“Emerging through Critical Race Theory Counter-storytelling in a Rhetoric and Composition Graduate Studies Context”

by Caleb Lee González | Xchanges 15.1, Spring 2020

What about This CRT Counterstory?

I tell this story to connect a personal experience in graduate studies with a larger (though very subtle) force of power and privilege that is often at work within the classroom. This matters as we continue to work toward pedagogical frameworks of inclusivity and making sure that the voices and experiences of graduate students who already find themselves on the margins are supported and heard. My story is one example that could have been taken up by the teacher with a few pedagogical moves such as, Hmm, say more about that, or, Let’s linger there for a moment.

Furthermore, Yosso (2005) talks about the cultural wealth model as a framework to understand how students of color access and experience college from a strengths-based perspective. In this symposium, Sales (2020) also references Yosso’s (2005) cultural wealth model in terms of aspirational capital. Another form that Yosso (2005) mentions is linguistic capital which alludes to the language and communication skills that students bring to the college space. In terms of my specific counterstory, I also can’t help but wonder that if a white peer of mine had shared the exact same knowledge of having come across the work in another language and reading a few more poems for greater context and working across two languages for greater meaning, the response may have been quite different.

This is only speculation, of course, but this is where the workings of educational access, privilege, and belonging that Martinez (2018), Ahmed (2012), and Yosso (2005) allude to in their work become important. Whose epistemologies and cultural wealth is valued or authorized within the educational space or even the class conversation? This matters for graduate studies in Rhet-Comp if we are to seek out ways of resisting such notions by ensuring that contributions of marginalized graduate students be accounted for within spaces of learning.