Jonathan Rosa
@DrJonathanRosa
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Looking like a Language, Sounding like a Race https://t.co/sWrwlJxKIa; Language & Social Justice in Practice https://t.co/Lok5EgiDtw
Joined March 2012
If your proposed response to “systemic” or “institutional” discrimination focuses on modifying individual behaviors, then you do not understand the meaning of systemic or institutional.
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I don’t know who told students that the goal of research is to find some previously undiscovered research topic, claim individual ownership over it, & fiercely protect it from theft, but that almost sounds like, well, colonialism, capitalism, & policing.
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Indigenous Peoples’ Day is as good a day as any to reflect on colonialism not simply as a historical event that took place centuries ago, but rather an ongoing, global formation of power that profoundly structures pasts, presents, and futures.
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“…the coloniality of language… capture[s] the colonizer’s imagination of the colonized as having no Language, that is, no Eurocentrically valorized expressivity]” —Veronelli
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There’s a special place in monolingual, nativist hell for those in higher education who strategically recruit students from China, generate tremendous revenue from their tuition, and then scold them for speaking “Chinese” publicly.
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Hell hath no fury like a slightly inconvenienced privileged person with access to the language of gaslighting, emotional labor, and microaggression.
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Reviewing research proposals & reminded to scream into the academic void again that filling a “gap” in the literature is often far less interesting or important than critically examining what produced said gap or the perception thereof.
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Being a linguistic anthropologist is fun because I regularly get to remind people that the only difference between “aks”/ask & “diffrent”/different is racism in general and antiblackness in particular. Also, this relatively unremarkable linguistic phenomenon is called metathesis.
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Debates about people’s racial identities are exhausting bc despite the deep desire for racial categories & boundaries to be objective & universal, the whole point of racism is that race is whatever colonially anchored power structures need it to be.
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Don’t use terms like “implicit,” “indirect,” or “covert” in relation to racism unless accompanied by the phrase, “as defined by racially evasive white denial rather than perspectives of people targeted by racism, for whom it is often experienced as explicit, direct, & overt”.
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When developing research topics, don’t just identify “gaps” in the literature & reduce your efforts to filling them in—that’s disrespectful to yourself & the work; instead, interrogate the function of particular scholarly avoidances & erasures—what/whose interests do they serve?.
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Why are they called “legacies” instead of intergenerational opportunity hoarders?.
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Next fall I’ll return to Stanford GSE w/TENURE—grateful to countless colleagues, mentors, students, friends, & family for endless support; missing my parents who sacrificed so much for my siblings & me; & recommitted to working toward a fundamentally different academy & world 💙.
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That many Latinx students effectively use Spanish all day long yet also fail Spanish classes while their White peers who are generally unable to use the language in conversation fare well in such courses demonstrates the discriminatory ways language “skills” are often defined.
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You’d almost think Anthropology were founded in and continually reproductive of racism.
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Your annual linguistic anthropological reminder: ideas about grammatical correctness typically reveal much more about the anxieties and investments in hierarchy of those who propagate them than the language use of those they target.
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First gen college students newly radicalized around various structures of power: Engage critically but humbly w/your families & communities by honing your ability to recognize their theories & analyses rather than imposing your scripts on them—you come from tremendous knowledge!.
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My two cents on starting grad school: Cultivate a healthy political, spiritual, and intellectual life off campus—when The University of Chicago attacked me, the City of Chicago sustained me, and I’ll never forget it.
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I feel like I knew the leaders of Teach for America & KIPP were entangled in romance & the neoliberal destruction of US public education, but suppressed it bc of how horrifying it is—thankfully the tik tok generation has the emotional capacity to face this truth
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Race isn’t simply or even primarily an identity—it’s a geography, a structure.
As of February 21, 2021, Chicago is reporting 114,866 people fully vaccinated: 4.2% of the population. Who is dying: Who is vaccinated:
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Imagine the broader worldview that allows wealthy Whites families to imagine they lack a fair shot at life.
