racial microaggressions embody an ideology of racism that places some groups in powerful positions and others in marginalized positions (e.g., Essed, 1990; Henry et al., 1998; Miles, 1989). What Sue and his colleagues seem to suggest is that these microaggressions are everyday reminders of wider-held notions of various racialized/marginalized groups in our society.

As stated above, racial microaggressions not only manifest themselves verbally, but also bodily

(nonverbally) and environmentally (Sue, 2010a, 2010b; Sue et al., 2007). In contrast to interpersonal microaggressions based on verbal and/or body language, environmental microaggressions are “the numerous demeaning and threatening social, educational, political, or economic cues that are communicated individually, institutionally, or societally to marginalized groups” (Sue, 2010a, p. 25). For example, racialized office workers may notice and take offence to the fact that their workplace is primarily

White and/or the management is mostly White, which implies that people of colour are not truly valued in the workplace. While environmental microaggressions represent macro-level issues such as systemic and institutional racism, they are nevertheless relevant in explaining racial microaggressions as they can house various forms of microaggressions that I will mention below.

The first main form of racial microaggressions is the microassault. This type of microaggression is characterized as conscious and explicit racial derogations that are intended to hurt people of colour (e.g.,

Sue, 2010a, 2010b; Sue & Constantine, 2007; Sue et al., 2007). For example, Sue & Constantine (2007) mention how microassaults can be verbal as seen in the use of racial epithets. Moreover, Sue (2010b) mentions how they can be behavioural as seen when parents may prevent their children from dating a

73 person of another race, for example. Finally, displaying racist paraphernalia in one’s school, workplace, or any public setting may constitute environmental microassaults (Sue, 2010b). Sue et al. (2007) refer to all microassaults as forms of “old fashioned racism” (p. 274) where hateful individuals openly discriminate against racialized people. Even though microassaults conflict with the idea that microaggressions are subtle, Sue et al. (2007) group them as microaggessions because they usually occur in private situations where racist individuals feel safe to engage in discrimination of various sorts.

In contrast to microassaults, microinsults, another form of racial microaggressions, are less overt.

More specifically, these types of microaggressions are “words and actions that convey rudeness, insensitivity, or demeaning attitudes toward the racial or ethnic heritage or identity of people of color” (Sue

& Constantine, 2007, p. 138). These words and actions may be outside of the awareness of the perpetrator and more often than not, contain a hidden insulting message to the racialized recipient (Sue,

2010b; Sue et al., 2007). For instance, “a White woman who clutches her purse more tightly in the presence of Latinos [or] a White man checking for his wallet while passing a group of African Americans on a sidewalk” (Sue, 2010a, p. 36) are microinsults that convey the message that these racialized groups are perceived as criminals. However, what makes microinsults more pernicious than microassaults is that they may be deemed positive affirmations at first glance (Sue, 2010b). For example, when a professor tells an exceptional Black student, “You are a credit to your race,” there is nevertheless a hidden message that

Black people are not as intelligent as White people (Sue, 2010b).

While microinsults are pernicious, perhaps an even more insidious form of racial microaggressions is the microinvalidation. Microinvalidations consist of “communications [or environmental cues] that exclude, negate, or nullify the psychological thoughts, feelings, or experiential reality of a person of color”

(Sue et al., 2007, p. 274). For instance, when Asian Americans who were born in the United States are continually asked where they were born or complimented on their good English, these questions and comments convey the message that these individuals are perceived as perpetual foreigners (Sue, 2010a;

Sue & Constantine, 2007). Another prominent microinvalidation is colour blindness where White individuals proudly claim that they do not see the race of their fellow people of colour, thus making themselves believe that they are not racist (Sue, 2010b). However, Sue (2010a) states that this praise for people of colour denies their experiences with dealing with racism and thus, displays extreme insensitivity.

Microinvalidations as well as microassaults and microinsults all present a variety of psychological dilemmas. This point is surprisingly true for the perpetrators of racial microaggressions. In fact, with regard to microinsults and microinvalidations in particular, perpetrators may be unaware that they are committing a microaggression in the first place (Sue, 2010a, 2010b; Sue et al., 2007). This lack of awareness may be caused by perpetrators having a different perception of reality where they see no racism, and this altered sense of reality can be considered a form of resistance in acknowledging that a microaggression has occurred (Sue, 2010b). Another type of resistance may come in the form of perpetrators genuinely believing that they are incapable of racism and/or convincing victims that the microaggression was trivial

(Sue, 2010b; Sue et al., 2007). Therefore, perpetrators’ ignorance of and unwillingness to accept racial microaggressions may make trying to remedy and/or prevent them extremely difficult. Moreover, this problem may present psychological dilemmas for the recipients of microaggressions.

Indeed, trying to deal with racial microaggressions can be psychologically taxing for victims as they have to “(1) [try] to ascertain the motivations behind the actions of perpetrators and (2) [decide] whether and how to respond” (Sue, 2010b, p. 16). Because it is difficult to determine if a microaggression has occurred (since perpetrators may be well-intentioned people who are unaware of their actions), microaggression recipients may be at a loss of what to do (Sue, 2010a). In fact, Sue (2010a) and Sue et al. (2007) report that victims usually do nothing for the following reasons: (a) microaggressions are often ambiguous; (b) victims are indecisive on how to best respond to a microaggression; (c) microaggressions happen quickly and there is limited time to respond; (d) denial that their friend, co-worker, etc., could be

75 capable of racism; and (e) the belief that their reactions will do little good in relieving the situation. This hesitance in addressing microaggressions may cause additional stress for victims.

Sue (2010a) has mentioned four primary effects that cumulative microaggressive stress can have on victims.27 Firstly, there are biological/physical effects as chronic stressors such as microaggressions may make racialized individuals more susceptible to various illnesses like hypertension and asthma.

Secondly, there are emotional effects as victims may develop depression from repeated microaggressions.

Thirdly, there are cognitive effects as recipients must spend a lot of mental energy trying to analyze a microaggression, which could distract them from other mental tasks. Lastly, there may be behavioural effects. For example, victims may become hyper-vigilant and skeptical in their interactions with others, believing that every comment, etc., has a hidden racist message.

Given these severe consequences of racial microaggressions, it is paramount to expose and remedy them. However, Sue and colleagues’ conception of racial microaggressions may paradoxically prevent the unmasking of these actions. In particular, one problem with Sue’s (2010a, 2010b) notion of racial microaggressions is that he neglects how race intersects with other identity markers such as gender and class, and often presents these types of microaggressions as separate categories. This neglect of intersectionality is surprising since scholars who subscribe to Sue do acknowledge intersecting microaggressions (e.g., Lewis, Mendenhall, Harwood, & Huntt, 2013; Smith & Redington, 2010).

If we ignore intersecting microaggressions, we may not truly understand the hidden messages behind these actions. In order to acknowledge this point, I also draw upon a CRT perspective of racial microaggressions as expressed through the work of Daniel G. Solórzano and colleagues. To begin, it is necessary to state that the CRT view of racial microaggressions is almost identical to the features of microaggressions as described above (albeit with different wording). That is, racial microaggressions are

27Sue (2010a) also mentions how there is a psychological cost of microaggressions for their perpetrators. However, since this thesis focuses on the recipients of microaggressions, I will not venture further on this point.

76 also seen as “subtle verbal and non-verbal insults/assaults [original emphasis] directed toward People of

Color, often carried out automatically or unconsciously” (Kohli & Solórzano, 2012, p. 447). Moreover, they are “cumulative assaults that take a psychological and physiological toll on people of color” (Solórzano &

Pérez Huber, 2012, p. 1489). However, one aspect in which CRT differs from the psychological literature is its acknowledgment of intersectionality.

In fact, within a CRT framework, racial microaggressions can also be seen as “layered assaults, based on a person of color’s race, gender, class, sexuality, language, immigration status, phenotype, accent, or surname” (Solórzano & Pérez Huber, 2012, p. 1489). Therefore, a variety of identity markers can intersect with one’s race and thus, can contribute to unique racial microaggressions. This point has been explored in numerous CRT studies that examine various populations and/or contexts. For example,

Allen (2010) examines how race, gender, and class all influence the racial microaggressions experienced by African American male students in secondary schools. One major finding was that these students often experienced differential treatment because of the belief that Black males are aggressive and dangerous.

Looking at Chicana and Chicano scholars in the post-secondary context, Solórzano (1998) found that these individuals often experienced a combination of racial and gender microaggressions as in the case of

Chicana scholars who felt that their comments and research were often ignored/devalued by their peers and superiors because they were women of colour.

In contrast to the above studies that focus on traditional intersecting categories such as race, gender, and class, other CRT studies showcase how race can interact with other lesser-explored social markers. For instance, Pérez Huber (2011) explores how race, language, and (perceived) immigration status can result in racist nativist microaggressions for Chicana students in public schools. In fact, the dominance of English in these schools suggested that to be a Spanish speaker was to be deficient and

‘nonnative’ to the United States. This point was evidenced by the fact that some participants reported being sent for speech therapy and being expected to communicate in English. Another unique theme has

77 been the intersection of race and names. For example, Kohli and Solórzano (2012) found that students of colour in American K-12 classrooms felt humiliated when teachers/peers would mispronounce their ethnic names, which sent the message that their cultural backgrounds were worth little in class.

Even though the above CRT studies have no direct relevance to this study, I use them to highlight the idea that any combination of social markers can constitute a racial microaggression. In the current research context, I primarily rely on the unique intersection of a teacher’s race and language background to explain racial microaggressions in the realm of ESOL (although there may be more intersecting categories at play). Therefore, I align this study with the CRT notion that racial microaggressions are often layered assaults (e.g., Solórzano, 2012; Solórzano & Pérez Huber, 2012). The benefit of this alignment is that one can record many more types of microaggressions that do not solely rely on race.

Aside from looking at the many types of racial microaggressions, CRT scholars are also interested in the context where these microaggressions occur (Kohli & Solórzano, 2012; Solórzano, 2012; Solórzano

& Pérez Huber, 2012). For example, Solórzano, Ceja, and Yosso (2000) and Yosso, Smith, Ceja, and

Solórzano (2009) examined how the negative racial climate in various American universities (as expressed through such things as lack of inclusion of students of colour) contributed to the racial microaggressions experienced by African American and Latina/o undergraduates, respectively. In the current research context, Canadian private-language schools may also create a negative climate for racialized ESOL teachers as some schools may promote their White teachers while ignoring their nonwhite ones (e.g.,

Hodge, 2005). This promotion has the potential to lead to racial microaggressions that could have profound effects on nonwhite ESOL teachers’ well-being.

This mention of the effects of microaggressions is also important for CRT scholars. In fact, they are concerned with how the types and context of racial microaggressions “lead to or result in negative effects for those targeted by them” (Solórzano & Pérez Huber, 2012, p. 1490). Similar to Sue (2010a),

Solórzano and Pérez Huber (2012) state that there are physical/emotional/psychological costs of dealing

78 with racial microaggressions such as “self-doubt, anger, stress, racial battle fatigue, poor academic performance, [and] poor health outcomes” (p. 1489).

These effects may also lead targets to respond to microaggressions in a variety of ways such as self-policing, resistance, and creating counter-spaces (Solórzano, 2012). Of course, Solórzano and Pérez

Huber (2012) add that these responses may influence the effects of microaggressions. This point can be seen in the studies of Solórzano et al. (2000) and Yosso et al. (2009) where the African American and

Latina/o undergraduates created academic and social counter-spaces (in the form of student associations, study groups, etc.) in order to escape the negative racial climate of their respective universities. By creating counter-spaces, these students could lessen the feelings of isolation, etc., prominent in these negative climates. This dialectal relationship between the effects of and responses to racial microaggressions is significant when looking at professional identity formation. Indeed, ESOL teachers may feel devalued due to microaggressions and may choose to respond in ways that create a positive teacher identity, thereby lessening these feelings of being devalued.

If understanding racial microaggressions entails understanding the effects of and responses to them, what happens if there are no effects and responses to report? This point is raised by Minikel-

Lacocque (2013) who speculates that if a target of a microaggression is not bothered by this action, it may not be suitable to name this action a microaggression in the first place. Of course, this declaration of not being bothered could simply be the victim using denial as a protective response against the racial microaggression (Solórzano & Pérez Huber, 2012). But even if the target of a microaggression is genuinely unaffected by the action, we may still call a racial microaggression a racial microaggression if it affects other individuals. Indeed, Solórzano (2012) explains that racial microaggressions can also affect secondary targets (i.e., individuals who witness a racial microaggression taking place). Even though they are not the direct targets, these eye-witnesses may experience the very same effects as those who were

79 the original target of the microaggression. This point emphasizes the danger of microaggressions: they are like a virus that affects individuals in the immediate vicinity.

As seen with the above points and in the last few pages as well, Solórzano and colleagues’ perception of racial microaggressions provides many valuable insights into this topic. However, I do not completely abandon Sue and colleagues’ conception of microaggressions as explained earlier in this section. Indeed, as a way to conclude this part of the thesis, I summarize my own understanding of racial microaggressions using the ideas of both sets of scholars.

To begin, I see racial microaggressions as subtle, most often unconscious, (non) verbal or visual slights against people of colour that cumulatively take a(n) emotional/psychological/physical/toll on racialized individuals (Kohli & Solórzano, 2012; Solórzano et al., 2000; Solórzano & Pérez Huber, 2012;

Sue, 2010a, 2010b; Sue et al., 2007). However, in line with CRT scholars, I also see them as “layered assaults, based on a person of color’s race, gender, class, sexuality, language, immigration status, phenotype, accent, or surname” (Solórzano & Pérez Huber, 2012, p. 1489) that may affect more individuals than the primary target of the microaggression (Solórzano, 2012). In addition, I also adopt the four- component model for understanding racial microaggressions as described by CRT scholars (although I do acknowledge that not all components will be present when explaining a microaggression).

That is, we must first look at the type of microaggression being committed (whether it is based on race alone or intersecting social categories); then look at the context in which it occurs; analyze the effects of the microaggression on the target (and others); and finally, analyze the responses of the target (and others) to the microaggression (Kohli & Solórzano, 2012; Solórzano, 2012; Solórzano & Pérez Huber,

2012). Within this model, I adopt various ideas from Sue and colleagues. For example, with regard to types of microaggressions, we can divide them into microassaults, microinsults, and microinvalidations

(Sue, 2010a, 2010b; Sue & Constantine, 2007; Sue et al., 2007). Furthermore, the work of Sue (2010a) can provide great detail on the mental and behavioural effects of racial microaggressions.

Now, the question is how the above conception of racial microaggressions plays out in the context of the ESOL school. More specifically, what are the racial microaggressions that racialized ESOL teachers experience in their interactions with employers, colleagues, and/or students? The following sub-section answers this question by exploring various microaggressive themes in the ESOL literature.

Exploring Microaggressive Themes in the ESOL Literature

Answering the above question is difficult as there seems to be little literature on the negative interactions between racialized teachers and their employers/colleagues/students. In fact, we do not have much knowledge of which microaggressions occur in the ESOL workplace. However, even though they do not use the term ‘microaggression,’ there are some sources that provide some detail of this phenomenon.

Institutional Racism against Racialized Teachers

Perhaps the most common microaggressive theme in the current literature involves the institutional racism against racialized ESOL teachers. In terms of employee visibility, we see institutional racism in some Canadian private-language schools. For example, in Hodge’s (2005) study of the experiences of

(racialized) immigrant ESOL teachers in a Vancouver private-language school, there are instances of environmental/visual microaggressions (Solórzano et al, 2000; Sue, 2010a, 2010b). In fact, one of the participants who is originally from Singapore commented on how she felt “kind of choked” (Hodge, 2005, p.

106) noticing that the promotional materials for the school never featured any Asian teachers. Moreover, another participant from India noticed that Caucasian rather than Asian teachers were sent on marketing trips, which signalled that Whiteness is marketable for ESOL schools. Whereas the first teacher speaks of being devalued by the microaggression, the second instructor does not express such feelings. Thus, we see how microaggressions may affect targets in different ways (Minikel-Lacocque, 2013).

I emphasize ‘targets’ because Solórzano (2012) reminds us that racial microaggressions not only affect the primary target, but also secondary targets. This point is exemplified in Mahboob’s (2006) narratives of his past experiences as a Pakistani international graduate student in the United States. In one

81 narrative, he mentions how a fellow racialized graduate student, who wanted to pursue a doctorate, applied for a teaching position at their university’s ESOL program in order to support her future studies. Despite her superior qualifications, the program administrator refused to offer the student a position because students would not be happy with her appearance. Here, appearance meant racial appearance as a White teacher with lesser qualifications was offered the job instead. Aside from this student, Mahboob was also a target of this microaggression since he was personally affected by the incident. In fact, he expressed anger and frustration since the microaggression was overtly racist and neither her nor his friend could do anything about it. This entire narrative seems like a combination of a microassault and microinvalidation since the program administrator explicitly discriminated against the student on account of her race, and did not recognize that racialized teachers can be highly qualified in their own right (Sue, 2010a, 2010b; Sue &

Constantine, 2007; Sue et al., 2007). Moreover, what is interesting about this incident is that a similar microaggression shockingly happened to Mahboob himself.

In fact, in another narrative, Mahboob (2006) describes being rejected for a teaching position in his university’s ESOL program. When he asked one of the directors for a teaching position as he believed himself to be highly qualified, the director told Mahboob that he could teach only if he could change his

Pakistani accent (since students studying in America wanted to be exposed to American accents). This comment surprised Mahboob as there were other teachers teaching in the program who had ‘non-

American’ accents. The crucial difference was that these instructors were White while Mahboob was nonwhite. Obviously, this incident left Mahboob sad as he realized that only White accents are acceptable in the program. Thus, this narrative could be an example of a microinvalidation where the director did not acknowledge that the ‘accents’ of people of colour are as intelligible as those of White speakers (Sue,

2010a, 2010b; Sue & Constantine, 2007; Sue et al., 2007). Rather, the director racialized and hence devalued certain accents (Amin, 2000, 2004; Lippi-Green, 2012).

Strangely, White non-English accents also seem acceptable for ESOL employers as seen in the case of Fujimoto (2006) who applied for a short-term teaching position in Japan. Fujimoto, a Japanese

American native speaker of English, was shocked that the position was given to a French woman who admitted that her English was not sufficient enough to teach the language. As we have seen in the discussion of racial capitalism (Leong, 2013), the Whiteness of the French woman most likely was a selling point for this Japanese school.

This desire to use Whiteness to garner further prosperity may economically punish nonwhite teachers as seen in the case of Jonathan, a Japanese American ESOL instructor who was offered a teaching position at a Japanese conversation school (Nosaka, 2007, as cited in Kubota & Fujimoto, 2013).

Jonathan declined this offer as he discovered that he would make 60% of what a lesser-qualified teacher was making. The reason for this wage disparity was that the managers, seemingly wanting to promote their White teachers, thought that Asian-looking Jonathan would be bad for school advertising. Therefore,

Jonathan’s low wages were justified by his inability to perform aesthetic labour: he would not look good for students who desire a White native-English-speaking teacher (Karlsson, 2012).

In the above examples, we see the everyday nature of institutional racism. This point is not surprising as Solórzano (2012) comments that racial microaggressions are indeed forms of institutional racism. Thus, individuals may experience this powerful force in the form of their interactions with their employers, immediate environments, etc. These institutional microaggressions also seem to possess an intersectional component. More specifically, the literature showcases racial microaggressions that survive on notions of both race and gender.

For example, Lin (2006), born in Hong Kong, reported how she “felt agonized” (p. 72) when her

Chinese male colleague of the Hong Kong university where she was working told her that he wanted to hire an inexperienced White British-English speaker as the new deputy programme leader despite knowing that she was more qualified for the job. His justification was that having a White face in a leadership position

83 would increase the reputation of the school, which infuriated Lin because the comment implied that an

Asian face would not be profitable for the school. Moreover, this microaggression could be seen as a layered assault (Kohli & Solórzano, 2012; Solórzano, 2012; Solórzano & Pérez Huber, 2012) as Lin saw the comment as having a gendered dimension as well. In fact, by being denied the leadership position and being relegated to administrative work, Lin had to act as a subservient woman of colour who must do everyday tasks in order to allow White men to achieve high levels of prestige.

Another example of this racialized and gendered stratification of labour is found in the narratives of

Lin et al. (2004) who recount their collective experiences as women faculty of colour in Teaching English to

Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). One of the authors named Anne (a pseudonym) mentions how as a woman of colour she was “often assigned to labor-intensive administrative and teaching duties” (Lin et al.,

2004, p. 494) in her department. In addition, she seemed to experience multiple microinsults that treated her as a second-class citizen because she was a racialized woman (Sue, 2010a). For instance, she was often excluded from communication on important departmental matters; treated as a teaching assistant; and “given the lowest salary at [her] rank” (Lin et al., 2004, p. 489). Anne found all of these microaggressions disturbing, thus suggesting that they did affect her emotionally.

Moving away from cases of institutional racism based on race and gender and returning to those based on race and accent, employment discrimination may occur because students simply do not want racialized accents as exemplified by Mahboob (2006). This student distaste for nonwhite accents may result in a series of complaints against racialized teachers, which happens to be another microaggressive theme in the ESOL literature that will be explored below.

Complaints and Struggles with Racialized Accents

As Amin (2000, 2004) comments, accents are racialized since the way White people speak English is deemed better than the way nonwhite individuals speak the language. We have already visited this point with regard to Mahboob (2006) being asked to change his Pakistani accent by his superior. However, this

84 discrimination may mostly come from students. In fact, we can look at Hodge (2005) for an example in the

Canadian private-language-school context. For instance, one of her participants of South Asian descent described various occasions where students would change her class because her ‘accent’ bothered them.

This participant felt rather traumatized by these class changes as she felt her ‘accent’ was code for her skin colour. Students changing class could thus be seen as a layered microaggression (Kohli & Solórzano,

2012; Solórzano, 2012; Solórzano & Pérez Huber, 2012) where the teacher’s race and accent made her an unworthy service provider of English in the classroom.

An almost identical situation occurred with Braine (1999a) who reported on his experiences as a

Sri Lankan instructor teaching in an English program in the United States. Like the above story, Braine states that “about [two] weeks after classes began, [he] was informed that two students had complained about [his] accent and requested transfers to classes taught by native speakers” (p. 23). Feeling hurt by this news, he concluded that this dissatisfaction with him was the result of students’ negative experiences with incompetent local teachers in their home countries. Braine is more concerned with the accent discrimination of ‘nonnative’ teachers as a whole (not only racialized instructors) and thus, one may argue that the students’ desire to change classes was simply due to perceptions of his language ability alone.

However, the link between race and accent becomes obvious if one looks at the racial microaggressions experienced by racialized native speakers of English.

Indeed, Sung (2011), in recounting his experiences as a teacher in a private-language school in

Hong Kong, mentions how parents of the students often believed that racialized native-speaking teachers had ‘nonnative’ accents. For example, Sung recalls one clear incident:

A parent [complained] to the clerk in 2009 that her child was being taught by a teacher of Indian descent. The teacher, who was born and raised in the UK, was a native speaker of English, yet was perceived to be someone who speaks ‘with an accent’ because of her appearance. It is unlikely that the parent had spoken to the teacher before or had heard her speak any English, yet she was convinced that she spoke English ‘with an accent.’ Her judgment was solely based on the fact that the teacher was of Indian descent and the

stereotype that people of Indian descent speak English ‘with an accent.’ The parent was worried that her child would not learn to speak with a ‘native-speaker’ accent (p. 27).

In this situation, there is a clear underlying ideology that all racialized speakers of English are ‘nonnative’ to the language regardless of their individual backgrounds (Kubota & Lin, 2006). Therefore, this racial microaggression is certainly another microinvalidation as the parents failed to consider that racialized users of English can indeed be native speakers of the language and capable instructors as well (Sue, 2010a,

2010b; Sue & Constantine, 2007; Sue et al., 2007).

The parent in Sung (2011) may have also been apprehensive to have her child taught by a nonwhite teacher because of issues of intelligibility. This issue is seen in Govardhan’s (2006) story of his interactions with staff at an American university. Govardhan describes his feelings of being ‘othered’ because he is an Indian speaker of English. One example that he details was his interactions with the department secretary. Whenever he would approach her, “she would bend toward [him] to catch every syllable that escaped [his] lips” (Govardhan, 2006, p. 145). Also, she would ask him to repeat his words.

This interaction is a microinsult as the secretary’s lack of understanding conveyed an attitude that racialized speakers of English are unintelligible (Sue, 2010a, 2010b; Sue & Constantine, 2007; Sue et al., 2007).

Student Disappointment with Racialized Teachers

In Govardhan’s (2006) case, his co-worker struggled to understand his accent. Apart from accents, individuals, particularly students, may also struggle to accept the fact that they have a racialized

ESOL teacher. Indeed, student disappointment is yet another theme that emerges in the literature. One example of this theme comes from Amin (1997, 1999) who examines the experiences of five minority immigrant female teachers working in Canadian ESOL settlement programs. These teachers felt disempowered as their students believed that only White people could be native speakers of English as well as true Canadians. Hence, the students expressed disappointment with their immigrant teachers because they could not teach students true Canadian language/culture. In terms of understanding

86 microaggressions, the problem with Amin’s work is that it looks at students’ cumulative views of their immigrant teachers without detailing any specific interactions.

Amin’s (2000, 2004) doctoral work makes up for this lack of detail by providing specific instances of student disappointment. Perhaps the most prominent example comes from a Pakistani teacher who remarks how she often experienced student disappointment with her as an instructor during her thirty years of teaching. Much of this sentiment came in the form of comments like “Oh, you’re Pakistani” (Amin, 2004, p. 66) or “Ohhh. So you’re from Pakistan” (Amin, 2000, p. 128), which according to this teacher, implied a kind of irony that a foreigner was teaching Canadian English/culture. Much like other microinsults, these comments became hurtful for this teacher as she could not compensate for her ‘nonnative’ status (Sue,

2010a, 2010b; Sue & Constantine, 2007; Sue et al., 2007).

In order to truly understand the source of these racial microaggressions found in Amin (1997, 1999,

2000, 2004), we must look at the school context where they occur, which is promoted by CRT scholars

(Kohli & Solórzano, 2012; Solórzano, 2012; Solórzano & Pérez Huber, 2012). The teachers in the above studies work in Canadian ESOL settlement programs that help newcomers to the country adapt to

Canadian culture through learning English. As Amin (1997) explains, since students are invested in learning the language in order to adapt to their new surroundings, they desire ‘authentic’ Canadians who can help them achieve this goal. The issue here is that students perceive ‘authentic’ Canadians as White native speakers of English and consequently, see racialized immigrant teachers as not having the insider knowledge needed to successfully live in Canada. Thus, they may express disappointment that their racialized teachers can never provide them with what they truly desire.

Open Challenges to Teachers’ Authority

Questioning the legitimacy of racial minority immigrant teachers is a common microaggression that is evident in Amin (1997, 1999, 2000, 2004). However, some other studies take this microaggression a step further by detailing how students openly challenge the authority of racialized teachers, which is

87 another theme in examining racial microaggressions. For instance, Fujimoto (2006) and Stephan (2006), both ESOL teachers of colour, discuss how their explanations of grammar, etc., were frequently tested or challenged by students. As these teachers were certain that their explanations were correct, they concluded that this disrespect was explained by their respective races. Fujimoto, a Japanese-American woman from Hawaii, and Stephan, a Surinamese male, did not look like the ideal White native speaker of

English and thus, were deemed incompetent in teaching the language. These challenges experienced by the authors could be microinsults since the students were questioning the teachers’ explanations not because of their poor teaching competence, but rather, due to their nonwhite skin (Sue, 2010a, 2010b; Sue

& Constantine, 2007; Sue et al., 2007).

According to Sue (2010a), there are cognitive effects for victims of microaggressions as they often spend a vast amount of mental energy trying to figure out the meaning of these incidents, etc. This point is particularly true for both Fujimoto (2006) and Stephan (2006) who experienced more challenges to their teaching authority through student petitions to have them replaced with White native speakers of English.

For Fujimoto, this call to have her replaced was perplexing as the student did not cite any explicit problem with her teaching. In the end, she had to conclude that not being Caucasian was the reason for the predicament. Similarly, for Stephan, he experienced anguish trying to figure out why his students disliked him even though he gave them many “opportunities to air their grievances” (p. 117) about his teaching. As

Stephan himself comments, his teaching authority was compromised by his race: he was not a stereotypical blonde-haired and blue-eyed native speaker and thus could not be taken seriously as a teacher. This false perception also led to other types of microaggressions for him.

Student Avoidance

Namely, Stephan (2006) experienced student avoidance, which is one more type of racial microaggression in the ESOL context. When he was working as a writing tutor at one school, he noticed that students would often sign up for sessions with other tutors instead of him. In fact, all of the time slots

88 for his sessions were completely open, whereas there were wait lists for his fellow colleagues. Stephan seems to suggest that this avoidance was a layered assault (Kohli & Solórzano, 2012; Solórzano, 2012;

Solórzano & Pérez Huber, 2012) because he was the only racialized, male, and ‘nonnative’-speaking tutor in the program, which perhaps made him unapproachable in the eyes of students.

Amin (1999) also describes an incident of student avoidance to which she was a secondary target

(Solórzano, 2012). Speaking of her experience teaching in a noncredit program, she recalls how she gave her students the option of staying in a level-two class or moving up to a level-three class. Expecting that her students would want to move up as quickly as possible, Amin was surprised that all of her students wanted to stay in the level-two class. Amin concluded that this desire to stay in the same course was due to the fact that a nonwhite woman was teaching the higher level and a White woman was teaching the lower one. Thus, the underlying message of this microinsult was that the students felt that they could better learn with a White teacher (rather than a racialized one) even though the course content would be simplified (Sue, 2010a, 2010b; Sue & Constantine, 2007; Sue et al., 2007).

