Voice, Silence and Analysis: Africentric Communities of Practice & Positioned Learning.

I was silent once, passive and quiet, in my youth. I sought to be liked and likeable in a legacy of racial supremacy that sought to discredit me. Voiced, I am now the aggregate of my familiarity.

My life’s experiences have been melded by the Canadian social construct with White Canadians believing they had a right to define me and rank me. My racial identity determined for them, my intellect, my character and my value. The “assignment of racial identity is important because from its beginning, American, and Canadian society have been structured on a racial continuum from white to non-white with whites receiving legal privileges not afforded to non-white groups (Hernandez, 1998, Lamey, 2011). From my birth, their identification of me was to affect my right to education, employment and participation in life... (Kaulback, 1990, Gould, 1981; Molnar, 1982 at p.1242; Payson, 1996).

(Lamey, 2011, Let's talk about Race: A Canadian Examination of White Supremacist Discourse- My Reflections of the Country and the Skin, I’m in GSL6200, Final Paper-December 28 at 4)

The reality is that my merit/ social ranking is determined by others. I am scrutinized as referenced by the social standards and values of White colonialism and my perceived compliance within their social rules (McNamee & Miller, 2004). My racial composition, gender, and financial circumstance (class) automatically ranked me in a deficit position (McNamee & Miller, 2004).

Over time I developed strategies to raise my social collateral and safeguard my aspirations. I was indulgent; a chameleon, light skinned and acceptable to them, my white teachers and colleagues. I acquiesced whenever possible. It was necessary for survival[i]. The expectation of silence and vassalage (subordination) were clear. I was silenced to the degree of my ethical constitution.

The voice speaks. Echo answers echoes. But what does the Silence say? What does the singer Sing that is more accurate and pure than the silence after the echoes have fallen? [ii](Miller, "Voice, Silence, Echos" in Miller; "Poems, Prose and Plays" 1990 at 43) 

The absence of voice is shrill and pierces the ear of equity.In the minority again, who would echo my voice? When vassalage and acquiescence are the valued expectation, who will stand by me?

The voice is from the beginning a form of architecture – not a means of self-protection but one half of an arch, an echo anticipation of an echo (Yeh quoting Carter, 1992 at 12)[iii].

Woodward and Minkley describe voice and silence as an axis of empowerment (at introduction; xxii). The relationship is hierarchal; opposite ends of the same continuum with voice as the extreme of power hierarchy and silence, the disempowerment.

Expressions of voice that fall outside of the normative are subject to rejection and exclusion. The First Lady, Michelle Obama captures the realities of so many Black women (and members of the Minority population) when she reflects on her experiences with voice.

I have a voice. Once quiet and uncertain, conciliatory and wide eyed hopeful, it was placed on community and office committees for that diverse input towards inclusiveness. Now characterized by the stereotypical Black norms, a voice lost and dismissed as “controlling, demanding, angry and threatening. It is no longer elicited or listened to. Heralding unpopular narrative, it is now stifled, muted, devalued and disbelieved as I am openly ignored, dismissed as crazy making , demeaned as too sensitive, whispered as incompetent and replaced on standing and advisory committees in favour of less experienced more popular people with favorable points of view. Michelle Obama

The intermingling of voice, silence, social hierarchy, subject matter and subjectivity affects group politics (Yeh, generally). Group members are strategic in their use of voice and silence ( Yeh at 329). I assert that the use of voice and silence in an educational setting requires serious consideration. (Yeh states that “one of the essential tools the professor uses is to have us reflect on and explore our own multiple social locations and identities, and how they affect us in the classroom and in our future profession as teachers (at 327).” This is specifically true and relevant in our current educational endeavor as members of an Africentric Learning community earning a master’s degree in education.

In consideration of Yeh’s professor’s expectation, that she use her voice, Yeh examines the authenticity of that expectation and questions the professor’s recognition of the professor’s own privilege as determined by the positioning of class and race.

On one hand, she aimed a pedagogy that speaks to “marginal and oppressed groups”…On the other hand, she failed to recognize her own “unearned privilege” that allows her to decide who is to be empowered and what voice is to be heard (Yeh at 327). 