Felicity Huffman tells judge she wanted daughter to have a "fair shot" at college
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Remember a few yrs ago when someone was deemed genius for composing a musical that framed a white man from a colonial outpost who participated in founding a settler colony as a metaphor for contemporary migrant refugees, racialized the founding fathers, & made them rap awkwardly?.
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Someone just tweeted that the Supreme Court is now politicized & I will never not be disturbed by people’s investment in the idea of this nation as a space of reasoned fairness despite no relevant historical or contemporary evidence whatsoever.
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Note how Donald Williams bravely, brilliantly emphasizes the perceiver’s role in framing his language & demeanor, recontextualizing his utterances not as disorderly but rather as life protecting, & placing the onus on Chauvin’s attorney to account for his racist interpretations.
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Stick with that idea you think could develop into an MA thesis, PhD dissertation, or even a book!
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Dear students: I look forward to learning with you, but no, the syllabus isn’t ready & likely won’t be until a few minutes before the first class. However, we will read & reflect on important ideas, & avoid hierarchical evaluations because our collective survival is at stake.
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Some colleagues suggest that it’s important for grad student stipends not to be too high to incentivize graduation ASAP; only a certain kind of person would worry about students becoming too comfortable from $20K a year & propose poverty as an academic carrot.
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Imagine internalizing & obsessing over stereotypes about grammatical correctness while growing up, becoming a linguistics major because of it, & then encountering sociolinguistics where you learn that linguistic correctness is less a matter of language than power 😱.
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Efforts to “diversify” syllabuses are less interesting than those to interrogate the fundamental intellectual limitations of fields whose canons have remained nearly exclusively White for generations.
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For some scholars, mass incarceration, educational inequity, addiction, homelessness, border policing, etc. are abstract concepts, whereas for others they’re embodied in close family, neighbors, & friends, & it shows in the stakes, urgency, & empathy that characterizes their work.
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Cis gays love a fun, no stakes, marginalization adjacent photo op with maximal individual attention & minimal political engagement, obscuring the reality that white nationalism has always been a profoundly homoerotic project.
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A reminder for junior scholars: When engaging with media about your work, consider answering the questions you want to be asked regardless of what you’re actually asked—a central part of scholarly expertise is the ability to reframe a dialogue [1/5].
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This tenure announcement from an organization and community that have inspired so much of my work means the world to me 💙🇵🇷.
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I defended my PhD dissertation exactly 10 years ago & my main unsolicited advice for a past me & others who might relate is to trust your body’s writing ebbs & flows (it knows!), & beware health consequences of extractive work practices that you’ll spend many years unlearning.
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Early on my Department encouraged me to leave the program because I was too focused on community work—a few years later, when I graduated before anyone else in my cohort, they awarded me a dissertation prize for engaged scholarship 😂😂😂.
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A particularly terrifying aspect of whiteness is its capacity to distort & perform vulnerability & victimhood in ways that define & transform worlds.
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“I suggest that we may learn from spaces of silence as well as spaces of speech, that in the patient act of listening to another tongue…we may disrupt that cultural imperialism that suggests one is worthy of being heard only if one speaks standard English” (hooks 194:174). 💙.
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One fun thing about entering the field of education is the discovery that many “experts” on schools don’t often interact w/children, teachers, or administrators, which tells you quite a bit about the priorities & commitments associated w/mainstream academic knowledge production.
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How is imposter syndrome even a thing in contexts overrun by elite mediocrity?.
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Socioeconomic mobility has taught me that what I used to think were personality traits shaped by chance—anxious, neurotic, planner, Type A, etc.—are better understood as maladaptive strategies for navigating life with no financial safety net; I was wasn’t pathological, just broke.
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That’s what happens when race & ethnicity are essentialized as accents, affects, aesthetics, & a few catch phrases uttered over & over. .
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Ok class, today let’s put on our anti-imperial thinking caps.
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Just became a first time home owner & I’m completely overwhelmed as I reflect on this incredible blessing, as well as all the work, support, & opportunity that made it a reality. My gratitude is immeasurable.
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It’s especially troublesome for distinctively NYC Dominican experiences to be homogenized into palatable Latinx representations without even a single Dominican among the film’s writing, production, & directing team—blatant, disgusting colorism is just one among many problems here.