Cases of Mistaken Identity and Questioning Teachers’ Backgrounds

As seen with Amin (1999) and all of the other narratives discussed thus far, the microaggressions that nonwhite teachers face are based on others knowing that they are indeed ESOL instructors. However, when people do not know that racialized teachers are teachers, this ignorance may result in racial microaggressions known as cases of mistaken identity. This microaggressive theme is noticeable in Lee’s

(2011) research. In fact, reporting on her doctoral research at a Canadian university with an ESOL program, Lee describes how one of her participants, a Japanese-Canadian female teacher, was told by the administrator to use the students’ entrance to the school on her first day of work. This microaggression could highlight how the administrator viewed all people of colour as students of English rather than teachers of the language. Thus, it could be another type of microinvalidation denying the real identity of this teacher (Sue, 2010a, 2010b; Sue & Constantine, 2007; Sue et al., 2007).

Aside from colleagues/employers as seen in the context of Lee (2011), ESOL learners may also mistake the identities of their racialized teachers. Simply put, it seems that students do not perceive racialized individuals as teachers of English or citizens of English-speaking countries. For example, Curtis

(2006) describes three separate instances where late students continued to enter and leave his classroom in Hong Kong, seemingly confused that a person of colour would be teaching the class. Curtis gives the explanation that students in Hong Kong usually think of foreigners as being White (due to British colonialism) and thus, would not have much experience having diverse instructors. Whereas Curtis’ nonwhite skin prevents him from being viewed as an instructor, Javier’s (2010) skin colour makes her seem non-Canadian. In fact, when describing her experience teaching English in various Chinese schools,

Javier, a Canadian of Filipino descent, recalls one instance where a late student (who had missed Javier’s self-introduction describing that she was Canadian) was concerned that Javier looked Chinese and therefore, could not be a Canadian/native-English speaker. The student felt reassured after Javier explicitly explained that she was indeed Canadian and a native speaker.

In both of these cases of mistaken identity, we once again see examples of microinvalidations as the students’ perception of the races of these teachers do not acknowledge their true identities (Sue,

2010a, 2010b; Sue & Constantine, 2007; Sue et al., 2007). Another aspect of these mistaken-identity microaggressions is that racialized teachers may be seen as perpetual learners of English. This point is explored in Amin (2000, 2004) who, as mentioned earlier, looks at the experiences of eight minority immigrant teachers in settlement programs and how they deal with linguistic nativism in Canada (a notion that positions White native speakers of English as true citizens of the nation).

For example, one of Amin’s (2000, 2004) participants who was born in India comments on how new students might be implying that she is lacking in Canadian English when they ask her such things as where she had learned English or how long she had been in Canada. As Amin hypothesizes, these questions suggest that if this teacher has learned English (rather than inherited it from birth), she is not

90 qualified to teach the language. Thus, once again, these student questions are microinvalidations as they embody the notion that individuals born outside of Inner-Circle countries do not have the competence to teach English (Sue, 2010a, 2010b; Sue & Constantine, 2007; Sue et al., 2007).

Backhanded Compliments

Of course, not all ESOL students subscribe to this belief. Indeed, there are learners who come to appreciate their racialized teachers. However, I argue that even if students come to praise their nonwhite instructors, they may still hold the belief in White superiority in ESOL teaching. Thus, they may commit racial microaggressions that I see as backhanded compliments. Thomas (1999), an ESOL teacher born in

Singapore, mentions a few examples of backhanded compliments that she experienced in the context of an

ESOL school in the United States.

For instance, during a writing class where the topic of language and race arose, Thomas (1999) recalled how one of her students said the following: “I had spent a lot of money to come to the United

States and I was hoping to get a [native speaker] to teach the class. When I first saw you, I felt certain that

I wouldn’t like the class” (p. 8). Even though this student did come to like Thomas as a teacher, it is nevertheless a microinsult that states that Thomas is the exception to the generalized rule that racialized

‘nonnative’ speakers are inferior ESOL teachers (Sue, 2010a, 2010b; Sue & Constantine, 2007; Sue et al.,

2007). Furthermore, this backhanded compliment took place in a context where the student paid to receive quality service. Therefore, we may say that this microaggression occurred in a prolonged service encounter: the student first judged Thomas’ embodied attributes when determining the value of her service

(McDowell, 2009), but had a change of heart after witnessing Thomas’ skills.

Thomas (1999) explains how comments like the one above have challenged her credibility as an

ESOL teacher. As a result, these experiences make her “apologetic, nervous about [her] ability to succeed, and sometimes even lead to a kind of paranoia born of experience” (p. 9). In short, she has begun to doubt herself as a teacher. Therefore, in Thomas’ case, racial microaggressions affect her professional identity.

This point is not surprising as microaggressions produce a number of effects and responses for victims

(Kohli & Solórzano, 2012; Solórzano, 2012; Solórzano & Pérez Huber, 2012), which may include how targets of microaggressions (choose to) identify themselves. In order to fully understand the effects of and responses to the racial microaggressions discussed in this section as well as those presented in the current study, I must theorize identity and its related concepts, which begins below.

(Teachers’ Professional) Identities, Interpellation, and Identity Work

To highlight how racial microaggressions affect an individual’s identity entails re-thinking our commonly-held notions of identity. Perhaps for many people, identity is one’s personal possession that is fixed and represents the true self (Benwell & Stokoe, 2006). However, this popular belief has been contested in the academic realm in particular. In fact, as Nunan and Choi (2010) explain, “Identity is no longer seen as a unitary or ever stable construct” (p. 3). Rather, Jenkins (2008) sees it as the following:

“[Identity] is a process—identification—not a thing. It is not something that one can have, or not; it is something that one does [original emphasis]” (p. 5). This performative aspect of identity (Schnurr, 2013) is echoed by Hall (1996) who states that identity is not about answering the question of who we are, but rather, “what we might become” (p. 4). Thus, identity is something that changes over time.28

Aside from being dynamic, identity is also relational (Bucholtz & Hall, 2005). Indeed, identities thrive on difference: individuals construct their identities in relation to different identities (Bhugra & Gupta,

2011; Connolly, 1991; Hall 1996). In other words, people may see themselves as what they are not.

28This point may seem problematic for some aspects of our identity such as race, which for many people, remains the core of their identity (Bhugra & Gupta, 2011; Omi & Winant, 1993). However, as Jenkins (2008) and Jhally (1996) note, the meaning and significance of race has shifted throughout history and thus, individuals may perceive their race (and therefore their identity) differently than their ancestors. Moreover, if we look at race in terms of skin colour, Jenkins reminds us that ‘passing’ (i.e., a person passes off as being from another race) is not uncommon. For instance, Harris (1993) mentions how her Black grandmother passed as White in order to gain employment during the 1930s, when overt racial discrimination was widespread. Therefore, racial identity, like other identities, can be and is dynamic on various levels.

Identities are also relational in the sense that they are formed through interaction. In fact, from a social constructivist perspective, identity can be seen as a process of (re)negotiating one’s sense of self through interactions with others (e.g., Beijaard, Meijer, & Verloop, 2004; Benwell & Stokoe, 2006; De Fina, 2010;

Howard, 2000; Norton, 2010; Schnurr, 2013). Therefore, whether we compare or contrast ourselves to them, or engage with them through verbal interactions, etc., other individuals play a significant role in shaping our identity construction.

Since we may have multiple interactions with a variety of individuals, it is logical that we develop multiple identities (e.g., Bhugra & Gupta, 2011; Liu, 1999; Schnurr, 2013). For the purposes of the current study, I choose to focus on only one of these identities that may be influenced by racial microaggressions: professional identity. This type of identity is fairly important as we often introduce ourselves by stating our careers. But what exactly is professional identity? Drawing on Ibarra (1999) and Schein (1978), Slay and

Smith (2011) define professional identity “as one’s professional self-concept based on attributes, beliefs, values, motives, and experiences” (p. 86). Here, I emphasize the role of experiences in professional identity formation, and this role is clearly seen in the professional identities of teachers.

Indeed, teacher identity can be explained by external forces such as life experiences. More specifically, various scholars have viewed teacher identity as something that is not fixed, but rather, a view of oneself as a teacher that changes over time in relation to other people and contexts (e.g., Beauchamp &

Thomas, 2009; Beijaard et al., 2004; Coldron & Smith, 1999; Dworet, 1996; Schepens, Aelterman, &

Vlerick, 2009; Sugrue, 1997). One keyword in the above definition is the idea of context, which in one sense, may describe the workplace. According to Reynolds (1996), teachers’ workplaces are ‘landscapes’ that can be very demanding and restrictive to teachers. In fact, the physical environment, what other individuals expect from teachers, and what teachers allow to impact themselves all influence their professional identities over a matter of time (Reynolds, 1996).

These issues are certainly pertinent for racialized ESOL teachers working in private-language schools. In fact, this school context may force these teachers to view themselves as service providers who must cater to the needs of their student-customers (Breshears, 2008; Hodge, 2005). Furthermore, employers may enforce this identity change by making sure that teachers are living up to students’ expectations. Finally, teachers may comply with their employers because they may fear losing their position at work or other consequences. However, even if teachers adjust their identities to suit their respective workplaces, the identity conflict may still be unresolved.

The reason is because teachers’ professional identities consist of various sub-identities that may conflict with this macro identity (Beijaard et al., 2004; Schepens et al., 2009). For example, race, as a subset of teacher identity (Hopson, 2013), may either help or hinder a teacher’s credibility in the classroom.

As seen in the section on embodiment in the previous chapter, we can argue that White ESOL teachers are given respect by students and employers because of their race, while nonwhite instructors are devalued.

Therefore, racialized teachers may report more negative interactions with students/employers/colleagues than their White counterparts because they are not the ideal service worker. If identity emerges “through everyday interaction” (Howard, 2000, p. 372) as I have argued thus far, then negative interactions may have a negative effect on the professional identity formation of ESOL teachers. But how exactly do negative interactions negatively affect teachers’ professional identities?

The simple answer to this question is ideology, which is a concept that I have spoken about with regard to racism and a standard language/Standard English. As I have said before, “ideology is a set of beliefs, perceptions, assumptions, and values that provide members of a group with an understanding and an explanation of their world” (Henry et al., 1998, p. 15). Ideology operates on the sub-conscious level and makes us believe that certain things are factual, undisputed. This point is echoed by Althusser (1971) who states the following:

It is indeed a peculiarity of ideology that it imposes (without appearing to do so…), obviousness as obviousness, which we cannot fail to recognize and before which we have the inevitable and natural reaction of crying out (aloud or in the ‘still, small voice of conscience’): ‘That’s obvious! That’s right! That’s true!’ [original emphasis] (p. 172).

What makes ideology even more covert is that it often emerges through everyday talk or interactions (Shuck, 2004, 2006). People may perpetuate an ideology in their daily conversations and interactions with family, friends, co-workers, and so on and so forth. People may also commit (racial) microaggressions against each other, which are types of social interactions and hence embody an ideology. In fact, as Sue (2010b) reminds us, racial microaggressions are representative of dominant worldviews that marginalize certain individuals. In the current research context, racial microaggressions against racialized ESOL teachers embody an ideology of racism that positions White native speakers of

English as dominant over all other nonwhite speakers of the language.

This ideology of racism (or any ideology) influences one’s identity through interpellation, a concept coined by Althusser (1971) to talk about the nature of ideology and how the state uses it to maintain the status quo. According to Althusser, one significant aspect of ideology is that it “represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence” (p. 162). In other words, an ideology can name the nature of reality. Moreover, it “hails or interpellates concrete individuals as concrete subjects

[original emphasis]” (Althusser, 1971, p. 173). Consequently, individuals who recognize this hailing (and thus, become subjects) accept the construction of reality as defined by the ideology. In less abstract terms, we can think of interpellation as a process where someone identities someone else and the latter person adopts this identity: I name you and you become what I named you.

For Althusser (1971), interpellation is made possible through ideological state apparatuses (ISAs) that normalize ideology and thus, serve the interests of the ruling elite. Perhaps the most influential ISAs in a society “include education, the family, religion, the legal system, the party-political system, culture and communication” (Hartley, 2011, p. 131). While ISAs refer to broad categories such as education and

95 politics, for the purposes of this study, I see racial microaggressions as a kind of apparatus. Indeed, these microaggressions act as a mechanism through which perpetrators (unconsciously) project an ideology of racism on to racialized ESOL teachers in private-language schools.

While interpellation certainly coincides with the idea that identity is socially constructed, as seen in the case of ISAs, this concept needs to be adjusted to suit the current study. In fact, interpellation suffers from a number of theoretical problems that need to be addressed. For instance, Althusser (1971) sees interpellation as a top-down process as the state/dominant class imposes ideology on to the masses.

However, interpellation may come from multiple sources and hence, may come from different directions.

This point is certainly evident in the context of service work.

For example, when looking at the workplace identities of service workers, McDowell et al. (2007) and Williams (2006) claim that we must look at dual interpellation. That is, service workers “have to conform not only to managers’ imaginations of an idealized embodiment of service, but also the expectations of customers” (McDowell et al., 2007, p. 6). In the case of White ESOL teachers, they may be interpellated as all-knowing experts of English by both employers and students (Haque & Morgan, 2009).

For instance, reflecting on his past teaching experiences in China, Morgan (who is White) states, “I took my visible ‘authenticity’ as a professional responsibility [emphasis added]…[T]hat is, as a ‘real’ Canadian in sound and appearance, it was a condition of my employment to dispense the cultural and linguistic capital of which I was in natural possession” (Haque & Morgan, 2009, p. 278). Whereas employers and learners may interpellate a superior identity on to White teachers like Morgan, I argue that they may do the opposite with nonwhite instructors (i.e., they may project a deficient identity upon these teachers).

The above narrative in Haque and Morgan (2009) also reveals another theoretical weakness in interpellation. We may think of this concept as absolute and permanent, but since Morgan discusses his interpellated identity in the past tense, interpellation is clearly not everlasting. In fact, Morgan mentions how during the remainder of his time in China, he sought to balance his Western-based knowledge and

96 skills with local Chinese approaches to teaching. Perhaps from Morgan’s story then, we may speculate that ideology may weaken its hold on one’s (professional) identity over time. However, it may even be possible that interpellation does not change individuals’ identities in the first place.

Indeed, yet another theoretical drawback of interpellation is the idea “that individuals are always- already interpellated by ideology as subjects” (Althusser, 1971, p. 176). This view is problematic because it does not account for individuals’ agency in forming their own (professional) identities (Beijaard et al., 2004).

In answer to this problem, Salzinger (2003) and Wright (1997, 2006) showcase how interpellation can be a contested process. Their studies of Mexican women working in maquilas (factories in northern Mexico) emphasize how these women challenge their naming as docile and subservient by management by exerting new identities. In fact, these workers resisted this notion of docile femininity through such things as talking back to superiors or refusing to do work.

The benefit of these studies is that they give another option in responding to interpellation. That is, rather than solely accepting ideology, individuals may openly challenge this hailing. However, venturing further than the above authors, Muñoz (1999) explains that dealing with interpellation may be more complex than simply accepting or resisting it. Drawing on the work of the French linguist Michel Pêcheux

(1982), Muñoz explains that both identifying and ‘counteridentifying’ with a dominant ideology is problematic because they both reinforce the dominance of the ideology. Thus, in order to escape the power of an ideology, Muñoz/Pêcheux promotes the idea of disidentification, which neither assimilates nor strictly opposes an interpellated identity. Instead, “disidentification is a strategy that works on and against dominant ideology” (Muñoz, 1999, p. 11). This point means that the strategy distorts and reconstructs encoded messages of an ideology in order to expose the exclusionary nature of these messages and re- wire them to “empower minority identities and identifications” (Muñoz, 1999, p. 31).

Like interpellation, disidentification is an abstract concept and therefore needs to be exemplified in concrete terms. One clear example comes from Muñoz’s (1999) description of one scene from the movie,

Kiss of the Spider Woman. As Muñoz notes, when “Valentín [one of the protagonists] commands his gay cell mate to ‘Be a man,’ Molina [the gay cell mate]…responds to his command by exclaiming: ‘A man!

Where do you see a man!’” (p. 168). Molina ‘disidentifies’ with this hailing not by complying with Valentín’s command nor by arguing that men do not need to act in certain ways, but by questioning the accuracy of the hailing. How can one tell someone else to be a man when the latter person is not a man? Molina distorts the ideology of men having to be tough by showing how it does not apply to him. Consequently, this questioning empowers Molina because he reserves the right to define himself.

Muñoz (1999) refers to Molina’s questioning as an act of ‘tactical misrecognition’ and this tactic speaks to the performative nature of disidentification. In fact, Molina does not disidentify with Valentín’s direct interpellation in his mind, but rather, he does so through a speech act of sorts: asking a question.

For Muñoz, disidentificatory performances such as Molina’s are always political. That is, by questioning the presence of a man in their prison cell, Molina is trying to alter the ideology of what it means to be a man. In other words, he is “invest[ing] [the ideology] with new life” (Muñoz, 1999, p. 12) by suggesting that men should act in a variety of manners. In short, he is creating a new, inclusive ideology.

While the above example from Kiss of the Spider Woman exemplifies how individuals seek to dismantle dominant ideologies, it is important to note that disidentification operates within ideology (Muñoz,

1999). Therefore, it agrees with Althusser (1971) that individuals cannot escape ideology. As a result, disidentification is often referred to as survival strategies used by “minoritarian subjects throughout their everyday life” (Muñoz, 1999, p. 179). Unless they are psychic, racialized ESOL teachers in private- language schools cannot necessarily escape racial microaggressions and thus, they cannot escape the racist ideology embodied in them. As a result, some may learn to disidentify with these microaggressions if they are to professionally survive in a private-language school.

As I have highlighted thus far, marginalized subjects may respond to interpellation by either accepting, challenging, or disidentifying with this process. No matter which option minority subjects

98 choose, they will need to renegotiate their identities in the face of interpellation. This renegotiation of identity is often work in itself (Muñoz, 1999) and is aptly called identity work. For the remainder of this section, I explore the nature of this concept.

Keeping in line with the above discussion, the idea that one can work on identity further emphasizes the process-oriented nature of this concept. Sveningsson and Alvesson’s (2003) often-cited definition of identity work speaks to this process-oriented view: such work “refers to…being engaged in forming, repairing, maintaining, strengthening or revising the constructions that are productive of a sense of coherence and distinctiveness” (p. 1165). In this sense then, individuals (especially marginalized individuals as I will discuss later) must constantly re-define themselves. People may need to continually re- work their identities because their self-identification or their entrenched dispositions often collide with external identifications (Connolly, 1991; Howard, 2000; Muñoz, 1999; Rounds, 2006). Thus, identity work is about balancing the internal and external.

However, this balancing act “is not most usefully understood as primarily an ‘internal’ self-focused process” (Watson, 2008, p. 130). Rather, as Watson (2008) points out, identity work “is better understood as a coming together of inward/internal self-reflection and outward/external engagement—through talk and action” (p. 130). Therefore, identity work partly entails presenting an identity for others. Indeed, this type of work is considered to have a performative quality that is enacted in social encounters (e.g., Beech, 2008;

Creed & Scully, 2000; Lutgen-Sandvik, 2008; Rounds, 2006; Sveningsson & Alvesson, 2003).

Since identity work may be perceived as an ongoing performance, it is possible that this type of work operates on the sub-conscious level a lot of the time. However, Rounds (2006) reminds us that major changes in one’s life such as arriving at a (religious) epiphany or simply reading a fascinating book may be the impetus for explicit identity work. Sveningsson and Alvesson (2003) echo this point by stating that

“specific events, encounters, transitions and surprises, as well as more constant strains…compel more concentrated identity work” (p. 1165). As Alvesson and Willmott (2002) and Lutgen-Sandvik (2008) add,

99 this conscious identity work is often based on a variety of negative feelings that accompany these sudden events and changes. In response to the pain and confusion brought on by these specific situations, etc., individuals may engage in what Alvesson and Willmott call intensive remedial identity work, which attempts to ‘heal’ one’s identity in the face of these traumatic forces.

Looking at the context of workplace bullying, Lutgen-Sandvik (2008) describes three characteristics of intensive remedial identity work. First of all, this type of identity work is intensive because work is a necessary part of life for most people. In one respect, since workers need money to survive and thus cannot escape bullying, they need to be able to cope with negative interactions. In another respect, since work satisfies our higher-level needs such as self-actualization, threats to these needs “necessarily engender passionate responses” (p. 113). Aside from its necessity, another trait of this type of identity work is that it often has the goal of altering (self-)perceptions. That is, “targeted workers feel compelled to justify themselves and their behaviour when confronted with accusations, threats and/or social ostracism”

(p. 113). The final characteristic of intensive remedial identity work is that it requires more effort than other kinds of identity work since workers must take on “the three inter-related tasks of sensemaking, self- defense, and identity management” (p. 113). In short, it is (mentally) exhausting.

Even though I would not equate bullying with racial microaggressions, at the very least, we may say that they are both negative experiences for the victims of these acts. Consequently, just as workers may perform intensive remedial identity work for bullying, racialized ESOL teachers may perform the very same work when confronted with cumulative racial microaggressions. In fact, we may apply the characteristics of this type of identity work as defined by Lutgen-Sandvik (2008) to the ESOL context.

Firstly, some ESOL teachers may see language teaching as a calling and thus, may feel threatened by microaggressions that affect their ability to teach effectively. Secondly, since racial microaggressions may hurt the reputation of teachers especially in the eyes of students, these teachers may need to justify themselves by showcasing how they are qualified instructors. Lastly, it may be (mentally) taxing for

100 teachers to perform this type of identity work as they need to make sense of whether a microaggression has occurred or not (Sue, 2010b) and find an appropriate way to respond, if necessary.

While (intensive remedial) identity work may be done in response to stigmatizing interactions such as racial microaggressions and bullying, it may also be performed as a preventive measure against future stigmatizing situations. Furthermore, this ‘preventive identity work’ may actually be part of one’s job description. This point is clearly exemplified in the context of Indian call centres where agents provide customer service to individuals in the Global North. Call-centre agents frequently experience racist backlash from these customers due to the belief that Indians are stealing away jobs from the West (e.g.,

Mirchandani, 2012). As a way for multinational conglomerates to avoid any negative publicity in such places as the United States and England, call-centre workers may perform what Poster (2007) terms

‘national identity management,’ “in which employees are asked to subsume different national identities as part of the job” (p. 271). More specifically, Poster and Nath (2011) state that agents may need to alter their accents, change their names, and mask their location in order to make callers believe that they are speaking to a fellow (White, middle-class) American or British citizen, for example. Therefore, national identity management is a type of identity work that is done explicitly.

Although I do not suggest that national identity management is a strategy that is used by racialized

ESOL teachers, I do argue that these teachers may perform a variant of it in the form of impression management (Roberts, 2005). That is, these teachers, like Indian call-centre agents, may consciously change or mask certain aspects of their identities in order to leave a positive impression for their students.

These changes and deceptions may be physical and/or they may simply be what racialized teachers share about themselves to their learners. Furthermore, this ‘identity masking’ may be done as a preventive measure against future racial microaggressions that have the potential to threaten teachers’ professional identities in the private-language-school context.

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I will delve into specific examples of the above points when exploring the identity formation of the participants of the current study. Moreover, specific examples will be explored in the next section in which I return to the literature previously reviewed in the section on racial microaggressions in the ESOL context on pages 80 to 91. Previously, I detailed the nature of these microaggressions without exploring their later impact on racialized teachers’ professional identities. Below, I remedy this absence by exploring how such things as interpellation, disidentification, and identity work can be applied to the professional effects of and responses to microaggressions as discussed in the current literature.

The Effects of Racial Microaggressions on the Professional Identities of Racialized Teachers

Once again, it may prove difficult to accomplish the above task. Since the literature that I have reviewed in the previous sections provides only incidental examples of racial microaggressions, one does not glean much insight into how these situations affect the professional identities of racialized teachers.

Nevertheless, it is possible to glean some partial insights from some of the literature.29

One such insight is that racial microaggressions do interpellate a deficient professional identity upon racialized ESOL teachers. For instance, Thomas’ (1999) account of how students used to be/are disappointed that she was not a (White) native speaker of English made her lose all confidence in herself as an ESOL teacher. In her interactions with both native-speaking colleagues and students, Thomas often

“find[s] [herself] doubting [her] own abilities, wondering if [she] really [is] good enough” (p. 10). Of course,

Thomas comments on how these uncertainties prevent her from realizing her full potential, which is a similar sentiment expressed by Lee’s (2011) Japanese Canadian participant. In fact, cases of mistaken identity and other stigmatizing situations based on her race made this teacher feel that she was unqualified:

“I’ve thought maybe I’m not qualified because I don’t look white. Um, I’ve come to a point where I think…maybe being a visible minority is not making me the instructor that I should be” (Lee, 2011, p. 49).

29I do not return to every piece of literature from pages 80 to 91 since some of them do not mention professional identity formation in any explicit sense.

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In this case, these microaggressions may have shaken up the professional identity of Lee’s participant in the sense that her self-confidence as a teacher has been unsettled (Nicholson & Carroll, 2013). If she is nonwhite, then she is unable to become an exceptional ESOL instructor in her opinion.

In contrast to the above two cases, Amin (1997), in her study of minority immigrant female teachers working in Canadian ESOL settlement programs for immigrants, showcases how school context may play a role in the interpellation of teachers. These programs are significant because they help newcomers to the country adapt to Canadian culture through learning English. Since students are invested in learning

English in order to adapt to their new surroundings, they desire ‘authentic’ Canadians who can help them achieve this goal. The issue here is that students perceive ‘authentic’ Canadians as White native speakers of English. Amin found that “when…students give the message that they consider their [immigrant] teacher to be a [‘nonnative’] speaker of English and therefore one who cannot teach them the English they want or feel they need, minority teachers are unable to effectively negotiate a teacher identity” (p. 581). In fact, in an ESOL settlement classroom, these teachers may become less effective in facilitating students’ needs because they cannot change their linguistic/racial backgrounds. Their qualifications mean nothing because they do not have the desired embodied qualities for students. Amin found that these cumulative feelings of

ESOL learners left these minority women disempowered as teachers, thereby showing how teachers may internalize the negative naming directed against them.

Aside from its connection to school context as evident in Amin (1997), another aspect of interpellation is that its effects may be temporary. This point is seen in Hodge’s (2005) account of how the

South Asian teacher felt traumatized by students changing her class because of her race/accent. In fact, in this microaggressive narrative, one sees how interpellation may wane over time since the teacher mentions how her confidence as an instructor gradually grew and thus, incidents like the one above do not bother her much. However, the problem with this narrative is that we do not know the reason for her increase in confidence. What type of identity work allowed her to move past the interpellation?

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While we cannot find an answer from Hodge (2005), we may look at other experiences to see how one overcomes an ideology of racism. Let us look at Lin’s (2006) narrative of being denied a leadership position because she is a nonwhite female and Mahboob’s (2006) story of being denied a teaching position because of his racialized accent as examples. Although these incidents left them agonized and sad, respectively, both individuals knew that they were highly-qualified for their positions, which highlights how a deficient identity was not interpellated on to them. But how did they resist this interpellation? It seems that both individuals engaged in the identity work of sensemaking where they tried to identify the causes of their negative experiences (Lutgen-Sandvik, 2008). That is, Lin saw her experience as representative of the general racialized and gendered stratification of labour in the ESOL realm, while Mahboob recognized how employers are more interested in race and accent rather than one’s qualifications. Thus, both individuals placed the blame on others’ perceptions rather than blame themselves.

When Lin (2006) and Mahboob (2006) placed blame on others, it was an internal process. In fact, all of the professional effects of racial microaggressions mentioned above have happened within the minds of various teachers. However, microaggressions may prompt professional identity formation in which teachers actively respond to these attacks by presenting positive professional selves to others. In the next sub-section, I explore some of these professional responses to microaggressions.

Racialized Teachers’ Professional Responses to Racial Microaggressions

In line with many kinds of intensive remedial identity work, these responses are done by racialized teachers in order to justify themselves as qualified workers after experiencing negative incidents like racial microaggressions (Lutgen-Sandvik, 2008). This point is first evident with some of the teachers in Amin’s

(2000, 2004) doctoral work. For example, one of her participants explains how instances of students criticizing her because of her Pakistani background influenced what type of teacher that she would like to be. In fact, in order to escape the criticism of higher-level students who may think that she cannot teach

Canadian conversational English, she chooses to teach lower levels, where there is less emphasis on

104 conversational skills. Perhaps this teacher has restructured her professional identity (Lutgen-Sandvik,

2008) by choosing to focus on areas in which she excels in order to construct a positive sense of teaching self. This restructuring was also evident in other participants’ stories.

In fact, in order to deal with student questions about her supposed lack of competence in Canadian

English, one of Amin’s (2000, 2004) participants of Indian descent sought to empower herself by using anti- racist materials in class “that challenge the belief that the White native speaker is the only valid [ESOL] teacher” (Amin, 2004, p. 71). Therefore, this teacher responded to her microaggressions by deciding to become an advocate for diversity in the ESOL classroom. Moreover, taking on this new role subsequently improved her legitimacy in the eyes of her students.

Speaking of proving one’s legitimacy, Curtis (2006) and Javier’s (2010) narratives of being mistaken for a ‘non-teacher’ and ‘non-Canadian,’ respectively, by students also suggest that racialized teachers need to construct their legitimacy in the classroom. In fact, Curtis’ experience prompted him to conduct a Q-and-A session at the beginning of a new class so that students would not be confused about his identity (he is British and of Indian descent). Similarly, Javier emphasizes her Canadian identity

(thereby reinforcing the idea that she is a native speaker) to international students on a first day of class.

She explains how she would recite a monologue about herself in front a new class in order “to ‘attack first’ by establishing who [she was] before any questions [about her identity] were raised” (Javier, 2010, p. 98).

Curtis and Javier’s actions are examples of disidentification as both teachers do not really resist the idea that British and Canadian English speakers are the best teachers of the language, but rather, they distort the ideology (Muñoz, 1999) by showcasing that people of colour can also be native speakers (and thus, be highly-qualified teachers). In short, they perform disidentification to become legitimate.

Aside from disidentification, Curtis (2006) and Javier’s (2010) responses to microaggressions may also be ‘preventive identity work’ as they explain themselves first in order to prevent later criticism. Other teachers may do this type of work by performing a variant of national identity management (Poster, 2007)

105 by masking/changing their linguistic identities in order to gain approval from students. For example, after his experience of students avoiding his tutoring sessions because of his race and ‘nonnative’-speaker status, Stephan (2006) reported how he would sometimes present himself as a native speaker of English as “it helps to foster a healthy student-teacher/tutee-tutor relationship” (p. 118). Since students may want native speakers because of their supposed expertise, Stephan performs preventive identity work in order to avoid any conflict with his tutees.