Africentricity is based in critical pedagogy. Critical pedagogy endeavors emancipation of the silenced, oppressed “voice” and empower the oppressed to speak, to critic and to act against masculine ideologies in educational settings and discourses (Yeh at 326, quoting Luke, Gore 1992). As the current educational purpose of this cohort requires subjective voice and critical analysis, the recent questions raised with respect to professor Plumb’s racial and social positioning is valid and necessary. Yeh, referencing Orner, 1992, asserts that discourse on students’ voice in the name of their liberation and empowerment has been inadequately considered in juxtaposition to the binary oppositions of subject/object, student/teacher, oppressor/oppressed, and voice/silence (Yeh at 327).

Why must the oppressed speak? For whose benefit do we/ do they speak? How is the speaking received, interpreted, controlled, limited, disciplined and stylized by the speakers, the listeners, the historical moment and the context? What use is made of the “people’s voice” after it is heard? (Orner, 1992 at 76) Yeh at 327).

Within this oppositional context, “the pluralizing context of “voices” does not guarantee a safe place for speaking out or talking back about their oppression.”(Yeh at 338). The examination of subjective content requires secure interaction between the members of the community of practice.

Tomasello, emphasises that the species distinction of human being is directly related to their engagement in social learning (Tomasello, generally) The advancement of the species is reliant upon the interaction of the members for adaptation and continuation of the knowledge (ratchet effect). This means humans are historically and contemporaneously interdependent. Membership to the group is not automatic or constant (Wenger, 1998). Circularly, human interaction and value systems are determinative of culture. Culture is integral to human knowledge and understanding.

The adaptation and ratcheting developed by individual social groupings within the conspecies create subtle distinctions of culture. This divides the conspecies into individual cultural groupings with differing relational interaction and values. Although these differences may be characteristically minute, notwithstanding the minuteness of genetic difference separating humans from primates, the effect of culture is defining. The reasoning affirms that cultural positioning is relevant.

Yeh, in exploring consciousness, acknowledges Anzuldua, 1987 and Asher, 2002:

[all] identities are located at the intersection of race, class, gender/sexuality, culture, history and geography. All identities, cultures, representations are hybrid, dynamic, context-specific and negotiated. And encounters with difference, different others, influence/ have implications for self .(at 90).

Recognizing, my classmate, Falomi Jones’s blog, revealing the “big elephant” in the classroom.  I agree with her assertions, “ In order for education to become equitable to all people, we must begin with a more comprehensive understanding of how power and privilege intersect with a person’s ability to learn. “  In addressing, the “big” elephant in the classroom she states the glaringly obvious, an elephant is big, and we must acknowledge that class, race, privilege and gender, (social and cultural positioning) affect our learning, (its content and delivery and our degree and form of participation). Wenger, recognizes a profound connection between identity and practice (149) however, he fails to consider his social positioning.as he embraces a "one size fits all" approach to knowledge production and management.  In so much as Wenger, seeks to redefine the conversation within circles of social learning, his failure to consider power and privilege negates restricts its relevance to the African Canadian reality.  

Let us examine our individual and collective positioning; explore the oppositional positions that situate our cohort reality, and its effect on our learning. The tenants of Africentric analysis require it.

Darlene M/ Lamey

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[1]  For example, the Virginia assembly declared in 1662 that the mulatto children of slave mothers would be slaves. Mulatto children of this time period are believed to be largely the offspring of indentured white servants and blacks. See JOEL WILLIAMSON, NEW PEOPLE: MISCEGENATION AND MULATTOES IN THE UNITED STATES 8 (1980).

[i] I was the only Black child in any of my formal education until grade 10 (there was one other) and then at law school, I had some classes where there were two of us.

[ii] R. Miller; Voices, Silence, Echo in Miller, Poems, Prose, Plays ed. Lionel Abrahams,: Capetown; Carrefore, 1990 at 43.

[iii] P. Carter; The sound in between voice, space, performance: Kenzington, Mew South Wales UP, 1992 at 12. http://books.google.ca/books?id=P9SiY8EHUC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false)