“It’s Mexican, it’s Puerto Rican, Dominican, Colombian, Peruvian,” Anthony Ramos says of #InTheHeights. “I love that this movie encapsulates everything, from the lightest of the lightest to the darkest of the darkest.”
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I’ve had tenure for about 10 weeks and it’s already glaringly clear how some people—particularly women of color—get stuck at the associate rank in perpetuity bc of ridiculously disparate service needs & expectations based on gender & race.
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Can someone remind me of the word for the everyday labor performed by faculty of color—particularly women of color—helping students of color regroup in the aftermath of disrespectful, hurtful, discouraging, and/or traumatizing encounters w/white professors? Asking for a friend.
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There are some senior faculty who advise graduate students and junior scholars to sacrifice their relationships, political commitments, health, and lives altogether to reach the PhD and then tenure. DO NOT LISTEN TO THEM—LIVE EVERY DAY.
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Sadly, this is peak San Francisco.
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It makes sense that abolition and decolonization would be challenging for liberals who thought they just had to unpack their invisible knapsacks.
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Is that language inaccessible or are you just new to conversations people have been having for many years which require time & effort to enter into meaningfully?.
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A reminder that linguistic patterns often described as “codeswitching” are fundamental to ALL human communication. Why we only notice & debate particular populations’ engagement in these practices is the much more interesting issue.
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That awkward moment when it becomes clear that white scholars dominate Asian Studies, African Studies, Latin American Studies, etc. and think this is somehow reflective of the quality of their work rather than white supremacy. We see you. We’ve always seen you.
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Based on some shifty scholarly practices, the Cite Black Women slogan might need to be changed to Carefully Engage with the Insights, Arguments, and Intellectual Projects of Black Women since people seem to enjoy citing things they’ve clearly never read, much less understood.
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Puerto Rico, Palestine, & many other non-sovereign territories are conveniently excluded from this grossly inaccurate count, but that’s what happens when colonial powers define the terms of decolonization.
When the UN was founded in 1945, some 750 million people, or 1/3 of the world's population, lived in territories dependent on #colonial powers. Today, fewer than 2 million people live under colonial rule in 17 remaining non-self-governing territories.
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When my article on racialized ideologies of “languagelessness” was desk rejected a month after initial submission bc I allegedly imposed race on the analysis, I acted like a responsible scholar by doubling down until it was in print 3 yrs later—it now has over 200 citations! 😎.
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Now that aspiring anti-racist academics are learning they should cite BIPOC scholars, especially women, please note it’s not just WHO you cite but HOW you cite—are BIPOC authors regarded as theorists or just case studies demonstrating the validity of white theorists’ concepts?.
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Family was complaining bc I kept knocking out during a movie, but then I woke up, watched for a minute, & asked which white director thought it would be fun to combine a Puerto Rican accent, Mexican sartorial aesthetic, & Flamenco music, & they told me to go back to sleep.
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Did someone say petty? One time in middle school when I wore a Harvard t-shirt, a senior role model laughed & said I could never get in; declining their fully funded PhD grad offer was cute, but joining the faculty at his dream school which rejected him was even better 😜.
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Wait, then what’s an anthropologist?.
'A liberal: someone who thinks he knows more about your experience than you do.' - James Baldwin
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Just learned that Looking like a Language, Sounding like a Race was awarded the 2021 American Association for Applied Linguistics (@AAALinks) First Book Award! Overwhelmed by the honor & inspired to continue studying language, race, & possible worlds! 💙
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Before inviting BIPOC scholars to participate in diversity initiatives, consider reading something—anything!—they’ve written first, even if just as a cute acknowledgment that they might actually have ideas & insights that don’t magically emanate from their bodies 😶.
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One of my favorite responses after giving a lecture is when undergrads say they talk about this stuff with their friends all the time but didn’t know you could study it—talking/arguing with friends a crucial form of study!.
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I’m so excited to meet all these new colleagues and students coming out as experts in race studies!.
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Once you recognize race needs to be alternately rigid & flexible to serve as a rationalization for dynamic colonial power structures, you stop being surprised by its apparent contradictions & inconsistencies.