Contributions of the Current Study to the Existing Literature

The reader must remember that Stephan’s (2006) identity work as well as the identity work of the teachers in this chapter are only incidental mentions of how racial microaggressions impact racialized teachers’ professional identities. The above literature neither systematically analyzes the professional identity formation initiated by microaggressions, nor does it seek to describe the types of microaggressions that racialized ESOL teachers experience in the first place. Therefore, the primary contribution of the current study is that it does the above tasks: it examines the racial microaggressions between racialized

ESOL teachers and their employers, colleagues, and/or students, and emphasizes how these interactions influence the former’s professional identities. Furthermore, with the exception of Hodge (2005), it examines these questions in a rarely-explored school context: private ESOL schools in Canada/Toronto.

By looking at microaggressions and their impact on professional identities in Toronto private- language schools, I acknowledge Lau and Williams’ (2010) recommendation that microaggression researchers should not only focus on the occurrence of microaggressions, “but also on coping and management processes as well [original emphasis]” (p. 330). Moreover, I follow Lau and Williams’ advice to explore the intersecting elements of microaggressions. That is, I do not only focus on microaggressions based on race and language, but also on other types based on how race intersects with such identity markers as gender and age. Moreover, I shed light on racial microaggressions that are not necessarily

106 language-related or directed against teachers. Indeed, racialized teachers can become secondary targets of microaggressions (Solórzano, 2012) that may have to do with ethnic stereotypes, for example. In short, I present a wider variety of microaggressions than the ones presented in the existing literature.

In terms of professional identity construction, I provide greater detail into how various racial microaggressions influence teacher identities than the current literature. Indeed, in contrast to the above studies which could not be divided into categories due to their limited numbers, I divide the professional effects of and responses to microaggressions into separate categories of identity work. Furthermore, whereas authors like Hodge (2005) do not explain why teachers react/respond to microaggressions in certain ways, I do consider how teachers’ individual backgrounds influence how they are affected by and respond to microaggressions. In addition to personal backgrounds, I consider how school context also influences the teachers’ professional identity formation.

Along with filling in gaps in the literature, the current study substantiates the main arguments of the existing literature, namely the idea that racialized teachers of English are devalued in the ESOL industry.

Also, like the studies cited above, this study intends to place racialized individuals at the centre of analysis, which is a point that I explore in the next chapter in which I detail the methodology of this thesis.

Chapter Four: Methodology

In order to fill in the gaps of the existing literature and place racialized teachers at the forefront, I conducted the current study that answers the following questions (as stated in the introduction):

1. What kinds of racial microaggressions do racialized English for Speakers of Other Languages

(ESOL) teachers experience in the context of private-language schools in Toronto?

2. Moreover, how do these microaggressions influence how the above-mentioned teachers construct

their professional identities?

In order to answer these questions, I use a critical race methodology, which will be described below.

Following this description, I describe the setting and (the recruitment of) participants, data collection and analysis, and finally, I address a select number of ethical issues and my role as the researcher.

What is a Critical Race Methodology & Why is it Useful?

Simply put, a critical race methodology has its theoretical foundations in critical race theory (CRT)

(Solórzano & Yosso, 2002). Therefore, the CRT tenets that were outlined in Chapter Two certainly apply to this particular methodology. To briefly summarize, both CRT and a critical race methodology share five main elements according to Solórzano and Yosso (2002). The first element is that they recognize “the intercentricity of racialized oppression—the layers of subordination based on race, gender, class, immigration status, surname, phenotype, accent, and sexuality” (p. 25). Thus, like CRT, a critical race methodology acknowledges the role of intersectionality when analyzing racism, which is important for the current study. Indeed, as I mentioned above, the racial microaggressions that racialized ESOL teachers experience are not only based on beliefs about race and language, but also, on other social markers such as gender and age. In the end then, a critical race methodology allows for a richer understanding of the microaggressions that racialized instructors of many backgrounds face.

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Aside from acknowledging multiple, intersecting oppressions, the second main element of a critical race methodology is that it embraces interdisciplinary knowledge (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002). That is, it borrows knowledge from a variety of academic fields such as “ethnic studies, women’s studies, sociology, history, [and] law…[to] better [understand] the effects of racism, sexism, and classism on people of color”

(Solórzano & Yosso, 2002, p. 27). Although I do not necessarily borrow from these specific fields, I do embrace the idea of borrowing knowledge from other disciplines. For example, as the reader may have gathered thus far, I have used sources from such fields as psychology and applied linguistics in order to better explain (the causes of) racial microaggressions as experienced by racialized teachers.

Using as much diverse knowledge as possible to understand the effects of racism is important as a critical race methodology is committed to social justice, which is its third element (Solórzano & Yosso,

2002). By highlighting the experiences of the ESOL teachers in this study, I hope that I will inspire both the participants and readers to find ways to stop microaggressions in their workplaces. In this way, I hope to support “the empowering of subordinated minority groups” (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002, p. 26).

In order to empower these groups, a critical race methodology shuns traditional, neutral research and centres on the experiential knowledge of people of colour, which are the fourth and fifth components of this methodology (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002). Thus, a critical race methodology allows for racialized individuals to speak for themselves about their own experiences. These individuals are experts in discussing their own lives and therefore, do not need a researcher or any outsider to speak on their behalf.

Giving a voice to racialized individuals often entails the use of counter-storytelling, which is a popular method among critical race theorists (e.g., DeCuir-Gunby & Walker-DeVose, 2013; Delgado, 1989;

Fernández, 2002; Solórzano & Yosso, 2002; Yosso, 2006).30

30The popularity of storytelling in CRT can be traced back to the fact that marginalized groups such as African slaves and Aboriginal peoples used storytelling to highlight their experiences and cultures (Delgado & Stefancic, 2012). Delgado and Stefancic (2012) also note that since CRT has its origins in the legal arena, the use of storytelling in witness testimony, etc., naturally influenced CRT scholars.

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According to Yosso (2006), counter-storytelling “is a method of recounting the experiences and perspectives of racially and socially marginalized people” (p. 10) in order to raise awareness of racial/social injustice. As evident in part of its name, counter-storytelling relies on collecting stories or narratives from racialized individuals.31 There are three types of counter-stories: autobiographical narratives, the stories of other people, and composite stories (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002). With regard to the last type of counterstory, “a variety of sources of data are used in order to create a group story regarding experiences with racism” (DeCuir-Gunby & Walker-DeVose, 2013, p. 253). In the current study, I use the second type of counter-stories as I detail the racial microaggressions experienced by other teachers.

No matter what type they are, all counter-stories, like other carefully-read stories, are useful as they link individual lives to wider social contexts (DeCuir-Gunby & Walker-DeVose, 2013; Maynes, Pierce,

& Laslett, 2008; Solórzano & Yosso, 2002). In detailing the racial microaggressions of the teachers in this study, I suggest how these microaggressions are representative of the larger problem of racism in the

ESOL industry by referring to relevant literature, etc. Aside from connecting the personal to the social, there are other benefits of using narratives when describing racial microaggressions. In fact, as these microaggressions are experiences of racism and “experience happens narratively” (Clandinin & Connelly,

2000, p. 19), it is logical to use stories to document these racist experiences where we are the protagonists.

Another benefit of using narratives in the current study is that stories help build empathy between people

(Ferreira, Ramírez, & Lauzon, 2009). For instance, Delgado (1989) explains that “stories humanize us…They allow us to see how the world looks from behind someone else’s spectacles” (p. 2440). This point is important for those who do not understand the impact of racism (specifically, racial

31There have been numerous definitions of the term ‘narrative’ (see Chase, 2005). Some of these definitions equate narrative with story, while others do not. For this study, I see ‘narrative’ as being synonymous with ‘story,’ hence, I use these terms interchangeably. As I explore racial microaggressions, which are specific instances of everyday racism (Solórzano & Pérez Huber, 2012), I use the following definition to describe a narrative: “A short topical story about a particular event and specific characters such as an encounter with a friend, boss, or doctor” (Chase, 2005, p. 652).

110 microaggressions) on racialized individuals as they may not have experienced such subordination themselves or personally known someone who did.

While I have outlined some benefits of using stories, I have not explained the advantages of using counter-stories. Perhaps the main benefit of counter-storytelling is that it counters the storytelling of the majoritarian group. In contrast to counter-storytelling, majoritarian storytelling “is a method of recounting the experiences and perspectives of those with racial and social privilege” (Yosso, 2006, p. 9). As Henry and Tator (2009) note, the dominant story that emerges from this storytelling

acts as a meta-code that shapes the ‘mindset’ from which the dominant group, that is Whites, observe, interpret, and understand the world…These codes exclude or silence other possible interpretations, thereby providing a justification for the maintenance and preservation of existing social hierarchies that are based on socially constructed categories of racial difference (p. 37).

Therefore, majoritarian narratives silence the experiences of people of colour and portray Whiteness as natural and superior (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002). In fact, these narratives are “embedded with racialized omissions, distortions, and stereotypes” (Yosso, 2006, p. 9) that denigrate people of colour. To take the

ESOL context as an example, a significant majoritarian story would be the idea that White native speakers of English possess the innate expertise to teach the language to students (e.g., Amin, 1997, 1999, 2000,

2004, 2005, 2006; Braine, 2010; Breckenridge & Erling, 2011; Curtis & Romney, 2006; Faez, 2012;

Hansen, 2004; Javier, 2010; Kubota, 2002; Kubota & Lin, 2006; Liu, 1999; Mahboob, 2011; McFarland,

2005; Motha, 2006; Romney, 2010; Ruecker, 2011; Shin & Kubota, 2008; Sung, 2011). Of course, this narrative distorts the capabilities of racialized English speakers by deeming them unworthy to teach the language simply on account of their respective races.

What is particularly dangerous about majoritarian stories such as the one above is that people of colour can both believe in and tell these narratives (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002; Yosso, 2006). Solórzano and Yosso (2002) give the example of African American “Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, whose writings demonstrate his stance against the civil rights of people of color and of women” (p. 28). In the

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ESOL context once again, learners, who are most often racialized themselves, may want White teachers.

Furthermore, as I have mentioned earlier, employers of Asian private-language schools indirectly narrate the majoritarian story of the excellence of White teachers by seeking out White native speakers of English to increase the prestige and profits of their schools (e.g., Braine, 2010; Heron, 2006; Hsu, 2005; Kubota,

2002; Kubota & Fujimoto, 2013; Mahboob, 2011; McFarland, 2005; Romney, 2010; Ruecker, 2011; Sung,

2011). Yosso (2006) explains how racialized majoritarian storytellers receive many benefits from telling these stories, and it is clear that Asian employers receive economic benefits by employing White teachers.

A critical race methodology uses counter-stories to combat majoritarian narratives such as the ones espoused by ESOL students and employers. Counter-storytelling, like other forms of storytelling for social change, “refers to an opposition to established knowledge, to Foucault’s suppressed knowledge, to the experience of the world that is not admitted into dominant knowledge paradigms” (Razack, 1998, p. 36).

Counter-storytelling opposes dominant narratives by dismantling them. Indeed, as Delgado (1989) explains, counter-narratives have a destructive quality as “they can show that what we believe is ridiculous, self-serving, or cruel” (p. 2415). Along with Delgado, Solórzano and Yosso (2002) and Yosso (2006) add that they also continue the fight for racial reform.

In order to achieve the above goals, counter-stories should not simply rant about one’s discrimination or attempt to convince others of the existence of racism (Ladson-Billings, 2013; Yosso,

2006). For Delgado (1989), effective counter-narratives are not coercive. Instead, “they invite the reader to suspend judgment, listen for their point or message, and then decide what measure of truth they contain”

(Delgado, 1989, p. 2415). Therefore, well-written counter-stories let readers discover racism and other forms of subordination by themselves. I take these points in mind by not trying to prove that racial microaggressions occur in every private-language school. Rather, by showcasing the microaggressions that 10 particular teachers experience, I hope that readers may see these stories as reminders of other microaggressions that they have experienced/seen in their own individual contexts.

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Along with being enlightening for those who read them, the counter-stories that I present in this study will ideally be beneficial for those who tell these stories as well. As Fernández (2002) summarizes, the strengths of using counter-storytelling are as follows: (1) it allows participants to reflect on their lived experiences; (2) narratives allow participants to make their stories public; and (3) it can be “transformative and empowering” (p. 48). With regard to point one, since racialized teachers working in private-language schools may be too busy to reflect on their own teaching experiences, the opportunity to talk about these experiences may result in new revelations about themselves. Regarding point two, by showcasing the microaggressions experienced by the teachers in the current research context, I hope that readers will come to empathize with them and seek positive change in their own school contexts. This hope leads to point three, where sharing one’s story may lead to reaching a new level of consciousness in which one discovers that microaggressions are not an individual problem and must be combatted.

This section has defined a critical race methodology and explained its usefulness in this study. If we look at this methodology as one form of narrative research, we discover its additional benefits. Namely,

Creswell (2013) notes that narratives “tell of individual experiences, and may shed light on the identities of individuals and how they see themselves [original emphasis]” (p. 71). These points are important as I am interested in racialized teachers’ experiences of racial microaggressions in Toronto private-language schools and thus, stories are the best way to capture these experiences. Furthermore, telling stories of racial microaggressions leads to individuals speaking of their effects on them, which in turn, leads to individuals sharing their identities. As a major component of this thesis is examining the professional identity formation brought on by microaggressions, narrative research is useful once again.

But what good is narrative research without any storytellers? In the following section, I introduce the storytellers of this study. That is, I profile the 10 racialized ESOL teachers whose stories comprise a large part of this thesis. Before introducing them, I briefly explain why I chose Toronto as the site of the study and other relevant details regarding the recruitment of these teachers.

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Setting, Recruitment, and Participants

Toronto was the perfect city to find private-language-school teachers given the abundance of private institutions in the area. In fact, there is no official list of how many schools operate in Toronto because they are too many of them to count (TESL Toronto, 2013). Therefore, Toronto was chosen for convenience: I could find participants much more quickly in this city than in others. Moreover, as I have worked as an ESOL instructor in the city, I already had a list of Toronto-based contacts who could help me in the recruitment of racialized ESOL instructors.

I had three main criteria when recruiting the appropriate participants. Firstly, they had to identify themselves as nonwhite. Secondly, they had to be currently employed as an ESOL teacher in a Toronto private-language school, or have worked as one for at least one year.32 Lastly, they needed to feel that race or racism influences or had influenced (if they are former private-school teachers) their interactions with students, colleagues, and/or employers in this school context. I initially wanted both ethnic and gender diversity in my sample, but I still accepted participants who had the same ethnicity or gender as existing participants if they fulfilled the above criteria.

While I could not fully control the ethnicities and genders of my participants, I certainly controlled the size of my sample for an important reason. For Creswell (2013), a good narrative study focuses on a maximum of three individuals because having more participants will decrease the level of detail that a researcher can record. While I do not dispute this point, I chose to use a larger sample of 10 teachers in order to capture the range of microaggressions in private-language schools. Indeed, having a sample of three participants would not have allowed me to detail a great variety of microaggressions (especially if all participants reported similar narratives).

32Upon consultation with my thesis committee, I decided to include former teachers in my sample in order to widen the possibilities of finding participants. Furthermore, by interviewing teachers who had left the private- language-school context for possibly negative reasons, I thought that I would be able to collect richer data concerning various forms of identity work.

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In order to gather this relatively large sample, my primary recruitment tool was a flyer that detailed the study (see Appendix A). The recruitment flyer was first forwarded through various graduate-student listservs in my home institution, the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE). In addition to the

OISE listservs, I forwarded the flyer to my friends and former colleagues in person or via e-mail, who in turn, were supposed to forward it to their contacts. Finally, both members of my thesis committee aided in recruitment by either suggesting contacts and/or forwarding the flyer themselves. Having individuals forward a flyer on my behalf was done to prevent coercion. That is, if I or anyone else directly asked potential participants to participate in the study, they would be forced to oblige as they would be put on the spot. By simply handing over a flyer instead, potential participants would have time to think about whether or not they would like to participate. This point was important as some of my contacts ended up being participants, and I did not want to directly ask them for their participation.

While some of my contacts did become participants of this study, I do not want to suggest that recruitment was an easy process. In fact, it was the opposite as it took a very long time to find individuals who were willing to share their stories with me. The recruitment process started in late October 2013 and did not end until late March 2014. My most successful strategy in finding participants was to use snowball sampling, which “in its simplest formulation…consists of identifying respondents who are then used to refer researchers on to other respondents” (Atkinson & Flint, 2001, p. 1). When I met with participants, I asked them to reach out to other teachers who may be interested in the study. Again, I asked participants to forward flyers rather than directly ask other teachers in order to avoid coercion.

When I eventually found each participant, I made arrangements to meet with each of them in person. We mutually chose (semi-)private locations such as coffee shops and study rooms that were located within downtown Toronto. Before commencing formal data collection, I went over the informed consent letter (see Appendix B) with each participant in order to ensure that each one was completely aware of the nature of the study and other pertinent information. After receiving written consent from each

115 teacher, I asked each of them to provide me with a pseudonym (or I gave them one if they had no particular preference) for which to use in their profiles. Speaking of which, I present the demographic information for the 10 racialized ESOL teachers of this study, which is then followed by brief life histories that will later help to explain how the participants experience racial microaggressions.

Table 1—Demographic Information of the Participants

Name Self-Ascribed Age Country of Self-Ascribed Number of Gender Birth Ethnic Years of Background ESOL Teaching Angelina Female Between 25 Hong Kong Chinese Around 7 to 9 and 5033 Chao Male 28 China Chinese About 5 Chiyo Female 28 Japan Japanese About 5 Josh Sex as Male 38 Canada Pacific About 11 Gender as Islander35 Heterosexual34 Maria Female 31 Brazil Japanese 13 Meezy Male 28 South Korea Asian A little over 5 Q Female 50 England Indian Maybe 14 Sharon Female 33 Canada Mixed-Race36 10 or 11 Yun Female 33 Hong Kong Chinese About 8 (on and off) Zoe Female 26 Canada Chinese 2

33Angelina did not wish to disclose her exact age. 34Josh does not identify his gender as simply male. 35Josh describes his ethnicity in terms of how other people see him. Thus, he chose Pacific Islander when I asked him for his ethnic background. As Josh’s family background is quite mixed, it is difficult for him to pinpoint a specific ethnicity. 36Sharon’s mother is British and her father is Indian.

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Angelina

Having been born in Hong Kong, a former British colony where Chinese and English were and are the official languages, Angelina considers herself a native speaker of English. Even though she is bilingual,

Angelina sees English rather than Chinese as her stronger language since most of her education was done through the former. Furthermore, English has continued to be her dominant language as a result of her finishing high school in Canada and doing all of her post-secondary education in the country as well.

Since Hong Kong has always been multicultural, Angelina remembers having childhood friends whose parents came from such countries as Ireland, Canada, and Japan. For Angelina, it never seemed problematic that her friends came from different linguistic/ethnic backgrounds and could speak Chinese proficiently. Thus, Angelina did not draw any connections between language and race. Influenced by her childhood background, Angelina often tries to negate her students’ thinking that racial/national origin correlates with linguistic ability, no matter the language.

Chao

Chao could not entirely escape this false thinking when he decided to teach ESOL in China before completing his undergraduate degree. Even though he considers himself a native speaker of English because he moved from China to Canada at the age of four and did all of his schooling in the latter country,

Chao’s ethnicity prevented him from being seen as such a speaker while teaching in China. In fact, a lot of apprehension about his identity came from the parents of students who were concerned that their children were being taught by a local Chinese person. In addition to his race, Chao attributes being young at the time as another reason why others might have distrusted his teaching ability.

In his current work context where he teaches ESOL learners at the pre-advanced level, Chao does not experience the same resistance from students as he did in China. If such situations do occur, however, he mostly laughs them off. The reason for this behaviour is that he tends not to take most things personally, which is reflective of his overall personality.

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Chiyo

Not taking things personally is also indicative of Chiyo’s personality. As a Japanese woman living in Canada for five years now, Chiyo recalls how people often treat her as a teenaged girl with low English proficiency. This stereotypical treatment does not seem to bother her as she jokingly states that she is indeed short and has a baby face. Within the classroom, being Japanese does not pose a problem for

Chiyo as she identifies as a Japanese-English instructor: someone who uses Japanese to teach Japanese students the English language. Thus, her Japanese background is an asset.

For Chiyo, native speakers of English are individuals who are born in an English-speaking country and have perfect grammatical knowledge and pronunciation. As a result of being born in Japan and not being entirely familiar with English slang and idioms, Chiyo identities as a ‘nonnative’ speaker of English.

Nevertheless, she makes up for this perceived weakness by researching idioms (among other things) and constantly trying to improve herself as a language teacher.

Josh

Coming from an opposing perspective, Josh will never see himself as a great ESOL teacher because he has never been a successful language student, which one must be in order to empathize with students. Despite being brought up by parents who speak a mishmash of Spanish, Portuguese, and

Pacific-Island dialects, Josh considers English his dominant and native language since he was born in

Canada and completed his education in the country.

Like his parents’ languages, it is difficult for Josh to pinpoint his ethnic background to one particular country because his family is quite mixed. Having this mixed-race background has been the source of a lot of racism for Josh as evident in his childhood years playing hockey, his service in the Canadian military, and to a lesser extent, his years as an ESOL teacher. These experiences have made Josh question whether or not he is Canadian and seem to be the impetus for Josh wanting to expand his students’ notions of who is or can be a Canadian.

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Maria

Maria had first-hand knowledge of multiple Canadians when she permanently moved to Canada in

2005. In fact, she had to adapt to a wide array of accents and cultures when she first arrived in the country.

Believing her English was advanced in Brazil, Maria realized that her English was not good enough in

Canada as it was textbook-based and did not match how others actually use the language.

As a result of not being born and raised in Canada, but rather in Brazil, Maria considers herself a

‘nonnative’ speaker of English. Despite her initial insecurities about her quality of English, she does not consider herself less than a native speaker. Instead, Maria sees her ‘nonnative’ status as a benefit in the classroom because she can better empathize with her ESOL students since she herself was a learner of

English. Moreover, she is quite confident in her teaching abilities as she considers herself very detail- oriented in terms of lesson planning, etc. Aside from her confidence, Maria’s passion for teaching is another strength that she brings to the ESOL classroom.

Meezy

For Meezy, ESOL teaching is more than a passion; it is a calling. In fact, ESOL teaching has fallen in line with his general desire to help others, which is also evident in his past community-service work with at-risk Sudanese youth in western Canada. Because teaching is important for him, Meezy is trying to work on his professionalism in his current school, which entails seeing his school as a business.

While Korean is his first language, Meezy considers himself a native speaker of English because his English is stronger than his Korean. His strength in English can be attributed to the fact that he lived in the western United States from the ages of 8 to 12 and then moved to western Canada at 14. While in the

United States, Meezy experienced a lot of racism due to him being the only Asian student in a school of mostly Latino/a students. Since he was not fluent in Spanish, he felt isolated from many of the students during breaks. This traumatic experience has had a deep impact on Meezy as he discourages his students from speaking in their mother tongues if that means that one student will be left out of the conversation.

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The initial conversations that Q has with her students concerns how an Indian person can speak with a British accent. Q often explains to her learners that while her parents come from India, she was born and raised in England, and is thus a native speaker of British English. Through the direct intervention of her parents, Q is also comfortable with Hindi and Urdu.

While Q is very proud of her ethnic background, she does not see it as having any relevance in her identity as a teacher. Indeed, she sees teaching in terms of appropriate knowledge and skills rather than personal identity. However, Q believes that her greatest strength as a teacher is her love for the job.

When she teaches, she does not feel like she is working. As Q adores teaching, it was quite painful for her to not find immediate work when she moved to Toronto around four years ago. Despite facing racial discrimination in her job hunt, Q has found work and is quite happy in her current school, where she is surrounded by both friendly students and colleagues from around the world.

Sharon

Sharon also has many positive interactions with her co-workers and students at her current school, but feels that aspects of her personal identity do affect how she is seen as a teacher. Since Sharon currently teaches TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language), which she sees as a White-man-in-a- suit type of course, students and peers may doubt her abilities because she is a young female. Being mixed-race and identifying as a native speaker of English because English is her first and only language,

Sharon is not immediately identified as a racial Other.

However, being half-Indian and half-Caucasian caused both Sharon and her siblings to experience a lot of racism when growing up in a small town in southern Ontario. In fact, their neighbourhood initially rallied against her family moving into the area, and Sharon notes a variety of other racist experiences at school. Being acutely aware of racism and other social issues, Sharon often feels the need to educate her students and others on their prejudiced thinking and/or behaviour.

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Yun

Yun finds it difficult to determine whether questions about her ethnic and language background are a result of prejudice as she sees such questions as normal in the Canadian context, where people come from all over the world. Born in Hong Kong and moving to Canada when she was seven-months-old, Yun is a speaker of Cantonese and English. Even though English is her second language, Yun considers herself a near-native speaker of it because she is more proficient in it than her Cantonese. Her nuanced identification as near-native is partly influenced by her time in her graduate program in second language education at an Ontario graduate institution.

While her work was very rewarding in private-language schools, Yun ultimately decided to leave this school context because she felt that she was reaching a plateau: she was teaching the same courses and not seeing any increase in pay, etc. After completing her graduate degree, she now works in an

English for Academic Purposes (EAP) setting at an Ontario university.

Zoe

Wishing to utilize her expertise gained from her master’s in curriculum design, Zoe also seeks to move on from ESOL teaching in her current school to some sort of work concerning curriculum design.

Even though she considers ESOL teaching as a transitional job, Zoe does enjoy the flexibility of the work and the fact that she has the opportunity to meet students from a variety of countries. She has noticed, however, how her school’s focus on customer service has given students more power.

Zoe considers herself a native speaker of English since she was born and raised in Canada, and her parents were born in the country as well. Even though she can use Cantonese, Zoe feels that her proficiency in the language is limited to the topics of family and food. Due to being limited in her use of

Cantonese, Zoe often felt shunned as a child when other Chinese children would criticize her for not being a true Chinese person. When her current students challenge her Chinese identity, Zoe remembers those feelings of isolation that she had experienced in her childhood years.

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Data Collection

Before meeting Zoe and the other participants, I had to decide how I wanted to collect the data from each teacher. My first step was to see data collection in terms of data creation. In fact, as Fernández

(2002) explains, stories “are mediated communicative events” (p. 49) between the speaker and listener.

That is, narratives are constructed through interaction rather than discovered per se. For this very reason, I decided that conducting interviews was the best method to record stories of racial microaggressions as experienced by these teachers, along with a researcher’s diary.

Narrative Interviews

An important component of a critical race methodology and narrative research is the active collaboration between the researcher and participant in creating stories (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000;

Fernández, 2002; Riessman, 2008). This collaboration is often needed because listeners/researchers are able to “demand more detail and greater elaboration” (Ewick & Silbey, 2003, p. 1343) of the stories being told by speakers/participants. Therefore, in order to record detailed stories of racial microaggressions, I needed to ask the participants to further elaborate on their various experiences. For the teachers to adequately fulfill this request, I needed to conduct two interviews with each one.37

Planned to be 45 to 60 minutes long but ending up being 30 to 45 minutes for most participants

(because most questions required short, straightforward answers), the first interview was conducted to collect the teachers’ demographic information, their linguistic and professional backgrounds, and their feelings about their past/current school contexts (see Appendix C). In short, the first interview was intended to gain background information on the racial microaggressions that the participants experience. In

37There were also practical reasons for wanting to do conduct multiple interviews with each teacher. Firstly, having one longer interview (instead of two shorter ones) could have resulted in information overload for the participants (as I would have had to ensure that I covered all of the information necessary to answer my research questions). Moreover, having two interviews allowed both the participants and myself to reflect in between interviews. I, as the investigator, had the time to think of additional questions to ask based on the previous interview, and the participants had the opportunity to think of new stories that they could tell in the second interview.

122 fact, learning about the teachers’ genders or ethnic backgrounds, for example, led to a discovery of exacerbating factors that contribute to their microaggressions. Moreover, having the participants compare and contrast their experiences in private-language schools with other educational contexts helped me to explain why microaggressions may be more prevalent in the former school context.

After conducting the background interviews, I conducted a second interview with each participant that was intended to be 60 to 75 minutes, but in reality, only took between 40 to 60 minutes. Perhaps the reason for this time change could be explained by the fact that my research topic required them to look at very specific aspects of their experiences in private ESOL schools. Indeed, I organized the second interview solely around my two central research concerns: racial microaggressions and the impact of these on the participants’ professional identities (see Appendix C). Riessman (2008) states, “[t]he goal in narrative interviewing is to generate detailed accounts rather than brief answers or general statements” (p.

23). I kept this point in mind by developing open-ended questions beginning with such phrases as “Tell me a time when…” or “Can you think of an occasion…”

In order to generate detailed accounts in narrative research, it may be necessary for the researcher to give control of the interview to participants by allowing the latter to speak about what is important for them (e.g., Clandinin & Connelly, 2000; Fernández, 2002; Riessman, 2008). While this point means that unstructured interviews are best, I chose to conduct semi-structured ones instead. As I was interested in detailing racial microaggressions in private-language schools and their impact on teachers’ identities, I did not want to steer away from these topics. Nevertheless, if a participant said something that was worth further exploration, I made the necessary changes to my interviewing.

Each interview was audio-taped using a digital voice recorder and then transcribed verbatim by myself. The audio files and transcripts were stored in a password-protected computer file, and hard copies of the transcripts were placed in a locked filing cabinet at my home. The participants were allowed to read the transcripts in order to make any changes, add further insights, etc., which keeps in line with CRT’s

123 valuing of the voice of racialized individuals (e.g., Closson, 2010; Delgado & Stefancic, 2012; Dixson &

Rousseau, 2005; Ladson-Billings, 1998, 2013; Solórzano & Yosso, 2002).

