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Using Positionality to Dismantle the Missy Anne Syndrome in English Methods Classrooms New Jersey English Journal Volume 9 What's Next? Embarking Upon a New Decade of English Language Arts Article 15 2020 Using Positionality to Dismantle the Missy Anne Syndrome in English Methods Classrooms Darlene Russell William Paterson University of New Jersey Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.montclair.edu/nj-english-journal Part of the Language and Literacy Education Commons Recommended Citation Russell, Darlene (2020) "Using Positionality to Dismantle the Missy Anne Syndrome in English Methods Classrooms," New Jersey English Journal: Vol. 9 , Article 15. Available at: https://digitalcommons.montclair.edu/nj-english-journal/vol9/iss1/15 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Montclair State University Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in New Jersey English Journal by an authorized editor of Montclair State University Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Russell: Using Positionality to Dismantle the Missy Anne Syndrome in Engli Using Positionality to Dismantle the Missy Anne Syndrome in English Methods Classrooms DARLENE RUSSELL William Paterson University of New Jersey My big brown eyes took it all in. I read roles. One of the most internecine and the excitement in my parents’ faces as they emotionally-cacophonous “relationships” counted down the days until the landmark was between Missy Anne Reynolds and airing of the TV mini-series, Roots. In the Kizzy Reynolds. 1970s this was both historical and Missy Anne was the niece of a White revolutionary media. Roots was the multi- slave owner, and Kizzy was Missy Anne’s generational chronicle of Alex Haley’s uncle’s slave. Kizzy was gifted to Missy as family from the rich shores of West Africa her handmaiden. Kizzy was Missy Anne’s to the savage dystopia of African Slavery possession; she was property. Missy Anne, a and the Civil War in America. This was not beneficiary of an institutionalized oppressive just Haley’s story; it was everyone’s story system built on race, interacted with Kizzy from the African Diaspora. Roots provided a in what appeared to be benevolence but sweeping panoramic glimpse, albeit with the simply masked superciliousness born out of trademarks of Hollywood, into the African the loins of White supremacy. Missy Anne’s American Slavery experience in the United words were oiled in deficit and States. This riveting epic mini-series was a condescendence, and she knew that it was visceral cultural cry of African American unfathomable for Kizzy to be her equal but people. It bellowed a narrative that African merely her life-size human toy. Americans carried in their ancestral DNA, “You remember when we would play and some passed down through the school? I’d be the teacher and you’d be generations but most learned about on a the pupil.” Missy Anne sang in a high dirty platter of history served in school. My pitch voice to Kizzy. “What fun we had! mother, father, brother, and I huddled You were such a good student, Kizzy” around the television to watch Roots. My [Roots]. brother was a toddler, and I was a second I have seen my share of “Missy Annes” grader. I did not quite understand this in schools serving largely Black and monumental moment, but I knew it was Latino/a student populations. I use Missy important. Anne for a few reasons: she is White and Several years later I viewed Roots with she is Kizzy’s “teacher.” Moreover, Missy older and more thoughtful eyes and engaged Anne’s persona represents some of the in rounds of critical discourse about the iconic sentiments and exchanges between movie with family and friends. To this day, White people and people of color many scenes and characters have stayed particularly Black people. In spite of the with me. To my chagrin, the mini-series equality strides in education, many teachers made such an impression upon me that I in the 21st century suffer with, what I call the avoided watching movies with any of the Missy Anne Syndrome. The Missy Anne actors who play the astonishingly nefarious Syndrome is characterized by intentionally Published by Montclair State University Digital Commons, 2020 1 New Jersey English Journal, Vol. 9 [2020], Art. 15 or sub-consciously perpetuating White • Being verbally condescending to supremacist ideologies, reproducing racist students oppressive structural systems, and Using language, word choice, tone as subscribing to racialized deficit thinking “weapons” to diminish students while even proclaiming colorblindness. The intellectually, psychologically, emotionally confluence of these symptoms is detected in or physically (e.g., physical appearance, teachers through quiet contemptuous gazes hair, clothing style, etc.). of students, polished