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Let’s hear it for audience members who give encouraging head nods & affirming gestures on zoom—whether presenting in person or virtually, it helps w/reading the room!.
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Educators: Is that policy you’re rigidly enforcing actually mandatory, helpful, or even logical?.
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I received this in campus mail today and I have no idea who sent it but I feel so seen 👀😂
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Someone said they were on their way to Rachel Dolezal’s dissertation defense & I still haven’t recovered.
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Finished paying off my student loans this week—rather than celebrating I’m more inclined to advocate for the abolishment of student debt and reflect on the perverse nature of pay to learn systems in higher ed that exploit the aspirations of poor and working class students.
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A great deal of my professional work centers on refusing to reproduce harms I’ve faced in academia, particularly as a graduate student—sometimes we forget the profound impact of harm reduction in contexts where toxic behaviors are normalized, incentivized, & celebrated.
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15 years ago this month my father passed away suddenly during my first year of grad school, knocking me off my feet; I was later asked to leave my program, but I’m glad I stayed & I’m now able to recognize the potential in my students that I needed mentors to perceive in me.
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At the beginning of every grad seminar, I suggest a few reading strategies for the social sciences:. Before picking up a text, learn something about the author & where this piece fits into their broader body of work to get a sense of key stakes, themes, & trajectories [1/9].
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Excited to continue thinking with colleagues about language & power beyond disciplinary boundaries!
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How come no one warns you that when you start doing this mindfulness, embodiment, being present work, your robotic numbness subsides & you start feeling everything, which presents constant new decisions?: e.g., Am I actually comfortable & well w/these activities, places, people?.
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On a daily basis I accidentally like & then quickly unlike a few tweets that make me feel like I could lose my job & that’s how I know I’m not yet ready for the revolution.
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Don’t worry, structural racism isn’t a relevant topic in California, where Latinxs between the ages of 20-54 have been dying of COVID at 8.5x the rate of whites.
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Please don’t use the phrase “implicit bias” in relation to a lynching.
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“The only cure will be a transformation of the whole society, & an entirely new knowledge order…It is through language that you & I…develop a mechanism to understand one another, do you see the immense potential there?! Language is entirely the point!”
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Any white person can casually embody the police in infinite ways, so as we advocate for defunding & abolishing the police, let’s always remember the bigger goal of defunding & abolishing whiteness.
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This is called receptive bilingualism & it’s a powerful skill!.
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Me: Stop being so snarky & let people have some damn joy. Also me: Through whose suffering is imperial joy sustained?
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Is it a good time to let students in on the secret that many professors have received little to no pedagogical training whatsoever? Or that teaching is often devalued or disregarded in tenure and promotion? 😬.
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If you’re talking about race & ethnicity & colonialism isn’t central to the discussion, then you’re probably not talking about race & ethnicity.
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I’m incredibly grateful for this important work which debunks the widely circulated myth that low-income kids (mostly of color) suffer from a 30 million word gap, but I’m also sad that we have to spend so much time disproving bigoted ideas when we could be up to so much more.
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Solidarity with NYC Black Puerto Rican women, Black Puerto Rican women throughout the diaspora, and all Black women, whose experiences and knowledges are infinitely profound, not costumes to play with.
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Rethinking educational marginalization at last week’s Yidan Prize Summit
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Not that we needed additional evidence that mainstream institutional invocations of justice, equity, diversity, & inclusion are often completely vacuous, but it’s fitting that Dr. S*nema earned a PhD in “Justice Studies”.
This is how Senator Krysten Sinema (D), who makes a $174,000 base salary (paid for by us, taxpayers) voted against a $15 minimum wage.
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When decolonial perspectives ground your research, they completely transform questions, methods, analyses, modes of representation, proposed interventions, and political commitments. A thread. .
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As an early career scholar I was flattered when students who’d never taken any of my classes asked me to serve on or even chair their thesis & dissertation committees, but after a few years the gender & race politics of colleagues’ (non-)mentorship have become much clearer.
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Those of us who thrive on canceled meetings, appointments, & other professional events are currently reaching our highest state of being
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