Researcher’s Diary

Another way that I adhered to CRT/a critical race methodology was through my use of a diary during the research process. In creating counter-stories, it is important for researchers to connect their own personal and professional experiences with the data (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002). Therefore, I used a diary to record my thoughts, feelings, and experiences in relation to the participants’ responses and the overall research problem. A diary may be considered a type of analytic memo and thus, can be used to generate codes and categories for data analysis (Saldaña, 2009). I also used my diary for this purpose as will be discussed below in my description of how I analyzed the data.

Data Analysis

I created counter-stories through a thematic narrative analysis, which has been used by CRT scholars such as Fernández (2002). According to Riessman (2008), this type of narrative analysis places primary focus on the content of the narrative rather than how the narrative is told or its format (although these elements are sometimes considered). Riessman also explains that while researchers who use thematic analysis do recognize that narratives are formed interactively (between the researcher and participant), their “focus is on the act the narrative reports and the moral of the story” (p. 62). I kept this point in mind while coding the interview transcripts.

Charmaz (2006) explains that “through coding, you define what is happening in the data and begin to grapple with what it means [original emphasis]” (p. 46). Because a critical race methodology embraces interdisciplinary knowledge (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002) and thematic analysis is similar to grounded theory in the way that both generate “thematic categories across individuals” (Riessman, 2008, p. 62), I decided to do my initial coding loosely in accordance with grounded theory. Below, I detail this coding process, but I

124 preface it by saying that it was never a linear process (Auerbach & Silverstein, 2003). Indeed, coding became a messy process that cannot be captured coherently in writing. Although temporally inaccurate, I present a step-by-step account of my data analysis for the sake of clarity.

The very first step in answering my research questions was to read over each transcript multiple times. After these multiple readings, I applied initial codes to the transcripts. Initial or open coding is concerned with describing rather than interpreting the data because doing the former may lead to findings that one may not have noticed (Charmaz, 2006; Strauss & Corbin, 1998). I decided to code on the sentence and paragraph level where I asked the question, “What is the major idea brought out in this sentence or paragraph?” (Strauss & Corbin, 1998, p. 120). Therefore, if a participant said, “I experienced a lot of racism as a child,” the initial code would be, “Experiencing racism in childhood.” The reason why I decided to code larger pieces of text (rather than line-by-line) was because I eventually wanted to pull out stories from the transcripts, which are generally more than one line.

The next step in data analysis was to organize the initial codes into repeating ideas and then themes (Auerbach & Silverstein, 2003). During this stage, I often reviewed my diary to see if I had already mentioned “how some codes seem[ed] to cluster and interrelate” (Saldaña, 2009, p. 41). Once I had organized all of the initial codes into various themes, I sought to find stories of racial microaggressions within these themes. Here, I identified stories “as brief, bounded segment[s] of interview text” (Riessman,

2008, p. 61) that detailed events with “a beginning, a middle, and an end” (Ewick & Silbey, 1995, p. 200).

However, I was not able to document all of the stories using this method. As some of the participants did not tell stories in an organized way, I needed to paraphrase and re-order their responses in order to construct a coherent narrative. This paraphrasing and re-ordering may be a form of restorying, which is a process where “the researcher provides a causal link between ideas” (Creswell, 2013, p. 74). As a part of the restorying for this study, I decided to eliminate pauses, fillers, etc., in the teachers’ responses in order to make their stories even more concise and coherent for the reader.

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After finding the stories, I interpreted their larger meaning as the final step in data analysis. This step was important because in the social sciences, “nothing speaks for itself” (Denzin, 2004, p. 447). In fact, interpretation can be seen as a form of storytelling. As Denzin (2004) explains, “interpretation requires the telling of a story…that states ‘things happen this way because’ or ‘this happened, after this happened, because this happened first’” (p. 447). My interpretative storytelling took the form of the four-component

CRT model of understanding racial microaggressions that I detailed earlier. That is, in order to understand a microaggression, we need to look at the type of microaggression, the context where it occurred, its effects on the target (and others), and how targets (and others) respond to the microaggression (Kohli &

Solórzano, 2012; Solórzano, 2012; Solórzano & Pérez Huber, 2012).

When looking at the type of racial microaggression in each story, I noted the theme from which the story came, identified the sub-type of microaggression that the story featured, and determined if the microaggression was also based on other markers such as gender. With regard to context, I looked at other themes that could help explain how the context of the private-language school (and other contexts) may have encouraged the racial microaggression to occur in each individual story. Lastly, I looked at the themes regarding professional identity in order to locate the possible effects of and responses to the microaggressions in the narratives. I did not follow this four-step model for every story because I was sometimes unable to find corresponding contextual factors, effects, and responses.

Once I followed the above model for all of the stories, I decided to cut the narratives in half by separating the type of microaggression and context from the effects and responses. Regarding the first half, I re-organized the stories into (brand-new) microaggressive themes in consultation with the existing literature, with mention of the context if and where appropriate. With regard to the effects and responses, I also re-organized them into new themes in relation to the literature on (professional) identity. The effects and responses were eventually conceptualized as types of identity work. The separation of these four components was meant to provide clear answers to the two research questions of this study. Therefore,

126 the following chapter answers what types of racial microaggressions the racialized ESOL teachers experience in their respective schools, while the penultimate chapter details how these microaggressions influence the professional identity formation of the instructors.

Concluding Thoughts about Ethical Issues & My Role as a Researcher

The entire data-analysis process that I have described above was not without ethical concerns on my part. One issue that particularly concerned me (and is one that appears in all types of narrative research) is the question of who owns the stories given the researcher and participant’s partnership in creating them (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000; Fernández, 2002; Riessman, 2008). Clandinin and Connelly

(2000) explain that “master’s and doctoral students feel this most keenly when they realize that their names will go on the finished research texts, and ownership is clearly theirs, not their participants’” (p. 176).

Knowing that I could not overcome this issue, I had to see myself as the messenger of the teachers’ stories. I adopted this role by allowing the teachers to speak in their own words in the following chapters as much as possible. Furthermore, I allowed the participants to review their interview transcripts so that I could represent their various thoughts, feelings, etc., as accurately as possible.

In addition to my concern over ownership, another ethical issue that worried me concerned the truthfulness of the counter-stories. In fact, in narrative research, “the distinction between fact and fiction is muddled” (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000, p. 179). Do the participants have a vivid memory of the event that they narrate? What parts of the narrative have the participants exaggerated or downplayed? With regard to these questions, since many of the teachers struggled to remember stories of microaggressions, I did wonder if their microaggression narratives happened in the particular way that they described. However, I learned to become less concerned with the above questions for two reasons. First, the stories that the teachers remembered perhaps showcased how certain microaggressions deeply affected them. Second, if

127 the teachers exaggerated certain elements of their stories, these exaggerations could help to explain why a microaggression occurred.38 Thus, the teachers were helping with my analysis of the data.

Another source of assistance in data analysis, I believed, was my own background. In narrative research, the personal/professional/political background of researchers influences how they restory the accounts of their participants (Creswell, 2013; Solórzano & Yosso, 2002). I did not refute this point as I used my prior experiences as a racialized ESOL teacher to determine themes and stories in the data at a much quicker rate. By drawing on my own experiences, I never strived for objectivity. As Fernández

(2002) states, “[a]ll research is subjective and […] the researcher’s subjectivity enters any research endeavor” (p. 49). This study certainly exemplifies this point as it was inspired by my own experiences dealing with racial microaggressions as I outlined in the introduction.

In addition to analyzing the data, another strength of my experience being a racialized instructor was that it allowed me to have a better rapport with the participants, who were also racialized teachers. I believed that this racial matching (Winddance Twine, 2000) made the teachers more comfortable in sharing their doubts, insecurities, etc., with me because I could empathize with them. However, since one’s multiple identities cannot be “fragmented and decontextualized” (Lee & Simon-Maeda, 2006, p. 584) in the researcher-participant relationship, I realized that my race alone could not help me fully empathize with each teacher. Indeed, Winddance Twine (2000) notes that such markers as “age, class, accent, education, national origins, region, as well as sexuality” (p. 9) all influence relations between both parties. For

38Even though issues of validity did cross my mind as seen above, I was not particularly concerned about detailing ‘factual’ stories from the teachers given the fact that narratives are not found, but rather, constructed through the interaction between the researcher and participant (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000; Fernández, 2002; Riessman, 2008). However, I did become interested in other types of validity. For example, as Angen (2000) states, “validity does not need to be about attaining positivist objective truth, it lies more in a subjective, human estimation of what it means to have done something well, having made an effort that is worthy of trust and written up convincingly” (p. 392). Therefore, validity, for me, entailed producing a high-quality piece of writing that effectively answered my two research questions. In order to achieve this quality, I made sure that I supplemented the participants’ stories with thoughtful analysis and connections to the (theoretical) literature.

128 instance, even though we were both nonwhite, I could not fully relate to the female participants’ stories of sexism because I have never experienced such discrimination as a result of being male.

This mention of the intersecting identities of the participants also raises the point of how simply being racialized does not make one automatically believe that racism exists (e.g., Winddance Twine, 2000).

Even though I wanted the participants to focus on how their race influences their interactions with others, many of them saw their gender and/or age as more influential factors. Rather than simply dismiss their feelings and ask them to focus on race instead, I further probed these cases of sexism/ageism in order to see if race played a contributing role in any way. Thus, my role as a researcher was to link the participants’ concerns with my own research concerns (Auerbach & Silverstein, 2003). This linkage of concerns appears in the form of the following chapters where I detail the microaggressions that the teachers experience, and how these events impact their professional identities.

Chapter Five: The Teachers’ Stories of Racial Microaggressions

In this chapter, I answer my first research question: what kinds of racial microaggressions do racialized English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) teachers experience in the context of private- language schools in Toronto? To provide a clear answer to this question, I decided to organize the teachers’ stories of racial microaggressions into microaggressive themes in consultation with the existing

ESOL literature as described in Chapter Three. These themes detail various aspects of the teachers’ work lives ranging from first encounters to what they view in their immediate environments. While I present a wide range of microaggressions, the reader must note that not all racial microaggressions are created equal. That is, some are more detrimental to teachers than are others. For instance, backhanded compliments may simply seem strange to teachers while cases of institutional racism may deeply hurt them. These instances of employment discrimination is what I first explore below.

Not Having the Right/White Qualifications for the Job

Li (1998) states that race has a market value and this point is certainly relevant when examining employment in the ESOL industry. As I have discussed earlier, Asian ESOL schools see White teachers as worth more than their racialized counterparts as they seek the former to teach in their institutions (e.g.,

Braine, 2010; Heron, 2006; Hsu, 2005; Kubota, 2002; Kubota & Fujimoto, 2013; Mahboob, 2011;

McFarland, 2005; Romney, 2010; Ruecker, 2011; Sung, 2011). While this institutional racism is prevalent in Asia, it seems to be present in North America as seen in the narratives of Hodge (2005) and Mahboob

(2006). The narratives of some of the teachers of this study also highlight how this discrimination may be occurring more often than not in the North American context. Indeed, some of the teachers experienced racial microaggressions in the form of institutional racism (Solórzano, 2012), which frankly became blatant at various times.

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For example, like Mahboob’s (2006) friend who was not offered a teaching position because of her appearance, some teachers remembered being told by potential employers that they were not hirable because they are nonwhite. In fact, Chao specifically recalled how after finishing his CELTA (Certificate in

English Language Teaching to Adults) in one Toronto school, he realized that his Chinese identity was an issue for the director, who would normally hire CELTA graduates:

After finishing CELTA, we sort of did interviews with the director at [the] school. And during…[this] class interview, he just interviewed everyone individually in the classroom. And I asked him, “In Toronto, would hiring an Asian teacher be an issue in your school?” I asked this question because this was right after I worked in China where it was an issue. I recall him directly telling me, “Yes, it is, which is why you most likely won’t be asked to stay on.” And that was weird for me because I would expect that in China, but not here.

Even though the director did not use any racial epithets or was violent, this story is an example of a microassault because he was explicitly discriminating against Chao because of the latter’s race (e.g., Sue,

2010a, 2010b; Sue & Constantine, 2007; Sue et al., 2007). That is, the director would not hire Chao as an

ESOL teacher because he was Asian (and thus, some students would not accept him). Sue et al. (2007) mention how microassaults mostly happen in private situations because perpetrators feel safe to express their racist beliefs. But why did the director voice his opinion in front of the other students? Because an ideology (of racism) makes us believe that certain things are obvious (Althusser, 1971), perhaps the director believed that he was telling a business truth rather than revealing his prejudice.

While Chao’s story happens publicly, Q’s narrative of being denied a teaching position showcases how microassaults most likely occur in more private quarters (Sue et al., 2007). Needing to find permanent work after a summer-teaching job, Q found another school where she perfectly matched the qualifications and experience required for the position being offered. She then phoned the employer in order to explain that she was exactly what he was looking for and make arrangements to drop off her resume at his office.

When Q later arrived at the office, she greeted the receptionist who then informed the employer that Q had arrived. Q continues this narrative in her own words:

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[The employer] said, “Yes, yes. Send her in, send her in. That’s what I want.” So I was very sure that this was a job that I had already gotten…And the [receptionist] got up and walked around to the edge of her desk and she said, “Come.” So I started following her and she walked through the doorway to the man. Out of politeness, I just stopped at the doorway thinking that I should let her go in, hand over the resume, and then I would walk inside. She went over, handed the resume, and then the man saw my last name. And he said, “Is she not a native speaker?” And the lady said, “Yes, she sounds like one, but I didn’t ask her.” He then said, “But the name is not English. See [Q’s last name]. It’s not English.” And I think he asked something about me being another colour…There was some question of brown coming up. Finally, he said, “Tell her we’ll call her.”

When the receptionist moved past the doorway, Q made eye contact with the employer and simply could not make sense of the situation. After the receptionist, looking helpless and embarrassed, apologized to her, Q quickly picked up her bag and left the office.

According to Sue (2010b), dealing with microaggressions is mentally taxing for victims because they try to understand the mindset of the perpetrators. Q’s experience exemplifies this point as she was trying to process all of the employer’s questions in her mind: “What’s her last name? Is that her last name? Brown? What is all this?” Q was utterly confused and then angry about the entire situation since she could not make sense of it at the time. In hindsight, perhaps we can understand why the employer did not view Q as a native-English speaker despite the fact that she was born and raised in England. The quickest answer is that he committed linguistic racial profiling (Romney, 2010).

That is, when seeing her Indian last name, the employer automatically assumed that Q was deficient in English because as a brown person, she is nonwhite and thus a ‘nonnative’ speaker of English

(Kubota & Lin, 2006). Alternatively, the employer may have thought that Q was a speaker of Indian

English, which is believed to have ‘mother tongue influence’ (MTI) from other Indian languages that results in poor grammar, verbosity, and strong regional accents (e.g., Cowie, 2007; Mirchandani, 2012; Poster,

2007). In either case, Q’s racial background trumped her professional one (Macdonald & Merrill, 2009).

Thus, Q’s narrative is not simply a microassault (as the employer openly refused to see her), but it is also a microinvalidation since the employer failed to recognize Q’s reality (Sue, 2010a; 2010b; Sue & Constantine,

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2007; Sue et al., 2007). In fact, he neither acknowledged that someone of Indian descent could be a native speaker of English, nor did he believe that skills are more relevant than race.

In the case of Q, a microinvalidation occurred as a result of the employer’s reaction to seeing her last name on the resume. However, microinvalidations may also happen when an employer is trying to find a way not to hire a racialized teacher. This type of situation occurred in Josh’s experience in trying to find a teaching position in Toronto. In one narrative, Josh applied to a school that was in desperate need of a teacher and recounted his awkward conversation with the White employer:

I handed her my stuff and she said, “I’d like to ask you a few questions first if that’s okay.” And I said, “Sure, certainly.” And then she goes, “Where did you do your studies?” And I replied, “Here in Toronto.” She goes, “And anywhere else?” I replied, “No, all of them in Toronto. From junior kindergarten to grad school to teacher’s college.” She then asked, “What language do you speak at home may I ask?” And I said, “Sure, no problem. At home, I speak English.” She then asked, “And your parents?” “They speak about six or seven different languages all mixed up,” I replied. She went, “Oh.” And I went, “But I can’t speak those languages. I can only speak English.” And after that, she went, “Okay, but when you communicate with them, how does that work?” I said, “They have jobs in Canada. They understand English perfectly.” And then after that, she said, “Okay, but we’re really looking for a native speaker.” And I said, “That’s fine because I am a native speaker.” Just as I said that, a White woman came out with a Scottish accent. And I thought to myself, “Gee, she’s not a native speaker [because she may speak Gaelic or Scots as a first language] and she’s working here. How does that work?” So I didn’t know what to take from it, but they never called me back.

Based on her persistent questioning about Josh’s background, it seems that the employer believed the native speaker to be a monolingual/monocultural entity (Kramsch, 1998). Despite Josh’s declaration that he is not multilingual, the fact that he came from a multilingual home rendered him a ‘nonnative’ speaker of

English and thus, unqualified for the position. Moreover, with his noticing of the Scottish teacher at the end of the interview, Josh realized that his racial and linguistic identities were in conflict (Faez, 2012): he was

‘nonnative’ because he was a nonwhite individual.

In gatekeeping encounters such as the above job interview, “the gatekeeper serves as the ultimate authority figure who judges, often severely, the gatekeepee’s adequacy” (Kerekes, 2006, pp. 27-28). In

Josh’s case, the gatekeeper/interviewer, being in a position of power, deemed him inadequate for a

133 position due to his perceived linguistic ability. But in order to maintain her position of authority, the employer needed to deem Josh inadequate in a subtle way. That is, if she had overtly discriminated against Josh, she would have lost her power as Josh could have challenged her racist thinking. Therefore, she needed to allude to Josh’s inadequacy because “through allusions one can suggest negative associations without being held responsible for them” (Wodak, 2011, p. 366).

Indeed, her microinvalidation against Josh did not entail her directly telling him that being nonwhite signalled being a ‘nonnative’ speaker, but rather, insinuating (through her questioning) that simply having racialized, multilingual parents makes one deficient in English. By trying to determine how Josh communicates with his parents, the employer was perhaps trying to make him think that it is logical for one to assume that he is a ‘nonnative’ speaker. Her use of ‘we’re’ instead of ‘I’m’ indicates that it is not her own perspective, but a general logic that determines his employability (Reisigl & Wodak, 2001). Aside from proficiency, why would the employers in Josh, Q, and Chao’s stories not want to hire them?

The simple answer to the above question is context. In fact, understanding the context of utterances is helpful in understanding whether or not they express prejudice (Wodak, 2011). Perhaps one reason why the above employers were able to make microaggressive comments against the teachers was because these comments happened in private-language schools, which have not been subject to immense labour regulation in Canada (Breshears, 2008). Therefore, the employers may have felt more comfortable to discriminate because they did not have a fear of any legal consequence. This need to commit institutional racism stems from the fact that these schools operate as businesses that market White

Canadians as the ideal ESOL service providers (e.g., Abrile, 2006; Hodge, 2005). Of course, this institutional racism sits within the cultural racism (Henry et al., 1998; Sue, 2010a) that states that the

English of White Canadians is the native variety of the language (Amin, 1997).

Chao, Q, and Josh all felt that not possessing these ‘Canadian’ qualities was the primary reason why they failed to get a teaching position. These feelings speak to the idea that they did not have the right

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‘property.’ That is, they did not have Whiteness, which would have given them the privilege of gaining employment (Delgado & Stefancic, 2012; Harris, 1993; Ruecker, 2011). By gaining White property in the form of White teachers, Toronto private-language schools become White properties themselves. If students desire White native speakers of English, then they would most likely go to places where many

White instructors congregate. But what happens when ESOL learners realize that their teacher is not always White? This question leads to another set of microaggressions that I discuss below.

Student Disappointment with Having a Nonwhite Teacher

Indeed, ESOL learners may express extreme disappointment when they discover that their teacher is nonwhite. While I have explored this theme in relation to Canadian ESOL settlement programs (e.g.,

Amin, 1997, 1999, 2000, 2004), I return to it as the teachers of this study also recount instances of their students being upset upon first meeting them. One unusual example of this point comes from Yun, who remembers one Japanese student who seemed very angry with having her as a teacher:

I remember one Japanese student [coming in on her first day] and I guess she was shocked by my appearance or approach. I don’t know exactly what happened, but she essentially stormed out of the class, slammed the door, and went straight to my supervisor at the time….I didn’t find out until afterwards that she was unhappy with me for whatever reason and had asked to be switched to another class.

This situation can be labelled a microinsult since it was an action that conveyed rudeness to Yun as a racialized individual (Sue & Constantine, 2007). By angrily exiting the classroom and asking to change class, the student sent the insulting message (Sue, 2010b; Sue et al., 2007) to Yun that she was not a suitable teacher due to her racial background. Of course, we can look at how the context of the private- language school facilitated this insulting message.

In fact, in explaining the above narrative, Yun told me, “It’s fine because at [this] school, if you don’t like the class or whatever, you can switch.” This comment implies that the Japanese student held the position of an educational consumer (Breshears, 2008; Hodge, 2005) who could switch service providers if

135 she was unhappy with the service at this institution. Because “service recipients translate race and ethnic markers into indicators of the nature of the service itself” (Macdonald & Merrill, 2009, p. 125), the student perhaps saw Yun’s Chinese background as proof of her deficiency in teaching ESOL. Holding this belief and the position of customer, the student could have felt free to commit a microinsult (because it was her right as a client to openly express her dissatisfaction).

As seen above then, the business aspect of private-language schools may allow students to voice their grievances in more explicit ways. But sometimes, it is the cultural context of students that helps to explain why they may be disappointed with having a certain teacher. More specifically, some of the female teachers reported incidents where students coming from male-dominated cultures showed them disrespect because they are (racialized) women. Because male students from these cultures sometimes expect to have authority over women (e.g., Stuart, 2005), they may come to resent having a female instructor control the classroom. Furthermore, as the “White, Anglo, male” (Amin, 1999, p. 97) garners the most authority in class, racialized females lose authority not only on account of their race, but also their gender. This point is relevant for Q who notes how some male students explicitly express their displeasure with her:

Sometimes they just can’t accept [me as a teacher] and sometimes they leave…It’s difficult for them to accept the fact that this is a woman and she’s a brown woman, [and] then they move to a different class.

Before deciding to leave class, male ESOL learners may openly challenge female teachers’ authority through constant disruptions during lessons, etc.

This type of situation happened to Angelina when she had to contend with a male Korean student who did not value her as a teacher and refused to follow her instructions:

Once this student came into class, he started to speak in Korean with his friend. I was like, “Please speak English.” He didn’t care. He continued, took out his phone, and didn’t even listen. I gave him work to do, but he didn’t do any of it…Obviously, he didn’t like me for whatever reason. He probably thought, “I came here to find a teacher who is White. So why am I being taught by an Asian? Also, why a woman?”

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Angelina’s narrative is another microinsult because the Korean student’s lack of respect highlights the demeaning attitude (Sue & Constantine, 2007) that Asian women do not deserve the same deference as

White men. Part of understanding why this microinsult occurred entails looking at Angelina’s belief that the student desired a White teacher. Since many South Koreans link the English spoken by White people with

(economic) progress (e.g., Grant & Lee, 2009), perhaps the student thought that Angelina could not help him reach prosperity. Moreover, when Angelina thinks that he did not want a female teacher, this belief may speak to the lingering patriarchy present in South Korea (e.g., Choe, 2007; Jung, 2011). Perhaps this particular student (and I emphasize ‘particular’ because I do not essentialize all Korean males) felt that an

Asian woman, like Angelina, should take orders from him rather than vice versa.

In both Angelina and Q’s experiences, we may see their microaggressions as layered assaults

(Kohli & Solórzano, 2012; Solórzano, 2012; Solórzano & Pérez Huber, 2012). That is, they experienced discrimination from students because their race and gender overlapped with each other. However, layered microaggressions do not stop at the intersection of race and gender. Indeed, race/ethnicity may intersect with age as seen in the case of Meezy who feels that being an ethnically-Korean male in his 20s leads to conflict with his older Korean students. Meezy details one story to exemplify this point:

I have a Korean gentleman in my class. I don’t know how old he is exactly. He seems to be about 50-something. And I believe it’s because of the large gap between our ages [that he seems disappointed in having me as his teacher]. He sometimes refuses to participate in speaking activities. I feel like he’s embarrassed that he is learning English from somebody younger because in Asia, most of the teachers are a lot older than the students.

When telling this story, Meezy believed that if he were a young White male, the Korean student would not have a problem being taught by him. Therefore, Meezy’s race and age become an issue as his authoritative position as a language teacher conflicts with the traditional Korean custom of juniors showing deference to their seniors (Haghighat, 2006).

By refusing to participate in some of the class activities and generally being uncomfortable with

Meezy, the Korean gentleman was indirectly conducting ethnic assignation on to Meezy. That is, he saw

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Meezy mostly in terms of his ethnic identity rather than consider his other identities such as his professional one (Kenny & Briner, 2013). Because Meezy is a young Korean male, he is only a young Korean male in the eyes of this student. Consequently, the gentleman possibly felt that he did not have to respect Meezy as a teacher because he is an older Korean male. In this sense, this ethnic assignation may be a type of microinvalidation as the student ignored Meezy’s experiential reality as someone who lives and works in

Canada (Sue, 2010a, 2010b; Sue & Constantine, 2007; Sue et al., 2007).

In fact, the student did not consider that since Meezy is in Canada, where deference for seniors is not as formalized as in South Korea, he did not need to adhere to Korean cultural norms. Moreover, he failed to contemplate the possibility that Meezy’s professional identity is more salient than his ethnicity while working at school. Seeing individuals only in terms of their ethnic/racial backgrounds is a theme that will be repeated in the next section where teachers face microaggressive questions about their origins.

Questions Concerning Teachers’ Backgrounds

A common type of microinvalidation involves the theme of being an alien in one’s own land (Sue,

2010a, 2010b; Sue & Constantine, 2007; Sue et al., 2007). That is, racialized individuals are “perceived as a perpetual foreigner or being an alien in one’s own country” (Sue, 2010a, p. 37). For Sue (2010a), when

Asian and Latino/a Americans, who are the usual victims of this microinvalidation, are complimented on their English or are asked where they were born, “the meta-communication is that ‘You are not American’ or ‘You are a foreigner’’’ (p. 37). I argue that racialized Canadians also experience this type of microinvalidation as seen in the stories of the teachers of this study. Indeed, when students inquire about their backgrounds, these teachers feel that they are perceived as foreigners.

For example, despite being born and raised in Canada, Zoe, like Javier (2010), recounts how students seldom see her as Canadian upon their first encounters with her:

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Generally, they ask, “Teacher, where are you from?” And then I tell them that I was born in Canada. And then they’re like, “No, teacher, where are you really from?” I’m like, “No, I’m from Canada.” And then they’ll ask, “Where is your family from?” And then I’ll explain to them that my grandparents come from Hong Kong. After that, they’re like, “Okay.”

When asking Zoe where she is really from, the students are making the allusion (Wodak, 2011) that a person of Chinese ancestry cannot be a true Canadian. This insinuation begs the question of why this belief persists. One reason why Zoe may be deemed a foreigner is because many have associated

Whiteness with Canada (Agnew, 2007). Razack (2002/2007) discusses how we believe in a national mythology that narrates how White Europeans peacefully settled in an empty Canada. Therefore, the

British and French are deemed the original inhabitants of the country and consequently, English and

French are the original Canadian languages (Haque, 2012).

Looking at English in particular, the above point implies that to be a true Canadian, one must be a

White native speaker of English (Amin, 1997). Yun feels that the media perpetuates this image as evidenced by her initial conversations with students:

I guess they think through the media that a Canadian is Caucasian. And so when they come to the school or the classroom and they see that I’m not, they’ll be curious. They’ll wonder like, “Is English your first language?” Or sometimes, “How long have you been studying English?”

Yun does not take offence to these types of questions as she does describe herself as a near-native speaker of English who did become proficient in the language after Cantonese. However, Yun’s experience may be an example of a microinvalidation since her students seem to assume that being nonwhite entails being a learner of English and thus, a non-Canadian. Therefore, it is possible that Yun’s students subscribe to the idea of one language, one culture, and one nation in which racial/linguistic outsiders are deemed perpetual foreigners (e.g., Amin, 2000, 2004; Bauman & Briggs, 2003; Hackert,

2009, 2012; Heller, 2008; Kramsch, 1997; Shuck, 2006). That is, ethnically-Chinese and Cantonese- speaking Yun is an immigrant because she does not come from a monolingual, British background.

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Similar to Yun, Josh feels that how Canada markets itself to the world influences how ESOL students come to perceive their teachers. In fact, he seems to echo Razack’s (2002/2007) argument that

Canada portrays itself as a wild, untamed country with White Canadians dressed as Mounties or playing ice hockey, which international students come to believe. For example, Josh recounts how one Swiss student explicitly questioned his Canadian identity when first meeting him:

But when we first met, she asked, “Are you the teacher?” And I replied, “Yes.” She then went, “Are you Canadian?” I was like, “Yes, I am.” She then said, “Cause you don’t look Canadian.” There was a collective ‘oooh’ in the class. She went, “What? You’re not what I think a Canadian looks like.” And I asked, “What does a Canadian look like?” “You know like me,” she said, “You know, fair hair, light eyes, white skin, you know.” I then said, “It’s not your fault that you think this because if you go to our airport and you look at our postcards, that’s what you’re going to see…”

In addition to looking at the wider of context of Canadian advertising, we must examine how the context of the private-language school may have facilitated this open challenge to Josh’s Canadian identity.

If Josh’s school is similar to other Canadian private ESOL schools that market Canadian

Whiteness as a selling point (Abrile, 2006; Hodge, 2005), then the Swiss student may have felt that she was paying to be taught by a White Canadian teacher. Like vacationers who may be upset to find out that their hotel room is smaller than they had expected, the student was surprised to have an instructor that did not match the product description. By questioning Josh’s Canadian status, perhaps she was making sure that she was getting her money’s worth. Indeed, questioning a teacher’s background in order to determine their educational worth is an issue that Maria must face in her interactions with students.

