Colormute : race talk dilemmas in an American school / Mica Pollock.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Pollock, Mica, 1971-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Race awareness--United States.

Race awareness.

Racism--United States--Terminology.

Racism.

Racism in language.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (284 p.)

Edition:

Course Book

Place of Publication:

Princeton, NJ ; Woodstock : Princeton University Press, 2004.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This book considers in unprecedented detail one of the most confounding questions in American racial practice: when to speak about people in racial terms. Viewing "race talk" through the lens of a California high school and district, Colormute draws on three years of ethnographic research on everyday race labeling in education. Based on the author's experiences as a teacher as well as an anthropologist, it discusses the role race plays in everyday and policy talk about such familiar topics as discipline, achievement, curriculum reform, and educational inequality. Pollock illustrates the wide variations in the way speakers use race labels. Sometimes people use them without thinking twice; at other moments they avoid them at all costs or use them only in the description of particular situations. While a major concern of everyday race talk in schools is that racial descriptions will be inaccurate or inappropriate, Pollock demonstrates that anxiously suppressing race words (being what she terms "colormute") can also cause educators to reproduce the very racial inequities they abhor. The book assists readers in cultivating a greater understanding of the pitfalls and possibilities of everyday race talk and clarifies previously murky discussions of "colorblindness." By bridging the gap between theory and practice, Colormute will be enormously helpful in fostering ongoing conversations about dismantling racial inequality in America.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. We Don't Belong to Simple Race Groups, but We Do

2. Race Doesn't Matter, but It Does

3. The De-Raced Words We Use When Discussing Plans for Racial Equality Can Actually Keep Us from Discussing Ways to Make Opportunities Racially Equal

4. The More Complex Inequality Seems to Get, the More Simplistic Inequality Analysis Seems to Become

5. The Questions We Ask Most about Race Are the Very Questions We Most Suppress

6. Six Although Talking in Racial Terms Can Make Race Matter, Not Talking in Racial Terms Can Make Race Matter Too

Moving Forward

Practically Speaking: Words for Educators in Particular

Notes

Bibliography

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [251]-268).

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jul 2019)

ISBN:

9786612129452

9781282129450

1282129457

9781400826124

1400826128

OCLC:

496796252