patronizing exchanges • Having encounters with students and with students, and race-coded language not relationships between other teachers and school staff. Interacting with students monolithically White cultural and instructional poly- or on a surface level instead of creating hegemonic ideologies, from the teachers to intersections of cultural connections with the curriculum, are endemic in public them on an authentic and deep level. schools across the nation. • Engaging in “play” marked by masked According to scholars like Banks, ridicule Sleeter & Thao, and Picower, a White, Actively seeking opportunities to middle-class, monolingual, female teaching “relate” to students and showcase diversity force dominate schools in the United States. consciousness by using students’ culturally- Moreover, Howard adduces that this based colloquialisms and gestures in demographic is particularly accentuated in exchanges with them as disguised racial racially segregated schools that serve Black mocking. and Latino/a students. In 2019 the NJ 101.5 • Using extrinsic motivation tactics to FM station aired a segment on “How New make students “happy” Jersey hopes to achieve a more diverse Converting the classroom into a modern teacher pool,” it was reported that “on a barter system by using tangibles like candy, typical school day, more than 163,000 food, and rewards to seduce students into students in New Jersey never encounter a being “well-behaved” and content without teacher of color in any classes or while having to ever really get to know them. walking through the halls.” • Using insipid and meaningless Lamont Repollet, New Jersey Education instructional activities Commissioner, interviewed in the segment Having low expectations of students and added that “about one in five schools in New intentionally selecting curricular materials Jersey have a 100 percent white professional that lack academic luster and vigor, which staff.” This data certainly underscores the reproduce systemic racial oppression and need for diversifying the teaching pool and White supremacy. prompts questions about how teacher • Asserting authority in a Draconian education programs will address race in the manner when students assert their new decade to silence the Missy Anne “voice” Syndrome. Penalizing students (e.g., discipline From my observations and years of referrals, suspensions, etc.) when they use experience working with schools that serve their voice to express, question or assert Black and Latino/a student populations, the themselves by deeming such “disrespectful” Syndrome is characterized in preservice and and rejecting the role that culture plays in in-service teachers in some of the following expression. Failing to see that cultural ways: interpretations can be biased, limiting, and inaccurate. https://digitalcommons.montclair.edu/nj-english-journal/vol9/iss1/15 2 Russell: Using Positionality to Dismantle the Missy Anne Syndrome in Engli • Funneling the message of superiority of capital and authentically connect with them. self and lifestyle into the classroom An integral cog in this connection is the Creating a cultural lacuna between teacher acknowledging and understanding students by deliberately transmitting his/her own positionality. messages of superiority and privilege It is through positionality that teachers through attitude, attire, and language. This can critically consider a cadre of print and social hierarchy flaunting relies on the myth non-print texts—poems, novels, music, of racial inferiority. essays, art, and films—and instructional A first step in avoiding the Missy Anne designs in the ELA classroom. According to Syndrome is recognizing the mammoth role Christensen in Reading, Writing, and Rising that culture plays in how one perceives self, Up, ELA teachers need “to respond to the others and the world. Also, understanding world, pose questions, be multicultural, anti- that cultural identities like race and class racist, and pro-justice, participatory, joyful, directly “position” how one perceives and activists, academically rigorous, and experiences life. H. Richard Milner, IV culturally sensitive” (138). In my (388) posits how “racial and cultural introduction of positionality, I provide consciousness” shapes our positionality. teacher candidates with an example of my Positionality involves the sociocultural positionality in Figure 1 as identity positions or cultural identities one holds as it disclosure and to serve as a mentor piece for pertains to race, gender, class, culture, students. We then read Ana María Villegas’ ethnicity, education, family history, and Tamara Lucas’ Preparing Culturally citizenship status, language, geography, Responsive Teachers: Rethinking the schooling, religion, and other identities. Curriculum discussing
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