Being of Japanese heritage and having a Japanese maiden name, Maria finds that her Japanese students in particular do not believe that she is actually Brazilian. In this sense then, her “body [is] racialized within a particular national field” (Winddance Twine, 2000, p. 17). By looking Japanese, she is assumed to be from Japan. This misconception may make Japanese students apprehensive in having her as a teacher as exemplified in the following narrative:

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It was actually lunch time and I came to my class five minutes prior to teaching. I had some students in my room having lunch, and this Japanese student was just eyeing me. When she saw me going through materials, she realized that I was a teacher. She turned to me and was like, “Are you Japanese?” And I said, “No, I’m not.” And she was like, “Oh, okay.” It was very awkward and it did not give me the best impression of the student…It seemed that she did not want to be taught by a Japanese person.

Upon reflection of this story, Maria believes that this student did not want a Japanese teacher because of the belief that teachers from Japan can be boring:

Talking to a coworker who was interviewed for a job in Japan, I discovered that some universities tell the teachers how to exactly teach their students. All the classes come with a lesson plan and how you are going to teach. This Japanese student might have feared this format. From what I gathered from this conversation, classes can be very dry.

By asking about Maria’s national background, the Japanese student perhaps wanted to make sure that Maria would not be a boring teacher. What separates Maria’s story from the others of this section is that the student was more concerned about whether she was Japanese than Canadian. Nevertheless, this questioning implied that Maria’s ethnicity is the sole determiner of her ability to teach English without any consideration of her actual skills/training. Maria’s story provides a good transition to the theme of others doubting the knowledge of nonwhite teachers, which will be explored in the following section.

Doubts about Teachers’ Abilities and Knowledge

A continuing theme of this thesis has been the idea that White native speakers of English are the best users and teachers of the language (e.g., Amin, 1997, 1999, 2000, 2004, 2005, 2006; Braine, 2010;

Breckenridge & Erling, 2011; Curtis & Romney, 2006; Faez, 2012; Hansen, 2004; Javier, 2010; Kubota,

2002; Kubota & Lin, 2006; Liu, 1999; Mahboob, 2011; McFarland, 2005; Motha, 2006; Romney, 2010;

Ruecker, 2011; Shin & Kubota, 2008; Sung, 2011). Consequently, racialized English speakers are deemed the opposite. The above points have been seen in Fujimoto (2006) and Stephan’s (2006) narratives in which their grammar explanations, etc., were frequently challenged by students. Though not as overt as

141 these cases, many of the teachers of this study also feel that their abilities in and knowledge of the English language are frequently doubted in their respective schools.

For instance, Meezy remembers various times when students questioned his pronunciation because he is ethnically Korean. In the following story, Meezy recounts how one student in his listening- and-speaking class speculated about his inability to pronounce long and short vowels:

I was teaching them about long vowels and short vowels like ‘sheet’ and the s-word, and the word ‘beach’ and the b-word. Those are the fun examples that I’ll throw at students. I think one of the Latino students said, “Oh, Asian people always make that mistake.” And in his broken English, he said something like, “You could too, I guess. Do you fix mistakes like that at your house?” So it was a semi-racist comment. However, it was a very fun, outgoing, relaxed group, so comments like that could be thrown at all people, not just me. So I took [the comment] as the student trying to be funny.

While recognizing their racist nature, Meezy did not view the student’s comments as entirely racist because they were made in a humorous tone. When derogatory comments are made through the use of humour, it is difficult for targets to contest them because they are simply jokes and are thus not meant to be taken seriously (e.g., Holmes, 2006; Weaver, 2011). If targets do challenge these jokes, they may be labelled such terms as “a ‘wet blanket,’ ‘killjoy’ or ‘misery-guts’’’ (Holmes, 2006, pp. 132-133). Perhaps

Meezy did not take offence to the student’s comments because he did not want to be perceived as lacking a sense of humour. Nevertheless, the student’s humorous remarks emphasize the stereotype that Asians are poor speakers of English (e.g., Ruble & Zhang, 2013) and therefore, can be considered a microassault, which sometimes takes the form of telling and laughing at racist jokes (Sue, 2010a).

In the above example, Meezy’s pronunciation is called into question through a microassault.

However, racialized teachers’ proficiency in English may be challenged through more subtle means such as microinsults. In fact, a usual theme in microinsults involves ascribing (a lack of) “intellect, competence, and capabilities” (Sue, 2010a, p. 35) to racialized individuals. This ascription of intelligence has certainly affected Maria who, as a racialized ‘nonnative’ speaker of English, believes that students do not trust her knowledge of the language despite her confidence in her teaching capabilities. In one example, Maria

142 narrates how one student initially doubted her teaching of a particular grammatical point and asked someone else for assistance:

[I was teaching the] present perfect and if you could use [it] with ‘today’ or not. I told my students that you could, depending on the time of the day you were saying it. One student actually checked with another teacher who was actually a nonnative teacher as well. She was Italian [who] was White, blonde-haired, and blue-eyed. She told the student that you can never use ‘today’ with the present perfect. So the student actually went further and searched it, and he came back to me like two days later and said, “You know what. You were right.” It was actually quite interesting and I asked him, “Why didn’t you believe me?” And he was like, “Oh cause I checked with another teacher and she said no.”

One interesting aspect of Maria’s story is that it conflicts with the general belief that ‘nonnative’ teachers are more effective grammar instructors because they have been explicitly taught grammatical rules (Benke &

Medgyes, 2005; Lasagabaster & Sierra, 2005; Mahboob, 2004; Medgyes, 1992, 2001). What the narrative does confirm, however, is the idea that nativeness in English is closely linked to Whiteness (Sung, 2011).

Indeed, even though the Italian teacher was a ‘nonnative’-English speaker, the student saw her as an authority in the English language simply because she was White.

Moreover, since the blonde, blue-eyed woman has been historically marketed as the pinnacle of beauty (e.g., Jones, 2008), Maria’s description of the Italian teacher being not only White, but also blonde- haired and blue-eyed suggests that the male student sought help from this teacher because she was attractive as well. Viewed from this perspective, the teacher’s beauty could be a form of aesthetic labour in that her attractiveness might have triggered “initial and repeat custom” (Warhurst & Nickson, 2007, p. 107).

That is, the student came to utilize her expertise in grammar because she was attractive.

This male-female dynamic is inferred in Maria’s narrative, but it is a real problem for Sharon with regard to students challenging her teaching authority. Whereas Maria feels that students doubted her knowledge of English due to her race, Sharon believes that an unclear combination of her race and gender

(Ladson-Billings, 2013) is responsible for students doubting her competence in English. Because Sharon teaches TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) which she describes as a White-man-in-a-suit

143 type of course, being a (mixed-race) female may make her less authoritative (Amin, 1999). In fact, she recounts how one male student was not satisfied with her explanation of the word ‘several:’

There was this ongoing debate. This one student just had no faith in me for no reason whatsoever, and really got on this thing with what the word ‘several’ meant. And whether it meant larger or smaller, two or three, or if it was similar to ‘many.’ This went on for days to the point where the other students were like, “Oh my gosh.” His approach [in finding the answer] was to go and ask other White male teachers in the school who were way less qualified than me because our school will hire teachers who have no ESL qualifications. So it is not to say that they wouldn’t know, but there was nothing to indicate that they would be more qualified than me. Also, they weren’t teaching professional programs.

As the student solely asked White male teachers for the meaning of ‘several,’ we may characterize

Sharon’s experience as a layered assault of racism and sexism (Kohli & Solórzano, 2012; Solórzano, 2012;

Solórzano & Pérez Huber, 2012). In one sense, Sharon’s story is an example of a racial microinsult that enforces the notion that racialized English speakers are less intelligent than their White counterparts no matter their qualifications (Sue, 2010a). On the other hand, it may also be an instance of a gendered microinsult stating that women are intellectually inferior to men in the realm of work (Capodilupo et al.,

2010; Sue, 2010a). This last point may seem surprising given that Sharon performs service work (in the form of teaching), which is perceived to be ‘women’s work’ due to the supposed need to be caring and deferential to clients (Cameron, 2000; McDowell, 2009).

While women may thus have the required soft skills to do service work, they may be perceived as lacking the necessary hard skills (i.e., technical competence) because these skills “denote masculine competence” (Burack & Franks, 2006, p. 98). For example, while a female math teacher may be praised for her rapport with students, others may feel that she cannot teach math because it is a masculine subject

(Sue, 2010a). Similarly, because TOEFL requires enhanced knowledge of grammar, etc., perhaps

Sharon’s student felt that she did not have this technical knowledge as a woman. Despite being more qualified than her White male peers, Sharon could not prove her worth.

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This unequal status between Sharon and her male peers may also lead to “peer-to-peer microaggressions [that] occur between individuals who occupy an equal status relationship in the organizational chart, but do not necessarily experience an equal amount of power and influence” (Sue,

2010a, p. 219). In the ESOL context, even though they may both be teachers, White native speakers might see their racialized “counterparts [as] less capable and competent” (Sue, 2010a, p. 220) because they do not have the embodied knowledge to teach the language. As a result, White teachers may come to dictate correct language usage and/or pedagogy to their nonwhite peers. This situation happens with Chiyo, a

Japanese ‘nonnative’ speaker of English who feels that her peers view her English as sub-par.

Chiyo’s teaching context is unique as she teaches alongside a White native speaker in the classroom. While Chiyo looks at Japanese students’ mistakes from English to Japanese, her colleague looks at their mistakes from Japanese to English. Sometimes this collaborative teaching results in Chiyo’s peer overtly correcting her utterances in class, which she details in the following narrative:

The students wanted to say something is homey, meaning you feel at home. In Japanese, we say ‘at home.’ It’s a borrowed English word, but here, it doesn’t make any sense. So I corrected my students’ mistake. But at the time, I said, “You should say homely.” [Hearing that,] my co-worker told me, “No, we don’t say that. We say homey.” The English dictionary actually says that ‘homely’ is okay, but it was [more of] a British-English word. So in that kind of situation, my co-worker directly told me in front of my students, and I’m sometimes embarrassed because it’s showing that I’m not familiar with the word.

Why would Chiyo’s colleague overtly correct her in front of the students? If we look at the teaching context once again, perhaps the teacher was simply assuming his role as a collaborator: he was using his expertise to supplement Chiyo’s lack of lexical knowledge. Furthermore, Chiyo describes his general personality as being direct with others.

Due to these factors, Chiyo’s co-worker, like other microaggressive perpetrators, might not have been aware that he was committing a microaggression against Chiyo (Sue, 2010a, 2010b; Sue et al.,

2007). Nevertheless, since he openly corrected Chiyo without checking to see if she was right, her colleague committed a microinsult that positioned her as less competent in English (Sue, 2010a). This

145 microinsult perhaps originated from earlier beliefs about the native speaker. As discussed with regard to

European nationalism/Anglo-Saxonism, native speakers (of English), being born and raised using the language, were believed to embody the culture of the (English-speaking) nation (e.g., Bonfiglio, 2013;

Hackert, 2009, 2012; Hutton, 1999). The present-day manifestation of this belief comes in the idea that native-speaking teachers are better able to teach English-speaking culture (e.g., Amin, 1997, 2000, 2004;

Benke & Medgyes, 2005; Hodge, 2005; Lasagabaster & Sierra, 2005; Mahboob, 2004).

Thinking of culture in terms of appropriate vocabulary usage, when Chiyo’s colleague told her, “We don’t say [homely],” his implied message was that a racial/linguistic outsider does not have the authority to say that a non-Canadian word can be used in Canada (Hutton, 1999). Furthermore, his use of the pronoun

‘we’ suggests that Chiyo should join his position (Reisigl & Wodak, 2001): since we native speakers say

‘homey,’ you should too. In this sense then, the co-worker’s comments reflect both a culturally racist (Sue,

2010a) and native-speakerist (Holliday, 2006) sentiment that White native speakers know and should teach culturally-appropriate English to their ‘nonnative’ counterparts. Furthermore, this sentiment may come from

“a position of innocence” (Razack, 1998, p. 89) in which Chiyo’s colleague might have perceived himself as not disrespecting Chiyo, but rather, giving her sound lexical/pedagogical advice.

Like the students in the above narratives, Chiyo’s colleague mistook her competence in English as inferior without adequate proof. On some occasions, students and peers may actually mistake these racialized instructors as non-teachers, which will be highlighted in the following set of stories.

Cases of Mistaken Identity

Indeed, many of the teachers felt that their race prevented them from being seen as teachers in their respective schools. Even though these cases of mistaken identity are interrelated to questions about teachers’ backgrounds (as I have discussed with regard to the literature in Chapter Three), I have chosen to present them as a separate theme for two reasons. Firstly, in contrast to the existing literature, there are

146 numerous examples of these cases and thus, they need to be treated separately. Moreover, these cases are not about questioning identity, but rather, making assumptions: individuals assume that race determines whether one is a teacher or not.

From this perspective, we can view cases of mistaken identity as a type of “ethnic assignation in a

‘power/status’ situation” (Kenny & Briner, 2013, p. 732). That is, racialized individuals “[find] themselves in situations where they [feel] the person they [are] interacting with [assumes] they [do] not hold their job or position because, they [feel], of their ethnicity” (Kenny & Briner, 2013, p. 733). This type of ethnic assignation is thus a microinvalidation that ignores the reality of nonwhite workers (Sue, 2010a, 2010b; Sue

& Constantine, 2007; Sue et al., 2007) and furthermore, emerges as a theme when ESOL teachers are mistaken as ESOL students. However, in the context of the private-language school, ethnicity/race is not the sole factor in mistaking racialized teachers as learners. In fact, since there is a large young Asian student population in many of their schools, the Asian teachers of this study feel that others mistake them for students because they are also ethnically Asian and in their twenties. Therefore, race and age facilitate ethnic assignation, which can now be thought of as a layered assault that transforms young Asian teachers into young Asian students (Kohli & Solórzano, 2012; Solórzano, 2012; Solórzano & Pérez Huber, 2012).

In the following narrative, Meezy exemplifies the above points by discussing how his race and youth are the source of many misconceptions about his teacher identity:

Pretty much every day, a student’s friend will come into my class at lunch or during breaks, and they will rarely think of me as the teacher even though I’m sitting right at my desk. I think my ethnicity has something to do with it, but I blame my fashion mostly. I wear hoodies and there will be days when I’ll look pretty flashy.

For Meezy then, fashion has an exacerbating effect on the ethnic assignation directed at him. Since hoodies are a popular fashion choice among young people, these pieces of clothing make him appear younger to other students. While Meezy does not find much pleasure out of his ethnic assignation, Chao actually does the opposite. Indeed, during the first days of class, Chao would sit among his students while

147 they would wonder where the teacher had gone. Once he stood up and began speaking, most students would figure out that he was the teacher. He describes one instance when one student did not understand the joke despite an explicit introduction about himself:

[After introducing myself as the teacher], I went on to do the first lesson. About 10 minutes into it, this Japanese girl went, “Oh, you are the teacher!” And I was like, “Seriously? You didn’t get that from my ‘hi-I’m-the-teacher’ speech?”

In this situation, it seems that the Japanese student was hearing Chao’s race or listening with her eyes

(Romney, 2006). Despite his explicit mention of being the teacher in fluent English, she perhaps saw Chao as being a fellow ESOL learner because of his ethnic background.

In the above stories, the student population of their schools may make Chao and Meezy appear as learners. In addition to this contextual factor, the fact that Canadian private-language schools have high turnover rates of teachers (e.g., Breshears, 2008) may increase cases of mistaken identity as new teachers come to replace the ones who had left and may not know the current staff. This factor is applicable to

Chiyo who details how one new teacher tried to stop her from using the photocopier because she was a

Japanese ‘nonnative’ speaker of English, much like her school’s student population:

I was using the copy machine at school, and one specific English teacher told me, “You cannot use it cause you’re a student, right?” And I said, “No. I’m an instructor here.” So she was like, “Oh sorry! I didn’t know that.”

Chao reports on a similar occurrence, but with regard to how new staff members fail to recognize him as a teacher at first (as was the case for Lee’s [2011] participant in Chapter Three):

The staff changes pretty frequently…at my school…I remember walking into the staffroom one day, and one of the new staff members turned to me and said, “This is for teachers only.” And it’s the same reaction as the students who say, “Oh, you’re the teacher?” It’s just kind of funny.

While there may be misconceptions about one’s professional identity among old and new staff members, there may also be cases of mistaken identity between co-workers who have known each other for a long period of time. These types of situations happen to Sharon who, as a mixed-race woman with a

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White mother, is not immediately identified as a racial Other. As a result, her co-workers often think of her as a White individual as seen in Sharon’s experience with one particular colleague:

[One of my co-workers and I were] waiting in line to make photocopies…and I was wearing something with more of a like Indian-style print…My co-worker turned to me and she was like, “God, the way you look today, you think we weren’t even the same race.” And I said, “We’re not.” Then she was like, “What are you talking about? You’re white.” She went on to say, “I even thought that you were Jewish like me.” And I responded, “I’m neither of those things….I’m half Indian and half British.” And then she was like, “Really?” It was just such an awkward interaction, and just the way she went about it, “Oh God, the way you look right now, you weren’t even the same race as me.” [The comment made me feel that] it was some like deviation or false something. When she realized that was the actual reality, she was so uncomfortable, but didn’t seem to think about the fact that that might make me feel uncomfortable.

Along with being a microinvalidation, the comments from Sharon’s colleague could be a microinsult in that they displayed insensitivity toward Sharon’s mixed-race background by not acknowledging it (Sue &

Constantine, 2007). But we should not view Sharon’s experience as simply an example of a racial microaggression; it is also an instance of a multiracial microaggression.

This type of microaggression “[sends] hostile, derogatory, or negative messages toward multiracial persons” (Johnston & Nadal, 2010, p. 132) on a daily basis. Johnston and Nadal (2010) mention that one persistent type of multiracial microaggression is the assumption of a monoracial identity: multiracial people are mistaken to be from one racial/ethnic group “or a member of a group they do not identify with” (p. 135).

This multiracial microaggressive theme certainly applies to Sharon’s situation as her colleague automatically assumed that since Sharon looked White, she must be White as well. Furthermore, by wearing an Indian-style outfit, Sharon was perceived to be deviating from this White identity.

Sharon’s case of mistaken identity is unique from the others in this section because she is not mistaken for a student, but for being monoracial. Building on this point, her microaggression is unique because it deals with her being mixed-race. In the next section, I look at another type of microaggression: secondary microaggressions in relation to stereotyping and cultural misunderstandings.

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Stereotyping & Lack of Cultural Understanding

For Solórzano (2012), microaggressions not only impact direct targets, but also affect individuals who witness these microaggressions taking place. These secondary targets may go through the same feelings of shock, etc., as the original targets, which is the case for the teachers of this study. Like other people of colour, these teachers have first-hand knowledge of racism (e.g., Closson, 2010; Delgado &

Stefancic, 2012; Dixson & Rousseau, 2005; Ladson-Billings, 1998, 2013; Solórzano & Yosso, 2002) and thus, are more sensitive to discrimination that happens around them. This awareness is heightened when they witness cases of stereotyping and/or a lack of cultural understanding.

The above points are certainly applicable to Sharon who, as someone who dealt with a lot of childhood racism because of her mixed-race background, quickly notices when her students make racist comments about other groups. For example, she is often aware of the Korean prejudice against Black people, which stems from the racist portrayal of Black people in the South Korean media (Grant & Lee,

2009). In the following story, Sharon mentions how her Korean students often commit the microinsult of assuming that Black people are automatic criminals (Sue, 2010a):

One of my tutoring students went to New York [one] week and he was like, “Oh, I went to this area and there were a lot of black people, and I was really scared.” There was like this concept of being afraid of black people and avoiding neighbourhoods…where there are a lot of black people. Yeah, just this bizarre concept around black people and crime.

As seen above, students may stereotype other racial groups because of their lack of exposure with these individuals. However, when ESOL teachers who interact with people from a variety of cultures stereotype others, it is difficult to justify their behaviour and hence, easier to name this behaviour as racist.

On one occasion, Sharon notes how one White male colleague was extremely racist against her Indian female friend who had substituted for his class:

I overheard through the wall him kind of making cracks about her, which was due to his needing to make sure that his class didn’t like anyone better than him. Then Halloween was the following week and he dressed as her. He wore like a long Indian skirt. I think he was making some comment around the stereotype that Indian women are hairy. I was

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like, “What is your costume?” He was going to say, “Oh, I’m the substitute teacher,” but then it probably clicked in his mind that she’s a friend of mine, and then he was like, “Oh, I’m the bearded lady.” But he was specifically wearing the exact kind of clothing she was wearing the week before…This situation made me so angry…but I didn’t say anything about it because I just didn’t know how to approach it…When someone’s appearance is racialized, if you’re making fun of their appearance, you’re making fun of their race.

Even though Sharon’s co-worker attempted to de-emphasize the Indian element of his costume, his wearing of a sari-like outfit is nevertheless a common ethnic identification marker for Indian women

(Gottschlich, 2011). This costume along with his making cracks about the substitute teacher can thus be characterized as a microassault since the colleague was openly mocking the Indian identity of the instructor

(e.g., Sue, 2010a, 2010b; Sue & Constantine, 2007; Sue et al., 2007).

Like direct targets of microaggressions, Sharon, as a secondary target, was particularly stressed in that she was indecisive on how best to respond to the microassault (Sue, 2010a; Sue et al., 2007). This indecision may have been triggered by her colleague trying to hide his microassault, but it also could have been facilitated by the context of Sharon’s particular school. Since her current school does not monitor what teachers are actually doing in their classes nor offers any diversity training, Sharon’s colleague was perhaps free to commit a microaggression because there was no explicit consequence of doing so. Aside from not directly preventing microaggressive behaviour as seen in Sharon’s institution, private-language schools may also encourage stereotyping in the way that they market their services.

Indeed, in the Canadian context as previously described, both Abrile (2006) and Hodge (2005) discuss how the White native speaker of English is portrayed as the authentic Canadian in promotional materials at various schools. This marketing of the White Canadian as the true Canadian consequently leads to others believing that nonwhite individuals are inauthentic Canadians. Zoe notes this stereotyping when she comments on how her students often complain about their homestay families (families associated with the school who provide accommodation to students):

[My students] will often complain about their homestays and say that their homestays are first of all, not real Canadians. Most of the homestay families are of Filipino descent, so

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that’s probably an issue that comes up. But they do say that they’re not speaking English at home, or they speak with a very heavy accent and they don’t understand them…They just feel like you’re not a real Canadian unless they have whatever accent a real Canadian is supposed to have.

Based on this anecdote, it seems that Zoe’s students perceive true Canadians as being non-Asian (or at least non-Filipino). What is interesting about this narrative is that her learners do not explicitly state that they do not want a nonwhite homestay. Rather, they allude to this point (Wodak, 2011) by complaining about accent, which seems to act like a proxy for race (Lippi-Green, 2012). This example is thus a microinvalidation that positions Asian families as being foreign to Canada due to their ‘accented’ English

(Sue, 2010a, 2010b; Sue & Constantine, 2007; Sue et al., 2007).

Perhaps Zoe’s students only allude that Asians are non-Canadian because Zoe herself is of Asian descent and hence, her students might not want to make her uncomfortable. Surprisingly, however, Zoe’s

Chinese background often causes other students to directly stereotype her. As a child, Zoe felt shunned by her Chinese peers because they deemed her ‘not Chinese enough’ due to her limited proficiency in

Cantonese. Similarly in her school, Zoe feels that her Chinese-speaking learners deem her an inauthentic

Chinese person because she cannot translate Chinese words into English. Zoe remembers one instance when a Taiwanese student seemed frustrated that Zoe could not understand her question:

I think [the student] didn’t understand a word and she asked me about it in Chinese. And I told her that I didn’t understand. She, said “No,” and kept on saying the word, and [finally] wrote it on the board. I didn’t really know what this word was. I was like, “You’re better off drawing this for me because I don’t know what you’re saying.”

As I have discussed earlier in the section on teachers’ backgrounds, a frequent type of microinvalidation against people of Asian descent is the idea that they are perpetual foreigners in English- speaking countries (Sue, 2010a, 2010b; Sue & Constantine, 2007; Sue et al., 2007). As they are perceived to be foreign, they are assumed to be speakers of languages other than English, for example. When she discovered that this assumption did not reflect Zoe’s reality, her student began to see her as non-Chinese and perhaps deficient. While Zoe partially embodies the ideal ESOL teacher in that she was born and

152 raised in Canada and is a native-English speaker, it is interesting to note that the Taiwanese student did not desire these traits. Instead, she wanted access to Zoe’s perceived embodied Chinese qualities, which was namely her knowledge of a Chinese language.

Aside from expecting to know an Asian language, some of the Asian teachers felt subjected to other Asian stereotypes like “being passive, humble, shy, docile, and generally submissive” (Gottschlich,

2011, p. 283). This feeling especially came from Meezy who, as an ethnically-Korean male, feels annoyed when students suggest that Asians are boring and do not like to party. He describes an example of this stereotyping in the following narrative:

[The students] will say something like, “I bet you can’t dance cause none of the Asian students can dance. I had a birthday party and they all sat there. Can you dance, teacher? You’re Korean, [so] can you dance?” But then again, I can’t dance.

Microinvalidations attempt to define the reality of racialized individuals (Sue, 2010a, 2010b; Sue &

Constantine, 2007; Sue et al., 2007), and in Meezy’s case, being Asian and being able to dance are incompatible from the perspective of his students. Meezy does try to negate these Korean/Asian stereotypes through presenting himself as a different type of Korean individual, which I will discuss in more detail in the following chapter on professional identity.

But for now, I mention Meezy’s resistance to these stereotypes as a way to transition to the fact that some of the teachers do manage to change students’ perceptions of them. However, these changed opinions may result in new microaggressions that are the subject of the following section.

Backhanded Compliments

Indeed, while ESOL students may come to praise their racialized teachers, these statements of praise may continue to express an insulting message to instructors, which was the case for Thomas (1999) as described in the third chapter. Many of the teachers of this study also reported instances of these backhanded compliments that covered a range of themes. One such theme concerns how students may

153 change their perception of teachers’ language/teaching ability as exemplified in Angelina’s narrative of her conversation with a student from her very first beginner class around seven to eight years ago:

Immediately after class, one of the South American students told me something like, “Once I laid my eyes on you, I thought to myself, ‘Is she Korean? Is she okay? Can she teach me English? Is her English good enough?’ Now I can understand what you say and I think your English is okay.” She then stayed in my class. I was like, “Oh, really?”

In the context of service work, customers use racial/ethnic markers to determine the value of the service being offered (Macdonald & Merrill, 2009). By questioning Angelina’s ethnic identity and language ability, the student was equating being Korean/Asian with being deficient in ESOL teaching. Even though she deemed Angelina’s English as satisfactory, the student still committed a microinsult that ascribed an inferior linguistic/pedagogical intelligence to Asian teachers in general (Sue, 2010a). That is, the student believed

Angelina to be an exception to the idea that Asians are poor ESOL teachers.

Since Angelina was teaching a beginner class, perhaps her student did not have the proficiency to be more tactful in her compliment. Therefore, the backhanded compliment could have been avoided if she had chosen the right wording. However, the fact that the student approached Angelina in the first place may be explained by her role as an educational consumer who paid to attend the school (Breshears, 2008;

Hodge, 2005). Because customers are encouraged to voice their opinions about the service that they receive, Angelina’s student perhaps felt free to express her changed opinion of her. Thus, the learner’s power as a consumer may have facilitated the occurrence of the backhanded compliment.

This freedom of customers to openly express their thoughts about their service providers may also lead to other types of backhanded compliments such as being glad that one has an older teacher. Chiyo has experienced this type of compliment since she usually presents herself as a few years older than her actual age. The reason for this fake age is that Japanese students traditionally respect older Japanese figures such as teachers and consequently, may be displeased about having a teacher who is younger than them. Chiyo gives one specific example of this point:

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Sometimes a student might say, “I’m glad that you’re older than me because if you were younger, I wouldn’t see you as a teacher, or I couldn’t respect you as much.” They actually say something like that.

Chiyo believes that if she were non-Japanese and young, her Japanese students would not have any issue with having her as a teacher. Therefore, we can view the above backhanded compliment as a layered microinsult based on Chiyo’s ethnicity and age (Kohli & Solórzano, 2012; Solórzano, 2012; Solórzano &

Pérez Huber, 2012): Chiyo, as a perceived older Japanese teacher, is more respectable than a younger counterpart. Comments such as the one above is the reason why Chiyo continues to present herself as an older teacher, which is a type of identity work that I will explore in the next chapter.

Whereas Chiyo receives praise for being respectable by not revealing her true age, Chao receives such compliments without any direct intervention on his part. In fact, his overall personality seems to make students change their stereotypical views on Chinese people. This point is especially true for his

Taiwanese students who come from a country that has had uneasy (political) relations with China (e.g.,

Sullivan, 2014). Chao details an interaction with one particular student:

I can remember having a weird conversation with a Taiwanese student. This was a student who did very well in my class, was a good student all-in-all, and we had a pretty good rapport. When she left my class, she said to me that before coming to Toronto, she thought that all Chinese people were horrible…She was like, “After meeting you, I realized that not all Chinese people are that bad.” I was like, “Oh thank you.” Like what did [she] just say? So that was sort of an interesting conversation.

This microinsult “appears to be a positive statement [about Chao] but is undermined with an insulting or negative metacommunication” (Sue, 2010b, p. 9) that Chinese people are generally not good individuals.

This metacommunication is what makes Chao shocked in the above narrative. What is further interesting about this message about Chinese people is that it has nothing to do with their language ability or teaching

(as in the case of Angelina and Chiyo). Rather, it is about their general character traits.

Sharon also feels that she is complimented not on her language or teaching, but on her being mixed-race in general. Indeed, she often receives compliments that highlight her racial Otherness, which is

155 the final type of backhanded compliment of this section. In the following story, Sharon narrates how a former White colleague had introduced her to some new teachers at a previous school:

It was like at a lunchroom table, and it was after I had been away for a couple of years and returned to the school. [So] there were a whole new set of teachers who basically didn’t know me. [One of my colleagues] was like, “Oh, Sharon just came back from India. Yeah, she’s half-Indian.” It seemed so pointed and then everyone was like, “Oh, that’s so interesting!” I was thinking, “Why are you talking about me like I’m not here? Like I’m not a plate of curry.”

By likening herself to a ‘plate of curry,’ Sharon was exemplifying how multiracial people are often subject to the microinsult of being exoticized and objectified by others (Johnston & Nadal, 2010). Just as people might eye and savour a plate of curry because they rarely eat such food, Sharon’s co-workers marvelled at her mixed-race identity with their ‘that’s-so-interesting’ comment. While being seen as exotic may at first seem like a compliment, it simultaneously excludes Sharon from her peers.

In fact, her colleague’s explicit mention that Sharon is half-Indian may be seen as a referential strategy used to distinguish her as a racial outsider (Reisigl & Wodak, 2001). By saying half-Indian, her co- worker was stating to the group that Sharon was neither White nor monoracial and thus, was different from her pure White co-workers. In addition to presenting her as a novelty, Sharon feels that this mentioning of her multiracial identity is representative of how her White peers use it as a warning to other White colleagues that they should not make any prejudiced comments around her:

I feel like they’re sending out a warning signal. Like, “Okay White people. We can’t say anything that we might say if we think that we’re all White people.”

Therefore, when White peers declare Sharon’s mixed-race identity, they prevent her from entering a realm of racist or prejudiced discourse. Of course, given her strong commitment to anti-racism, Sharon would never desire to enter this racist realm.

This idea that racism can be a realm, a place, closely relates to environmental microaggressions, which seem to be present in some of the teachers’ schools. I briefly examine these microaggressions in the penultimate section of this chapter.

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Environmental Microaggressions

In the above stories of racial microaggressions, I have focused on interactions between racialized teachers and their students/colleagues/employers. However, not all microaggressions need to be interactional in nature, which is the main idea behind environmental microaggressions (Sue, 2010a).

Indeed, Sue (2010a) mentions how such things as “mascots or symbols,…inaccurate media portrayals of marginalized groups in films, television, radio, print media, and educational curriculum” (p. 27) can all send insulting and demeaning messages to racialized individuals. Looking at educational curriculum in particular, some ESOL teachers may feel insulted by the books and other course materials that surround them in their workplaces. Sharon is one teacher who exemplifies this point.

In fact, she remembers one particular instance when she was deeply offended by one of the materials of a fellow colleague. Sharon describes the incident in more detail below:

I came into work and someone had left something on the photocopy plate, and I turned it over to see just what it was and who I thought it might belong to. The first thing that just jumped off the page at me were some pretty intense racial slurs. So I started reading the article, and I was totally offended and thought that this is so inappropriate. Basically, the gist of the article was this man reminiscing about lessons his father had taught him when he was young. He came home from school one day and admitted to his father that he had ignored another person being bullied on the basis of his race because he thought that the bullies would turn on him. Both the son and father were Jewish and the main focus of the story was his father’s speech to him. I hate even saying these words, but it’s important to the story. Basically the father said that every time you hear the n-word, you believe you hear in your mind that they’re saying dirty Jew…It was all these different racial slurs, but those words were there on paper and this was the article the teacher had chosen to use with a low-level class…Just the whole thing I found super offensive and I felt like my workplace is not somewhere I’m supposed to come and see extremely offensive language. I know this teacher and I have heard some of her opinions, and I think her perspective was like, “I’m Jewish and this [article] is saying Jewish people experience racism the same way as everyone else.” I’m a firm believer that you don’t equate people’s discrimination. I think it minimizes people’s individual experiences with something.

What is noteworthy about this narrative is that Sharon strongly suspects that the article belonged to her

Jewish colleague who had told her that she did not look White one day as described in a previous story.

Therefore, in addition to telling Sharon that she did not look White one day, her colleague also indirectly

157 contributed to an environmental microassault that exposed Sharon to explicit racial epithets (Sue, 2010a).

Even though the article was intended to be anti-racist, Sharon found it offensive because it seemed to equate everyone’s discrimination. The reason why Sharon’s peer was allowed to use the article can be partly explained by their school context.

As Sharon noted earlier, her current school is lax on issues of diversity since it neither monitors what instructors teach in their classes nor does it provide any diversity training, etc., for its teachers and staff. Thus, her colleague could use the article with her class without having to gain approval from a supervisor or some other authority figure. Furthermore, this laxness seems to have prevented Sharon from taking any action on the matter as seen from her director’s response when notified about the article:

My director kind of took it upon herself to just veto what I was doing [Sharon intended to post an anonymous letter in the staff room that addressed the problem with the article], and left me in this position where I would have to approach that person directly. She basically explained it out to me, “If you really read the article, they’re not saying those words are good.” I’m not an idiot up here. I fully acknowledge that, [but] my problem [was] seeing [that] kind of language at work.

By not acknowledging Sharon’s concerns about the article, her director was interestingly committing another microaggression against her. That is, she committed a microinvalidation that carried the message that Sharon is imagining racism when it does not truly exist in the article (Sue, 2010a, 2010b; Sue &

Constantine, 2007; Sue et al., 2007).

The environmental microaggression that Sharon experienced represented her specific institution’s lack of handling of diversity issues. However, Sue and colleagues (Sue, 2010a, 2010b; Sue et al., 2007) remind us that environmental microaggressions can also be representative of macro-level issues such as institutional racism. The first set of microaggressions that I detailed concerned institutional racism, and it seems appropriate to return to this theme to conclude this chapter. As discussed in the first section of the chapter, Whiteness seems to be the prime qualification in receiving an ESOL teaching position. Zoe seems to note both this trend and the gender imbalance at her school:

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I’ve noticed recently now that there are a lot more [White] male teachers. Like when I first started, there were a lot of female teachers…I do wonder about this because we have a large population of Saudi students. I wonder if it’s about respect and authority. I wonder if that’s the reason why they’re hiring more [White] men.

What one may at first gather from Zoe’s observation is that it exemplifies how employers hire individuals based on customers’ expectations of the proper service provider (Macdonald & Merrill, 2009).

Indeed, since Saudi students seem to better respect male teachers, Zoe’s employers consequently hire more men than women. According to Tannen (1994), “the very notion of authority is associated with maleness” (as cited in Schnurr, 2013, p. 131). Because of this point, even nonwhite male teachers can exercise power through their gender (Amin, 1999). However, Zoe states that mostly White males are being hired, which indicates that their race further increases their authority. As a form of property, Whiteness

“conveys a host of privilege and benefits” (Delgado & Stefancic, 2012, p. 174) for those who possess it.

While their maleness garners respect from students, White men’s Whiteness gives them linguistic authority as they are believed to be native speakers who own English (Widdowson, 1994). For this reason, Amin

(1999) states that the referent of ESOL is “White, Anglo, male” (p. 97).

Because Zoe, as a woman of Chinese descent, does not match this referent, her narrative is an example of a layered environmental assault (e.g., Solórzano, 2012; Solórzano & Pérez Huber, 2012): more

White males are being hired because of a combination of their gender and race. In Appleby (2013), we saw White masculinity used as a semi-sexual lure to make Japanese women learn English. Here, we see

White masculinity potentially used as the ultimate seal of authority for Saudi students, who can respect

White male teachers as men and as experts in the English language.

Discussion & Concluding Remarks

By examining such themes as environmental microaggressions as described above, this study goes beyond the microaggressive themes presented in Chapter Three. However, while the above

159 microaggression narratives expand the current ESOL literature, it is important to note that these stories still echo the themes in the third chapter. In fact, with the exception of complaints about racialized accents and student avoidance and albeit various (organizational) differences, the current narratives mostly mirror the experiences of racialized teachers as discussed in the literature. For instance, the current narratives of institutional racism resemble the ones told by Mahboob (2006) who reports how he and his friend were denied teaching positions at an American university due to their respective races. In terms of backhanded compliments as another example, the current stories of how students felt comfort in expressing their initial views of their teachers echo Thomas’ (1999) account of how her student did the very same thing.

Although generalizability is not a goal in qualitative research (Glesne & Peshkin, 1992, as cited in

Creswell, 2013), the fact that the racial microaggressions of this study mostly match ones involving different actors and contexts suggests that these microaggressions are more common than one may think (although

I later summarize how context influences these interactions). If we look to critical race theory (CRT) to examine these microaggressions collectively, we begin to see patterns that help to explain this prevalence of racial microaggressions in the ESOL context.

Returning to one of CRT’s central tenets, we remember that since racism is so ordinary, it continues to be a part of our everyday reality (Delgado & Stefancic, 2012; López, 2003). This tenet is certainly applicable to the stories of racial microaggressions that have been presented in this chapter. In fact, with the exception of some explicit examples, we have seen how the interactions between the racialized teachers of this study and their students, peers, employers, and even their environments showcase how racial microaggressions often occur in uneventful situations such as teaching a grammatical point, receiving a compliment, or simply noticing a piece of paper in the staffroom.

Just as they serve as a reminder of the ordinariness of racism, these narratives also remind us that races are socially constructed into a hierarchy (Delgado & Stefancic, 2012; Haney López, 1995; Ladson-

Billings, 2013). Indeed, through Josh’s story of being rejected for a teaching position to Yun’s narrative of

160 student disappointment in having her as a teacher, one has seen how in the realm of ESOL service work, the White worker reigns supreme in the minds of employers and students. This hierarchy of workers closely relates to the notion of Whiteness as property where Whiteness presents various benefits and privileges for its owners (Delgado & Stefancic, 2012; Harris, 1993; Ruecker, 2011). As seen with the above stories, Whiteness gives one the benefit of finding employment and being appreciated as the ideal worker.

Whiteness even goes further by granting one the privilege of being believed by others. For instance,

Maria’s story of her student asking a White ‘nonnative’ speaker about a present-perfect rule that she had taught suggests that White teachers have automatic linguistic credibility.

However, being White or nonwhite does not solely determine one’s credibility. In fact, many of the stories presented here highlight how the discrimination that the teachers face has an intersectional component. As many critical race theorists following Crenshaw (1991) have echoed, race intersects with a variety of social markers to produce unique forms of oppression for people with multiple group identities

(e.g., Howard & Reynolds, 2013; López, 2003; Solórzano, 2013). In terms of student disappointment for example, the reader saw how the older Korean student felt uncomfortable having Meezy as a teacher because he was a young Korean male. Thus, age and race play an intersecting role in this story of student disappointment. Looking at the doubts about teachers’ knowledge as another example, we saw how

Sharon’s student asked White male teachers about ‘several’ rather than believe Sharon, a racialized woman. These examples showcase how racial microaggressions are often layered assaults (Kohli &

Solórzano, 2012; Solórzano, 2012; Solórzano & Pérez Huber, 2012).

While intersectionality provides a more complex understanding of racial microaggressions, it does not give a clear-cut explanation of how an act of discrimination is caused by a combination of this and that identity marker (e.g., Ladson-Billings, 2013). Although I have attempted to provide such an explanation for the sake of clarity, it is important to note that many of the teachers such as Sharon and Meezy state that it is difficult to discern whether a microaggression was a result of a combination of racism and sexism or

161 racism and ageism, for example. In the ‘several’ story with Sharon, perhaps her gender rather than her race was the primary reason why her male student sought out male teachers. Therefore, we must keep in mind that when social markers such as race and gender intersect, one may overpower the other.

While intersectionality highlights the ‘messiness’ of the above racial microaggressions, it also emphasizes another interesting aspect of these microaggressions: they do not always concern the intersection of race and language/teaching ability. Indeed, even though one may expect to find more language-related racial microaggressions in the teachers’ stories of working in language institutions, it is somewhat surprising that quite a few of them did not deal with racialized teachers being deemed inadequate teachers of English. For example, Chao’s story of his Taiwanese student not liking Chinese people before meeting him had little to do with language teaching. Rather, it concerned how Chao had an atypical Chinese personality, which aligns with Hodge’s (2005) claim that private ESOL students are more concerned with teachers’ personal characteristics rather than their actual pedagogy.

Chao’s narrative and the others like it beg the question of why these non-language-related racial microaggressions occur in private-language schools. To answer this question, we need to understand the mindset, motivations, etc., of the different perpetrators of the above-mentioned microaggressions. Let us first look at the ESOL students. At the risk of essentializing, some ESOL learners may come to Canada with cultural baggage that is not left at home.39 Chiyo’s interactions with her Japanese students exemplify this point. As seen with her student expressing relief that Chiyo was older, Japanese learners expect their

Japanese teachers to be mature even if they live in a foreign country. Thus, this story suggests that maintaining cultural norms are more important than having a young, qualified teacher.

By accommodating students’ cultural preferences, employers consequently commit non-language- related microaggressions as well. For example, let us look at Zoe’s noticing of her school hiring more

39I do not intend to promote the false notion that only non-Canadians carry cultural baggage with them. Indeed, Canadians may have certain cultural preferences that may affect their interactions with others.

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White male teachers for the Saudi student population. This rise in male teachers is not necessarily related to their language skills, but rather, to their White masculinity, which for Saudi males, is a sign of authority.

Therefore, as suggested by Zoe’s superiors, employers may place more emphasis on students’ cultural rather than linguistic preferences when hiring ESOL teachers. When all is said and done, employers want to offer service workers that their customers desire (Macdonald & Merrill, 2009).

When the desired service workers are hired and are working together, they may want to learn about each other, which leads to the reason why colleagues may also commit non-language-related microaggressions. When not engaging in work-related tasks such as scheduling meetings and discussing the future directions of the company, co-workers often engage in small talk, which usually entails asking and telling about aspects of one’s life such as hobbies, family, etc. (e.g., Mirivel & Tracy, 2005). This asking and sharing of personal details may lead to microaggressions not related to the workplace.40 This point is seen in Sharon’s narratives of when her colleague mistook her for being White and when her other peer stated that she was half-Indian. In both stories, the microaggressions happened as the result of small talk about Sharon’s outfit and her recent travels, respectively.

Aside from the mindset of perpetrators, perhaps the most important reason why the microaggressions did not solely address the intersection of race and language is that there is no real connection between language and race! That is, race has nothing to do with one’s English competence.

Nevertheless, this false tie between language ability and race is the ultimate microinvalidation, which is the most common microaggression cited in this study. But why are there so many microinvalidations?

According to Sue (2010a), these types of microaggressions are the most dangerous because they are usually outside of the awareness of their perpetrators “and insidiously deny the racial…reality of [various]

40Authors like Schnurr (2013) mention how it is difficult to distinguish the transactional and relational aspects of professional communication as they often have a ‘symbiotic’ relationship. However, when I talk about microaggressions not related to the ESOL workplace, it is simply meant to refer to those that do not attack racialized teachers’ linguistic/pedagogical proficiency (but may attack their racial background alone).

163 groups” (p. 37). From this perspective, an increased number of microinvalidations are committed because perpetrators are simply unaware that their words or actions are microaggressive in nature.

However, I also argue that the prevalence of microinvalidations can be attributed to individuals consciously using these microaggressions as a way to discriminate without losing face. As I have mentioned throughout this chapter, microinvalidations are often made through allusions, which allow perpetrators to make discriminatory comments without having to be held responsible for them (Wodak,

2011). When the employer in Josh’s narrative stated that her school was looking for a native speaker, this statement was a code phrase or insinuation that she was looking for a White person (Davies, 2003). Or when Zoe’s students ask her where she is really from, ‘really’ insinuates that a person of Chinese descent is not a true Canadian. Allusions like these make it easier to be direct in an indirect manner and thus, help to explain why microinvalidations against racialized teachers happen so often.

Along with allusions, we also need to take the context into account when determining why microinvalidations and other types of microaggressions occur (Kohli & Solórzano, 2012; Solórzano, 2012;

Solórzano & Pérez Huber, 2012). This study has examined microaggressions in private-language schools, and this school context certainly plays a contributory role. Indeed, we have seen how the seeming lack of regulation of private ESOL schools and their promotion of White Canadians as the ideal ESOL teachers

(Abrile, 2006; Breshears, 2008; Hodge, 2005) may have facilitated the rejection of Chao, Josh, and Q as potential teachers. As Breshears (2008) and Hodge (2005) note, these schools also position students as consumers who may be more vocal about the service that they receive. For instance, Yun’s student’s slamming the door of her classroom and Angelina’s student initially questioning her teaching skills seem to have happened due to these customers openly expressing their opinions of their service providers.

While the private-language-school context is important in explaining the racial microaggressions of this study, we must not forget the other interrelated contexts that facilitate these microaggressions as well.

Let us look at the cultural context of students (as I mentioned before with regard to the cultural baggage

164 that they bring to Toronto) as an example. In Angelina’s narrative of her Korean student disrespecting her because of her race and gender, we may cautiously blame this microaggression on the lingering patriarchy in South Korea (e.g., Choe, 2007; Jung, 2011). That is, the student’s views on (Asian) women may have already determined how he was going to treat Angelina during her lesson. Aside from students’ home cultures as seen with Angelina, the context of Canada in terms of how it advertises itself to the world can lead to more racial microaggressions. Josh particularly emphasizes this point when he describes how his

Swiss student did not believe that he was Canadian because he did not look like one. As discussed before,

Josh blames stereotypical images of White Mounties, etc., as contributing to this student’s perception of him. Thus, for Josh, his country rather than his school is responsible for his microaggressions.

In this chapter, I have answered my first research question by examining the kinds of racial microaggressions that the participants face in their respective workplaces. Moreover, where appropriate, I detailed how the context of the private-language school and other contextual forces (as described above) allow these microaggressions to be committed. Therefore, I have covered half of CRT’s four-component model for understanding racial microaggressions: I analyzed the type and context of these microaggressions (Kohli & Solórzano, 2012; Solórzano, 2012; Solórzano & Pérez Huber, 2012). In the following chapter, I address the second half of this model by analyzing the effects of and responses to these microaggressions in the professional sense.

Chapter Six: Linking Racial Microaggressions to Professional Identities

By examining the effects of and responses to the microaggressions in the previous chapter, I intend to answer the second research question of this study: how do these microaggressions influence how the teachers construct their professional identities? To answer this question, I categorize the types of identity work that the participants perform in relation to the racial microaggressions that they experience.

The reader may notice a problem with this organization. That is, grouping types of identity work into themes suggests that these individuals experience microaggressions in the same way. Although this point is true on the surface level, I do highlight the differences between participants where appropriate. With that said, let us first look at the effects of the microaggressions.

The Effects of Racial Microaggressions on the Teachers’ Professional Identities

When scholars examine the effects of racial microaggressions on their victims, the effects that they analyze are psychological and physiological in nature (e.g., Solórzano & Pérez Huber, 2012; Sue, 2010a).

In the current study, I do not focus on these types of effects per se. Rather, I look at professional effects by asking how microaggressions influence the participants’ view of themselves as teachers. Sometimes these effects are severe as seen with the first type of identity work described below.

Experiencing Doubt and Pain from Interpellation

Racial microaggressions embody a worldview/ideology (Sue, 2010b), which in the current context, says that White native speakers of English are categorically better than nonwhite speakers of the language.

In the process of interpellation, an ideology is able to name subjects through various apparatuses

(Althusser, 1971), which in the current context once again, are racial microaggressions. By experiencing multiple microaggressions based on their race and language, some racialized teachers come to believe the ideology hidden within them. In this study, part of the ideology that names racialized English for Speakers

165 166 of Other Languages (ESOL) teachers as deficient is the belief that White native speakers are the best users and teachers of English (e.g., Amin, 1997, 1999, 2000, 2004, 2005, 2006; Braine, 2010;

Breckenridge & Erling, 2011; Curtis & Romney, 2006; Faez, 2012; Hansen, 2004; Javier, 2010; Kubota,

2002; Kubota & Lin, 2006; Liu, 1999; Mahboob, 2011; McFarland, 2005; Motha, 2006; Romney, 2010;

Ruecker, 2011; Shin & Kubota, 2008; Sung, 2011). In my examination of the existing ESOL literature, we have seen how teachers like Thomas (1999) believe this idea as they doubt their abilities when faced with expressions of (initial) disappointment from others.

Whereas Thomas (1999) and other teachers completely succumb to the above ideology, the teachers of this study seem to be partially interpellated as they experience occasional self-doubt as teachers. For example, Chiyo sometimes doubts herself as an English-language instructor when faced with microaggressions that deem her English as inferior as exemplified by her story of how her White colleague corrected her on her use of ‘homely.’ She describes her precise feelings below:

To be honest, sometimes I take it personally. Sometimes it affects me very negatively. [I lose] my confidence as a teacher or sometimes it makes me hate English or learning English. Sometimes I feel like I don’t want to be [an] English teacher anymore.

Reminiscing about the student who stormed out of her class in particular, Yun also stated how she felt inferior both pedagogically and linguistically after the incident:

It made me feel like I was a poor teacher and that I did not have the right to be teaching her because of my race and/or language proficiency. This feeling comes up whenever I hear that a student is not satisfied [in my current school context].

It is evident that these microaggressions have a negative effect on the professional identities of Yun and

Chiyo as their confidence as teachers is “unsettled, disrupted and agitated” (Nicholson & Carroll, 2013, p.

1233) by these recurring negative events. But why do these teachers experience self-doubt as a result of experiencing these microaggressions? We must look at their backgrounds to gain some answers.

In the case of Chiyo, we must consider the fact that she was born, raised, and spent most of her life in Japan and considers herself a ‘nonnative’ speaker of English. Because of these factors, Chiyo feels

167 that she is not as versed in English colloquial expressions, etc., as her native-speaking peers. This feeling seems to be Herderian in nature in the sense that since she is a racial and linguistic outsider to Canada,

Chiyo will not have the same type of idiomatic knowledge, etc., as a Canadian native speaker (Hackert,

2012). Therefore, Chiyo’s partially-interpellated identity may partly stem from her insecurities with the

English language. While it may be easier to understand why Chiyo is affected by microaggressions, it is somewhat perplexing in Yun’s case as she came to Canada when she was seven-months-old, grew up in the country, and considers English her dominant language. However, her self-identification as a near- native speaker of English may clear up this confusion.

Even though she is the most proficient in English, Yun considers herself a near-native speaker of the language because it is not her mother tongue. Rather, she acquired Cantonese first and then learned

English through the Canadian school system. Her near-native status is thus influenced by her Chinese background and the fact that she sometimes does not understand the words, expressions, etc., that native speakers of English use.41 Like Chiyo, Yun seems to describe herself as a linguistic outsider, which may make her more susceptible to the ideology of racial microaggressions that position her as such an outsider because of her race. Therefore, when her student seemed insecure in having her as a teacher and slammed the door, this door slam may have brought out similar insecurities in Yun.

While racial microaggressions somewhat interpellate a deficient teacher identity upon Yun and

Chiyo, it is important to note that this interpellation is not a constant, permanent process. In fact, Chiyo’s feelings of inferiority sometimes emerge when her general condition is not good. Also, Yun doubts her abilities only when students seem to doubt them as well. Therefore, their experiences of self-doubt are temporary. However, microaggressions may have a more lasting effect on some professional identities, which is true for Josh when he thinks about the employment discrimination that he has faced.

41In my interviews with Yun, her self-identification as a near-native speaker of English did not seem to combat the native and ‘nonnative’ distinction. Rather, it is used to explain her proficiency in the language.

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Somewhat similar to Lee’s (2011) Japanese-Canadian participant who felt that not being White was never going to make her a qualified instructor in the eyes of others, Josh feels that his experiences with institutional racism make him feel like a perpetually disadvantaged ESOL teacher. He further explains these sentiments in his own words:

I feel like I’ve been shot in the foot. I show up at the start line, I train for this day, and just as I get up there, I get shot in the foot. And now, I’ve got to run with a bad limp. Then someone’s going to say, “Well look, you see, he can’t keep up with the others.” That’s what I feel like I’m getting myself into every time this happens…I look at myself going into it as having a disadvantage…I imagine going into an interview and someone telling you, “By the way, they’re looking for a White guy. But good luck.” It’s kind of like this.

Josh’s description of himself being shot and having a limp is similar to what Nicholson and Carroll (2013) term being cut apart, a type of identity undoing where identities are attacked and experience pain.

Because some ESOL schools see having nonwhite teachers as a disadvantage, Josh consequently comes to see his mixed-race background as disadvantageous to his teacher identity. What is interesting is that

Josh does not entirely blame schools for damaging his professional identity, but rather, his country:

[When you show up at the start line that I mentioned before,] you have to ask yourself, “Who is holding that pistol?” It’s my country, really…Like the Koreans and everyone else overseas who are expecting me to be a White, blonde-haired, blue-eyed guy, that’s what they see on TV. So I can only blame my country for that.

Canada seems to cut apart Josh’s identity because its citizens have attacked him in the past. Indeed, when performing patriotic activities such as playing hockey as a child and serving in the Canadian military later in life, Josh experienced a lot of racism due to him not being White, which seems to be synonymous with performing these activities. Therefore, when schools reject him as a teacher, Josh notes how this rejection reminds him of the discrimination he faced when playing hockey and serving in the military.

As he mentions that this type of discrimination is something that he must perpetually face, we may expect that part of Josh’s remedial identity work involves a post-microaggression stabilizing (Lutgen-

Sandvik, 2008). For Lutgen-Sandvik (2008), such stabilizing sometimes involves “coming to grips with [an] unfair world” (p. 105). In terms of his experiences with institutional racism, Josh seems to do a similar type

169 of stabilizing: even though he acknowledges his skill in teaching ESOL, Josh knows that he can never surpass a White teacher in terms of desirability and respect. Therefore, part of his professional identity is living with the fact that he can never make people believe that a racialized ESOL teacher can be exceptional as well. Whereas Chiyo and Yun doubt their abilities as language teachers, Josh doubts that he can be seen as a legitimate language instructor in the first place.

Dual Reasoning

Josh’s recognition of the injustice in the ESOL employment realm is indicative of his ability to reason why others devalue him as a teacher. But in reasoning about the interpellation that he faces, Josh consequently comes to be negatively affected by this interpellation. In contrast to Josh, other teachers are able to reason about the microaggressions that they face without becoming negatively affected by them.

Indeed, while they understand that others may devalue them as teachers, they also understand why they should not devalue themselves. Therefore, in addition to reasoning about the causes of various racial microaggressions, these teachers reason why they should not be bothered by them. This type of identity work may be labelled dual reasoning and seems to describe Angelina’s mindset.

In fact, thinking about how the South American student initially thought that she would not be a good ESOL teacher because she was Asian, Angelina understands this microaggressive comment by adopting the perspective of a student-customer:

I think I can understand [her thinking]. For example, I want to learn Tai Chi. If my teacher is blonde-haired and blue-eyed, I’ll go, “Mmm. Does he really know?” It’s like a stereotype…I can understand the student’s standpoint.

Angelina’s thinking coincides with the idea that service workers are often subject to a variety of stereotypes and prejudices (Macdonald & Merrill, 2009; Williams, 2006). Similar to how a White person may be critiqued for teaching a Chinese martial art, a Chinese individual may be criticized for teaching a White language. Angelina’s reasoning speaks to the fact that she perceives ESOL teaching as more of a service as a result of her school context being a business (Reynolds, 1996):

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[I see myself as a] service provider first…What we do as teachers [is to] provide service. [Students] ask us questions, we answer them. They need help, we help them.

Because Angelina views herself as a service worker, she understands that like other service providers, she may be judged on her embodied qualities through various microaggressions (McDowell, 2009).

While Angelina understands how student-customers may judge her embodied qualities, it is important to note that she does not necessarily believe these judgments:

What race or ethnic background you have or what colour you are, do they equate with ability? No, I don’t think so. What’s the point of going to school then? Right? Again, it [just] goes back to stereotypes.

As seen with this comment, Angelina, like many of the other teachers of this study, does not view being a certain race as determining whether one is a good ESOL teacher or not. As Angelina notes herself, the fact that she had childhood friends from all over the world who could speak excellent Chinese is the primary reason why she believes this point. When she asks, “What’s the point of going to school,” she implies that one’s skills and experience are more important in language teaching. Therefore, Angelina seems to push aside student perceptions of her when viewing herself as an ESOL instructor.

Chao also seems to push aside student perceptions of him as exemplified by his reaction to the microaggressions he has faced such as when his students mistake him for a learner. In fact, he comes to see these microaggressions as a result of students’ preconceived notions rather than him as a teacher:

Because the way I see it, it’s not so much a reflection of what I’ve been doing or who I am [as a teacher]. It’s their perception of different cultures and different ethnicities in general. So it’s not something that they’re judging about me, it’s just something that they had in their head before meeting me.

While Chao is able to exclude outside perceptions from his teacher identity, he does seem to empathize with his students’ thinking:

I come from a very mono-ethnic community. Like in China, there’s no one from any other culture. So because of that, I can definitely see how you travel abroad and you have a certain mindset depending on where you come from. So I don’t take it personally because of that.

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Whereas Angelina’s dual reasoning involves seeing herself as a service provider, Chao develops such reasoning by linking his personal background to those of his students. From a personal stance then, he sees how he may be seen as an unconventional ESOL teacher.

Despite their individual differences, the dual reasoning that Chao and Angelina perform after dealing with racial microaggressions appears to be a form of sensemaking, which is one type of intensive remedial identity work (Lutgen-Sandvik, 2008). For Lutgen-Sandvik (2008), sometimes sensemaking involves identifying the causes of abuse in specific situations like microaggressions. In Chapter Three, we have seen how Lin (2006) and Mahboob (2006) make sense of their microaggressions by understanding external perceptions of them. Angelina and Chao perform a similar task. In Angelina’s case, her sensemaking involves understanding that customers will always judge service workers based on their appearance (McDowell, 2009) and because of this judgment, she will continue to be seen as a deficient teacher. In contrast, Chao’s sensemaking entails understanding that coming from monocultural backgrounds may make students surprised at having a nonwhite ESOL instructor.

Aside from identifying the causes of negative events, sensemaking also involves validating oneself

(Lutgen-Sandvik, 2008) as a teacher in the current context. As discussed above, even though she understands why students may doubt her abilities by being racialized, Angelina does not believe that race equates with language/teaching ability. Thus, she does not see herself as an inferior teacher because of these outside perceptions. Similarly, Chao validates himself as a teacher by acknowledging that microaggressions against him are a result of students not being exposed to different cultures, etc., rather than his ability/inability to teach the English language to students.

In addition to sensemaking, the dual reasoning that Angelina and Chao perform may also be a kind of disidentification done in response to the interpellation that positions both teachers as inferior on account of their Chinese background. As I have mentioned before, this process operates within ideology and distorts/reconstructs it to empower subordinated identities (Muñoz, 1999). By understanding how students

172 might perceive them, both teachers do not explicitly fight against the ideology that White teachers are the norm in ESOL teaching. However, they distort this ideology by not viewing it as a fact of life (Althusser,

1971), but instead, seeing it as the opinion of other people. That is, while students may see them as undesirable teachers, they do not view themselves as such.

An interesting aspect of Angelina and Chao’s disidentification is that it involves internal reasoning, which is in contrast to that of teachers like Javier (2010) who explicitly tell students that native speakers of

English can also be racialized. Although they do not vocalize their disidentification like Javier, both teachers nevertheless detach from the ideology that positions them as inferior teachers. Sometimes, teachers may detach in other ways after experiencing microaggressions, which I detail below.

Detaching the Personal from the Professional

Indeed, racial microaggressions may make some teachers see these incidents as attacks on their personal identities rather than their professional ones. Therefore, racial microaggressions do not necessarily change these individuals’ view of themselves as teachers. This point is particularly relevant for

Q when she thinks about the employer and student discrimination that she has faced as a result of being a woman of Indian descent. In fact, she sees her microaggressions as simply personal attacks:

It hurts me as an individual more than it hurts my teacher identity. It’s not that it made me feel any less confident as a teacher, but it hurts me as a person that you can discriminate and divide based on your colour…So that hurts. It’s almost like you telling me, “Oh, you’re brown. You can never drive a car because you’re brown.”

The reason why Q is able to separate personal from professional assaults is that generally, she sees her ethnic identity as having no relevance in teaching, which she believes, only concerns one’s knowledge and skills base. In Q’s words, “a teacher is a teacher is a teacher.”

Furthermore, the reason why the microaggressions affect Q on a personal level may be explained by her status as a relatively new immigrant to Canada. While studying and working in England, Q remembers not facing any racial/linguistic discrimination. However, when coming to Toronto, she was

173 shocked to encounter such discrimination despite the fact that the city promotes such things as diversity and equality. Thus, Toronto’s dissimilarity to England may be a contributing factor in explaining why Q is personally insulted by the various microaggressions that she has faced.

Even though she is able to detach personal attacks from professional ones, Q does admit that her personal background clashes with her professional identity:

[People] don’t know me as a teacher because they refuse to know me. You see a person over there and she doesn’t fit your picture of a teacher, so you refuse to deal with me.

Stigmatized racial identities may hurt one’s professional identity development (Slay & Smith, 2011), and this point is true for Q as employers and students do not take the time to appreciate her abilities because she does not look like the ideal White ESOL teacher. Therefore, while she can exclude her race when determining her competence as a teacher, others cannot make this separation as we have seen that in the realm of ESOL, the value of one’s racial identity is linked to the value of one’s professional identity.

Whereas Q cannot entirely separate her personal identity from her professional identity, Sharon actively attempts to perform this feat when dealing with various microaggressions. Beliefs and values are some of the components that make up one’s professional identity (e.g., Slay & Smith, 2011), and one particular belief to which some workers adhere is the idea that there should be a clear separation between one’s personal and professional lives. Sharon seems to follow this belief particularly when her Korean students say ignorant things about Black people:

My last two serious relationships have both been with Black men. And sometimes students do get to the point where like if we’re spending months together, are like, “Oh, do you have a boyfriend?” Then, “Where’s he from?” I do feel hesitant to tell them because I just don’t want to deal with judgment and ignorance.

Sharon’s hesitancy to share details about her personal life has led her to maintaining a certain level of formality in her class. While she may discuss other aspects of her personal life such as family, her romantic relationships are off the table.

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Aside from those of her students, the microaggressive comments of Sharon’s colleagues that position her as an exotic Other also cause her to see her job as strictly professional. For example, after narrating the story of how one of her peers explicitly pointed out that she was half-Indian in the lunchroom,

Sharon made the following comment:

I’m not like a work-snob, but I don’t really go out of my way to socialize with co-workers because it’s not really what I’m there for. I’ve watched people who do; there’s always some kind of fallout and drama. So I keep my interactions with co-workers to a minimum.

As seen in this example and the one above, Sharon leaves her personal background out of her workplace in order to avoid future conflicts or more specifically, future racial microaggressions. From this perspective,

Sharon’s decision to separate her personal and professional lives is not so much an effect of microaggressions, but rather, it is a response to them. This point leads to the subject of the remainder of this chapter on professional identities.

The Professional Responses to Racial Microaggressions

According to Solórzano and colleagues (Kohli & Solórzano, 2012; Solórzano, 2012; Solórzano &

Pérez Huber, 2012), racial microaggressions not only affect their targets, but may also cause victims to respond to these attacks in a variety of ways.42 In the current research context, sometimes these responses involve presenting a desired professional self to others. Indeed, racial microaggressions may require intensive remedial identity work in which racialized ESOL teachers attempt to change perceptions about their professional identities (Lutgen-Sandvik, 2008). One way that this work is accomplished is by attacking ideologies that position them as deficient workers in the first place.

42The reader may think that the effects that I have presented above can also be classified as responses to racial microaggressions. While I agree to some extent, I nevertheless label them as effects because they are internal thought processes, etc. The responses that I present in this section are performative in nature, which resemble many types of identity work (e.g., Beech, 2008; Creed & Scully, 2000; Lutgen-Sandvik, 2008; Rounds, 2006; Sveningsson & Alvesson, 2003).

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Changing Students’ Perceptions

In fact, some of the teachers feel the need to change students’ perceptions that racialized instructors are deficient in teaching English. One such teacher is Angelina who does seek to improve her teaching skills and knowledge, but remains ambivalent whether it is a response to microaggressions such as when her male Korean student disrespected her or when her South American student gave her a backhanded compliment about initially not believing that she would be a good teacher:

I don’t know if it’s a natural defense mechanism…I’m not White, what can I do? I cannot change it. But it’s not to prevent criticism or anything. It’s just to prove that my appearance doesn’t mean anything.

Angelina’s uncertainty about seeing her self-improvement as a direct response to the microaggressions that she has faced may be partly explained by her dual reasoning as discussed earlier in this chapter. That is, the ideology that race is related to language/teaching ability is something that her students believe, not herself. Thus, Angelina does not need to change herself in order to fit her ESOL learners’ beliefs.

However, her use of words such as “defense” and “prove” suggest that the messages of these microaggressions do attack her professional identity and need to be resisted.

For Ewick and Silbey (2003), “resistance entails a consciousness of being less powerful in a relationship of power [original emphasis]” (p. 1336). Although Angelina is a teacher, in the context of service work, she may be less powerful than her students since she is a service provider who needs to cater to their needs as customers of her school. When students enter the classroom with an ideology that states that Angelina is an unsuitable teacher because of her race, she becomes even less powerful in terms of her professional identity. Therefore, being conscious of the fact that she may be perceived as a deficient teacher, Angelina must resist this perception by improving her skills as an instructor, which in turn, will ideally make students see no connection between language and race.

Angelina’s resistance to the ideology of the racial microaggressions that she has faced may be described as a strategy of decategorization, which is a type of social identity-based impression

176 management that encourages others to solely see one’s professional identity and neglect one’s social identity, namely racial/ethnic identity (Kenny & Briner, 2013; Roberts, 2005). In other words, this strategy

“[manages] the impact of stereotypes on others’ perceptions of [workers’] competence and character”

(Roberts, 2005, p. 687). By desiring to prove that her appearance has no correlation to her professional abilities, Angelina does decategorize her racialized and professional selves.

As seen above, Angelina attempts to challenge students’ perceptions of racialized teachers with regard to their race and language/teaching ability. However, as discussed in the previous chapter, the racial microaggressions that the teachers of this study have faced are not solely language-related. Indeed, these microaggressions embody other ideologies/stereotypes that the teachers feel the need to challenge on a daily basis. For example, Meezy often finds the need to resist stereotypes about Korean people in the classroom such as when his students state that Koreans/Asians are boring and not outgoing. This resistance seems to be a lifelong struggle for Meezy:

My life has been a constant battle of trying to break people’s stereotypes. So I largely dedicate my personality to people’s perceptions. I would like to think I’m humorous. I would like to think I’m outgoing. These features come from the fact that people constantly judge me. So in a way, racism and stereotypes have done me a lot of good.

Aside from being aware that one is in a less powerful position, “resistance also requires a consciousness of opportunity [original emphasis], an opening in the situation through which one might intervene and turn matters to one’s advantage” (Ewick & Silbey, 2003, p. 1336). Viewed from this perspective, Meezy’s resistance to Korean/Asian stereotypes can be credited to the racial microaggressions that he experiences.

That is, when these microaggressions occur, they give him the opportunity to resist, to present himself as an atypical Korean person. As Meezy states, these situations do him a lot of good.

As described above then, Meezy is able to redefine himself (Slay & Smith, 2011) as a humorous, outgoing Korean male. However, the reader may wonder how this redefinition relates to his professional identity as an ESOL teacher. One way to answer this question is to consider the fact that ESOL teaching is

177 a type of service work in which students enjoy or see value in using the service (Walker, 2013). Part of enjoying a service is enjoying its service provider. If Meezy’s students think Koreans are quiet and boring, then they may see his teaching as boring. (Remember that Hodge [2005] discusses how student feedback in private ESOL schools often judges teachers’ personalities). Conversely, by presenting himself as a humorous and outgoing person, Meezy’s students may see his teaching as fresh and exciting and by extension, see him as a fresh and exciting English-language teacher.

Humour does seem to play an important part in Meezy’s teacher identity as it allows him to have a closer rapport with his Korean students in particular:

In Korea, [older males and younger males] bond by making fun of each other or just going out for a few drinks. I actually try to do that with my male students…I would do the things that an older Korean male is supposed to do with younger Korean males in order to build relationships. So I try extra hard.

While he uses humour to present himself as an atypical Korean, it is interesting to note that Meezy also uses humour to present a traditional Korean self to students. I explore this contradiction in the next section in which I discuss how teachers perform ethnic identification in response to microaggressions.

Performing Ethnic Identification

In the previous chapter, I mentioned how some microaggressions were examples of ethnic assignation in which racialized teachers felt that others saw them mostly in terms of their ethnic/racial identities while ignoring their professional identities as teachers (Kenny & Briner, 2013). Ethnic assignation can thus be considered “a ‘push’…towards [one’s] ethnic identity” (Kenny & Briner, 2013, p. 731). While racialized individuals can be pushed towards their ethnicity, they can also be pulled to it, which Kenny and

Briner (2013) term ethnic identification, which refers “to instances where features of a situation [lead] to

[individuals] experiencing an increased affinity with their ethnic group, resulting in an increased salience of their ethnic identity” (p. 732). This increased sense of ethnic identity may merge with one’s professional identity, which is the case for some of the teachers after experiencing microaggressions.

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One such teacher is Meezy who, as we have seen in the previous section, resists Korean stereotypes, but seems to embrace Korean etiquette to deal with some of the microaggressions that he has experienced. For example, in response to the older Korean student who was disappointed that he had a younger Korean teacher, Meezy seems to incorporate youth behaviour into his teaching:

I’m working on my teaching [in terms of] how I would address him…I rarely call him by his name. I call him sir or mister. Also, I try to smile a lot more when I speak to him because when you talk to an older person with a straight face, it is considered very rude.

In a general sense, Meezy seems to bring his ethnic identity into his workplace in order to gain rapport with students such as the one above (Kenny & Briner, 2013). By using honorific terms and smiling more, Meezy engages in somewhat subservient behaviour. In this regard, this ethnic identification weakens his teacher identity in that he must be more respectful towards the student than vice versa. While one may see

Meezy’s response to this microaggression as him simply wanting the student to like him, it seems more to do with making the student comfortable in class as Meezy notes the following:

[The older student] is already having a hard time with most of the students because they’re young, they talk about different things, and there’s a large generation gap. And on top of that, his teacher is a 28-year-old Korean. It seems to be stressing him somewhat.

By interacting with the student in a traditional Korean manner, Meezy intends to make him feel less alienated in the classroom. This desire to help the student may stem from the fact that Meezy himself was isolated as a child when he lived in the United States and experienced discrimination from his Latino/a peers. Furthermore, this desire perhaps emerged from his previous work in community service in which the motto is “You help them, no matter what.” Therefore, Meezy’s performance of ethnic identification suggests that he is willing to sacrifice his teacher authority in order to make any student comfortable in class.

In Meezy’s case, his performance of ethnic identification is a direct response to a specific racial microaggression. However, some of the teachers’ performances do not necessarily respond to an exact

(type of) microaggression. Let us take Chiyo as an example of this point. Like Meezy and as discussed in the previous chapter, Chiyo often experiences microaggressions based on her age and ethnicity. For

179 example, her Japanese students, who respect older Japanese teachers than younger ones, often give her backhanded compliments that they are glad she is older than them (which is often not the case as I will explain later). These compliments indirectly remind Chiyo that when she is noticeably younger than her older students, her youth cannot overstep her authority as a teacher:

In Japan,…we have to respect anyone older than us…Sometimes, I have students older than me and I feel a little more pressure than from other students. So my age really affects my teaching because I can’t be bossy…I have to be modest, respect all students, and can’t treat them as young students.

Kenny and Briner (2013) mention that ethnic identification is a pull towards one’s ethnic identity. In

Chiyo’s situation, this pull seems a bit restrictive. Unlike Meezy who freely embraces Korean cultural norms as part of his teacher identity, Chiyo feels that she must give up teacher traits such as being authoritative because she is a young Japanese woman. In this sense, Chiyo’s ethnic identification verges on the edge of being ethnic assignation as certain behaviour seems to be forced upon her. Nevertheless, I label Chiyo’s teaching habits as a type of ethnic identification as these are things that she chooses to do because of her students. This choice to subscribe to Japanese cultural etiquette may be explained by the fact that Chiyo has spent most of her life in Japan and thus is still influenced by these customs. As I have briefly mentioned, Chiyo does lie about her age in order to avoid having to perform this ethnic identification, which is a type of preventive identity work that I will explore below.

Enacting Preventive Measures

Sometimes racial microaggressions may encourage teachers to change or lie about aspects of their professional identities in order to negate future microaggressions. We may call these changes preventive identity work in that they attempt to prevent future criticism about one’s professional identity. In the context of call centres in India, we see preventive identity work as national identity management in which Indian agents modify their accents, adopt English names, and mask their locations in order to prevent racist backlash from the Global North (Nath, 2011; Poster, 2007). While racialized teachers do not

180 necessarily perform this drastic type of identity work, they do practice a kind of impression management, which “is the process people use to shape the image others have of them” (Rosenfeld et al., 2001, as cited in Roberts, 2005, p. 689). For example, we have seen how Stephan (2006) projects a positive professional image by lying about being a native speaker of English to his students. Since his students respect native speakers, he performs this preventive identity work to gain respect as a teacher.

Unlike Stephan (2006), however, the impression management that the teachers of this study perform does not entail them lying about their language-user status. The reason why the teachers do not lie about being native speakers of English is that they are not solely judged by their perceived language proficiency. In the case of Chiyo for example, most of the microaggressions that she experiences concern her being a young Japanese woman and thus, much of her preventive identity work attempts to alleviate the burdens of this particular status. In fact, as I have briefly mentioned previously, Chiyo lies about her age to garner respect as a teacher:

I have a fake age at school…I am three years older than I really am because we [Japanese] think teachers should be mature and they should be older.

Pretending to be older thus makes Chiyo a better teacher in the eyes of her Japanese students, which in turn, prevents any criticism on her perceived inexperience. Other teachers also portray themselves as more mature for this purpose such as Maria who dresses differently on a first day of class:

On the first day of class, I will not wear something very casual. I will not come to school wearing like overalls and boots because some students might ask you more questions. So I tend to dress somehow more formally.

According to Goffman (1959), “clothing…may be strategically used by the individual to gain support from others for a particular identity” (as cited in Rockquemore, 1998/2007, p. 305). In Maria’s case, her choice to wear more formal clothing on the first day of class expresses her desire for her students to see her as a more mature, professional teacher. However, it is important to note that Maria’s decision to dress more formally is not a response to microaggressions based on her age. Instead, it seems to be a response to

181 microaggressions that position her as less knowledgeable than a White teacher such as when her student asked a White ‘nonnative’-speaking teacher about a present-perfect rule. Because Maria identifies as a racialized ‘nonnative’ speaker of English, her wearing of formal, mature clothing may be seen as a compensatory strategy that states, “Even though I may not have the embodied qualities that you desire in a teacher, my clothing represents my skills and experience in language teaching.”

Maria’s choice to wear formal clothing may be an example of reconciling, which is a type of remedial identity work in which one attempts to highlight a preferred identity (Lutgen-Sandvik, 2008).

Although her identity work is more preventive than remedial, Maria highlights her preferred identity as a professional, qualified teacher by dressing formally. This ‘preventive reconciling’ also emerges as a theme for other teachers such as Yun who highlights her achievements to students:

Like more and more, over the years, I’ve been telling students more about my background, like my educational background and/or my professional background. Just so I can justify myself I guess.

Solórzano (2012) and Solórzano and Pérez Huber (2012) remind us that targets of microaggressions respond to these attacks in order to lessen the effects of these attacks. As discussed in the beginning of this chapter, Yun was partially interpellated as a poor teacher when a student slammed the door after being disappointed with Yun. Therefore, her strategy of highlighting her educational and professional achievements to students is a tactic that Yun uses to prevent future feelings of inferiority. Indeed, as a consequence of student criticism, Yun’s preventive identity work entails improving herself as a teacher:

As a result [of student dissatisfaction], I feel like I need to do more professional development, go further in education, and spend more time preparing for classes.

By desiring to improve herself as a teacher, Yun is superficially similar to Angelina, who also seeks to develop her knowledge and skills in ESOL teaching. However, a significant difference between the two is that Angelina sees her self-improvement as not attempting to please students, but to directly challenge their

182 ideology stating that she is a deficient teacher. Yun’s self-improvement, by contrast, seems to mitigate the interpellation against her in particular.

While Yun uses her education and experience to highlight herself as a legitimate teacher for students, Meezy uses his name to achieve this same goal. Meezy does not use his Korean first name at school, but instead uses ‘Meezy,’ which is his English middle name. Aside from being easier for students to remember, Meezy makes this name choice to emphasize his Canadian identity:

Vijay: So by referring to yourself as Meezy at your school, is that a way to make yourself more legitimate for students? Like emphasize that you’re more Canadian?

Meezy: I couldn’t have said it better. It’s a form of advertisement.

Meezy mentions how most of the microaggressions that he experiences comes from his Korean students who are disappointed in not having the ‘Canadian experience.’ As this experience entails having a White teacher (Amin, 1997), Meezy uses his name as a way to emphasize that despite being born in Korea, he is a Canadian citizen who has spent most of his life in Canada. Although his name does not entirely whiten

Meezy, it opens up the possibility for his students to see him as more than simply Korean.

Seeing his name as a type of advertisement is interesting as Meezy works in a private-language school, which is a school context that has used the image of Canadians, especially White Canadians in order to attract student-customers in Canada (e.g., Abrile, 2006; Hodge, 2005). It could be argued then that Meezy’s school context seems to influence his professional identity (Reynolds, 1996) as he constructs himself as a legitimate teacher by advertising his Canadian identity through his name. Just as we may read the package of a product to know what we are about to consume, Meezy’s name allows his students to know what kind of instructor will teach them the English language.

In the above example, Meezy uses his name to educate students on his Canadian identity, which in turn, will ideally prevent microaggressions against him. On some occasions, this type of education has a

183 larger goal of promoting anti-racism, which relates to the final type of identity work that the teachers perform in relation to the racial microaggressions that they experience.

Becoming Anti-Racist Educators

The final way that the teachers of this study respond to racial microaggressions is to use these incidents as teachable moments for the purpose of anti-racism, which Dei (2000) generally defines as “a critical discourse of race and racism in society that challenges the continuance of racializing social groups for differential and unequal treatment” (p. 27). By addressing the racism in these microaggressions, these teachers are simultaneously restructuring their professional identities from service providers of English into critical educators (Lutgen-Sandvik, 2008). In this respect, they are similar to one of the teachers in Amin

(2000, 2004) who educates others on diversity and creates anti-racist materials. However, one difference between this teacher and those of this study is that the latter restructure their identities immediately after experiencing microaggressions such as Josh.

Being the only teacher in his current school who discusses racism and other types of oppression,

Josh generally incorporates anti-racism into his teaching because of his childhood and overall life experience dealing with racism. In fact, as mentioned before, Josh experienced discrimination from his peers while playing hockey and serving in the Canadian military. As Josh puts it, his ‘skin experience’ inspires him to talk about issues of race in class and moreover, it gives him an increased sensitivity to microaggressions to which he immediately responds. For example, in his interaction with the Swiss student who doubted that he was Canadian, Josh said the following:

And I said, “It’s not your fault that you think this because if you go to our airport and you look at our postcards, that’s what you’re going to see. You know, moose, the Rocky Mountains, Mounties, ice hockey, Natives in traditional dress, and multiculturalism. So I can’t blame you for thinking that.” I [continued], “But I’m Canadian and I guess I’ll go for the rest of my life not being accepted as that. But you’re not going to get a lesser-brand of English as a result of me not being what you had hoped for.”

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In this response, the way that Josh becomes an anti-racist educator is to perform disidentification, which

Muñoz (1999), drawing on Pêcheux (1982), claims to be “a strategy that works on and against dominant ideology” (p. 11). Rather than challenge the ideology that only White people are Canadian (Amin, 1997) by offering an alternative frame of reference, Josh dismantles this ideology by explaining the reasons for the student’s ideological thinking. That is, he walks her through the fact that Canada markets itself as a White country (e.g., the postcards), thereby making her sympathize with his interpellation (e.g., being seen as a non-Canadian for his entire life). In the end, Josh’s disidentificatory speech has an unspoken message: this type of ideological thinking hurts racialized people. Furthermore, the invisible directive for the student is to change such thinking permanently.

Aside from this point, Josh’s mention of the student not going to get a lesser-brand of English highlights how disidentification is a survival strategy used by minoritarian subjects (Muñoz, 1999). Perhaps as a way to prevent student complaints that might lead to his termination, Josh disidentifies with his students’ ideologies in order to prove that he is a qualified teacher of English. Therefore, racial microaggressions make Josh take on the identity of an anti-racist educator, which simultaneously highlights his worth as an ESOL instructor. In this sense, his disidentification is a type of intensive remedial identity work that has the goal of altering outside perceptions of him as a teacher (Lutgen-Sandvik, 2008).

In Josh’s case, his professional identity emerges through communication (Schnurr, 2013). That is, he becomes an anti-racist educator by directly talking to his student. Instead of oral communication,

Sharon becomes an anti-racist educator through written communication, namely letter writing. Similar to

Josh, Sharon comes from a mixed-race background and has experienced (childhood) racism because of this background. Her sensitivity to issues of race and racism has led to her having to educate people in general, especially when they are confused about her mixed-race status. Therefore, when she found the article with racial slurs that was left by her colleague, Sharon merged her personal identity as anti-racist

185 educator with her professional identity as a language teacher. In fact, in response to finding the article,

Sharon had written an anonymous letter to her colleague explaining the offensiveness of the letter:

I had typed up this letter that I was going to leave and say to the person, “If you would like to discuss this, I’m totally open to talking about it.” But I didn’t put my name on it because I didn’t want the person reading it to feel, “Now Sharon is being racially sensitive with me.” You know, I wanted the person to read it first and think it could’ve been from our black co- worker [or others].

As I discussed in the previous chapter, Sharon’s director discouraged her from sending the letter because she believed the article to be non-racist. Sharon expresses her feelings about this veto:

And I just had to let [the situation] go because I was put in this position where I wasn’t really asking for permission to address this with a co-worker. I was just letting [her] know what I [was] doing because [she was] kind of my boss loosely. She just totally took any agency I had in the situation.

What is noteworthy about Sharon’s experience is how power is very influential in professional identity construction (Schnurr, 2013). With this point, I am not referring to how power helps Sharon become an anti-racist educator, but rather, how it actually limits her identity work. More specifically, her director somewhat prevents Sharon from becoming a full-fledged anti-racist educator as the former has professional power over the latter: because she is Sharon’s superior, she has the authority to tell Sharon what (not) to do in their workplace. This entire situation suggests that one’s remedial identity work can be contested by those who would ideally benefit from such work.

Despite facing limits in her anti-racist work with her colleagues, Sharon nevertheless takes on the identity of anti-racist educator when she is a secondary target of racial microaggressions (Solórzano,

2012). As Solórzano (2012) reminds us, secondary targets can be just as affected by microaggressions as primary targets and may therefore feel the need to respond to these attacks. Sharon makes such a response when witnessing student microaggressions against other racial groups. For instance, when her

Korean students make the association between Black people and crime, Sharon states how she tries to

186 attack these scenarios and open up their minds as much as possible. Like Josh before, Sharon becomes an anti-racist educator through immediate communication with her students (Schnurr, 2013).

When her students complain about the heavy accents of their ‘non-Canadian’ homestay families,

Zoe also becomes an immediate anti-racist educator by saying the following:

I’ll always explain to them how everyone has an accent, everyone is different, but everyone is still speaking English.

Zoe makes this type of response because it follows her conception of what a teacher should be: someone who facilitates and gets information across to students. As a teacher, she has to ensure that she gives the correct information to her learners, whether it may be language-related or in this case, the fact that there is no such thing as having a neutral accent (e.g., Lippi-Green, 2012). Like the other teachers of this section,

Zoe’s anti-racist work showcases how ESOL teaching in private-language schools may require more than simply teaching the English language.43

Discussion & Concluding Remarks

Two important points must be made in relation to this chapter. Firstly, identity construction, including professional identity construction, can be outside of the awareness of the individual (worker)

(Schnurr, 2013). Indeed, the professional effects of and responses to microaggressions that I have detailed are not necessarily named as such by the participants. For example, even though they do consciously attack the microaggressions that they experience and/or witness, Josh, Sharon, and Zoe never referred to themselves as anti-racist educators during our interviews. Rather, their anti-racist work was

43As discussed previously, Angelina is also a ‘double educator’ as she too teaches English and educates her students on stereotyping by constantly improving herself as an ESOL teacher. The reason why I do not mention Angelina in this section is because her anti-racist work (in contrast to the other participants) is not an immediate, finite response to certain microaggressions. Rather, it is an indefinite professional response.

187 something that they simply did as part of their teaching. Therefore, it was my analysis of their data (rather than the teachers themselves) that named them as anti-racist educators.

My mentioning of my role as the researcher leads to the second point that I must emphasize. The central purpose of this chapter was to showcase how racial microaggressions influence the professional identity formation of the racialized teachers of this study. However, as Meezy rightly noted in our second interview, microaggressions are not the only factor that influences teacher identities. Indeed, we have seen how the personal/professional backgrounds of the teachers may sometimes be a contributing factor in how they are affected by/respond to microaggressions. To take Meezy as an example, I suggested how his childhood feelings of isolation in the United States as well as his professional background in community service could have been motivating forces in his performance of ethnic identification in order to make his older Korean student more comfortable (with him) in the classroom.

Aside from individual backgrounds, we have also seen how the school context can be influential in how the teachers are affected by and/or respond to the microaggressions that they experience and how they ultimately construct their professional identities (Reynolds, 1996). For instance, Angelina sees herself as a service provider of English because she sees her workplace as partly a business. Consequently, she is able to understand why students may see her as an unsuitable teacher (i.e., through her dual reasoning) because she also understands that service workers are judged by their embodied qualities such as their race (Macdonald & Merrill, 2009; McDowell, 2009).

This mention of race also reminds us that racial identities are very much a subset of teachers’ professional identities (Hopson, 2013). In fact, we have seen how teachers like Chiyo, Yun, and Josh are interpellated as less-valued teachers by various microaggressions because they are nonwhite. However, this connection between racial and professional identity goes beyond the idea that racialized individuals may be seen/may see themselves as less legitimate teachers. Indeed, racial or ethnic identity may play an active role in how racialized individuals present themselves as teachers. For example, Chiyo’s Japanese

188 identity is prominent when interacting with her (older) Japanese students because Japanese cultural norms dictate that as a young person, she must be respectful towards her elders in particular.

We also see how Meezy’s Korean identity plays a role in his professional responses to microaggressions such as when he states how he uses honorifics and smiles when interacting with his older Korean student who seems disappointed in the class in general. It is important to note, however, that while he becomes ‘more Korean’ to deal with some microaggressions, Meezy also becomes ‘less Korean’ to deal with others as seen when he becomes a humorous, outgoing teacher in response to stereotypes that deem him the opposite. Meezy thus constructs a duality (Srinivas, 2013) in his professional identity as a teacher: he is both a Korean teacher who adheres to Korean cultural etiquette, and a Canadian teacher who does not act as a stereotypical Korean. Meezy’s professional identity formation showcases how teachers’ identity work can sometimes be contradictory.

Another example of this contradiction comes from Josh who is both wounded by and disidentifies with the ideologies of the microaggressions committed against him. In fact, his experiences of institutional racism has made him feel disadvantaged as an ESOL teacher. However, when confronted by students who do not believe that he is Canadian, Josh disidentifies with their ideological thinking by explaining their thinking to them. Both sets of microaggressions construct Josh as two different teachers: a disadvantaged instructor and an anti-racist educator, respectively. He develops the first identity by experiencing interpellation, while he creates the second by performing disidentification.

My mention of experiencing interpellation and performing disidentification leads to an important point of how the different ways to respond to the ideologies of racial microaggressions can be done in different manners. Utilizing Pêcheux (1982), Muñoz (1999) reminds us that after acceptance and resistance, disidentification is the third mode to deal with an ideology. Just as disidentification becomes an additional option to handle an ideology, there seems to be multiple ways that one can perform it. Indeed, disidentification can be performative as seen when Josh talks to his Swiss student, or it can be internal

189 sensemaking as seen when Angelina and Chao perform dual reasoning. Simply put, there are multiple types of disidentification.

This point is in contrast to acceptance and resistance, in which there only seems to be one way to do these actions. With regard to acceptance or experiencing doubt/pain from interpellation, it seems to be solely an internal process. That is, teachers like Chiyo, Yun, and Josh are mostly psychologically affected by the interpellation that they face. Conversely, in the case of resistance, it seems to be mostly performative. For example, when Angelina and Meezy challenge student perceptions, they do so through their actions and interactions. For Angelina, she improves her knowledge and skills to show students that she is a qualified ESOL teacher. For Meezy, he becomes humorous and outgoing when interacting with students in order to disprove the stereotypes against Korean individuals.

When making this distinction between the internal (i.e., not visible to others) and the performative, I am not suggesting that one is more passive than the other. Instead, it is to emphasize that identity work involves a balance of inward reflection and outward engagement (Watson, 2008). That is, identity work occurs within individuals and in their interactions with others. Therefore, when I separated this chapter into the professional effects of and responses to racial microaggressions, it was to showcase how identity work is performed in the personal and social realms. While it is necessary to distinguish the personal and social in order to highlight the places of identity work, it is also important to locate the two as conflicting yet present elements of (professional) identity construction for individual subjects.

Since the topic of racial microaggressions is heavily influenced by the psychological literature, it is tempting to see the above effects of and responses to microaggressions as evidence of how identity is a personal, individual phenomenon. Indeed, as I have stated and exemplified throughout this chapter, each teacher has differing backgrounds, motivations, etc., that influence how they deal with various racial microaggressions. For instance, Josh and Sharon, as mixed-race individuals who are more sensitive to racism, seem to be more affected by and perhaps respond more to microaggressions than the other

190 teachers because they intimately know the harmful effects of (racial) discrimination. Or in the cases of

Chiyo and Meezy, their ethnic backgrounds play a more salient role in their professional identities than other teachers because both they and their students are conscious of the fact that they all share the same ethnicity. Even though these individual backgrounds are significant aspects of these teachers’ identities, we must not neglect the social aspect of professional identities.

I have already made mention of this point by stating how identities are constructed through interactions with others (e.g., Beijaard, Meijer, & Verloop, 2004; Benwell & Stokoe, 2006; De Fina, 2010;

Howard, 2000; Norton, 2010; Schnurr, 2013). Indeed, after/while experiencing racial microaggressions, the teachers report various professional effects of and responses to these interactions. However, it is equally important to note how identity emerges in how the teachers articulate these effects and responses. That is, we need to understand that (professional) identity is often produced through discourse (Bucholtz & Hall,

2005). This point is perhaps easiest to explain when examining how the teachers professionally respond to various microaggressions. For example, it is clear that Zoe enacts an anti-racist-educator identity when she tells students that everyone has an accent in response to their complaints about the accents of their homestay families. In short, her utterance constructs her anti-racist stance.

Aside from professional responses such as Zoe’s, it is also possible to see the discursive constructions of professional identity in the effects of racial microaggressions. Let us take Josh as perhaps the strongest example of this point. We have seen how Josh feels disempowered by the interpellation that he has faced such as when he talks about being ‘shot in the foot’ and thus being perpetually disadvantaged in the ‘ESOL job race.’ By stating that he has been wounded by a figurative bullet, Josh constructs himself as a teacher who is disadvantaged by others. In other words, he does not see deficiency in himself, but is made deficient by those who refuse to hire/accept him as a language instructor. What is noteworthy here is that Josh does not place blame on select individuals for wounding him. Rather, and as noted before, it is

Canada that is ‘holding the pistol.’ In fact, the discrimination that he faces is a result of a societal discourse

191 that states that Canada is a White country, which, according to Josh, is perpetuated in the international media (that comes to influence ESOL students and employers). Therefore, Josh’s sense of himself as a teacher “is constructed by the way the world is [thought to be]” (Bamberg, De Fina, & Schiffrin, 2011, p.

178) rather than by individual prejudices. Furthermore, in this discursive construction of himself as a disadvantaged teacher, Josh simultaneously emerges as an anti-racist educator. That is, in his interactions with me as the interviewer, Josh explains his hurt rather than simply express pain. Indeed, while he describes how he is professionally affected by racial microaggressions, Josh also clearly details how these racist slights are truly a social rather than personal issue. By re-framing microaggressions as a social problem, Josh emphasizes how this problem is widespread, which we have seen him do in response to the

Swiss student who doubted his Canadian identity.

If Josh is able to construct an anti-racist teacher identity in both explaining the effects of and his responses to racial microaggressions, then it is possible to suggest that being affected by and responding to microaggressions are not mutually exclusive when it comes to professional identity formation. But the link between the two does not end here. Indeed, effects and responses share a dialectal relationship as the latter may be performed to alleviate the former (Solórzano, 2012; Solórzano and Pérez Huber, 2012).

For instance, we have seen how Yun attempts to mitigate her interpellated feelings as a teacher by actively proving her worth to students upon various first encounters.

Yun’s example highlights how racial microaggressions like other negative events, changes, etc., often require intensive remedial identity work in which victimized workers maintain and/or reconstitute their professional identities in the midst of these attacks (e.g., Alvesson & Willmott, 2002; Lutgen-Sandvik,

2008). In fact, I have referred to this type of identity work to showcase how the participants do this type of work to reconstitute their professional identities as ESOL teachers. Within their general types of identity work (as represented by the various sub-sections of this chapter), we have seen how the teachers perform various types of remedial work such as sensemaking, reconciling, and restructuring their professional

192 identities (Lutgen-Sandvik, 2008). Even though they do similar types of identity work, the teachers nevertheless do such work in differing ways.

Although there are complex differences among the teachers, the simple fact that they are all influenced in some way by racial microaggressions speaks to the power of these attacks on one’s professional identity as an ESOL teacher. Furthermore, we come to know about the influence of these attacks through the stories that the teachers tell, which ultimately shed more light on their professional identities (Creswell, 2013). Indeed, when they detail the microaggressions that they have faced, how they are affected by these slights, and how they respond to them, we come to understand “what the narrators care about most, what motivates them…and the dilemmas with which they live” (Beijaard et al., 2004, pp.

121-122). For example, we learn that Sharon cares about keeping her personal life separate from her professional one. Moreover, we understand that Maria is motivated to dress formally on a first day of class to present herself as more experienced. Finally, we see how Angelina understands that she will be judged as a service provider of English, but nevertheless tries to challenge these judgments.

In the end then, these random examples showcase how dealing with racial microaggressions in private-language schools draws out specific aspects of teachers’ professional identities, all of which is showcased by giving racial microaggressions a storied form.

Chapter Seven: Concluding Thoughts About the Study

When I decided to name this study Excuse me, are you the teacher, it was not simply a reference to cases of mistaken identity. By emphasizing ‘you,’ this question takes on additional meanings. Indeed,

‘you’ may signify disappointment as in “I cannot believe that a nonwhite person will be my teacher.” Or

‘you’ may express doubt as in “I am not sure if a nonwhite person is able to teach English.” Overall, ‘you’ signifies that racialized individuals are not always considered the ideal teachers of English for Speakers of

Other Languages (ESOL). As I have explored, this lack of consideration for racialized teachers can often lead to their students, peers, and/or superiors committing racial microaggressions against them.

In order to refresh the reader’s memory of these microaggressions, let me briefly summarize the answer to my first research question of what types of racial microaggressions are experienced by racialized teachers in the context of Toronto private-language schools. The microaggressions that I am about to re- state take on a storied form: there are ones that concern teachers trying to enter private-language schools, there are others that then deal with initial impressions about teachers, and finally, there are ones that become a part of teachers’ normal routines. Let us review this grand narrative.

Firstly, some of the teachers of this study experienced racial microaggressions that barred them from employment in various ESOL schools. These microaggressions were manifestations of institutional racism (Solórzano, 2012) that stated that nonwhite individuals are essentially unsuitable to teach English.

When the teachers are able to secure employment, they experience new types of racial microaggressions.

For instance, when students first meet the teachers, they may express disappointment and/or actively inquire about the teachers’ backgrounds seemingly because they expect to have a White and/or male and/or older teacher. Moreover, students may have little faith in the teachers’ proficiency in English due to their race and/or gender. Lastly, once these teachers get past these initial doubts and questions, they may need to deal with daily microaggressions concerning being mistaken as non-teachers, stereotypes (about

193 194 the teachers themselves), backhanded compliments, and even the teachers’ surroundings. As repeated throughout this thesis, these microaggressions do not solely concern racism, but also other intersecting oppressions such as sexism and ageism in particular (Kohli & Solórzano, 2012; Solórzano, 2012;

Solórzano & Pérez Huber, 2012). Furthermore, depending on the perpetrator or the context, these microaggressions may not be entirely language-related.

Of course, the accumulation of these microaggressions may have a lasting impact on targets (Kohli

& Solórzano, 2012; Solórzano et al., 2000; Solórzano & Pérez Huber, 2012; Sue, 2010a, 2010b; Sue et al.,

2007), which in the current context, is a professional impact. This point leads to the second major research question of this thesis: how do these microaggressions influence how the teachers construct their professional identities? As discussed in the previous chapter, the teachers are professionally affected by and respond to racial microaggressions in a variety of ways. In terms of effects, the teachers may experience doubt and pain as ESOL instructors, come to understand why others see them as inferior, or separate their personal selves from their professional lives. These effects encourage the teachers to respond to microaggressions in different ways such as actively resisting student perceptions of them, ethnic matching, taking steps to prevent future microaggressions, and becoming anti-racist educators.

Whether it be professional identity formation or racial microaggressions, we cannot ignore the fact that these phenomena occur in the context of Toronto private-language schools. Indeed, I have suggested that various aspects of this school context (such as positioning students as customers and being lax on diversity issues), sometimes in conjunction with other contexts such as cultural ones, may facilitate microaggressions and professional identity work to some extent. But beyond this point, let us consider the private aspect of these schools. Because they are privately-owned, these schools are usually outside of public scrutiny (e.g., Clark & Paran, 2007) and thus, discrimination in the form of microaggressions may be more rampant than in a public-sector institution. A particular strength of this thesis is that it brings this scrutiny to private schools through the stories of racialized teachers.

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Limitations of the Study and Suggestions for Future Research

Despite this strength, there are limitations of this study that need to be addressed. Firstly, because racial microaggressions are mostly interactions between individuals, the reader may have the impression that racism is simply an individual problem (Goldberg, 1993). However, as Scheurich and Young (2001) outline, the individual level of racism “sits within the institutional level, which sits within the societal level” (p.

133). Viewed from this perspective, individual racist interactions may be representative of the racism found in wider contexts. In the current context, the racial microaggressions told here may be indicative of the racism prevalent in the Canadian/international ESOL industry.

Aside from perhaps representing racial microaggressions as an individual issue, another drawback of the study is that we only hear from the targets of microaggressions (i.e., the racialized teachers) without looking at the perpetrators. Although I do consider the mindsets, motivations, etc., of various students, colleagues, and employers when analyzing the microaggression narratives, these factors are only speculations on my part as a researcher. Perhaps this study would have provided a more complex picture of racial microaggressions if I had interviewed perpetrators as well. However, Solórzano (2012) notes that it is difficult to interview perpetrators because they may be incapable of seeing and/or deny that they do commit microaggressions. Therefore, including the direct commentary of these individuals may not necessarily heighten the quality of research and furthermore, may sustain a majoritarian discourse because perpetrators may draw on non-racial reasons to explain the discrimination of racialized teachers.

While I am able to justify the above two limitations, there are certain weaknesses of the study that cannot be justified and thus can only be remedied by future research. One such weakness concerns the lack of ethnic diversity among the participants. As the reader has learned, the majority of the participants came from East Asian backgrounds and in some cases, experienced microaggressions specific to their respective ethnicities. For instance, Meezy struggles against microaggressions based on his (youthful)

‘Koreanness’: either he is perceived as unauthoritative by older Korean students or deemed boring and

196 introverted by other learners. Not having a wider variety of ethnicities in my sample may have ignored other types of racial microaggressions that are specific to individuals from other ethnic backgrounds (as

Meezy’s situation clearly exemplifies). Therefore, for future researchers interested in this research context,

I would suggest trying as hard as possible to find a heterogeneous sample to compare and contrast microaggressions across ethnic groups.

In addition to finding a racially/ethnically-diverse array of participants, I encourage researchers to specifically explore the intersection of race and other identity markers in their analyses of racial microaggressions in the ESOL context. Even though I have exemplified how microaggressions are sometimes layered assaults of racism and sexism or racism and ageism (Kohli & Solórzano, 2012;

Solórzano et al., 2000; Solórzano & Pérez Huber, 2012), these examples are more sporadic than systematic. By systematically looking at the intersection of race and gender for example, we may glean new insights into the (differing) experiences of racialized male and female teachers.44

Apart from examining new types of intersecting microaggressions, we also need to explore these new microaggressions in new school contexts. Indeed, the racial microaggressions reported here are not exclusive to the context of private-language schools and may be occurring in other ESOL settings. For instance, we have seen in Amin’s (1997, 1999, 2000, 2004) work that microaggressions can happen in

Canadian settlement programs for immigrants. Furthermore, in my interviews with Yun, she detailed how she is currently facing a number of microaggressions in her current workplace, which is a post-secondary setting and which echoes the themes of the current study. By looking at the variety of contexts in which microaggressions can occur, we may highlight their prevalence within the entire ESOL realm. Moreover, looking at new school contexts may showcase how racial microaggressions become more insidious or detrimental to racialized teachers and their professional identities.

44Such a study might need to adequately answer the question of why there is a need to distinguish (racialized) male from female ESOL teachers in the first place.

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Other miscellaneous ways to expand microaggression research in the ESOL realm include looking at other targets of microaggressions such as ESOL students, and conducting comparative studies of the experiences of native and ‘nonnative’ speakers. Of course, another way to expand the research is to move beyond ESOL. Indeed, discrimination based on language and race is not limited to the ESOL industry as it may be present in such areas as the English news media (Amin, 2000) or international call centres (e.g.,

Mirchandani, 2012; Nath, 2011). No matter which area researchers choose to study, the central purpose of their research should be to inspire others to end the occurrence of racial microaggressions.

Ways to Combat Racial Microaggressions in the ESOL Context

But how exactly do we combat racial microaggressions? In particular, how can we end them in the

ESOL context? Firstly, with particular regard to institutional racism, we must enact punitive measures against the perpetrators of microaggressions. We have seen some of the teachers of this study being denied employment through microaggressions that state that due to their perceived ‘nonnative’-speaker status, they cannot be teachers. Racialized instructors who experience this kind of employment discrimination in Ontario, for example, must remember that they may file a complaint with the Ontario

Human Rights Commission (OHRC). Indeed, according to the OHRC (1996/2009), issues about one’s perceived proficiency in a language “can be used to mask discrimination based on race” (p. 5) and thus, deserve punitive action. Complaining about the microaggressive behaviour of employers may lead to stricter labour regulation desperately needed in private ESOL schools (Breshears, 2008).

As seen above, punishing perpetrators may be the impetus for them to cease their discriminatory actions. Of course, another way to cease racial microaggressions is through education.45 As Sharon and

45The following ideas are simply preliminary thoughts in preventing racial microaggressions in the ESOL context. A critical pedagogy that combats these indignities requires a chapter-/book-length explanation in order to be comprehensive and thus effective for educators.

198 other teachers noted about their workplaces, one reason why microaggressions may occur in private- language schools is that these institutions do not provide any kind of diversity training for their employees that informs them on the detrimental impact of microaggressions. Therefore, ESOL administrators may wish to conduct workshops or meetings that allow marginalized workers to voice their experiences and offer their peers/superiors strategies to refrain from future microaggressive behaviour (Sue, 2010a).46 In the case of preventing the microaggressions coming from students, teachers may follow similar actions in the classroom. Alternatively, they may take a page from teachers like Josh, Sharon, and Zoe who use racial microaggressions as teachable moments. In fact, teachers may help students understand why they commit microaggressions and why they must stop doing so.

The most important learning goal of the above types of education should be to recognize that microaggressions are the apparatus for spreading oppressive ideologies (Althusser, 1971; Sue, 2010b). If microaggressions are simply embodiments of these ideologies, perhaps we need to directly attack the ideologies in order to cease microaggressions. Indeed, in the case of ESOL teaching, Romney (2006) stresses that the field “needs to move away from the Eurocentric, native-speaker-dominated notion of the

English language, because it is erroneous and anachronistic” (p. 194). Moving away from this ideology requires us to not simply resist or disidentify, but to decolonize. By decolonization, I am not referring to “the political transformation of nation states, but…the articulation and transformation of dominant ideologies at the level of communities and individual bodies” (Perry, 2012, p. 103). Moreover, by naming and transforming ideologies, decolonization liberates us from these oppressive beliefs (Ng, 2012).

46Of course, the overall intent of these sessions should not be to re-victimize racialized workers by simply having them share their pain as a result of experiencing individual microaggressions. In fact, presenting racial microaggressions as an interpersonal issue neglects the fact that these attacks reflect a wider social problem within the ESOL industry (which I once again emphasize in the following paragraph). Although speaking in the context of teacher-education programs, Chacón (2009) provides a possible example of how ESOL workplaces can implement training that promotes “critical understanding of hegemonic practices and disempowering colonial discourses that legitimate social inequity” (p. 220).

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But where do we begin this liberation from the ideology that valorizes the White native speaker of

English? Let us look at ESOL materials as an arbitrary starting point. Romney (2006) suggests that the development and publication of future ESOL materials can counteract this valorization by highlighting all varieties of English as well as their speakers. As Romney continues, doing such a thing would reinforce the fact that Englishes beyond the Inner Circle are also legitimate to learn and furthermore, that competent

English speakers come from a variety of racial/ethnic backgrounds.

Even when using existing materials that are based on White-native-speaker models, decolonization can still occur through questioning (Ng, 2012). That is, teachers may encourage their students to critically question the ideologies present in the ESOL materials that they use. For example, with regard to stereotypical racial images in textbooks, Taylor-Mendes (2009) suggests that “teachers not only need to draw attention to the content of the image, but also need to initiate discussions about the issues that the image implies” (p. 77). By examining the hidden messages of these images (i.e., certain races are superior to others), students might be able to change their own stereotypical views on race.

Aside from ESOL materials, another site for decolonization involves the terminology that is used in

ESOL. In particular, we need to dismantle the distinction between the native and ‘nonnative’ speaker of

English, which, as I have mentioned before, is based more on social than linguistic factors (Brutt-Griffler &

Samimy, 2001). Because this distinction has little to do with language proficiency and more to do with racial and national origin, racialized individuals who do achieve superior-level competence in English may never be given the title of native speaker and may suffer from various types of discrimination by not having this status. Memmi (1965) rightly states that in order to achieve complete liberation, the colonized “must cease defining [themselves] through the categories of colonizers” (p. 152). Indeed, the only way that

(racialized) ‘nonnative’ speakers may cease to be negatively defined in relation to native speakers is to throw away the terms, native and ‘nonnative’ altogether. As I mentioned at the end of Chapter Two, various scholars such as Cook (1999), Rampton (1990), and Jenkins (2003) have attempted the above task

200 by offering alternative labels for native and ‘nonnative’ speakers. The task now is to spread alternative terms like the ones proposed by the above authors all across the ESOL realm.

When we transform the labels of native and ‘nonnative’ speaker or when we create new ESOL materials that promote all varieties and speakers of English, they highlight how decolonization transforms oppressive ideologies into positive ones (Ng, 2012; Perry, 2012). Just as we may transform negative ideologies, we may also transform the apparatuses of these ideologies (Althusser, 1971), which along with terminology and materials, are racial microaggressions. In order to make this change, we must ask the following question: what is the opposite of a microaggression? The answer is a microtransformation. In contrast to racial microaggressions which are subtle acts of racism that create negative subjectivities for racialized individuals, microtransformations utilize interactions and discourse strategies that lead to a positive transformation of racialized subjectivities (Wolfe, 2011). Wolfe (2011) looks at microtransformations in terms of teacher-student interactions, but they can also be employed in a variety of ways. For example, ESOL employers may explicitly praise the merits of their racialized ‘nonnative’- speaking teachers to students in order to send the message that these teachers are effective instructors.

In turn, former students of racialized instructors may tell newer batches of students about how well they learned English with these teachers. Hearing such positive comments will ideally lead racialized teachers to construct positive professional identities in their respective (private-language) schools.

Just like racial microaggressions, a single microtransformation does not lead to a one-time positive change in one’s (professional) identity (Wolfe, 2011). Indeed, since microtransformations have a gradual effect on racialized individuals, they need to become an everyday part of our interactions in order to be truly effective. In other words, microtransformations need to become routinized decolonizing strategies used by all (i.e., employers/administrators, teachers, and students) in the ESOL realm in general and private- language schools in particular.

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Final Remarks

Because racial microaggressions, let alone racial microaggressions in Toronto private-language schools, are an understudied topic, a significant part of this thesis has been to describe these occurrences as they apply to a number of racialized ESOL teachers. In fact, this study has a revelatory purpose because as Sue (2010a) notes, “[a]s long as microaggressions remain hidden, invisible, unspoken, and excused as innocent slights with minimal harm, we will continue to insult, demean, alienate, and oppress marginalized groups” (p. 19). By revealing the racial microaggressions occurring in the private-language- school context, this study hopes to inspire others to prevent them as well (along with making them re-think what it means to be an authentic teacher of ESOL).

When I use the word ‘others,’ I am not solely referring to the targets of microaggressions, but to the perpetrators as well. Indeed, both perpetrators and targets need to work together to cease racial microaggressions. This collaboration is important because as they dehumanize marginalized individuals through their microaggressive speech and behaviour, perpetrators become dehumanized as well (Freire,

1970/2009). By working together to stop this destructive form of communication, both parties will be able to regain their humanity. At the end of the day, the topic of racial microaggressions remind all of us that we must act and be treated humanely both in private-language schools and beyond.

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Appendix A: Recruitment Flyer (This flyer was originally printed on OISE/University of Toronto letterhead)

Invitation to Participate in a Study about the Experiences of ESOL Teachers of Colour who are working/used to work in Toronto Private-Language Schools

Are you a person of colour currently working as an ESOL teacher in a private-language school in Toronto? Or have you worked as one for at least one year in this school context?

Do you feel that your race (or racism) plays/played a role in your interactions with students/employers/colleagues in this context?

If you answered “yes” to the above questions, then you may want to be a participant in my study.

I am a Master’s student in the Adult Education & Community Development Program at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), a division of the University of Toronto. For my thesis, I am interested in studying racial interactions in the private-language school context in Toronto. A possible example is when a teacher of colour is mistaken as a student by a student or colleague (implying that people of colour are learners of English). I specifically intend to focus on racial interactions between ESOL teachers of colour and their students/employers/colleagues, and how these interactions affect the professional identities of these teachers. This study will contribute to the small, but growing literature on ESOL teachers of colour in a context that is rarely explored in the literature: the private- language school.

I am currently looking for 10 ESOL teachers of colour who are working/used to work in private-language schools in Toronto to interview. I am looking for both male and female participants from a variety of ethnic backgrounds. For each participant, I will conduct a total of two interviews. The first one, lasting between 45 to 60 minutes, will ask participants about their demographic, linguistic, and professional backgrounds (as well as their thoughts and feelings about private-language schools). The second interview, lasting between 60 to 75 minutes, will ask participants to describe how their race or racism affects/affected their interactions with others and comment on how these experiences influence/influenced their professional identity formation. All interviews will be kept confidential and will take place at a location convenient for each participant.

If you are interested in being a participant in this study and/or you would like more information, please feel free to contact me, Vijay Ramjattan, by phone (XXX-XXX-XXXX) or by e-mail ([email protected]).

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Appendix B: Informed Consent Letter (This letter was originally printed on OISE/University of Toronto letterhead)

Dear ESOL Teacher,

First of all, thank you very much for considering being a participant in my study. My name is Vijay Ramjattan and I am pursuing an M.A. in Adult Education & Community Development at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), a division of the University of Toronto. As part of the degree requirements for the M.A., I am required to write a thesis based on my own original research. The title of this study is Excuse Me, Are You the Teacher?: The Experiences of Racialized ESOL Teachers in Private-Language Schools in Toronto. The study will be conducted under the supervision of Dr. Kiran Mirchandani.

The purpose of my research is to explore the racial microaggressions experienced by 10 ESOL teachers of colour who work/used to work in private-language schools in Toronto, Ontario. These microaggressions can be described as small, subtle, everyday forms of racism experienced by people of colour. For instance, a racial joke or Asian Canadians (born in Canada) being asked where they were born (implying that they are only foreigners) are examples of racial microaggressions. I will be exploring racial microaggressions that ESOL teachers of colour experience when interacting with their students, employers, and/or colleagues. Furthermore, I will explore how these microaggressions influence the professional identities of teachers.

I am inviting you to participate in my study because you have identified yourself as an ESOL teacher of colour currently working in a private-language school in Toronto (or you have worked as one for at least one year), and you wish to describe your experiences based on race/racism in this school context.

As a participant in this study, you will be asked to participate in a total of two face-to-face interviews with me at a private location that is convenient for both you and me. The first interview, lasting between 45 to 60 minutes, will ask you for background information about yourself including your demographic, linguistic, and professional backgrounds (as well as your thoughts and feelings about private-language schools). The second interview, lasting between 60 to 75 minutes, will ask you to describe any racial interactions that you have experienced at your (previous) workplace and comment on how these experiences influence/influenced how you see/saw yourself as an ESOL teacher. Both interviews will be semi-structured, meaning that while I will have a list of prepared questions to ask you, I may alter or omit certain questions based on what you say (I may even ask you to elaborate on a certain idea, etc.).

Each interview will be audio taped using a digital voice recorder and will be transcribed verbatim to paper using Microsoft Word with your written permission. Audio files, transcripts, and the list of participants (with their contact information) will be stored in password-protected, encrypted computer files, and hard copies of transcripts, the digital voice recorder, and copies of the informed consent letters will be placed in a locked filing cabinet at my home. I will be keeping a researcher’s diary throughout the interview process, which will also be secured in the filing cabinet. Aside from myself, my thesis supervisor will be the only person with access to the data. In the transcripts, names and other identifying information about you and your workplace will be systematically replaced with pseudonyms. All raw data (i.e., the transcripts and the researcher’s diary) will be destroyed two years after the completion of the thesis (along with the consent letters and participants’ contact information). The audio files from both the digital voice recorder and the computer will be destroyed sooner as they will be deleted once transcription is done. Approximately two weeks after each interview, you will have the opportunity to review the transcripts of your interview in order to make any changes, etc., to your responses. I may mail or e-mail the transcripts upon your request, and will ask that you return the revised transcripts approximately one week after you receive them.

To make clear, participation in the study is voluntary. Additionally, you will be at low risk of harm by participating in this study. By talking about racial microaggressions, which are forms of racism, you may feel uncomfortable

225 226 describing instances of discrimination (as it means possibly recapping derogatory statements about yourself). To lower this risk, you may refuse to answer any question and withdraw from the interview process at any time without consequence. Also, at no time will I place value judgments on you (as a teacher), nor will I place value judgments on your responses. Finally, to help you feel more comfortable, I am more than willing to share my own personal experiences with racism in the ESOL context and remind you that your bravery in sharing your stories will ideally lead to positive change in many ESOL workplaces.

There is no compensation for participating in this study. However, there are many benefits of being a participant. Firstly, you will have the opportunity to seriously reflect on your own teaching experiences, which many teachers are unable to do because of busy work schedules and other responsibilities. Secondly, by detailing your experiences, you will be contributing to the small, but growing literature on ESOL teachers of colour. Lastly, being a participant can be empowering as sharing your stories may inspire others to take active measures to stop the racism experienced by teachers of colour.

Aside from this study, your responses may be used in future publications and presentations based on these publications. If that is the case, pseudonyms will be used in place of your name and the name of your workplace.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at (XXX-XXX-XXXX) or at [email protected]. You may also contact my thesis supervisor, Dr. Kiran Mirchandani at XXX-XXX-XXXX or [email protected]. Additionally, if you have any questions related to your rights as a participant in this study, please contact Dean Sharpe at the Ethics Review Office at the University of Toronto at (XXX-XXX-XXXX) or [email protected].

Thank you in advance for your participation.

Vijay Ramjattan Dr. Kiran Mirchandani M.A. Candidate, Leadership, Higher and Adult Education Leadership, Higher and Adult Education OISE/University of Toronto OISE/University of Toronto XXXXX XXXXX XXX, ON XXX, ON XXX XXX XXX XXX Tel: XXX-XXX-XXXX Tel: XXX-XXX-XXXX E-Mail: [email protected] E-Mail: [email protected]

By signing below, you are indicating that you are willing to participate in the study, you have received a copy of this letter, and you are fully aware of the conditions above.

Name ______Signature ______Date ______

Preferred telephone number ______Preferred e-mail address ______

Please initial if you would like an electronic copy of the study upon completion ______Please initial if you agree to have your interview audio taped and transcribed ______

Please sign and return one copy to Vijay Ramjattan and keep a second copy for your own records.

Appendix C: Interview Questions

INTERVIEW ONE: BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Please tell me your gender, age, country of birth, ethnic background, and the number of years teaching ESOL (in a private-language school).

Do you consider yourself a native or ‘nonnative’ speaker of English and why? Describe when, why, and how you studied English if you believe these questions apply to you.

Give a brief summary of your educational background and employment history.

Describe how and why you became an ESOL teacher. Also, describe your current position.

Describe your feelings about working in a private-language school.

If you taught English in other school contexts, how does/did working as an ESOL teacher in a private school differ?

If applicable: Why did you decide to leave your private-language school?

INTERVIEW TWO: RACIAL MICROAGGRESSIONS & PROFESSIONAL IDENTITIES

Describe your overall experience dealing with students, colleagues, and employers at your (previous) school.

Give specific examples of how new students react(ed) to you on a first day of class.

Tell me a time when you thought that your race affected your teaching authority.

Can you think of an occasion when you felt that your race influenced your interactions with students, colleagues, and/or employers at your (previous) school? How did you feel afterward?

Can you think of specific instances when other aspects of your identity like your gender, age, language ability, etc., have worked in conjunction with your race to create unique types of interactions with the above people? How did you feel afterward?

How do you define yourself as a teacher? What factors influence your definition?

Describe your sense of professional identity before and after working in your current school/in your previous private- language school.

Can you think of specific instances where interactions with your students/colleagues/employers played a role in how you viewed yourself as a teacher? Are these the same interactions mentioned above with regard to your race?

What do you see as your future career possibilities as an ESOL teacher after having experienced race-related interactions with your students, colleagues, and/or employers?

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